Friday Church News Notes
Volume 25, Issue 05 - February 2, 2024
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.
A PASTOR’S FEEDBACK ON THE WAY OF LIFE BIBLE COLLEGE (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - We announced the Way of Life Bible College this week. See https://www.wayoflife.org/bible-college/ A pastor replied as follows: “Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this. Firstly let me say I am VERY EXCITED about this and the timing for us is perfect. We have two young men who want to train for the ministry so we are ramping up our Bible College program for this year. We are offering your Mastering the English Bible course on Old Testament history for our Tuesday night Bible class. We already have a good number of the church folk that have signed up. We are then running a full day of Bible college courses on Wednesday for the two young men plus any others who may want to study as well. Having your courses developed in this way for a Bible College context with review questions, tests etc., is so useful as busy pastors like myself can take the courses and use them. I plan to use a good number of your courses for our Bible college program alongside some of our own. ... Thanks again for the first class materials you are producing!”
THE TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The Treason,” Niall Ferguson, The Free Press, Jan. 25, 2024: “It might be thought extraordinary that the most prestigious universities in the world should have been infected so rapidly with a politics imbued with antisemitism. Yet exactly the same thing has happened before. A hundred years ago, in the 1920s, by far the best universities in the world were in Germany. By comparison with Heidelberg and Tübingen, Harvard and Yale were gentlemen’s clubs, where students paid more attention to football than to physics. More than a quarter of all the Nobel prizes awarded in the sciences between 1901 and 1940 were awarded to Germans; only 11 percent went to Americans. Albert Einstein reached the pinnacle of his profession not in 1933, when he moved to Princeton, but from 1914 to 1917, when he was appointed professor at the University of Berlin, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, and as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Even the finest scientists produced by Cambridge felt obliged to do a tour of duty in Germany. ... Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich. A university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it. The fall from grace of the German universities was personified by the readiness of Martin Heidegger, the greatest German philosopher of his generation, to jump on the Nazi bandwagon, a swastika pin in his lapel. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 until 1945.” [Conclusion by Way of Life: Throughout human history, higher education has tended to be the fountainhead of error, not only anti-semitism but every error. This is because of man’s corrupt fallen nature, the pride of intellect (“the pride of life,” 1 Jo. 2:16), and demonic delusion. In these end times, the spirit of apostasy and the mystery of iniquity is nearing full bloom.]
THE GETTYS AND THE RAPPER (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Gettys featured rapper Shai Linne at their Sing! 2022 conference, and he is scheduled to return for Sing! 2024. The Gettys (Keith and Kristyn) are hugely influential. “Up to 100 million people worldwide sing Keith Getty’s hymns in church services each year” (“Hitting the right notes,” Belfast Telegraph, Aug. 11, 2018). The Getty-Townend hymn “In Christ Alone” is hugely popular, with an estimated 40 to 50 million people singing it in church services each year. At least eight of the Gettys’ songs are included in Majesty Music’s Rejoice Hymns. Twenty-nine of their songs are featured in Hymns Modern and Ancient compiled by Fred Coleman who heads up Bob Jones University’s Department of Church Music. Both Crown Baptist College and West Coast Baptist College have performed Getty-Townend material in their services. Typically, the lyrics to the Getty-Townend contemporary hymns are Scriptural and the tunes are fairly conservative, but the Gettys have no boundaries in music or in association. Their concerts featured a mixture of traditional hymns mixed with out-and-out rock & roll, blues, jazz, rap, Irish jigs, anything. They don’t believe in separation. They are positive-only, non-judgmental. Keith Getty says to the large mixed multitude crowds at the Sing! conferences, “We are one in Christ; the things that unite us are far greater than the things that divide.” Yet the vast majority of these people are strangers to him. He doesn’t know who most of these people are, whether they have actually been born again, how they live, what churches they attend, if any, or what doctrines they hold. The Gettys are representative of evangelicalism today, at the heart of which is “a renunciation of separatism,” as Harold Ockenga stated in the 1940s. The Gettys don’t draw clear lines as the Bible requires. They don’t speak out against error and issue warnings as the Bible demands. They don’t contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints or mark and avoid those who teach false doctrine, as God’s Word clearly demands. Because of the lack of boundaries, the Gettys are a bridge to the exceedingly dangerous world of the “broader church” with all of its sins and heresies, as surely as Hillsong or any of the other contemporary worship groups. See the report “The Gettys - Pied Pipers of Contemporary Worship Music” and the video presentation “Bob Jones, Majesty Music, New Calvinism, and the Gettys.”
THE CLIMATE MODELS ARE WRONG (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The Climate Models,” PowerLineBlog.com, Jan. 27, 2024: “Dr. Roy Spencer, a top scientist specializing in climate [he helped design the NASA temperature tracking satellites], wrote a report for [the Heritage Foundation] which he summarized on his own web site. Spencer compared observed warming in the U.S. corn belt during the summer, between 1973 and 2022--a 50-year period--with the warming that was predicted by the major climate models. He found that all of the models yielded more warming than actually occurred, most to an absurd degree. The chart shows the results. It should not need to be said that a model is not evidence of anything. A model is a hypothesis. Like any scientific hypothesis, it is confirmed or refuted by observation. A model that is refuted by observation is worthless. And yet, these models, which have repeatedly been shown to be wrong, are the basis for enormously destructive policies that have been adopted across much of the western world. Someone pointed out with respect to these data--I would credit him, but I can’t now find the reference--that if it were simply a matter of mathematical errors or inconsistencies, one would expect some models to err on the ‘hot side’ and others on the ‘cold side’ of actual observations. But that isn’t the case: all of the models run hot. That suggest that global warming alarmism is a political, not a scientific, movement.”
Roy Spencer’s web site - https://wattsupwiththat.com
SPURGEON AND A REGENERATE CHURCH MEMBERSHIP (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Metropolitan Tabernacle, from its earliest days under the pastorates of William Rider and Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), was careful to maintain a regenerated church membership. This continued under Charles Spurgeon’s leadership. Prospective candidates for baptism and membership were required to go through a multi-step process. First, the enquirer met with one of the elders or deacons to share his or her testimony. Second, if the elder or deacon was satisfied with the testimony, the enquirer was recommended to meet with Spurgeon. Third, if Spurgeon was satisfied, he nominated a church member to visit the candidate “to enquire as to the moral character and repute.” Fourth, if the visit was satisfactory, the candidate was invited to attend a special congregation meeting to appear before the church family. There the candidates would again give their testimonies and answer any questions from church members. These meetings were not rushed and could last several hours, beginning at 2pm and “lasting till a late hour at night.” Fifth, the church then voted whether to receive the candidate as a member. Sixth, if approved by the vote of the church, the candidate was baptized and received into membership and participated in the next communion service. Members who were not present and active were removed from membership. In his final message to the Pastors’ College, Spurgeon said, “Let us not keep names on our books when they are only names. ... Keep your church real and effective ... A merely nominal church is a lie. Let it be what it professes to be.”
PLANTS SKILLED IN ANIMAL HUSBANDRY (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, Jan. 23, 2024: “It occurred to scientists only about 30 years ago that insect pests might be controlled through hormones. If, for example, a hormone that prevented a destructive insect from reaching maturity was applied to a crop, the interrupted lifecycle of the insect might prevent damage to the crop. Yet, the hormone would be a safe, natural substance. However, scientists found that synthesizing such hormones was much more difficult than they thought. Several years into the research, Japanese scientists discovered that certain plants were already making these hormones for self-defense. In fact, many of the plants were manufacturing what they called “super-hormones.” ‘Super-hormones’ are hormones that work in far lower concentrations than the juvenile hormones made by the insects themselves. These juvenile hormones prevent insects from reaching their adult, and usually most destructive, stage. Among those plants that make juvenile insect hormones are ferns and certain evergreens. One result of this research is the development of a mosquito juvenile hormone. This hormone can be time-released from briquettes in swamps, preventing mosquito wigglers from ever maturing to their flying, biting, adult stage. Again, the incredible design and balance that could only have been built into the world by a wise Creator are evident in the creation. How else could plants have gained such skill in animal chemistry? Ref.: Science Digest, March, 1979, page 67.”
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).
THE TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The Treason,” Niall Ferguson, The Free Press, Jan. 25, 2024: “It might be thought extraordinary that the most prestigious universities in the world should have been infected so rapidly with a politics imbued with antisemitism. Yet exactly the same thing has happened before. A hundred years ago, in the 1920s, by far the best universities in the world were in Germany. By comparison with Heidelberg and Tübingen, Harvard and Yale were gentlemen’s clubs, where students paid more attention to football than to physics. More than a quarter of all the Nobel prizes awarded in the sciences between 1901 and 1940 were awarded to Germans; only 11 percent went to Americans. Albert Einstein reached the pinnacle of his profession not in 1933, when he moved to Princeton, but from 1914 to 1917, when he was appointed professor at the University of Berlin, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, and as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Even the finest scientists produced by Cambridge felt obliged to do a tour of duty in Germany. ... Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich. A university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it. The fall from grace of the German universities was personified by the readiness of Martin Heidegger, the greatest German philosopher of his generation, to jump on the Nazi bandwagon, a swastika pin in his lapel. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 until 1945.” [Conclusion by Way of Life: Throughout human history, higher education has tended to be the fountainhead of error, not only anti-semitism but every error. This is because of man’s corrupt fallen nature, the pride of intellect (“the pride of life,” 1 Jo. 2:16), and demonic delusion. In these end times, the spirit of apostasy and the mystery of iniquity is nearing full bloom.]
THE GETTYS AND THE RAPPER (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Gettys featured rapper Shai Linne at their Sing! 2022 conference, and he is scheduled to return for Sing! 2024. The Gettys (Keith and Kristyn) are hugely influential. “Up to 100 million people worldwide sing Keith Getty’s hymns in church services each year” (“Hitting the right notes,” Belfast Telegraph, Aug. 11, 2018). The Getty-Townend hymn “In Christ Alone” is hugely popular, with an estimated 40 to 50 million people singing it in church services each year. At least eight of the Gettys’ songs are included in Majesty Music’s Rejoice Hymns. Twenty-nine of their songs are featured in Hymns Modern and Ancient compiled by Fred Coleman who heads up Bob Jones University’s Department of Church Music. Both Crown Baptist College and West Coast Baptist College have performed Getty-Townend material in their services. Typically, the lyrics to the Getty-Townend contemporary hymns are Scriptural and the tunes are fairly conservative, but the Gettys have no boundaries in music or in association. Their concerts featured a mixture of traditional hymns mixed with out-and-out rock & roll, blues, jazz, rap, Irish jigs, anything. They don’t believe in separation. They are positive-only, non-judgmental. Keith Getty says to the large mixed multitude crowds at the Sing! conferences, “We are one in Christ; the things that unite us are far greater than the things that divide.” Yet the vast majority of these people are strangers to him. He doesn’t know who most of these people are, whether they have actually been born again, how they live, what churches they attend, if any, or what doctrines they hold. The Gettys are representative of evangelicalism today, at the heart of which is “a renunciation of separatism,” as Harold Ockenga stated in the 1940s. The Gettys don’t draw clear lines as the Bible requires. They don’t speak out against error and issue warnings as the Bible demands. They don’t contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints or mark and avoid those who teach false doctrine, as God’s Word clearly demands. Because of the lack of boundaries, the Gettys are a bridge to the exceedingly dangerous world of the “broader church” with all of its sins and heresies, as surely as Hillsong or any of the other contemporary worship groups. See the report “The Gettys - Pied Pipers of Contemporary Worship Music” and the video presentation “Bob Jones, Majesty Music, New Calvinism, and the Gettys.”
THE CLIMATE MODELS ARE WRONG (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The Climate Models,” PowerLineBlog.com, Jan. 27, 2024: “Dr. Roy Spencer, a top scientist specializing in climate [he helped design the NASA temperature tracking satellites], wrote a report for [the Heritage Foundation] which he summarized on his own web site. Spencer compared observed warming in the U.S. corn belt during the summer, between 1973 and 2022--a 50-year period--with the warming that was predicted by the major climate models. He found that all of the models yielded more warming than actually occurred, most to an absurd degree. The chart shows the results. It should not need to be said that a model is not evidence of anything. A model is a hypothesis. Like any scientific hypothesis, it is confirmed or refuted by observation. A model that is refuted by observation is worthless. And yet, these models, which have repeatedly been shown to be wrong, are the basis for enormously destructive policies that have been adopted across much of the western world. Someone pointed out with respect to these data--I would credit him, but I can’t now find the reference--that if it were simply a matter of mathematical errors or inconsistencies, one would expect some models to err on the ‘hot side’ and others on the ‘cold side’ of actual observations. But that isn’t the case: all of the models run hot. That suggest that global warming alarmism is a political, not a scientific, movement.”
Roy Spencer’s web site - https://wattsupwiththat.com
SPURGEON AND A REGENERATE CHURCH MEMBERSHIP (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Metropolitan Tabernacle, from its earliest days under the pastorates of William Rider and Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), was careful to maintain a regenerated church membership. This continued under Charles Spurgeon’s leadership. Prospective candidates for baptism and membership were required to go through a multi-step process. First, the enquirer met with one of the elders or deacons to share his or her testimony. Second, if the elder or deacon was satisfied with the testimony, the enquirer was recommended to meet with Spurgeon. Third, if Spurgeon was satisfied, he nominated a church member to visit the candidate “to enquire as to the moral character and repute.” Fourth, if the visit was satisfactory, the candidate was invited to attend a special congregation meeting to appear before the church family. There the candidates would again give their testimonies and answer any questions from church members. These meetings were not rushed and could last several hours, beginning at 2pm and “lasting till a late hour at night.” Fifth, the church then voted whether to receive the candidate as a member. Sixth, if approved by the vote of the church, the candidate was baptized and received into membership and participated in the next communion service. Members who were not present and active were removed from membership. In his final message to the Pastors’ College, Spurgeon said, “Let us not keep names on our books when they are only names. ... Keep your church real and effective ... A merely nominal church is a lie. Let it be what it professes to be.”
PLANTS SKILLED IN ANIMAL HUSBANDRY (Friday Church News Notes, February 2, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, Jan. 23, 2024: “It occurred to scientists only about 30 years ago that insect pests might be controlled through hormones. If, for example, a hormone that prevented a destructive insect from reaching maturity was applied to a crop, the interrupted lifecycle of the insect might prevent damage to the crop. Yet, the hormone would be a safe, natural substance. However, scientists found that synthesizing such hormones was much more difficult than they thought. Several years into the research, Japanese scientists discovered that certain plants were already making these hormones for self-defense. In fact, many of the plants were manufacturing what they called “super-hormones.” ‘Super-hormones’ are hormones that work in far lower concentrations than the juvenile hormones made by the insects themselves. These juvenile hormones prevent insects from reaching their adult, and usually most destructive, stage. Among those plants that make juvenile insect hormones are ferns and certain evergreens. One result of this research is the development of a mosquito juvenile hormone. This hormone can be time-released from briquettes in swamps, preventing mosquito wigglers from ever maturing to their flying, biting, adult stage. Again, the incredible design and balance that could only have been built into the world by a wise Creator are evident in the creation. How else could plants have gained such skill in animal chemistry? Ref.: Science Digest, March, 1979, page 67.”
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).
_____
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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