Friday Church News Notes
April 19, 2024 - Volume 25, Issue 16
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.
THE HURKLE-DURKLE GENERATION (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Hurkle-Durkle Is the New Way to Self-Care Ourselves to Death,” The Free Press, Mar. 20, 2024: “Every few years, the algorithm latches on to a new justification for doing absolutely nothing. Sometime this winter, I noticed videos about bed rot, which is what it sounds like: plonking down in bed indefinitely. ... Then, more recently, the term hurkle-durkle began flashing across my screen. ... on TikTok and Instagram it means to hit snooze, curl up under your duvet, and relax. To hurkle-durkle is to be at rest but not exactly sleeping. Kind of like you’re in a coma. ... These have dovetailed with various de-productivity trends that don’t have a Scandinavian patina but mushroom up nonetheless, like quiet quitting, which is about keeping a job but purposely not excelling at it, and the soft life, which instructs us to choose comfort and ease over the hustle and grind of getting up and squeezing the most productivity possible out of the day. ... File all of these online trends under the large umbrella of self-care, which has become shorthand for just doing whatever you want to. ... Self-care is like self-help, but with no goals or striving. The $11 billion industry is mostly geared toward women, and while hurkle-durkle might not be associated with a particular product, it smuggles in the same insidious message: anything you do for yourself is inherently good and you should never feel guilty about it. ... I think of Japan, and the legions of social hermits called hikikomori. There are an estimated 1.5 million hikikomori, or ‘shut-ins,’ according to the Japanese government. While they’re mostly men, the hikikomori take hurkle-durkling to the extreme: to qualify as one, you must stay in your home for six months or longer, sometimes in the same room.” 2 Timothy 3:1-2, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves...”
FRENCH WOMAN ARRESTED FOR DENOUNCING IMMIGRATION AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The European Conservative, Apr. 9, 2024: “A young woman was arrested in the eastern French city of Besançon and taken into custody for holding up a sign calling for the deportation of foreign rapists. She faces up to a year in prison. Her lawyer has stated that she intends to lodge a complaint for ‘infringement of personal freedom.’ During Besançon’s carnival on Saturday, April 6th, two young women, one of them a 19-year-old, held up signs in the street reading: ‘Violeurs étrangers dehors’ and ‘Libérez-nous de l’immigration’ (‘Foreign Rapists Away’ and ‘Free us from immigration’). On one of the facades of the Grande Rue, one of Besançon’s main thoroughfares, they also unfurled a banner pointing out that ‘46 women could have been spared if the OQTFs (Obligation de Quitter le Territoire which is French for Obligation to Leave French Territory) had been applied in 2023’. They both belong to the feminist identity group Némésis, which regularly denounces the increase in violence against women due to the massive influx of immigrants who do not respect the rules of Western society with regard to women. ... The mayor of Besançon, a member of the Ecologist party, denounced the association made ‘between migrants and rapists,’ and announced that she would be filing a complaint on behalf of the city for ‘incitement to hatred.’ Following this complaint, one of the two activists, Yona, was taken into custody. She faces up to a year’s imprisonment. A police raid was carried out at her parents’ home in an attempt to recover the offending banner, while Yona’s computer was placed under seal by a magistrate.’”
THE MAN WHO DESIGNED THE TRANSGENDER FLAG (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The shocking untold history,” The Bridgehead, Mar. 22, 2024: “A few years ago, the ‘trans flag’ started to pop up everywhere. First created in 1999, the banner of alternating pink, blue, and white stripes flew from city halls; at protests; on government buildings; on public schools, Catholic schools, and even some churches. The creator of the flag described it this way: ‘The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional masculine color. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional feminine color. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender.’ In the mainstream press, the creator of the now-ubiquitous transgender flag is referred to as ‘American trans woman Monica Helms.’ But as with so many of the architects of the Sexual Revolution, there is quite a bit more to the story. Helms was born Robert Hogge and identifies as female or ‘bigender,’ claiming that his brain ‘floats between multiple roles…Sometimes I am a man and a woman at the same time, or I can change in a nanosecond, then change back just as fast.’ Who is Robert Hogge? By his own admission, he was a troubled teen who spent his time stealing his mother’s underwear, sexually experimenting, and cross-dressing. In the 1970s he joined the U.S. Navy and promptly began to steal the underwear of women who lived in his apartment building. ... [He] decided that it was time ‘to rebuild myself in my own image…as a woman.’ He got married without telling his partner, Donna, about his proclivities. Unsurprisingly, she was upset when she found out about his cross-dressing. He continued to do so anyhow, investing large amounts of money into his transgender project and even attending classes on how to act feminine with other men. ... he and Donna divorced in 1997. Helms left his wife and children...”
MAKING SUICIDE CONTAGIOUS (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “I’m 28, and I’m Scheduled to Die in May,” The Free Press, Apr. 1, 2024: “Some right-to-die activists want everyone to have access to euthanasia--even young people with mental illness. Are they also making suicide contagious? Zoraya ter Beek, 28, expects to be euthanized in early May. ... Ter Beek, who lives in a little Dutch town near the German border, once had ambitions to become a psychiatrist, but she was never able to muster the will to finish school or start a career. She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living--despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats. She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that ‘there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.’ At that point, she said, she decided to die. ... I don’t see it [death] as my soul leaving, but more as myself being freed from life. Her liberation, as it were, will take place at her home. ‘No music,’ she said. ‘I will be going on the couch in the living room.’ ... ‘I’m a little afraid of dying, because it’s the ultimate unknown,’ she said. ‘We don’t really know what’s next—or is there nothing? That’s the scary part.’ ... Typically, when we think of people who are considering assisted suicide, we think of people facing terminal illness. But this new group is suffering from other syndromes—depression or anxiety exacerbated, they say, by economic uncertainty, the climate, social media, and a seemingly limitless array of fears and disappointments. ... In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make euthanasia legal. Since then, the number of people who increasingly choose to die is startling.” John 3:16-18, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
IDAHO GOVERNOR SIGNS BILL DEFINING WOMAN (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “What Is a Woman?” The Washington Times, Apr. 10, 2024: “Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed without comment legislation that codifies in state law biological definitions for ‘woman,’ ‘man,’ and other sex-based terms, making his state the fifth to exclude men who identify as women from being legally recognized as female. ... House Bill 421, signed into law on Tuesday, takes effect July 1. The measure declares that there are only two sexes, male and female; that everyone is either male or female, and gives biological definitions for sex-related terms including ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘girl’ and ‘boy.’ ‘In no case is an individual’s sex determined by stipulation or self-identification,’ reads the legislation, which passed the House and the Senate with no Democratic votes. Four states--Kansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Nebraska--adopted similar measures last year. Five states--Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi--are considering such legislation.”
THE SUN NOT A NUCLEAR REACTOR? (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, April 5, 2024: “If we could harness all of the sun’s energy that reaches the Earth, we would have more than enough energy to fill all our energy needs--even if the entire world became as industrialized as the west. Yet, less than 0.10% of all of the sun’s energy output reaches the Earth! What is going on within the sun to create so much energy? Most people have heard that the sun produces its energy through nuclear fusion. And even though most scientists think this is true, they admit that the real answer isn’t that simple--and the full answer is unknown. If the sun produces its energy by nuclear fusion, one of the results of that process is a tiny particle called a neutrino. But, in fact, the neutrinos that should be coming from the sun are not. Worse, new calculations of the temperature needed for the sun to ignite into the nuclear fusion process show that the evolutionary theory for how the sun formed does not generate enough heat for fusion. An alternate theory says that the sun’s heat is a result of its powerful gravity pulling the sun in on itself--called gravitational collapse. This would explain why the neutrinos are missing. But evolutionists have rejected gravitational collapse because if this is where the sun’s heat comes from, the sun could not be billions of years old. Despite our scientific sophistication, many of God’s works still defy our understanding! REF.: DeYoung, Don B., and David E. Rush. 1989. ‘Is the sun an age indicator?’ Creation Research Society, Quarterly, v. 26, September. p. 49.”
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).
FRENCH WOMAN ARRESTED FOR DENOUNCING IMMIGRATION AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The European Conservative, Apr. 9, 2024: “A young woman was arrested in the eastern French city of Besançon and taken into custody for holding up a sign calling for the deportation of foreign rapists. She faces up to a year in prison. Her lawyer has stated that she intends to lodge a complaint for ‘infringement of personal freedom.’ During Besançon’s carnival on Saturday, April 6th, two young women, one of them a 19-year-old, held up signs in the street reading: ‘Violeurs étrangers dehors’ and ‘Libérez-nous de l’immigration’ (‘Foreign Rapists Away’ and ‘Free us from immigration’). On one of the facades of the Grande Rue, one of Besançon’s main thoroughfares, they also unfurled a banner pointing out that ‘46 women could have been spared if the OQTFs (Obligation de Quitter le Territoire which is French for Obligation to Leave French Territory) had been applied in 2023’. They both belong to the feminist identity group Némésis, which regularly denounces the increase in violence against women due to the massive influx of immigrants who do not respect the rules of Western society with regard to women. ... The mayor of Besançon, a member of the Ecologist party, denounced the association made ‘between migrants and rapists,’ and announced that she would be filing a complaint on behalf of the city for ‘incitement to hatred.’ Following this complaint, one of the two activists, Yona, was taken into custody. She faces up to a year’s imprisonment. A police raid was carried out at her parents’ home in an attempt to recover the offending banner, while Yona’s computer was placed under seal by a magistrate.’”
THE MAN WHO DESIGNED THE TRANSGENDER FLAG (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The shocking untold history,” The Bridgehead, Mar. 22, 2024: “A few years ago, the ‘trans flag’ started to pop up everywhere. First created in 1999, the banner of alternating pink, blue, and white stripes flew from city halls; at protests; on government buildings; on public schools, Catholic schools, and even some churches. The creator of the flag described it this way: ‘The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional masculine color. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional feminine color. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender.’ In the mainstream press, the creator of the now-ubiquitous transgender flag is referred to as ‘American trans woman Monica Helms.’ But as with so many of the architects of the Sexual Revolution, there is quite a bit more to the story. Helms was born Robert Hogge and identifies as female or ‘bigender,’ claiming that his brain ‘floats between multiple roles…Sometimes I am a man and a woman at the same time, or I can change in a nanosecond, then change back just as fast.’ Who is Robert Hogge? By his own admission, he was a troubled teen who spent his time stealing his mother’s underwear, sexually experimenting, and cross-dressing. In the 1970s he joined the U.S. Navy and promptly began to steal the underwear of women who lived in his apartment building. ... [He] decided that it was time ‘to rebuild myself in my own image…as a woman.’ He got married without telling his partner, Donna, about his proclivities. Unsurprisingly, she was upset when she found out about his cross-dressing. He continued to do so anyhow, investing large amounts of money into his transgender project and even attending classes on how to act feminine with other men. ... he and Donna divorced in 1997. Helms left his wife and children...”
MAKING SUICIDE CONTAGIOUS (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “I’m 28, and I’m Scheduled to Die in May,” The Free Press, Apr. 1, 2024: “Some right-to-die activists want everyone to have access to euthanasia--even young people with mental illness. Are they also making suicide contagious? Zoraya ter Beek, 28, expects to be euthanized in early May. ... Ter Beek, who lives in a little Dutch town near the German border, once had ambitions to become a psychiatrist, but she was never able to muster the will to finish school or start a career. She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living--despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats. She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that ‘there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.’ At that point, she said, she decided to die. ... I don’t see it [death] as my soul leaving, but more as myself being freed from life. Her liberation, as it were, will take place at her home. ‘No music,’ she said. ‘I will be going on the couch in the living room.’ ... ‘I’m a little afraid of dying, because it’s the ultimate unknown,’ she said. ‘We don’t really know what’s next—or is there nothing? That’s the scary part.’ ... Typically, when we think of people who are considering assisted suicide, we think of people facing terminal illness. But this new group is suffering from other syndromes—depression or anxiety exacerbated, they say, by economic uncertainty, the climate, social media, and a seemingly limitless array of fears and disappointments. ... In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make euthanasia legal. Since then, the number of people who increasingly choose to die is startling.” John 3:16-18, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
IDAHO GOVERNOR SIGNS BILL DEFINING WOMAN (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “What Is a Woman?” The Washington Times, Apr. 10, 2024: “Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed without comment legislation that codifies in state law biological definitions for ‘woman,’ ‘man,’ and other sex-based terms, making his state the fifth to exclude men who identify as women from being legally recognized as female. ... House Bill 421, signed into law on Tuesday, takes effect July 1. The measure declares that there are only two sexes, male and female; that everyone is either male or female, and gives biological definitions for sex-related terms including ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘girl’ and ‘boy.’ ‘In no case is an individual’s sex determined by stipulation or self-identification,’ reads the legislation, which passed the House and the Senate with no Democratic votes. Four states--Kansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Nebraska--adopted similar measures last year. Five states--Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi--are considering such legislation.”
THE SUN NOT A NUCLEAR REACTOR? (Friday Church News Notes, April 19, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, April 5, 2024: “If we could harness all of the sun’s energy that reaches the Earth, we would have more than enough energy to fill all our energy needs--even if the entire world became as industrialized as the west. Yet, less than 0.10% of all of the sun’s energy output reaches the Earth! What is going on within the sun to create so much energy? Most people have heard that the sun produces its energy through nuclear fusion. And even though most scientists think this is true, they admit that the real answer isn’t that simple--and the full answer is unknown. If the sun produces its energy by nuclear fusion, one of the results of that process is a tiny particle called a neutrino. But, in fact, the neutrinos that should be coming from the sun are not. Worse, new calculations of the temperature needed for the sun to ignite into the nuclear fusion process show that the evolutionary theory for how the sun formed does not generate enough heat for fusion. An alternate theory says that the sun’s heat is a result of its powerful gravity pulling the sun in on itself--called gravitational collapse. This would explain why the neutrinos are missing. But evolutionists have rejected gravitational collapse because if this is where the sun’s heat comes from, the sun could not be billions of years old. Despite our scientific sophistication, many of God’s works still defy our understanding! REF.: DeYoung, Don B., and David E. Rush. 1989. ‘Is the sun an age indicator?’ Creation Research Society, Quarterly, v. 26, September. p. 49.”
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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