Friday Church News Notes
Volume 23, Issue 51 - December 23, 2022
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.
KIDULTS: ADULTS BUYING TOYS FOR THEMSELVES (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In the latest trend of the vain pop culture, adults are buying toys for themselves. Yes, for themselves. NBC News reports, “There are two things keeping the toy industry afloat right now: inflation and a consumer group known as ‘kidults.’ These kids at heart are responsible for one-fourth of all toy sales annually, around $9 billion worth ... Kidults, who tend to KIspend more on toys, have a great fondness for cartoons, superheroes and collectibles that remind them of their childhood. They buy merchandise such as action figures, Lego sets and dolls that might typically be considered ‘for kids.’ However, in recent years, toy makers have created product lines just for these consumers, realizing that demand is high for this generation of adults who still want to have fun. ‘The definition of adulthood has definitely evolved,’ said Jeremy Padawer, chief brand officer at toy company Jazwares. ‘What it used to mean, to be an adult, was to be a very upstanding, serious member of society. And to do that you had to demonstrate it intellectually, emotionally, in every other single way. Now we feel a lot more free to express our fandom as a part of our adulthood,’ he said” (“Adults are buying toys for themselves,” NBC News, Dec. 19, 2022). The fleeting pop culture controls the thinking of most professing Christians, more than the eternal Word of God. They are not pilgrims; they are worldlings. The social calendar of the average church is evidence that it is pandering to the lukewarm crowd. It consists of partying with a thin veneer of Bible. The pop culture focuses on fun. It is self-centered. Its latest theme song is “Young, Wild and Free” by foul-mouthed, marijuana addict Snoop Dogg. “So what we get drunk. So what we smoke weed. We’re just having fun ... Living young, wild and free.” This is a direct fulfillment of Bible prophecy. It is a sign of the times. “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). “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but AFTER THEIR OWN LUSTS shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3). God’s Word says, Grow up! “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, THAT YE MAY GROW THEREBY” (1 Peter 2:2). “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION” (Hebrews 6:1). “Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; THAT WE MAY PRESENT EVERY MAN PERFECT in Christ Jesus” (Colossians 1:28).
BIDEN SIGNS SAME-SEX MARRIAGE LAW (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Biden Signs,” Christian Headlines, Dec. 14, 2022: “President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a bill into law that he says will ensure that same-sex marriage remains legal but that critics say goes much further than that by also threatening religious liberty. The bill, the Respect for Marriage Act (H.R. 8404), defines marriage as ‘between 2 individuals’ and overturns the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Supporters say it ensures that same-sex marriage remains legal even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its landmark decision Obergefell v. Hodges(2015), which struck down traditional marriage laws nationwide. ... Although the bill includes an amendment that supporters say protects religious liberty, critics say its impact is too narrow. The amendment protects churches and other houses of worship. ... Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty legal group that opposed the bill, said in an analysis that the law ignores ‘the true threats to religious individuals and organizations.’ As written, the new law ‘can be used to punish social-service organizations that work closely with government,’ such as ‘adoption or foster placement agencies that serve their communities in accordance with their religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.’ The new law also could be used by the government to threaten a religious organization’s tax-exempt status, ADF said. ... ‘It only applies to religious organizations in the solemnization or celebration of a marriage, not to religious individuals or to any entity in any other context.’ ... For example, the new law would not protect Christian-owned florists and bakers who have been involved in prominent lawsuits nationwide.”
MEGACHURCH PASTOR WANTS TO REACH YOUNG MEN BY GROWING MARIJUANA (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Pastor Jamal Bryant of Atlanta’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church has announced his plan to grow marijuana on the church property as an outreach. The church is “the largest land-owning Black church in America.” He said he is looking for male congregants that “smell like weed” (“Megachurch Pastor,” Relevant, Dec. 9, 2022). He says, “So if the guy, Black boy, in Bankhead said, ‘They growing weed at the church? Where do I join?’ I don’t need no pamphlet for him.” So Pastor Jamal wants to use marijuana as a church promotion! This is beyond dumb, even if marijuana were legal in Georgia, which it is not (cultivating marijuana for any reason is a felony offense). Marijuana is not a harmless drug. Proponents of recreational marijuana typically ignore proven dangers such as addiction, psychosis, marijuana as a gate-way drug, long-term effects on learning, cognition, and personality, amotivational syndrome (lethargy and loss of interest in achievement), bronchitis and respiratory infections, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. There is a long line of evidence that marijuana is not an innocent relaxation drug. I know this all too well, having been a drug user before I was saved, beginning with my Army tour in Vietnam in 1970-71. Marijuana is a psychoactive drug with hallucinogenic properties which can mess with the depths of an individual’s soul. It affects people differently, but depression, intense anxiety, and paranoia are common side effects, and acute psychosis is not infrequent. This was proven in a study published in the Lancet in March 2019. The rush to legalize marijuana is the fruit of the rock & roll pop culture, the heart and soul of which is the anti-God philosophy of “live as you please.” It is the product of a filthy entertainment industry, apostate Christianity, an educational system devoted to moral relativism, a society that celebrates unrestrained self-expression, and the gross lack of wisdom typically reflected in mainstream media reporting. God’s command that His people be “sober” is repeated 12 times in the New Testament Epistles. It means to be in control of one’s mind and spirit so that nothing but God is in charge. “Sober” is the opposite of being under the influence of alcohol or marijuana or other mind-control drugs.
CANADA EUTHANIZED 10,000 OF ITS CITIZENS LAST YEAR (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “America, be very afraid,” Daily Mail, Dec. 6, 2022: “Canada, a country that prides itself on its open-mindedness and tolerance, has the most permissive rules on euthanasia in the world--and the results have been frankly terrifying. Last year, more than 10,000 people in Canada--astonishingly that’s over three percent of all deaths there--ended their lives via euthanasia, an increase of a third on the previous year. ... Alan Nichols, for instance, was a 61-year-old British Columbian with a history of depression and other medical issues--though none of them life-threatening--who was hospitalized in 2019 over fears he might be suicidal. Although he asked his brother, Gary, to ‘bust him out’ as soon as possible, within a month of going into hospital he’d submitted a request to be euthanized. He listed only one health condition--hearing loss--as the reason, but that was enough to satisfy his keepers and he was killed. ‘Alan was basically put to death,’ said his brother Gary. Erin Smith said her 71-year-old father, Rod McNeill, went to an Ontario hospital after suffering a fall. A month later, he ... was euthanized for a condition--end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease--that an autopsy shows he didn’t have, Smith said. ... Canada is set to allow people to die exclusively for mental health reasons. Starting March 2023, Canada’s medically assisted suicide eligibility will expand to people who do not have a physical ailment. ... Canada is also considering extending euthanasia to ‘mature’ minors--children under 18 who meet the same requirements as adults. Doctors and human rights campaigners say Canada’s easy-come, easy-go euthanasia laws are particularly dangerous for disabled people who are being ‘devalued’ as a result. ... Professor Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, described Canada’s law as probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ programme in Germany in the 1930s’. Being compared to the Nazis is surely the last thing that Justin Trudeau and his achingly woke allies would expect to ever hear but as they turn their country into an assisted suicide Wild West, they are losing any claim to common humanity.”
PLANTS FOCUS LIGHT (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com: “In many ways, a plant is like a machine that changes the energy of sunlight into food energy that is needed by the rest of the living world. The energy which runs the plant is light. Now, if you were going to design a better, more efficient plant, how might you do it? Obviously, one way to improve a plant would be to create one that can do its job with less light. But remember, the plant cannot store more energy than it receives. And if the plant was too sensitive to light, a strong dose of sunlight could kill it. The obvious solution is to outfit the plant with tiny lenses which focus even dim light into the chemical centers where photosynthesis takes place. Due to man’s ignorance, modern science has often regarded plants as if they were simple, unsophisticated forms of life. Now scientists have discovered that many plants do indeed have special cells which focus and concentrate the available light into the very centers where it is needed. One plant’s shaded leaves were found to intensify available light by 26 times. And if the light gets so strong that it could damage the leaves, the light is focused onto cells which can absorb the extra light. Plants are much more complex, higher-performance living things than we ever suspected. Plants incorporate designs based on a highly sophisticated knowledge of both chemistry and physics. What a wonderful witness they are to our Creator!”
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).
MEGACHURCH PASTOR WANTS TO REACH YOUNG MEN BY GROWING MARIJUANA (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Pastor Jamal Bryant of Atlanta’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church has announced his plan to grow marijuana on the church property as an outreach. The church is “the largest land-owning Black church in America.” He said he is looking for male congregants that “smell like weed” (“Megachurch Pastor,” Relevant, Dec. 9, 2022). He says, “So if the guy, Black boy, in Bankhead said, ‘They growing weed at the church? Where do I join?’ I don’t need no pamphlet for him.” So Pastor Jamal wants to use marijuana as a church promotion! This is beyond dumb, even if marijuana were legal in Georgia, which it is not (cultivating marijuana for any reason is a felony offense). Marijuana is not a harmless drug. Proponents of recreational marijuana typically ignore proven dangers such as addiction, psychosis, marijuana as a gate-way drug, long-term effects on learning, cognition, and personality, amotivational syndrome (lethargy and loss of interest in achievement), bronchitis and respiratory infections, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. There is a long line of evidence that marijuana is not an innocent relaxation drug. I know this all too well, having been a drug user before I was saved, beginning with my Army tour in Vietnam in 1970-71. Marijuana is a psychoactive drug with hallucinogenic properties which can mess with the depths of an individual’s soul. It affects people differently, but depression, intense anxiety, and paranoia are common side effects, and acute psychosis is not infrequent. This was proven in a study published in the Lancet in March 2019. The rush to legalize marijuana is the fruit of the rock & roll pop culture, the heart and soul of which is the anti-God philosophy of “live as you please.” It is the product of a filthy entertainment industry, apostate Christianity, an educational system devoted to moral relativism, a society that celebrates unrestrained self-expression, and the gross lack of wisdom typically reflected in mainstream media reporting. God’s command that His people be “sober” is repeated 12 times in the New Testament Epistles. It means to be in control of one’s mind and spirit so that nothing but God is in charge. “Sober” is the opposite of being under the influence of alcohol or marijuana or other mind-control drugs.
CANADA EUTHANIZED 10,000 OF ITS CITIZENS LAST YEAR (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “America, be very afraid,” Daily Mail, Dec. 6, 2022: “Canada, a country that prides itself on its open-mindedness and tolerance, has the most permissive rules on euthanasia in the world--and the results have been frankly terrifying. Last year, more than 10,000 people in Canada--astonishingly that’s over three percent of all deaths there--ended their lives via euthanasia, an increase of a third on the previous year. ... Alan Nichols, for instance, was a 61-year-old British Columbian with a history of depression and other medical issues--though none of them life-threatening--who was hospitalized in 2019 over fears he might be suicidal. Although he asked his brother, Gary, to ‘bust him out’ as soon as possible, within a month of going into hospital he’d submitted a request to be euthanized. He listed only one health condition--hearing loss--as the reason, but that was enough to satisfy his keepers and he was killed. ‘Alan was basically put to death,’ said his brother Gary. Erin Smith said her 71-year-old father, Rod McNeill, went to an Ontario hospital after suffering a fall. A month later, he ... was euthanized for a condition--end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease--that an autopsy shows he didn’t have, Smith said. ... Canada is set to allow people to die exclusively for mental health reasons. Starting March 2023, Canada’s medically assisted suicide eligibility will expand to people who do not have a physical ailment. ... Canada is also considering extending euthanasia to ‘mature’ minors--children under 18 who meet the same requirements as adults. Doctors and human rights campaigners say Canada’s easy-come, easy-go euthanasia laws are particularly dangerous for disabled people who are being ‘devalued’ as a result. ... Professor Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, described Canada’s law as probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ programme in Germany in the 1930s’. Being compared to the Nazis is surely the last thing that Justin Trudeau and his achingly woke allies would expect to ever hear but as they turn their country into an assisted suicide Wild West, they are losing any claim to common humanity.”
PLANTS FOCUS LIGHT (Friday Church News Notes, December 23, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com: “In many ways, a plant is like a machine that changes the energy of sunlight into food energy that is needed by the rest of the living world. The energy which runs the plant is light. Now, if you were going to design a better, more efficient plant, how might you do it? Obviously, one way to improve a plant would be to create one that can do its job with less light. But remember, the plant cannot store more energy than it receives. And if the plant was too sensitive to light, a strong dose of sunlight could kill it. The obvious solution is to outfit the plant with tiny lenses which focus even dim light into the chemical centers where photosynthesis takes place. Due to man’s ignorance, modern science has often regarded plants as if they were simple, unsophisticated forms of life. Now scientists have discovered that many plants do indeed have special cells which focus and concentrate the available light into the very centers where it is needed. One plant’s shaded leaves were found to intensify available light by 26 times. And if the light gets so strong that it could damage the leaves, the light is focused onto cells which can absorb the extra light. Plants are much more complex, higher-performance living things than we ever suspected. Plants incorporate designs based on a highly sophisticated knowledge of both chemistry and physics. What a wonderful witness they are to our Creator!”
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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