Friday Church News Notes
Volume 22, Issue 37 - September 10, 2021
The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, though this does not imply an endorsement.
ANCIENT “CHEAT-WEIGHT” FOUND IN JERUSALEM (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Weight used to cheat in trade,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 2, 2021: “Archaeologists have uncovered a weight used for trading in ancient Jerusalem that scholars believe was used to defraud traders. Found in the northern part of the City of David in Jerusalem’s Old City and dating back to 2,700 years ago during the First Temple period, the weight in question is just 14 mm. in diameter and 12 mm. in height, and is only the second one of its kind to have been found in Israel. Made of hard limestone, it contained engravings indicating it has a weight of two gerah, which equals 0.944 grams. Despite this, however, the weight does not weigh two gerah. Rather, the researchers found that it weighed at least 3.61 grams, over three times as much. While this may seem odd, Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Eli Shukron and Hagai Cohen Kolonimus say that the likely explanation is that whoever used this weight in commerce was using it to cheat people. This type of scamming is actually extensively described in the Bible, where it is harshly criticized.” [The following is Deuteronomy 25:13-16 in the KJV: “Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.”]
INTER-VARSITY PRESS’S NATIVE AMERICAN VERSION (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - InterVarsity Press has yet again demonstrated its apostasy by publishing the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. It aims “toward conveying Christian beliefs through Native American cultural concepts and storytelling” (“New Bible translation,” The Christian Post, Sept. 1, 2021). John 3:16 reads, “The Great Spirit loves this world of human beings so deeply he gave us his Son--the only Son who fully represents him. All who trust in him and his way will not come to a bad end, but will have the life of the world to come that never fades --full of beauty and harmony.” This is not the Word of God. It’s not even a loose paraphrase. To call it a Bible version is nonsense. It has no clear connection to the divinely-inspired words of Scripture, yet it was positively reviewed by hundreds of “Native churches, leaders and Bible scholars” and was done in close collaboration with Wycliffe Associates of Orlando (formerly part of Wycliffe Bible Translators) and OneBook. This type of thing is based on the unscriptural “dynamic equivalency” principles of Eugene Nida and pioneered by Wycliffe Bible Translators and the United Bible Societies. The modern Bible versions, with their textual corruptions and frightful paraphrasing liberties and the endless multiplicity of contradicting readings, are playing a major role in end-time apostasy and wishy-washy ecumenism. The infallible Word of God is not something to be played with; it is not a nose of wax to be twisted as man pleases. The translation of God’s eternal Word is the most serious business on earth. The First Nations Version isn’t much more corrupted than The Message, which is one of Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s favorite “versions.” Here is John 3:16 in The Message: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.” What does that mean? Let’s let the King James Bible, an accurate translation of the infallible Word of God, shine light on this confusion: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
MORE FEEDBACK FROM “A WORD ABOUT THE COVID VACCINES” (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Thank you so much for your well researched article on the Covid Vaccines. I am a Pastor of a small church ... I have the privilege of being able to support myself in the ministry as a Doctor, being a family physician and an emergency physician. I must say this Covid situation has saddened me no end; it has distracted God Fearing and Preaching pastors, and Christians alike, from doing the work of The Lord to focusing on conspiracy, anti-government rhetoric, and protesting. I absolutely agree with you, we were told not to fight the government but to ‘fight the good fight’ -- which was never the fight against the establishment. The so called conspiracy baffles me, the so called persecution confuses me. We have not even come close to the level of persecution God’s churches suffered during the time of Paul, yet it was during these times that we were told to ‘obey magistrates’ and to ‘honour the king,’ not to mention praying for ‘kings and for all that are in authority’ -- not protesting and causing civil disobedience. I do believe that this is all a distraction from Satan to divert our attention away from what really matters -- The Gospel of Christ. As a word of encouragement, I agree with all that you said as it made perfect scientific sense, but more importantly it made perfect biblical sense. The drug companies? They are just companies wanting to make as much of a profit for their share holders as they can -- pretty dumb to kill off your customers, don’t you think? Conspiracy about COVID-19? Unlikely! This would require collaboration at the highest level between multiple countries who can’t even agree on where to hold a meeting let alone something as big as this. Will this level of government collaboration ever happen? Yes, one day, God has ordained it, so yes it will happen. Is it the Christian’s job to stop it? No, if God has ordained it we have no power to stop it; our job is to pray for all men everywhere that they would come to the saving knowledge of Christ and the spread the gospel as we were instructed -- simple really. Is Covid-19 real? I hope so because if it’s not then I’m not sure what we have been treating this past 18 months. Is there a conspiracy? Absolutely!!! A conspiracy by Satan to distract Gods people from the real task at hand. Thank you again for your article, well written and well presented.”
GETTING AROUND GOD’S LAW (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Lord Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their clever tactics of getting around God’s law. “But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (Mt. 15:3-6). Israel is still engaged in this terrible game. The law of God says, “But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. ... And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years” (Leviticus 25:1-7, 20-22). (The sabbath year began on September 6, 2021, which is the year 5,782 on the Jewish calendar.) Instead of simply ceasing from farming in the sabbath year and trusting God to provide their needs, Israeli farmers have gone to the rabbis for help in artful disobedience. One tactic is to “symbolically relinquish ownership” to non-Jews for the sabbath year. Another tactic is to move the farming indoors to hothouses. The sabbath hothouses “are built under rabbinical supervision to ensure the plants have no contact with the soil” (“The farmers giving their land a year off,” Israel21c, Aug. 29, 2021). Nechemia Rappel, who was chairman of the Religious Kibbutz movement in 2007, said “Everyone understands that you cannot work for six years and then have no income on the seventh. A farmer cannot tell his customers in Israel and abroad that he is not working and that he’ll be back in a year” (“Bid to let land lie,” Forward, Aug. 29, 2007). Right, that is true if one is not trusting in Jehovah God.
COMPROMISE IS A CREEPING PARALYSIS (Friday Church News Notes, September 17, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “The spirit of compromise grows like creeping paralysis. and before one realizes it, the churches speak out so weakly against any sin that it can barely be heard, and certainly they would never take action of any kind. they just sit trying to be pleasing to everybody, uttering a few pious, meaningless platitude” (James Crumpton, New Testament Church Discipline).
INSULATED EARS (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, June 25, 2021: “Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, the Creator who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. Author: Paul A. Bartz. Ref: McCutcheon, Marc. 1989, The Compass in Your Nose, Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. p. 90.”
CONCLUSION: The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will not be discouraged. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:11-14).
INTER-VARSITY PRESS’S NATIVE AMERICAN VERSION (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - InterVarsity Press has yet again demonstrated its apostasy by publishing the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. It aims “toward conveying Christian beliefs through Native American cultural concepts and storytelling” (“New Bible translation,” The Christian Post, Sept. 1, 2021). John 3:16 reads, “The Great Spirit loves this world of human beings so deeply he gave us his Son--the only Son who fully represents him. All who trust in him and his way will not come to a bad end, but will have the life of the world to come that never fades --full of beauty and harmony.” This is not the Word of God. It’s not even a loose paraphrase. To call it a Bible version is nonsense. It has no clear connection to the divinely-inspired words of Scripture, yet it was positively reviewed by hundreds of “Native churches, leaders and Bible scholars” and was done in close collaboration with Wycliffe Associates of Orlando (formerly part of Wycliffe Bible Translators) and OneBook. This type of thing is based on the unscriptural “dynamic equivalency” principles of Eugene Nida and pioneered by Wycliffe Bible Translators and the United Bible Societies. The modern Bible versions, with their textual corruptions and frightful paraphrasing liberties and the endless multiplicity of contradicting readings, are playing a major role in end-time apostasy and wishy-washy ecumenism. The infallible Word of God is not something to be played with; it is not a nose of wax to be twisted as man pleases. The translation of God’s eternal Word is the most serious business on earth. The First Nations Version isn’t much more corrupted than The Message, which is one of Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s favorite “versions.” Here is John 3:16 in The Message: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.” What does that mean? Let’s let the King James Bible, an accurate translation of the infallible Word of God, shine light on this confusion: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
MORE FEEDBACK FROM “A WORD ABOUT THE COVID VACCINES” (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Thank you so much for your well researched article on the Covid Vaccines. I am a Pastor of a small church ... I have the privilege of being able to support myself in the ministry as a Doctor, being a family physician and an emergency physician. I must say this Covid situation has saddened me no end; it has distracted God Fearing and Preaching pastors, and Christians alike, from doing the work of The Lord to focusing on conspiracy, anti-government rhetoric, and protesting. I absolutely agree with you, we were told not to fight the government but to ‘fight the good fight’ -- which was never the fight against the establishment. The so called conspiracy baffles me, the so called persecution confuses me. We have not even come close to the level of persecution God’s churches suffered during the time of Paul, yet it was during these times that we were told to ‘obey magistrates’ and to ‘honour the king,’ not to mention praying for ‘kings and for all that are in authority’ -- not protesting and causing civil disobedience. I do believe that this is all a distraction from Satan to divert our attention away from what really matters -- The Gospel of Christ. As a word of encouragement, I agree with all that you said as it made perfect scientific sense, but more importantly it made perfect biblical sense. The drug companies? They are just companies wanting to make as much of a profit for their share holders as they can -- pretty dumb to kill off your customers, don’t you think? Conspiracy about COVID-19? Unlikely! This would require collaboration at the highest level between multiple countries who can’t even agree on where to hold a meeting let alone something as big as this. Will this level of government collaboration ever happen? Yes, one day, God has ordained it, so yes it will happen. Is it the Christian’s job to stop it? No, if God has ordained it we have no power to stop it; our job is to pray for all men everywhere that they would come to the saving knowledge of Christ and the spread the gospel as we were instructed -- simple really. Is Covid-19 real? I hope so because if it’s not then I’m not sure what we have been treating this past 18 months. Is there a conspiracy? Absolutely!!! A conspiracy by Satan to distract Gods people from the real task at hand. Thank you again for your article, well written and well presented.”
GETTING AROUND GOD’S LAW (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Lord Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their clever tactics of getting around God’s law. “But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (Mt. 15:3-6). Israel is still engaged in this terrible game. The law of God says, “But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. ... And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years” (Leviticus 25:1-7, 20-22). (The sabbath year began on September 6, 2021, which is the year 5,782 on the Jewish calendar.) Instead of simply ceasing from farming in the sabbath year and trusting God to provide their needs, Israeli farmers have gone to the rabbis for help in artful disobedience. One tactic is to “symbolically relinquish ownership” to non-Jews for the sabbath year. Another tactic is to move the farming indoors to hothouses. The sabbath hothouses “are built under rabbinical supervision to ensure the plants have no contact with the soil” (“The farmers giving their land a year off,” Israel21c, Aug. 29, 2021). Nechemia Rappel, who was chairman of the Religious Kibbutz movement in 2007, said “Everyone understands that you cannot work for six years and then have no income on the seventh. A farmer cannot tell his customers in Israel and abroad that he is not working and that he’ll be back in a year” (“Bid to let land lie,” Forward, Aug. 29, 2007). Right, that is true if one is not trusting in Jehovah God.
COMPROMISE IS A CREEPING PARALYSIS (Friday Church News Notes, September 17, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “The spirit of compromise grows like creeping paralysis. and before one realizes it, the churches speak out so weakly against any sin that it can barely be heard, and certainly they would never take action of any kind. they just sit trying to be pleasing to everybody, uttering a few pious, meaningless platitude” (James Crumpton, New Testament Church Discipline).
INSULATED EARS (Friday Church News Notes, September 10, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, June 25, 2021: “Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, the Creator who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. Author: Paul A. Bartz. Ref: McCutcheon, Marc. 1989, The Compass in Your Nose, Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. p. 90.”
CONCLUSION: The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will not be discouraged. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:11-14).
_____
Distributed by Way of Life Literature., publisher of Bible Study Materials and reports for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY (REPORTS AND FRIDAY NEWS) IS NOT DEVOTIONAL. IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR.
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
The Way of Life Literature preaching and publishing ministry is based at Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. A mail stop is maintained in Port Huron, Michigan.
Way of Life Literature - www.wayoflife.org
copyright 2018 - Way of Life Literature
