Friday Church News Notes
Volume 25, Issue 07 - February 16, 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.
PERVERSION OF THE AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Innocent: The Price One Man Paid for Doing What Is Right is the sad account of the perversion of the American justice system to convict those who honor God’s law. The following is from the back cover: “On December 5th, 2018, an innocent man, who broke no laws, was incarcerated into a U.S. federal prison to begin a three-year prison sentence. His crime? As an act of compassion, he drove a distraught mother from Virginia to New York as she sought refuge for her young daughter whom she had learned was being sexually abused, and the courts refused to protect her daughter in the matter. After the drive, the mother and daughter disappeared, having left the country. Because the former partner was a lesbian and the mother was a former lesbian (now a converted Christian believer), the story received attention from the LGBTQ movement and was soon being portrayed as a hate crime against a homosexual. The FBI became involved and eventually tracked down Philip Zodhiates and a Mennonite pastor, both who were brought to trial and convicted of aiding and abetting an ‘international parental kidnapping’ even though the mother and daughter had every right to leave the country according to the statute under which the men were convicted. During Philip’s 30-month incarceration, he wrote daily in a journal about life in prison. What began as a terrifying experience for this Christian husband, father, philanthropist, and businessman (the son of the well-known Hebrew/Greek Bible scholar, Spiros Zodhiates) became a journey of faith--not just for Philip but also for many of the inmates who met Philip and whose lives were changed forever. What could have been a collapse of faith for an innocent man--falsely accused of a crime he never committed and thrown into prison--turned into just the opposite for Philip. He had always cherished God’s Holy Word, but now it became his life line and the Holy Spirit his comfort and peace in a deeper way than ever before. Innocent not only tells the story of the injustice that took place in a country that has lost its moral foundation but is also a wake-up call that persecution may be right around the corner for those who are trying to do the right thing.”
MARXISM AND THE INSANITY ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The root cause,” Fox News, Nov. 15, 2023: “Americans are finally catching on that the oppressor-oppressed narrative being taught in our schools and universities is not a conspiracy theory disseminated by conservatives. It’s real. Jewish students having to barricade themselves in a college to escape a mob in Manhattan, of all places, has opened people’s eyes to the threat woke ideology represents to civilization. Too bad it took a grotesque massacre and mass rapes in the Holy Land to do it. But now that we have people’s attention, let’s connect the dots. The oppressor-oppressed worldview that paints democratic Israel as the ‘oppressor’ and Palestinian terrorists as the ‘oppressed,’ so prevalent on college campuses, is pure Marxism. In the first page of The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explain that ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ ... In a democracy, one party or side seldom gets all it wants. And if the system is correctly structured, as the founders strived to do with the American system of government, there are checks and balances. The legislature, the executive, and the judiciary check each other’s powers (and the legislature itself is divided into two chambers). Not so in Marx’s ‘oppressor and oppressed’ view. There you end up with a ‘revolutionary reconstitution,’ which Marx himself promised would be ruthless. ‘This cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads,’ he averred in the manifesto. A few months later, Marx wrote, more ominously, ‘There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.’ Blood will run--it’s a feature, not a bug, of Marxism.”
ISAAC WATTS EXHORTS PARENTS TO GUARD CHILDREN’S “FURNITURE OF THE MINDS” (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from the Preface to Divine Songs: attempted in easy language for the use of children, Isaac Watts, 1715: “It is an awful and important charge that is committed to you. The wisdom and welfare of the succeeding generation are intrusted with you before hand, and depend much on your conduct. The seeds of misery or happiness in this world, and that to come, are oftentimes sown very early; and, therefore, whatever may conduce to give the minds of children a relish for virtue and religion ought in the first place, to be proposed to you. ... What is learned in verse is longer retained in memory, and sooner recollected. The like sounds and the like number of syllables exceedingly assist the remembrance. And it may often happen that the end of a song, running in the mind, may be an effectual means to keep off some temptations, or to incline to some duty, when a word of scripture is not upon their thoughts. This will be a constant furniture for the minds of children, that they may have something to think upon when alone, and sing over to themselves. This may sometimes give their thoughts a divine turn, and raise a young meditation. Thus they will not be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age.”
REPUBLICAN LAWLESSNESS (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - I despise politics. It is dirty, compromising business at best. There is no Godliness Party in America or anywhere else on this corrupt earth (and if there were, it wouldn’t win many elections!). The Republican Party is a moral mess, and both parties spend money like drunken sailors. But when it comes to law and order and freedom of religion and speech, which are very big things, the choice between the two parties in America is like night and day. Where are the Republican rioters burning down businesses and shooting peaceful protestors and surrounding people to demand that they support Trump or else? Where are the Republican mayors and governors legitimizing riots? Where are the Republican attorneys general and district attorneys who are weak on punishing violent criminals but are filing charges against peaceful citizens for bearing arms in self-defense and protesting abortion clinics? Where are the Republican educators who are removing the names of the Founding Fathers from their schools? Where are the Republican governors who are releasing violent criminals back into the population? Where are the Republican mayors who are defunding the police? Where is the Republican cancel culture? Where are the Republicans who are oppressing churches?
ARE CHRISTIANS THE CAUSE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL’S PAIN? (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Many homosexuals blame Christian teaching on sexuality for their problems. The British newspaper The Independent calls this “psychological torture ... imposed from a supposedly godly environment” (“Christian Rock Star ‘I’m Gay,” The Independent, Aug. 16, 2014). Consider Vicky Beeching, mentioned in the “Christian rock star” report. Beginning in Sunday School, she was taught that homosexuality is such a great sin that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for it. After becoming a contemporary Christian musician at age 16, she hid her homosexuality, and she believes that the resulting stress caused psychological and physical problems. When she was diagnosed with a disease at age 35 and had to take chemotherapy, she said, “I looked at my life, and thought, ‘I have to come to terms with who I am.’” She determined to “come out” and stop “living as a shadow of a person.” While the stress of living a lie and abiding in unconfessed sin will doubtless cause problems in an individual’s life, the stress cannot be blamed on “the church.” The cause of the stress is not the law of God but the sin. It is like being in the habit of running red lights because you are “a red-light runner by nature” and blaming the resulting anxiety and potential crash on the naughty light. The confusion of “Christian homosexuality” is prophesied in Scripture. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
THE HIGH PRIEST’S BELLS (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In 2011, a small golden bell with a tiny loop at its top was found by archaeologists excavating the ancient drainage channel that ran beneath the Pilgrim’s Way from the Pool of Siloam to the western side of the Temple Mount. The bell is very likely one that was made for the high priest’s robe. There is no mention in the Bible or in extra-biblical Jewish historical records of a golden bell like this used in any other fashion. Attached to the hem of the high priest’s beautiful blue robe were pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet, and golden bells (Ex. 28:33-35). The gold bells signify, first, Christ’s deity. He is God and He is man and as such He can be the Mediator between God and man. This work was signified on the day of atonement when the high priest carried the blood of the sacrifice into the holy of holies and applied it to the ark and the mercy seat (Leviticus 16). Second, the bells signify the Father’s delight in the Son. The bells related particularly to the high priest’s work in the Holy Place which was to the Father. Of Christ, the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 17:5). Third, the bells signify Christ’s present ministry in heaven for His redeemed people. Jewish tradition says there were 71 bells, so the sound would be heard clearly as the high priest moved about his business in the Tabernacle. As the bells enabled the people to hear the High Priest ministering in the holy of holies even though they couldn’t see him, so Christ’s present ministry in heaven can be“heard” by the witness of the Word of God and the testimony of the Holy Spirit (Joh. 16:12-15; Heb. 7:24-25; 1 Jo. 2:20). Fourth, the gold bells announce Christ’s imminent return. As the people outside the Tabernacle heard the tinkling of the bells, they knew the high priest would soon return to pronounce God’s blessing on them. “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand” (Php. 4:5). (excerpted from Mastering the English Bible, “Old Testament History from Genesis to the Silent Years,” https://www.wayoflife.org/mastering/index.php)
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).
MARXISM AND THE INSANITY ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The root cause,” Fox News, Nov. 15, 2023: “Americans are finally catching on that the oppressor-oppressed narrative being taught in our schools and universities is not a conspiracy theory disseminated by conservatives. It’s real. Jewish students having to barricade themselves in a college to escape a mob in Manhattan, of all places, has opened people’s eyes to the threat woke ideology represents to civilization. Too bad it took a grotesque massacre and mass rapes in the Holy Land to do it. But now that we have people’s attention, let’s connect the dots. The oppressor-oppressed worldview that paints democratic Israel as the ‘oppressor’ and Palestinian terrorists as the ‘oppressed,’ so prevalent on college campuses, is pure Marxism. In the first page of The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explain that ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ ... In a democracy, one party or side seldom gets all it wants. And if the system is correctly structured, as the founders strived to do with the American system of government, there are checks and balances. The legislature, the executive, and the judiciary check each other’s powers (and the legislature itself is divided into two chambers). Not so in Marx’s ‘oppressor and oppressed’ view. There you end up with a ‘revolutionary reconstitution,’ which Marx himself promised would be ruthless. ‘This cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads,’ he averred in the manifesto. A few months later, Marx wrote, more ominously, ‘There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.’ Blood will run--it’s a feature, not a bug, of Marxism.”
ISAAC WATTS EXHORTS PARENTS TO GUARD CHILDREN’S “FURNITURE OF THE MINDS” (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from the Preface to Divine Songs: attempted in easy language for the use of children, Isaac Watts, 1715: “It is an awful and important charge that is committed to you. The wisdom and welfare of the succeeding generation are intrusted with you before hand, and depend much on your conduct. The seeds of misery or happiness in this world, and that to come, are oftentimes sown very early; and, therefore, whatever may conduce to give the minds of children a relish for virtue and religion ought in the first place, to be proposed to you. ... What is learned in verse is longer retained in memory, and sooner recollected. The like sounds and the like number of syllables exceedingly assist the remembrance. And it may often happen that the end of a song, running in the mind, may be an effectual means to keep off some temptations, or to incline to some duty, when a word of scripture is not upon their thoughts. This will be a constant furniture for the minds of children, that they may have something to think upon when alone, and sing over to themselves. This may sometimes give their thoughts a divine turn, and raise a young meditation. Thus they will not be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age.”
REPUBLICAN LAWLESSNESS (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - I despise politics. It is dirty, compromising business at best. There is no Godliness Party in America or anywhere else on this corrupt earth (and if there were, it wouldn’t win many elections!). The Republican Party is a moral mess, and both parties spend money like drunken sailors. But when it comes to law and order and freedom of religion and speech, which are very big things, the choice between the two parties in America is like night and day. Where are the Republican rioters burning down businesses and shooting peaceful protestors and surrounding people to demand that they support Trump or else? Where are the Republican mayors and governors legitimizing riots? Where are the Republican attorneys general and district attorneys who are weak on punishing violent criminals but are filing charges against peaceful citizens for bearing arms in self-defense and protesting abortion clinics? Where are the Republican educators who are removing the names of the Founding Fathers from their schools? Where are the Republican governors who are releasing violent criminals back into the population? Where are the Republican mayors who are defunding the police? Where is the Republican cancel culture? Where are the Republicans who are oppressing churches?
ARE CHRISTIANS THE CAUSE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL’S PAIN? (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Many homosexuals blame Christian teaching on sexuality for their problems. The British newspaper The Independent calls this “psychological torture ... imposed from a supposedly godly environment” (“Christian Rock Star ‘I’m Gay,” The Independent, Aug. 16, 2014). Consider Vicky Beeching, mentioned in the “Christian rock star” report. Beginning in Sunday School, she was taught that homosexuality is such a great sin that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for it. After becoming a contemporary Christian musician at age 16, she hid her homosexuality, and she believes that the resulting stress caused psychological and physical problems. When she was diagnosed with a disease at age 35 and had to take chemotherapy, she said, “I looked at my life, and thought, ‘I have to come to terms with who I am.’” She determined to “come out” and stop “living as a shadow of a person.” While the stress of living a lie and abiding in unconfessed sin will doubtless cause problems in an individual’s life, the stress cannot be blamed on “the church.” The cause of the stress is not the law of God but the sin. It is like being in the habit of running red lights because you are “a red-light runner by nature” and blaming the resulting anxiety and potential crash on the naughty light. The confusion of “Christian homosexuality” is prophesied in Scripture. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
THE HIGH PRIEST’S BELLS (Friday Church News Notes, February 16, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In 2011, a small golden bell with a tiny loop at its top was found by archaeologists excavating the ancient drainage channel that ran beneath the Pilgrim’s Way from the Pool of Siloam to the western side of the Temple Mount. The bell is very likely one that was made for the high priest’s robe. There is no mention in the Bible or in extra-biblical Jewish historical records of a golden bell like this used in any other fashion. Attached to the hem of the high priest’s beautiful blue robe were pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet, and golden bells (Ex. 28:33-35). The gold bells signify, first, Christ’s deity. He is God and He is man and as such He can be the Mediator between God and man. This work was signified on the day of atonement when the high priest carried the blood of the sacrifice into the holy of holies and applied it to the ark and the mercy seat (Leviticus 16). Second, the bells signify the Father’s delight in the Son. The bells related particularly to the high priest’s work in the Holy Place which was to the Father. Of Christ, the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 17:5). Third, the bells signify Christ’s present ministry in heaven for His redeemed people. Jewish tradition says there were 71 bells, so the sound would be heard clearly as the high priest moved about his business in the Tabernacle. As the bells enabled the people to hear the High Priest ministering in the holy of holies even though they couldn’t see him, so Christ’s present ministry in heaven can be“heard” by the witness of the Word of God and the testimony of the Holy Spirit (Joh. 16:12-15; Heb. 7:24-25; 1 Jo. 2:20). Fourth, the gold bells announce Christ’s imminent return. As the people outside the Tabernacle heard the tinkling of the bells, they knew the high priest would soon return to pronounce God’s blessing on them. “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand” (Php. 4:5). (excerpted from Mastering the English Bible, “Old Testament History from Genesis to the Silent Years,” https://www.wayoflife.org/mastering/index.php)
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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