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Way of Life Literature

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Way of Life Literature

Publisher of Bible Study Materials

Way of Life Bible College
Friday Church News Notes
Volume 23, Issue 37 - September 16, 2022
Graphical Edition
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.
 
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QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FANTASY WORLD (Friday Church News Notes, September 16, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The late Queen Elizabeth II, as likable as she was as a person and as effectual she was as a royal figurehead, lived in a fantasy world, as most people do. When the queen died on September 8 at age 96, she was England’s longest-reigning monarch. She came to the throne in 1952, not long after World War II. Winston Churchill was Prime Minister. She was decorous, dutiful, dependable, cheerful. In public, she was always impeccably and modestly dressed. She took her job as queen seriously. In her 21st birthday message (1947) broadcast from South Africa, she made the following public vow: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial family to whom we all belong. ... God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.” By all counts, Elizabeth fulfilled her vow. The problem is that she was living in a fantasy world. Her throne was a fantasy. She had no real authority. Her church was a fantasy. As an institution, the Church of England is real, but as a church, it is a fantasy. It has no likeness to the church we see in Scripture. The saddest thing is that Elizabeth’s gospel was a fantasy. In her annual Christmas messages, which were heard by millions, her only gospel was the gospel of love your neighbor. She mentioned Jesus, but He was only a Teacher, an Example, a Light to follow, not a Saviour from sin and judgment. She spoke of God and His love, but it was the heresy of universalism. What she said in 1997 was typical: “St. Paul spoke of the first Christmas as the kindness of God dawning upon the world. The world needs that kindness now more than ever, the kindness and consideration of others that disarms malice and allows us to get along with one another with respect and affection. Christmas reaffirms that God is with us today, but as I have discovered afresh for myself this year, He is always present in the kindness shown by our neighbors and in the love of our friends and family. God bless you all and happy Christmas.” That is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and no amount of human kindness can remove man’s sin before God and take away the wages of sin, which is eternal death. Like probably all of her predecessors, and like a very large portion of the world’s population, Queen Elizabeth had Christianity as religion, but Christianity as a religion doesn’t save. Salvation is not merely a doctrine to believe; it is a supernatural new life in Christ. “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

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ONSPIRACIES AND THE CHILD OF GOD (Friday Church News Notes, September 16, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Someone wrote recently and said, “I know you don’t believe in conspiracies.” But that is not true. Of course there are conspiracies in this dark world. A conspiracy is a secret plan to pervert justice, to cause harm, to steal, to injure, to kill, to rig elections, to undermine legitimate authority, etc. The Psalms describe conspiracies. Consider Psalm 10, “He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.” That is a perfect description of a conspiracy, and this world is filled with such things. What I have said and emphasized is, first of all, that many conspiracies are myths and we must be careful not to get caught up in mythology. Second, I have said that to study and root out conspiracies is not the calling of God’s people. Let unregenerate conservatives spend their lives on that sort of thing. They have no higher calling. But the children of God have been bought with a great price, which is the blood of Christ, and they are not their own, and their heavenly Master has given them their marching orders for this present life. What this dark world needs more than anything is New Testament churches. It is the greatest need of every city and every town. I’m not talking about those weak, powerless, man-made things that call themselves churches. I’m talking about true New Testament churches as we see in Scripture, as we see in Acts 2:41-42 and Ephesians 4:11-16 and Philippians 2:12-16 and Colossians 1:28-29 and 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10. I’m talking about biblical, Spirit-led, life-changing churches that are truly the pillar and ground of the truth. The New Testament church is the headquarters for Christ’s Great Commission, which is God’s main plan for this age. It is the church that preaches the gospel, disciples the saints, trains the workers, prepares the preachers, and builds up the homes. This is what God’s people need to focus on like a laser. Christ said that he would be with these churches until the very end of the age: “and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Mt. 28:20). God’s people need to know the times, and on God’s calendar it is Great Commission time and it is Church time. All of the redeemed need to recommit themselves to building strong New Testament churches. It is no small task. It requires every hand on deck. God’s people need to reject tradition and follow the Word of God. They need to be Christ followers, not man followers. They need to stop fretting and start trusting, stop lazing and start serving. That’s what I have said about conspiracies.

BILLY GRAHAM CORRUPTED GOD’S WORK IN JAPAN (Friday Church News Notes, September 16, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Tomonobu Yanagita, a fundamentalist preacher in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s, described the mixing of evangelicals and modernists by Billy Graham’s big tent philosophy and the resultant doctrinal confusion. “Yanagita has warned repeatedly of the havoc being wrought in missionary circles by the leaders of New Evangelicalism. He recalls the joyful prospect that loomed for sound, fundamental missions in 1945 when General MacArthur issued his declaration for religious freedom for Japan. An unprecedented number of Bible-believing missionaries came to that land to begin their labors. They were reinforced by experienced missionaries that had been forced out of China in 1949 and many new groups began in Japan with the purpose of spreading the true Gospel. ‘Then,’ continues Dr. Yanagita, ‘this period of formation of ... evangelical groups who stood firmly for the Biblical position was challenged and interrupted by the coming to Japan in 1956 of Dr. Billy Graham, who demanded that all groups, including Bible believers and modernistic pro-Shinto believers, unite for the purpose of evangelism. Billy Graham demanded “a united front of all Christian groups” before he would preach in Japan. ... the way was opened for the pre-war compromising leaders to take over again by this means of ecumenical evangelism. This joint mass evangelism including modernistic unbelievers and evangelicals caused an influx of modernist thought into evangelical groups bringing about ultimate compromise’” (William Ashbrook, Evangelicalism The New Neutralism, first edition, 1958, p. 34).

WITCHCRAFT AND THE MODERN WORLD (Friday Church News Notes, September 16, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The modern world is permeated with witchcraft. Since the 1960s, rock music has promoted pagan and demonic themes. The Rolling Stones, for example, sang “Sympathy for the Devil” and incorporated voodoo ceremonies into their Goat’s Head Soup album. Hinduism and its popular western counterpart, the New Age, are demonic to the core. The cover story of Time magazine for June 19, 1972, was “Occult Revival.” It described a growing fascination with witchcraft among college educated people. Ancient occult practices such as Tarot, I Ching, palmistry, and Ouija boards have exploded in popularity. In 1969, Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, which has gone through dozens of printings and has been translated into Spanish, Danish, and Swedish. The occult is a major theme in popular writing. Even the most mainstream bookstores have sections on the occult and the paranormal. The Harry Potter books, which promote unadulterated witchcraft to children, have sold 450 million copies, and the Harry Potter franchise, which includes the movies, has brought in $24 billion in sales. Science Fiction is filled with occult themes. Hollywood has spewed out occult movies one after the other, such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, Star Wars (promoting the occult concept of “the Force”), Avatar, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Blair Witch. New Dawn Magazine for March 21, 2014, reported that “Russia is currently undergoing a massive occult revival.” Nearly 40% of books in Russian deal with the occult, and popular TV programs promote the paranormal. Astrology, which was born in ancient Babylon, has witnessed an explosion in popularity in modern times. Newspapers carry horoscopes, and Americans purchase 20 million books on astrology annually. In spite of this, you rarely hear of churches burning occult material today. It is more typical for professing Christians to bring their love for the occult into the churches instead of making a clean break with it.

MIRACLE OF SMELL (Friday Church News Notes, September 16, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from creationmoments.com, November 25, 2020: “It’s commonly known that many animals are able to detect extraordinarily weak odors. The real mystery is how they can smell scents that are 1,000 times too weak to produce the chemical reactions necessary to make a scent signal. From the chemist’s point of view, our sense of smell shouldn’t work as well as it does. When you smelled that wonderful dinner a few days ago, a marvel of chemical reactions was taking place in your nose. Scientists still aren’t sure how we sense such a wide range of smells. It was while investigating this question that scientists may have stumbled across the answer to another question. The receptors in our noses have to detect a certain number of scent molecules before they can trigger the chemical response that makes the signal that tells us we have smelled something. When air is drawn into your nose, an organ called Steno’s duct sprays a fine mist. Scientists always thought this mist simply humidified the incoming air. Now they’ve discovered that the duct also makes proteins that grab onto odor molecules. Sprayed into the incoming air, the proteins collect odor molecules. Then, with their load of odor molecules, they settle onto receptors that trigger your sense of smell. As a result, even scents that are too weak to smell are concentrated by this ingenious system so that we can sense them. Our sense of smell helps protect us, gives our food flavor, and adds richness to the experience of living. It’s truly a marvel of our Creator’s design. Ref: Vaughan, Christopher. 1990. ‘Molecular odor‑eaters.’ Science News, v. 133. p. 348.”

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).

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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.

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