Friday Church News Notes
Volume 24, Issue 35 - September 1, 2023
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.
Noah Wall
BOY BORN WITH “NO BRAIN” MAKING GOOD PROGRESS (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In October 2008, a boy named Noah Wall was born in England with only 2% of his brain and with spina bifida, to boot. His parents were advised to abort him, but they refused. In the documentary The Boy Without a Brain, Noah’s father, Rob, said, “It was never an option for us. We wanted to give Noah that chance of life.” The doctors persisted in pressuring the Walls to abort the baby, five separate times, painting a dire picture. He would basically be in a vegetative state, severely mentally disabled, unable to walk, talk, see, hear, or eat. He was only expected to live a few days. Their predictions were reasonable, medically, but they turned out to be wrong. After birth, Noah breathed on his own, cried, and was alert. When he was three, the doctors were dumbfounded to find that his brain had grown to 80%. Noah’s mother, Shelly, said, “Rob and I broke down when we heard the news. It was like a dream. I’ve never known anything like it. Even the consultants were in tears. Every time we see the doctors, they just shake their head. They’re just amazed at what he can do.” Noah’s parents have done everything possible to help him live a normal life, including obtaining the best medical care. He has had 11 surgeries, beginning with an intensive early surgery to connect two parts of his brain that weren’t connected. Noah is 12 now, and he can talk, walk, read, do math, surf, and ski. He goes to school and loves science. We commend the Webbs for their refusal to abort the boy. The prophet David wrote, “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16).
ANDROGYNOUS ROCKERS WARNING ABOUT THE PUSH FOR CHILD TRANSSEXUALISM (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In a case of brazen hypocrisy, some of the old 70s androgynous rockers, who helped pave the way for the homosexual rights movement and all of its destructive wickedness, are warning of the agenda to transsexualize children. In April, Paul Stanley of KISS called transgender affirmation for youth a “sad and dangerous fad” (Apr. 30. 2023). Dee Snider of Twisted Sister agreed, saying, “I do not believe young children are ready to decide their gender allocation. I believe their choices should be supported and accepted by their parents, but I do not think kids have the mental capabilities to make rational, logical decisions on things of a magnitude that will affect them for the rest of their lives” (“Dee Snider,” Rolling Stone, May 6, 2023). Now Alice Cooper (a man named Alice) has joined the chorus with this: “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be. I think that’s so confusing to a kid. It’s even confusing to a teenager. You’re still trying to find your identity, and yet here’s this thing going on, saying, ‘Yeah, but you can be anything you want. You can be a cat if you want to be.’ I mean, if you identify as a tree… And I’m going, ‘Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?’” (“Rocker Alice Cooper,” Fox News, Aug. 24, 2023). What these men are saying is right, as far as it does, but it is largely ineffectual coming from rockers who were at the forefront of the unisex movement and have preached “do your own thing.”
MUSLIMS RAMPAGE AGAINST CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN PAKISTAN (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Firsthand account of extremist violence,” Fox News, Aug. 23, 2023: “Images and video obtained by Fox News Digital show the ransacking of churches by an apparent Muslim-led mob in Jaranwala on Aug. 16, an action provoked by allegations that a Christian and his friend had blasphemed by ripping pages out of a Quran. Tumultuous crowds were filmed going into churches, tossing furniture out windows, smashing altars and setting fire to the buildings. Many Christians were also forced to flee their homes to escape the attackers. When the riots quelled, and they returned to their dwellings, they found their property stolen and homes burned. ‘I saw with tears in my eyes how the mob desecrated crosses on the roofs of the churches and in graveyards and ruined church buildings. They burnt so many Bibles and altars,’ said the Rev. Deacon Daud Irshad, 28. ... ‘The condition in Pakistan is very bad,’ Irshad said, casting doubt on the blasphemy allegations that instigated the riots. ‘So much hatred, jealousy, envy and enmity from the Muslims towards Christians. It seems that we Christians are like animals to them. Whenever they want to kill, they kill, and whenever they want to spare, they give free hand.’ By his account, more than 25 churches were damaged and hundreds of homes attacked. Irshad said rioters first looted property from the buildings and then used flammable liquids to set them on fire. ... Open Doors, a Christian charity that serves persecuted churches throughout the world, reports that Christians in Pakistan are considered second-class citizens. The country was seventh on the charity’s worldwide list of the worst places to be a Christian. ... [Open Doors spokesperson Eshan] Silva attributed the latest attacks to Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws, which the organization says disproportionally target religious minorities. ... ‘The laws are used to settle grudges and exact revenge; a simple allegation of having insulted the Prophet or desecrated a Quran is enough to see the accused imprisoned for years while they wait for trial.’”
BAPTIST SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER’S JOURNEY VIA CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER TO GODDESS WORSHIP (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Contemplative prayer, which was borrowed from Rome’s dark monasticism, has swept through “evangelicalism” in the past 20 years, as we have documented in the free eBook Evangelicals and Contemplative Prayer. Popular contemplative practices include breath prayer, centering prayer, Jesus prayer, entering the silence, and lectio divina. It is an extremely dangerous field that has often led to apostasy and even pantheistic concepts of God. For example, popular author Sue Monk Kidd, who was once a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, found goddess worship through the path of contemplative prayer. As she delved deeper into contemplative mysticism, she traveled to Crete and worshiped in a cave of the goddess Skoteini. She says, “[S]omething inside me was calling on the Goddess of the Dark, even though I didn’t know her name” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 93). Soon, the Sunday School teacher was praying to God as Mother, “the divine feminine presence.” Finally, she envisioned herself as a goddess and began to worship herself. “To embrace Goddess is simply to discover the Divine in yourself as powerfully and vividly feminine” (Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 141). She set up an altar with a mirror so she can worship herself. She believes that the world can be saved by the divine mother. “I know of nothing needed more in the world just now than an image of Divine present that affirms the importance of relationship--a Divine Mother, perhaps, who draws all humanity into her lap and makes us into a global family” (Dance, p. 155). Sue Monk Kidd’s book ends with the words, “She is in us.”
GAITHERS RECOMMENDING NEW AGE WRITINGS (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Gloria Gaither, who with her husband, Bill, have had a vast influence on Southern Gospel, is recommending the writings of New Age goddess Sue Monk Kidd and Catholic/Buddhist mystic Richard Rohr. In the Gaither’s Homecoming Magazine website, Gloria recommends Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, gushing that Kidd is “an amazing writer who tells a story with such skill that she somehow manages to both prick our consciences and give us great hope.” In an interview with Rohr, Gloria said, “I want to say thank you because so many of your books have been impacting my life, especially Falling Upward. ... I think that changed my thinking about ... just about everything. We have studied that book in our Monday night Bible study.” In 2009, Bill and Gloria Gaither hosted William Paul Young, author of The Shack. In 2005, they hosted emerging leader Brian McLaren, and New Ager Leonard Sweet at a Gaithers Praise Gathering. These people the Gaithers are promoting do not believe in the vicarious blood atonement of Jesus Christ. By their own testimonies, they are not born again. In her book Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd describes her journey from Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher to goddess worship by means of Catholic mysticism. Richard Rohr believes the path to God is found through “the teachings of both Jesus and Buddha” (announcement for Rohr’s 2008 Jesus and Buddha conference). In The Shack, William Paul Young re-imagines God as a woman. He believes God is non-judgmental; he denies the need of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. These are the dangerous waters to which the Gaithers are digging channels for their ill-informed, feeling-oriented, Southern Gospel-loving friends in fundamental Baptist churches. (For more about this see the free eBook Evangelicals and Contemplative Prayer, available from Way of Life Literature, https://www.wayoflife.org/publications/all.php)
FLASH OF LIGHT MARKS MOMENT LIFE BEGINS (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Bright Flash of Light,” London Telegraph, Apr. 26, 2016: “Human life begins in a bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg, scientists have shown for the first time, after capturing the astonishing ‘fireworks’ on film. An explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception. ... [It is] an incredible spectacle, highlighting the very moment that a new life begins.” “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb” (Psalm 139:13).
AFFLICTION THE BEST BIT OF FURNITURE (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I am afraid that all the grace I have got out of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows and pains and griefs is altogether incalculable. What do I not owe to the hammer and the anvil, the fire and the file! Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library” (Charles Spurgeon).
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).
ANDROGYNOUS ROCKERS WARNING ABOUT THE PUSH FOR CHILD TRANSSEXUALISM (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In a case of brazen hypocrisy, some of the old 70s androgynous rockers, who helped pave the way for the homosexual rights movement and all of its destructive wickedness, are warning of the agenda to transsexualize children. In April, Paul Stanley of KISS called transgender affirmation for youth a “sad and dangerous fad” (Apr. 30. 2023). Dee Snider of Twisted Sister agreed, saying, “I do not believe young children are ready to decide their gender allocation. I believe their choices should be supported and accepted by their parents, but I do not think kids have the mental capabilities to make rational, logical decisions on things of a magnitude that will affect them for the rest of their lives” (“Dee Snider,” Rolling Stone, May 6, 2023). Now Alice Cooper (a man named Alice) has joined the chorus with this: “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be. I think that’s so confusing to a kid. It’s even confusing to a teenager. You’re still trying to find your identity, and yet here’s this thing going on, saying, ‘Yeah, but you can be anything you want. You can be a cat if you want to be.’ I mean, if you identify as a tree… And I’m going, ‘Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?’” (“Rocker Alice Cooper,” Fox News, Aug. 24, 2023). What these men are saying is right, as far as it does, but it is largely ineffectual coming from rockers who were at the forefront of the unisex movement and have preached “do your own thing.”
MUSLIMS RAMPAGE AGAINST CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN PAKISTAN (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Firsthand account of extremist violence,” Fox News, Aug. 23, 2023: “Images and video obtained by Fox News Digital show the ransacking of churches by an apparent Muslim-led mob in Jaranwala on Aug. 16, an action provoked by allegations that a Christian and his friend had blasphemed by ripping pages out of a Quran. Tumultuous crowds were filmed going into churches, tossing furniture out windows, smashing altars and setting fire to the buildings. Many Christians were also forced to flee their homes to escape the attackers. When the riots quelled, and they returned to their dwellings, they found their property stolen and homes burned. ‘I saw with tears in my eyes how the mob desecrated crosses on the roofs of the churches and in graveyards and ruined church buildings. They burnt so many Bibles and altars,’ said the Rev. Deacon Daud Irshad, 28. ... ‘The condition in Pakistan is very bad,’ Irshad said, casting doubt on the blasphemy allegations that instigated the riots. ‘So much hatred, jealousy, envy and enmity from the Muslims towards Christians. It seems that we Christians are like animals to them. Whenever they want to kill, they kill, and whenever they want to spare, they give free hand.’ By his account, more than 25 churches were damaged and hundreds of homes attacked. Irshad said rioters first looted property from the buildings and then used flammable liquids to set them on fire. ... Open Doors, a Christian charity that serves persecuted churches throughout the world, reports that Christians in Pakistan are considered second-class citizens. The country was seventh on the charity’s worldwide list of the worst places to be a Christian. ... [Open Doors spokesperson Eshan] Silva attributed the latest attacks to Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws, which the organization says disproportionally target religious minorities. ... ‘The laws are used to settle grudges and exact revenge; a simple allegation of having insulted the Prophet or desecrated a Quran is enough to see the accused imprisoned for years while they wait for trial.’”
BAPTIST SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER’S JOURNEY VIA CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER TO GODDESS WORSHIP (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Contemplative prayer, which was borrowed from Rome’s dark monasticism, has swept through “evangelicalism” in the past 20 years, as we have documented in the free eBook Evangelicals and Contemplative Prayer. Popular contemplative practices include breath prayer, centering prayer, Jesus prayer, entering the silence, and lectio divina. It is an extremely dangerous field that has often led to apostasy and even pantheistic concepts of God. For example, popular author Sue Monk Kidd, who was once a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, found goddess worship through the path of contemplative prayer. As she delved deeper into contemplative mysticism, she traveled to Crete and worshiped in a cave of the goddess Skoteini. She says, “[S]omething inside me was calling on the Goddess of the Dark, even though I didn’t know her name” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 93). Soon, the Sunday School teacher was praying to God as Mother, “the divine feminine presence.” Finally, she envisioned herself as a goddess and began to worship herself. “To embrace Goddess is simply to discover the Divine in yourself as powerfully and vividly feminine” (Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 141). She set up an altar with a mirror so she can worship herself. She believes that the world can be saved by the divine mother. “I know of nothing needed more in the world just now than an image of Divine present that affirms the importance of relationship--a Divine Mother, perhaps, who draws all humanity into her lap and makes us into a global family” (Dance, p. 155). Sue Monk Kidd’s book ends with the words, “She is in us.”
GAITHERS RECOMMENDING NEW AGE WRITINGS (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Gloria Gaither, who with her husband, Bill, have had a vast influence on Southern Gospel, is recommending the writings of New Age goddess Sue Monk Kidd and Catholic/Buddhist mystic Richard Rohr. In the Gaither’s Homecoming Magazine website, Gloria recommends Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, gushing that Kidd is “an amazing writer who tells a story with such skill that she somehow manages to both prick our consciences and give us great hope.” In an interview with Rohr, Gloria said, “I want to say thank you because so many of your books have been impacting my life, especially Falling Upward. ... I think that changed my thinking about ... just about everything. We have studied that book in our Monday night Bible study.” In 2009, Bill and Gloria Gaither hosted William Paul Young, author of The Shack. In 2005, they hosted emerging leader Brian McLaren, and New Ager Leonard Sweet at a Gaithers Praise Gathering. These people the Gaithers are promoting do not believe in the vicarious blood atonement of Jesus Christ. By their own testimonies, they are not born again. In her book Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd describes her journey from Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher to goddess worship by means of Catholic mysticism. Richard Rohr believes the path to God is found through “the teachings of both Jesus and Buddha” (announcement for Rohr’s 2008 Jesus and Buddha conference). In The Shack, William Paul Young re-imagines God as a woman. He believes God is non-judgmental; he denies the need of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. These are the dangerous waters to which the Gaithers are digging channels for their ill-informed, feeling-oriented, Southern Gospel-loving friends in fundamental Baptist churches. (For more about this see the free eBook Evangelicals and Contemplative Prayer, available from Way of Life Literature, https://www.wayoflife.org/publications/all.php)
FLASH OF LIGHT MARKS MOMENT LIFE BEGINS (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Bright Flash of Light,” London Telegraph, Apr. 26, 2016: “Human life begins in a bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg, scientists have shown for the first time, after capturing the astonishing ‘fireworks’ on film. An explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception. ... [It is] an incredible spectacle, highlighting the very moment that a new life begins.” “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb” (Psalm 139:13).
AFFLICTION THE BEST BIT OF FURNITURE (Friday Church News Notes, September 1, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I am afraid that all the grace I have got out of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows and pains and griefs is altogether incalculable. What do I not owe to the hammer and the anvil, the fire and the file! Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library” (Charles Spurgeon).
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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