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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 48 - December 2, 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.
 
Hug Yourself
T.D. JAKES SAYS HUG YOURSELF (Friday Church News Notes, December 2, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - T.D. Jakes, one of America’s most popular and influential preachers, is exhorting people to hug themselves. On Nov. 6, 2022, he preached, “The courage you need to survive must come from within you. When it doesn’t come from around you, it must come from within. ... [Say to yourself,] ‘I’ll encourage myself, I’m taking myself out to dinner. I’m gonna be my valentine. You’re not going to help me. I’m gonna be my own valentine.’ … If the kids don’t bring you no roses, get yourself some roses. If they don’t send you no card, get yourself a card. Encourage yourself! I want you to do something right now. I want you to throw your arms around yourself and hug yourself. I want you to rock from side to side and say, ‘I got you, I got you.’ In the season you are in your life, hug yourself and say, ‘I got you. I got you.’ You’re gonna get through this” (Jakes, “Stop Living in Limbo,” Nov. 6, 2022). “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves...” (2 Timothy 3:1-2).

HUNDREDS OF CONGREGATIONS LEAVING THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH (Friday Church News Notes, December 2, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Hundreds of congregations are leaving the United Methodist Church (UMC) over the issues of ordaining homosexual pastors and hosting same-sex marriages. Though the denomination officially bans these things and its Book of Doctrine says “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” many congregations have flaunted homosexual rights. The result is a large ongoing split, with the more conservative congregations departing to join a new denomination, the Global Methodist Church, which was formed in April 2022. This month, 249 North Carolina congregations departed, which is 32% of the total (“Nearly one-third of church split,” Fox News, Nov. 23, 2022). They join 58 congregations in Louisiana and 70 in North Georgia. In other states, many churches have expressed their intention to leave. Typical of these is Lanes Chapel United Methodist Church in Tyler, Texas. Jeff Gage, senior pastor, says, “We will be disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church at the end of the year. It’s not the denominational structure that troubles us. It’s what’s happening across the denomination that is contrary to what we see as solid biblical teaching” (“Methodist church split,” KETK.com, Sept. 23, 2022).

POLISH PARTY LEADER SPEAKS OUT FOR TRADITIONAL GENDER DISTINCTIONS (Friday Church News Notes, December 2, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “PiS Party Leader,” The European Conservative, Nov. 12, 2022: “Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has come out in defense of traditional gender distinctions. On November 12th, the head of the party, Jarosław Kaczyński, gave a speech in Wadowice during which he harshly attacked the LGBT movement’s effects on children. ‘We do not want, ladies and gentlemen, a country in which twelve-year-old girls declare themselves lesbians, although unfortunately these things are already spreading in Poland,’ said Kaczyński. Kaczyński also spoke out against the transgender movement, to which his country has become increasingly susceptible. Polish universities, Kaczyński asserted, were implementing policies friendly toward an agenda, in which normative behavior and honest debate were punishable. On college campuses in Poland, if a student, ‘a boy, two meters [6 feet] tall and 120 kilos [264 pounds] in weight with a beard says he is Zosia [a female name], then the teacher has to call him that or be fired. This is madness, ladies and gentlemen, and this madness must be fought. What is in the genes cannot be interpreted,’ the party leader warned. ... Kaczyński’s colleague and Polish Minister of Education Przemysław Czarnek urged Poles to take responsibility for the unique role they play in staving off the destructive ideologies of the West, warning them they ‘must be counter-revolutionaries’ ... To him, gender ideology ‘destroys the family, destroys common sense.’”

MASTECTOMIES AMONG TRANSGENDER MINORS HAVE “EXPLODED” (Friday Church News Notes, December 2, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Answers in Genesis, Oct. 10, 2022: “How many children will be sacrificed on the altar of the LGBTQ religion before parents wake up and stand against the madness that’s preached fervently in so many schools around our nation and through the media? It seems the answer is many thousands of children. You see, the push to teach gender ideology to young children and teens isn’t without consequences—it’s scarring (quite literally) thousands of children, leading them to do irreversible damage to their bodies. A recent article [New York Times, Sept. 26, 2022] shared that rates of so-called ‘top surgeries’ (mastectomies or chest reconstruction on trans-identifying patients) have soared in recent years, with one medical center performing just 5 on minors in 2013, compared to 70 in 2019. A survey of 26 ‘leading pediatric gender clinics’ in America uncovered ‘long waiting lists’ of minors for these surgeries and a group of 11 clinics reported a total of 203 such surgeries ... irreversible surgeries on teenagers based on their subjective feelings! ... A recent report claims this industry will be worth a whopping $5 billion by 2030 because, as one such clinic pointed out, these surgeries are a ‘big money-maker’ as they require lots of follow-up. These young people have been lied to by their schools, the media, and social media influencers who’ve told them all of their pain, discontentment with their bodies, mental illness, and trauma will be healed if they just become their ‘true selves’ and identify as trans or something on the LGBTQ spectrum. And I’m not exaggerating when I say they are being convinced by much of the media they consume to go down this path: a recent study found ‘86.7% of the parents of gender-dysphoric teenagers reported that the gender dysphoria coincided with an increase in internet/social media use, or the self-identification of a friend of that teen as transgender, or both.’ The gender madness sweeping through our Western cultures is nothing short of horrific child abuse. Children, who are highly susceptible to suggestion and peer influence, are having the seeds of gender confusion planted in preschool, watered through social media pages (such as TikTok), and then that seed blooms as their peers begin to ‘come out’ as trans.”

THE MASKING OF AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, December 2, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Jeffrey Anderson, “Masking,” Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2021: “In its worldwide impact, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst in a century. As a threat to Americans’ health, however, it is closer to the 1968 Hong Kong flu or the 1957 Asian flu—neither of which noticeably altered Americans’ everyday lives—than to the 1918 Spanish flu. In a head-to-head comparison, COVID-19 makes the Spanish flu look like the Black Death of medieval Europe. According to the best available figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and elsewhere, the typical American under the age of 40 in 1918 was more than 100 times as likely to die of the Spanish flu than the typical American under the age of 40 in 2020 was to die of COVID-19. Whereas COVID-19 sadly shortened the lives of many older people already in poor health, the Spanish flu took people in the prime of life and left orphans in its wake. Americans’ reaction to COVID-19, however, has been radically different from their behavior in 1968, 1957, or even 1918. ... One major difference between then and now is the increased role of public health officials. ... The most reliable science on whether masks are effective in stopping the transmission of viruses comes from randomized control trials (RCTs). ... Randomized control trials have found little to no evidence that masks work to prevent viral transmission—either from the wearer to others or vice versa. In fact, some significant evidence from RCTs indicates that masks increase transmission. ... A 2020 study by Professor Henning Bundgaard and his team in Denmark is the only RCT that has tested the effectiveness of mask-wearing against COVID-19. It found that 1.8% of those participants in the group wearing masks, and 2.1% of those in the unmasked control group, became infected with COVID-19 within a month. This difference was not statistically significant. ... In sum, not only do masks apparently not work as advertised, they are uncomfortable and unhygienic. They obscure our humanity and undermine our children’s development. They prevent us from seeing the emotions, sensibilities, and affections of others, or sharing our own. They limit communication and erode understanding. They profoundly compromise human interaction and substantially reduce our quality of life. Public health officials understand none of this.”

THE END OF A SPACE MISSION (Friday Church News Notes, December 2, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com: “The Cassini-Huygens Mission, which ended in 2017, was, by any stretch of the imagination, a remarkable human achievement. Launched on October 15, 1997, the craft was active for nearly 20 years before its final descent into the oblivion of Saturn’s gravity on September 15, 2017. Cassini-Huygens took seven years to reach Saturn. In order to save fuel, an extremely complicated orbit was calculated to use planetary gravitational fields to accelerate the craft enough for its long journey to Saturn. This involved two close approaches to Venus, one to the Earth, and another to Jupiter, which finally whipped the craft off in the right direction for the rendezvous with the ringed planet and its moons. The complexity of the calculations required to power the craft to Saturn relied on the predictability and measurability of gravitational forces elsewhere in the Solar System. Such confidence in calculations was only possible because these universal constants display the wisdom of God. NASA’s brilliant scientists did not assume that their work would be hindered by random evolutionary chance in the way that all these planets behaved. Yet, part of their mission was the vain search for the evolution of life on one of Saturn’s moons. Evolution-minded scientists often cannot see the irony or the inconsistency of such an approach--a reliance on divine design in an attempt to prove such design does not exist! Ref: NASA press release on Cassini-Huygens, www.nasa.gov.”

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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