THE 2024 U.S. ELECTION (Friday Church News Notes, November 8, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - For our part, we see the election as a good day for America and an answer to many prayers. We know America’s wickedness and that of the new president, as well, but we also know the One who “removeth kings, and setteth up kings,” and we know His great mercy. The reason we are told to pray for those who are in authority is so that we can lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty and proclaim the gospel to sinners for whom Christ died (1 Timothy 2:1-6). Along that line, a pastor friend wrote, “I told our church tonight we better use every minute of at least these next four years to advance the gospel and the cause of Christ while we still can.”

GETTYS PURCHASE $5.5 MILLION HOME IN NASHVILLE (Friday Church News Notes, November 8, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The profit for contemporary worship music can be massive. Keith and Kristyn Getty have purchased a $5.5 million mansion in Nashville. This information was provided to us by a Re-Max agent based on information available online. The Gettys partner with Stuart Townend in Getty-Townend Music (GTM). The Getty-Townend hymn “In Christ Alone” has become one of the most famous hymns ever written, with an estimated 40 to 50 million people singing it in church services each year. The Gettys host massive, rocking music programs at Nashville’s Opry House. Purposefully bridging sacred and contemporary music, they are drawing large numbers of “fundamentalists” into the contemporary orbit. Many of the Getty-Townend songs are included in Majesty Music’s Rejoice Hymns. Twenty-nine of their songs are featured in Hymns Modern and Ancient, published by Heart Publications, a ministry of Steve Pettit Evangelistic Association and compiled by Fred Coleman who heads up Bob Jones University’s Department of Church Music. Both Crown Baptist College and West Coast Baptist College, the two largest independent Baptist Bible colleges, have performed Getty-Townend material in their services. Since the Gettys have no clear boundaries in music or association, they are a bridge to the “broader church” with all of its great dangers. The Gettys don’t believe in separation. They are positive-only, non-judgmental. They are representative of evangelicalism today, at the heart of which is “a renunciation of separatism,” as Harold Ockenga stated it in the 1940s. The Gettys are people that say they love sound doctrine, but they don’t separate from heresy, yoking with Roman Catholics and others who hold “damnable heresies” (2 Peter 2:1). They don’t draw clear lines as the Bible requires. They don’t speak out against error and issue warnings as the Bible demands. “Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:128). “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11). “Now I beseech you, brethren, MARK THEM which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). Instead, they keep everything on an upbeat, positive note. Obviously this is a financially profitable path. (See “The Gettys: The Pied Pipers of Contemporary Worship Musicians,” www.wayoflife.org.)

BILL GATES PROPOSES NEW RELIGION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Friday Church News Notes, November 8, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed that AI (artificial intelligence) will solve the world’s problems and possibly become a new religion. He said, “The potential positive path [of AI] is so good that it will force us to rethink how should we use our time. You can almost call it a new religion or a new philosophy of how do we stay connected with each other, and not be addicted to these things that will make video games look like nothing in terms of the attractiveness of spending time on them. ... It’s fascinating that issues of disease, and enough food, and of climate--if things go well--those will largely become solved problems” (Gates, “Possibility, AI, and Humanity,” Reid Hoffman’s Possible podcast, Oct. 31, 2024). Bill, whose net worth is said to be $104 billion, is one of the prominent examples of Jesus’ warning about a man who gains the whole world and loses his own soul. A voracious reader, he has neglected the one Book that really matters, which is the Bible. It is filled with prophecy, and the key to understanding Bible prophecy is the normal-literal method of interpretation. The same Book that described Christ’s first coming in great detail--including His birthplace and lowly condition, miracles, preaching, ministry in Galilee, rejection by Israel, corrupt trial, beating, crucifixion, mocking, sacrificial suffering and shedding of blood, death, resurrection, and ascension--describes Christ’s second coming in just as much detail. That the prophecies of His first coming were fulfilled literally and perfectly is irrefutable evidence that the prophecies of His second coming will be fulfilled in like manner. His coming will be preceded by a time of global trouble greater than that of any previous time. In the very opening scenes of that time “there shall be famines, and pestilences” (Matthew 24:7-8), debunking Gates’ fantasy that disease and lack of food will no longer be realities. As for climate, the earth will be the scene of massive destruction: “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter” (Revelation 8:7-11). That is only a small part of what Bible prophecy describes for the future. It is far wiser to trust the eternal words of Jesus Christ than any mere man. We pray that Mr. Gates will bow his knees to the God who gives him “life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25) and will put his confidence in Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Saviour (John 14:6) and in the great atonement He has made for mankind. “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

1,000-YEAR-OLD SEED POSSIBLY THE BALM OF GILEAD (Friday Church News Notes, November 8, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” (Jeremiah 8:22). A 1,000-year-old seed found in the region of ancient Gilead has produced a plant that might be the healing “balm of Gilead.” The following is excerpted from “Biblical Tree Resurrected,” Patterns of Evidence, Oct. 11, 2024: “In the 1980s a mysterious 1,000-year-old seed was discovered during archaeological excavations of a cave in the Judean Desert. Now scientists have revived the seed, and the tree that has grown from it could belong to a lost lineage mentioned in the Bible, according to the researchers. Dr. Sarah Sallon, a researcher at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, retrieved the seed from storage and successfully germinated it in 2010, nicknaming the plant ‘Sheba.’ It has taken almost 14 years for the ancient seed to grow into a tree with fully fledged characteristics that can be scientifically studied. DNA sequencing and chemical analyses have revealed that the tree is part of the Commiphora genus, within the frankincense and myrrh family. ... The seed, from which Sheba grew, dates to between AD 993 and 1202. ... Before Sheba, Dr. Sallon had previous success resurrecting ancient plants, such as a date tree using 1,900-year-old seeds, which produced Judean dates in the region for the first time in centuries. ... The resin from the tree’s bark could be the source of ‘tsori’ extract associated with healing in Genesis, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. [‘Tsori’ is the Hebrew word translated ‘balm’ in Ge. 37:15; 43:11; Jer. 8:22; 46:11; 51:8; and Eze. 27:17.] The substance is linked with the historical region of Gilead, which sits to the east of the Jordan River between the Yarmuk River and the northern end of the Dead Sea, close to where the seed was found. ... The Sheba tree has not flowered yet, so it remains unclear what specific species it belongs to. Hopefully, it will flower soon and scientists will be able to carry out even more detailed analyses of the tree’s reproductive material narrowing down its particular species.”

THE FACT OF HUMAN LIFE (Friday Church News Notes, November 8, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is from CreationMoments.com, October 28, 2024: “The infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand was made in 1973. Today, Creation Moments will look at what science knows about the miracle God performs as He forms a new human being within a mother’s womb. Even though the fertilized egg is only one cell, it is a unique cell. The fertilized human egg is unlike any other fertilized egg because it is genetically human. Its 46 chromosomes and 30,000 genes have all that is needed to make an adult human being. Within 18 days, long before most mothers are even aware that they may be carrying a child, the heart starts the first of the 3 billion beats it will make in a lifetime. Only 22 days later, brain waves can be recorded, and the unborn child is already moving. By eight weeks these movements will include swimming motions and grasping with fingers that already have unique fingerprints. At four months the unborn baby is growing at a rate which, if continued, would leave him weighing 14 tons at birth. Studies show that by the 28th to 32nd week, the unborn child is actually able to remember things. Science knows that even though the child is unborn, it is uniquely human from the day of conception. The womb is the Creator’s workshop in which He forms another human being He loves. We pray that the unborn may soon be universally seen as just one more stage of human existence, no less human than infants, adults or the elderly.”

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; Mt. 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” (Ro. 13:11-14).