Friday Church News Notes
Volume 24, Issue 51 - December 22, 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.
Workers install components of the 10,000 Year Clock in an underground chamber in Texas. (Jeff Bezos via Instagram)
JEFF BEZOS’ 10,000-YEAR CLOCK (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is providing the major part of the funding to build a 10,000-year clock inside a mountain he owns in West Texas. Also called the Clock of the Long Now, the 500-foot-tall time piece is designed to synchronize with the sun every noon and to chime once a day, with a different chime for every day. Designer Danny Hillis says the clock will tick once a year, the century hand will advance once every hundred years, and a cuckoo will sound every millennium. If Bezos would read and believe the Bible, he could save the $42 million he is spending on this boondoggle. Man’s entire history has only been about 6,000 years, and we are now in what the Bible calls “the end times.” Every biblical sign of the end times is being fulfilled, including the return of Israel to her land after her 2,000-year global dispersal and the preparation for the Third Temple. Jesus Christ prophesied that these and other signs mark the imminent approach of the terrible day of the Lord and His return in reigning power and glory (Matthew 24). The Bible’s prophecies have never been wrong. Every detail of Christ’s life was prophesied in the Old Testament Scriptures, including His birthplace Bethlehem, the details of His suffering on the cross, His resurrection, and ascension. According to the Bible, in 10,000 years all men now living will be in heaven or hell, depending on their relationship with Jesus Christ, the only Saviour. The sixth stanza of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” written by the converted slaver John Newton, describes the heaven side: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun.”
SOCIAL MEDIA THE DEVIL’S MIXING BOWL (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Social media is the devil’s mixing bowl to weaken Christians in their spiritual stand. Facebook and other social media tend to mix everything together, the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the worldly, righteousness and unrighteousness, truth and heresy, wisdom and nuttiness. In this manner, social media provides a direct and powerful and continual assault on biblical holiness and purity. Consider the following warnings we have received from Christian friends. Testimony # 1 - “When someone leaves a good church and starts living according to the world, many people continue to remain friends with them and ‘like’ everything they do. They will encounter things on Facebook that their church is against, such as immodest clothing, rock music, drinking, smoking, dancing, dating, wrong marriages. They hear these things preached against at church, but they approve of them on Facebook. They will not separate from people who are going in the wrong direction. From that standpoint, I believe that Facebook has done great damage to churches. I have friends in independent Baptist churches around the world and I have observed that this takes place everywhere.” Testimony # 2 - “It is amazing to me the lack of discernment so many professing Christians have. They will ‘like’ and ‘share’ Facebook posts that feature false doctrine, psycho-babble, half-truths and sayings, and off-color memes. Contemporary Christian, Country, and other types of music not fit for consumption by a child of God is often liked and shared.” Testimony # 3 - “I found that I ‘reconnected’ with people that the Lord had separated me from. The Lord geographically moved me from an area that I did not need to live in. When I got saved He removed me from things that were not spiritually or physically healthy for me. The Lord saved me from a very wicked life! As a Christian I had no business reconnecting with them. Satan had me believe that I could be a witness to them. It did not happen! There were zero salvations as a result of me ‘reconnecting’ with anyone on Facebook.”
STUDENTS CHANTING “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA” DON’T KNOW WHICH RIVER, SEA (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Israel365 News, Dec. 12, 2023: “Some may wonder what students understand when they chant the antisemitic slogan ‘From the river to the sea.’ Ron Hassner, a professor of political science and Israel studies chair at the University of California, Berkeley, decided to find out. Hassner, also editor-in-chief of the journal Security Studies, hired a polling firm to survey 250 U.S. students ‘from a variety of backgrounds,”’ he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. ‘Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).’ It turned out that just 47% of those who supported the slogan knew which river and which sea it referenced. Some thought it was the Nile or Euphrates, both of which are rivers, or the Dead Sea, Atlantic and Caribbean ... Students supporting the slogan showed greater ignorance about other facts about the region and its history. Fewer than 25% knew who PLO leader Yasser Arafat was, with 10% saying he was Israel’s first prime minister. ... ‘There’s no shame in being ignorant unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions,’ Hassner wrote. After the students were confronted with their misunderstandings, 67.8% of them changed their minds and rejected ‘From the river to the sea,’ Hassner added. ‘Those who hope to encourage extremism depend on the political ignorance of their audiences. It is time for good teachers to join the fray and combat bias with education.’”
CHRISTIAN MAN DESTROYS SATANIC DISPLAY AT STATE CAPITOL (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On December 11, a man destroyed a satanic display at the Iowa State Capitol building. The statue of Baphomet, sponsored by the Iowa Satanic Temple, was decapitated by 35-year-old Michael Cassidy, a former military pilot. He immediately turned himself in to the police and was arrested on suspicion of fourth-degree criminal mischief. He told Fox News that the display “was extremely anti-Christian” and posted the following Bible verse to X: “1 Peter 5:8 KJV Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Harvard-educated lawyer, offered his support to Cassidy. He commented on X, “Satan has no place in our society and should not be recognized as a ‘religion’ by the federal government. Good prevails over evil--that’s the American spirit.” The Satanic Temple, founded in 2012, claims it does not believe in a supernatural Satan but in Satan as “the eternal rebel” against “arbitrary authority and social norms.” They say, “To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions” (“After School Satan Clubs,” USA Today, Dec. 16, 2023). In 2019, the organization received tax-exempt status from the IRS. Many members claim to be atheists. Yet they use traditional satanic symbols, particularly the pentagram, the crescent moon, the serpent, and Bahamut, the filthy half-man half-goat that “represents the merging of opposites”: human and animal, male and female, black and white, light and darkness. The Satanic Temple promotes non-restricted abortion and sells mail-order abortion pills. There is a Satan, of course. Originally named Lucifer, he is a fallen angel who is in rebellion to God and hates everything pertaining to God, including God’s redeemed people. He is also called “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil” (Revelation 20:2). He is destined for hell, but he is not currently in hell. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
THE WHOLE WORLD IMAGINING A VAIN THING (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Psalmist prophesied that the whole world will imagine a vain thing, which is to cast off “the bands” of God and Christ. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people IMAGINE a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:1-3). The word translated “anointed” is the Hebrew messiah, which is the same as the Greek Christ. It refers, of course, to Jesus, who is revealed in the same Psalm as the Son of God (verse 7). This vain imagination is spreading across the globe with a great fervor today, even among professing Christians. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” has become an anthem of sorts for this rebellion, and it is interesting that it uses exactly the same word used by the Psalmist 3,000 years ago. The lyrics say: “IMAGINE there’s no heaven … No hell below us, above us only sky … no religion too/ You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.” Lennon dreamed that the world would come together by imagining a unity in rebellion against God’s absolute authority and the exclusiveness of salvation through His Son. I’ve heard “Imagine” sung and played practically everywhere I have traveled in this world, in more than 30 countries. It has been sung as a duet by Dolly Parton and the homosexual rocker Elton John. It was sung by Bill Clinton with a Jewish and Arab children’s choir. It was used by a short-term missionary P.E.A.C.E. team from Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in August 2006 as part of a video slide show that was posted on YouTube. I used to love that song before I was saved (“Imagine” came out in 1971, when I was in the apex of my run from God), and I, too, didn’t believe in hell or in a God that would send people to hell. But I thank the Lord for His mercy in opening my blinded eyes.
SOCIAL MEDIA PROTECTION REQUIRES A MINDSET OF TAKING CONTROL (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). The fundamental protection in the social media age is to take control. It is the determination that I will have one Master, and that Master is Jesus Christ! I’m not going to allow anyone or anything to take the place of Christ as my Master. I will not be a slave to a smartphone or a video game or YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or FoxNews or Snapchat or Instagram or Tiktok. I will not be a slave of a constant stream of “notifications.” I will not be the puppet of some faceless, money-grubbing corporation. I will not be controlled by social engineers. I will not allow my time to be wasted on vanity and wickedness. This requires stepping back and analyzing one’s life and every aspect of how communication technology is affecting me, not just one time, but repeatedly, continuously. It needs to be done by individuals, by families, and by churches.
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).
SOCIAL MEDIA THE DEVIL’S MIXING BOWL (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Social media is the devil’s mixing bowl to weaken Christians in their spiritual stand. Facebook and other social media tend to mix everything together, the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the worldly, righteousness and unrighteousness, truth and heresy, wisdom and nuttiness. In this manner, social media provides a direct and powerful and continual assault on biblical holiness and purity. Consider the following warnings we have received from Christian friends. Testimony # 1 - “When someone leaves a good church and starts living according to the world, many people continue to remain friends with them and ‘like’ everything they do. They will encounter things on Facebook that their church is against, such as immodest clothing, rock music, drinking, smoking, dancing, dating, wrong marriages. They hear these things preached against at church, but they approve of them on Facebook. They will not separate from people who are going in the wrong direction. From that standpoint, I believe that Facebook has done great damage to churches. I have friends in independent Baptist churches around the world and I have observed that this takes place everywhere.” Testimony # 2 - “It is amazing to me the lack of discernment so many professing Christians have. They will ‘like’ and ‘share’ Facebook posts that feature false doctrine, psycho-babble, half-truths and sayings, and off-color memes. Contemporary Christian, Country, and other types of music not fit for consumption by a child of God is often liked and shared.” Testimony # 3 - “I found that I ‘reconnected’ with people that the Lord had separated me from. The Lord geographically moved me from an area that I did not need to live in. When I got saved He removed me from things that were not spiritually or physically healthy for me. The Lord saved me from a very wicked life! As a Christian I had no business reconnecting with them. Satan had me believe that I could be a witness to them. It did not happen! There were zero salvations as a result of me ‘reconnecting’ with anyone on Facebook.”
STUDENTS CHANTING “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA” DON’T KNOW WHICH RIVER, SEA (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Israel365 News, Dec. 12, 2023: “Some may wonder what students understand when they chant the antisemitic slogan ‘From the river to the sea.’ Ron Hassner, a professor of political science and Israel studies chair at the University of California, Berkeley, decided to find out. Hassner, also editor-in-chief of the journal Security Studies, hired a polling firm to survey 250 U.S. students ‘from a variety of backgrounds,”’ he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. ‘Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).’ It turned out that just 47% of those who supported the slogan knew which river and which sea it referenced. Some thought it was the Nile or Euphrates, both of which are rivers, or the Dead Sea, Atlantic and Caribbean ... Students supporting the slogan showed greater ignorance about other facts about the region and its history. Fewer than 25% knew who PLO leader Yasser Arafat was, with 10% saying he was Israel’s first prime minister. ... ‘There’s no shame in being ignorant unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions,’ Hassner wrote. After the students were confronted with their misunderstandings, 67.8% of them changed their minds and rejected ‘From the river to the sea,’ Hassner added. ‘Those who hope to encourage extremism depend on the political ignorance of their audiences. It is time for good teachers to join the fray and combat bias with education.’”
CHRISTIAN MAN DESTROYS SATANIC DISPLAY AT STATE CAPITOL (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On December 11, a man destroyed a satanic display at the Iowa State Capitol building. The statue of Baphomet, sponsored by the Iowa Satanic Temple, was decapitated by 35-year-old Michael Cassidy, a former military pilot. He immediately turned himself in to the police and was arrested on suspicion of fourth-degree criminal mischief. He told Fox News that the display “was extremely anti-Christian” and posted the following Bible verse to X: “1 Peter 5:8 KJV Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Harvard-educated lawyer, offered his support to Cassidy. He commented on X, “Satan has no place in our society and should not be recognized as a ‘religion’ by the federal government. Good prevails over evil--that’s the American spirit.” The Satanic Temple, founded in 2012, claims it does not believe in a supernatural Satan but in Satan as “the eternal rebel” against “arbitrary authority and social norms.” They say, “To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions” (“After School Satan Clubs,” USA Today, Dec. 16, 2023). In 2019, the organization received tax-exempt status from the IRS. Many members claim to be atheists. Yet they use traditional satanic symbols, particularly the pentagram, the crescent moon, the serpent, and Bahamut, the filthy half-man half-goat that “represents the merging of opposites”: human and animal, male and female, black and white, light and darkness. The Satanic Temple promotes non-restricted abortion and sells mail-order abortion pills. There is a Satan, of course. Originally named Lucifer, he is a fallen angel who is in rebellion to God and hates everything pertaining to God, including God’s redeemed people. He is also called “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil” (Revelation 20:2). He is destined for hell, but he is not currently in hell. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
THE WHOLE WORLD IMAGINING A VAIN THING (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Psalmist prophesied that the whole world will imagine a vain thing, which is to cast off “the bands” of God and Christ. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people IMAGINE a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:1-3). The word translated “anointed” is the Hebrew messiah, which is the same as the Greek Christ. It refers, of course, to Jesus, who is revealed in the same Psalm as the Son of God (verse 7). This vain imagination is spreading across the globe with a great fervor today, even among professing Christians. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” has become an anthem of sorts for this rebellion, and it is interesting that it uses exactly the same word used by the Psalmist 3,000 years ago. The lyrics say: “IMAGINE there’s no heaven … No hell below us, above us only sky … no religion too/ You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.” Lennon dreamed that the world would come together by imagining a unity in rebellion against God’s absolute authority and the exclusiveness of salvation through His Son. I’ve heard “Imagine” sung and played practically everywhere I have traveled in this world, in more than 30 countries. It has been sung as a duet by Dolly Parton and the homosexual rocker Elton John. It was sung by Bill Clinton with a Jewish and Arab children’s choir. It was used by a short-term missionary P.E.A.C.E. team from Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in August 2006 as part of a video slide show that was posted on YouTube. I used to love that song before I was saved (“Imagine” came out in 1971, when I was in the apex of my run from God), and I, too, didn’t believe in hell or in a God that would send people to hell. But I thank the Lord for His mercy in opening my blinded eyes.
SOCIAL MEDIA PROTECTION REQUIRES A MINDSET OF TAKING CONTROL (Friday Church News Notes, December 22, 2023, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). The fundamental protection in the social media age is to take control. It is the determination that I will have one Master, and that Master is Jesus Christ! I’m not going to allow anyone or anything to take the place of Christ as my Master. I will not be a slave to a smartphone or a video game or YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or FoxNews or Snapchat or Instagram or Tiktok. I will not be a slave of a constant stream of “notifications.” I will not be the puppet of some faceless, money-grubbing corporation. I will not be controlled by social engineers. I will not allow my time to be wasted on vanity and wickedness. This requires stepping back and analyzing one’s life and every aspect of how communication technology is affecting me, not just one time, but repeatedly, continuously. It needs to be done by individuals, by families, and by churches.
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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