Friday Church News Notes
November 15, 2024 - Volume 25, Issue 46
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.
THIRD TEMPLE COIN FEATURING IMAGE OF TRUMP (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In early 2018 the Temple in Zion (Hamikdah Betzion) organization issued a half shekel temple tax coin featuring images of Persian King Cyrus and U.S. President Donald Trump on one side and the Third Temple on the other. This was in recognition of Trump’s support for Israel and his public recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Currently there is no Jewish temple, of course, but the Temple in Zion is one of the groups preparing to build the third temple. Others are the Temple Institute, the Temple Mount Faithful, and Women for the Temple (who are practicing to bake shewbread and to dye and weave priests’ vestments, among other things). In 538 BC, Cyrus issued a proclamation ordering the rebuilding of the Second Temple. The Temple in Zion and associated groups hope that President Trump will institute the building of the Third Temple. Hillel Weiss, chairman of the group, says, “The Trump Declaration must continue with a declaration of the role of the Jews in establishing the Temple in its place. Only then will President Trump’s international ambitions come true in the Middle East” (“Israeli Group Issues Temple Tax Coin,” Israel Today, Feb. 26, 2018). Scripture indicates that the building of the Third Temple will be facilitated by the Antichrist in his Mr. Peace incarnation. Revelation 11 describes the measuring of the Third Temple in the time when the Two Witnesses prophesy in Jerusalem during the first half of the Antichrist’s reign. The next major event on God’s prophetic calendar is the Rapture of church age saints. This will mark the beginning of the Day of the Lord and the rapid rise of the Antichrist as a man of peace and a great problem solver. The hour is very late. We see the day approaching! It is possible that the redeemed saints won’t be here when Trump’s term ends, but until then we have our marching orders in Matthew 28:18-20.
WOMEN FIRED FOR REFUSING COVID VACCINE WIN LAWSUITS (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Catholic woman fired,” Fox News, Nov. 11, 2024: “A Catholic woman who was fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine was awarded close to $13 million in damages after suing her former employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Lisa Domski, who worked at the insurance company for 38 years as an IT specialist, was awarded the massive payout after a federal jury in Detroit ruled in favor of her religious discrimination case. She argued that the company denied her request for an exemption from its 2021 COVID vaccine policy despite her insistence that it conflicted with her Catholic faith. Domski's lawyer Jon Marko told Fox News Digital that she had worked remotely during the pandemic and was on a hybrid arrangement prior to the COVID outbreak. ‘Her remote work arrangement should have excluded her from the vaccine policy as she posed no risk to others,’ he said. ... The payout comes months after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee paid a woman nearly $700,000 in a settlement after she was similarly fired for refusing to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement.”
FREEDOM OF SPEECH DISAPPEARING IN BRITAIN (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Dead girls, Islamic terror and government crackdown,” World Israel News, Nov. 6, 2024: “On August 8, Bernadette Spofforth, a 55-year-old British Twitter user, was dragged out of her home, arrested and held for 36 hours for posting that the murderer of three girls in Southport was a Muslim terrorist. The charge she was held under was ‘posting inaccurate information.’ Bernadette was one of thousands of people arrested in a massive crackdown by the Starmer government aimed at suppressing political dissent over its open borders migrant policies. After Axel Rudakubana, a Muslim terrorist, entered a children’s Taylor Swift dance workshop and stabbed 11 little girls, killing 3 of them, British authorities declared an emergency. The emergency was not the latest act of horrifying Muslim terrorism targeting local children. It was that some of its citizens had noticed the latest Muslim terror attack and were outraged. ... The Southport stabbing at a Taylor Swift dance workshop fit the pattern. So did the immediate torrent of media disinformation accompanied by police threats and government crackdowns. ... Even as PM Starmer demanded censorship of ‘misinformation’ and Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood, a Pakistani Muslim with her own extremist views, unleashed a ruthless crackdown on the British people, the regime was undoubtedly aware of the truth about the terrorist. After denying that Axel Rudakubana was a Muslim terrorist and arresting people for saying that he was, the police have finally admitted that he possessed an Al Qaeda manual titled ‘Military Studies in the Jihad’ and, like a number of previous Al Qaeda terrorists, had been making Ricin in an attempt to produce a biological weapon. ... The Southport crackdown was one of the ugliest periods in British history in this century. And it was all based on a government lie.”
ELECTION PORTRAYS A FRIGHTFULLY WICKED NATION (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The 2024 U.S. election, though encouraging from a conservative political and liberty angle, portrays a frightfully wicked nation. About 72 million Americans cast their approval of the Biden-Harris agenda: the brazen, interminable lying, the gross misrepresentation of and murderous spite toward their opponents, the murder of unborn babies, the wide-open border, the defunding of police, the perversion of the justice system, the woke-dei agenda, the anarchist Black Lives Matter, insane transsexualism, governmental control of the media, the anti-God, Marxist doctrinaire Department of Education, the wretched corruption of the university system, and a great many other evils. The only thing that can roll back such entrenched wickedness to any degree is effectual prayer (holy, focused, persistent, fervent), the laser-focused building of holy pilgrim homes and churches, and the zealous preaching of the gospel. This is the business that Christ has assigned to His redeemed people, and they need to focus on it while there is time. The Lord’s churches will not be rewarded for how politically-minded they were or how well their thinking aligned with that of unregenerate “conservatives.” “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).
MASSACHUSETTS AND FLORIDA DEFEAT BALLOTS TO DECRIMINALIZE PSYCHOTIC DRUGS. (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The citizens of Massachusetts voted down a ballot that would have legalized psychotic drugs, including psilocybin, and Florida voted down a ballot that would have legalized recreational marijuana (cannabis). The latter is currently legal in 24 states, but so far, only Oregon and Colorado have decriminalized psilocybin (In 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom, of all people, vetoed a bill that would have decriminalized psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT.) The deceptive concept of “medical marijuana” is the tool that advocates have used to break down citizens’ natural resistance to legalization of this dangerous drug, and they are attempting the same thing with psilocybin. For example, it was recently reported that a trial found that “a single 25-milligram dose of synthetic psilocybin combined with psychotherapy led to a marked reduction in depression symptoms” (“Mushrooms hit the ballots,” The Washington Times, Nov. 1, 2024). But Dr. Joshua Siegel, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, rightly called mushrooms “dangerous and destabilizing to those people, who are generally in great need of stability. People can partly or completely lose touch with reality and behave in irrational and potentially dangerous ways.” Clinical trials use tiny amounts of the substance, but when it is legalized there is no control of the quantity that is ingested. When Navy vet Gregg Mollenhauer turned to psilocybin for depression, he found that “you go from feeling completely happy to completely miserable, and that’s a dangerous place to be.” Indeed. He said, “mushrooms kind of goes to your body, like physically, mentally and, like, spiritually, and just kind of ruffles it all up--and then you’re sick.” The mental and spiritual “ruffling up” is exactly what I experienced in the early 1970s before I was converted. In 2023 an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot accused of trying to bring down a plane mid-flight said he had consumed “magic mushrooms” before boarding (The Washington Times, Nov. 1, 2024).
TESTIMONY ABOUT THE SATANIC ATTACK ON SACRED MUSIC SERIES (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I wanted to thank you for your video series The Satanic Attack on Sacred Music. I just finished listening to it yesterday, and I wish there was a way to give that to every single Christian in the world (or rather, make them listen to it)--especially fundamental Baptists like myself. Before, I was pretty sure I understood the danger of wrong music and the reasons why. Now I KNOW and can have solid reasons and understanding behind what I believe. There was music that I really enjoyed listening to on YouTube--literally just straight a-cappella hymns that I thought were perfectly acceptable, not pushing the line at all. But after listening to the series I realized that music can be ever so slightly heading south with scooping and sliding, and I didn’t even realize that is part of what I liked about it. It has given me a burden for having the right music. I am very blessed to be part of our church that teaches Godly music and has high music standards. But even in our church I can see how easy it would be for that very slow, very gradual decline starting with a special that just has the rhythm a little off, or ending on the wrong [chord.] (I need to listen to the series again; not having a musical background at all, some of it was Greek to me, but very fascinating.) I have started praying daily for the standards of our church that they will be upheld, and that we will not degrade over time. I just wanted to thank you again for your many years of sacrifice and service. You helped me make some big changes in my life many years ago that saved me from a lot of garbage, and I will always be grateful.”
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).
WOMEN FIRED FOR REFUSING COVID VACCINE WIN LAWSUITS (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Catholic woman fired,” Fox News, Nov. 11, 2024: “A Catholic woman who was fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine was awarded close to $13 million in damages after suing her former employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Lisa Domski, who worked at the insurance company for 38 years as an IT specialist, was awarded the massive payout after a federal jury in Detroit ruled in favor of her religious discrimination case. She argued that the company denied her request for an exemption from its 2021 COVID vaccine policy despite her insistence that it conflicted with her Catholic faith. Domski's lawyer Jon Marko told Fox News Digital that she had worked remotely during the pandemic and was on a hybrid arrangement prior to the COVID outbreak. ‘Her remote work arrangement should have excluded her from the vaccine policy as she posed no risk to others,’ he said. ... The payout comes months after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee paid a woman nearly $700,000 in a settlement after she was similarly fired for refusing to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement.”
FREEDOM OF SPEECH DISAPPEARING IN BRITAIN (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Dead girls, Islamic terror and government crackdown,” World Israel News, Nov. 6, 2024: “On August 8, Bernadette Spofforth, a 55-year-old British Twitter user, was dragged out of her home, arrested and held for 36 hours for posting that the murderer of three girls in Southport was a Muslim terrorist. The charge she was held under was ‘posting inaccurate information.’ Bernadette was one of thousands of people arrested in a massive crackdown by the Starmer government aimed at suppressing political dissent over its open borders migrant policies. After Axel Rudakubana, a Muslim terrorist, entered a children’s Taylor Swift dance workshop and stabbed 11 little girls, killing 3 of them, British authorities declared an emergency. The emergency was not the latest act of horrifying Muslim terrorism targeting local children. It was that some of its citizens had noticed the latest Muslim terror attack and were outraged. ... The Southport stabbing at a Taylor Swift dance workshop fit the pattern. So did the immediate torrent of media disinformation accompanied by police threats and government crackdowns. ... Even as PM Starmer demanded censorship of ‘misinformation’ and Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood, a Pakistani Muslim with her own extremist views, unleashed a ruthless crackdown on the British people, the regime was undoubtedly aware of the truth about the terrorist. After denying that Axel Rudakubana was a Muslim terrorist and arresting people for saying that he was, the police have finally admitted that he possessed an Al Qaeda manual titled ‘Military Studies in the Jihad’ and, like a number of previous Al Qaeda terrorists, had been making Ricin in an attempt to produce a biological weapon. ... The Southport crackdown was one of the ugliest periods in British history in this century. And it was all based on a government lie.”
ELECTION PORTRAYS A FRIGHTFULLY WICKED NATION (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The 2024 U.S. election, though encouraging from a conservative political and liberty angle, portrays a frightfully wicked nation. About 72 million Americans cast their approval of the Biden-Harris agenda: the brazen, interminable lying, the gross misrepresentation of and murderous spite toward their opponents, the murder of unborn babies, the wide-open border, the defunding of police, the perversion of the justice system, the woke-dei agenda, the anarchist Black Lives Matter, insane transsexualism, governmental control of the media, the anti-God, Marxist doctrinaire Department of Education, the wretched corruption of the university system, and a great many other evils. The only thing that can roll back such entrenched wickedness to any degree is effectual prayer (holy, focused, persistent, fervent), the laser-focused building of holy pilgrim homes and churches, and the zealous preaching of the gospel. This is the business that Christ has assigned to His redeemed people, and they need to focus on it while there is time. The Lord’s churches will not be rewarded for how politically-minded they were or how well their thinking aligned with that of unregenerate “conservatives.” “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).
MASSACHUSETTS AND FLORIDA DEFEAT BALLOTS TO DECRIMINALIZE PSYCHOTIC DRUGS. (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The citizens of Massachusetts voted down a ballot that would have legalized psychotic drugs, including psilocybin, and Florida voted down a ballot that would have legalized recreational marijuana (cannabis). The latter is currently legal in 24 states, but so far, only Oregon and Colorado have decriminalized psilocybin (In 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom, of all people, vetoed a bill that would have decriminalized psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT.) The deceptive concept of “medical marijuana” is the tool that advocates have used to break down citizens’ natural resistance to legalization of this dangerous drug, and they are attempting the same thing with psilocybin. For example, it was recently reported that a trial found that “a single 25-milligram dose of synthetic psilocybin combined with psychotherapy led to a marked reduction in depression symptoms” (“Mushrooms hit the ballots,” The Washington Times, Nov. 1, 2024). But Dr. Joshua Siegel, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, rightly called mushrooms “dangerous and destabilizing to those people, who are generally in great need of stability. People can partly or completely lose touch with reality and behave in irrational and potentially dangerous ways.” Clinical trials use tiny amounts of the substance, but when it is legalized there is no control of the quantity that is ingested. When Navy vet Gregg Mollenhauer turned to psilocybin for depression, he found that “you go from feeling completely happy to completely miserable, and that’s a dangerous place to be.” Indeed. He said, “mushrooms kind of goes to your body, like physically, mentally and, like, spiritually, and just kind of ruffles it all up--and then you’re sick.” The mental and spiritual “ruffling up” is exactly what I experienced in the early 1970s before I was converted. In 2023 an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot accused of trying to bring down a plane mid-flight said he had consumed “magic mushrooms” before boarding (The Washington Times, Nov. 1, 2024).
TESTIMONY ABOUT THE SATANIC ATTACK ON SACRED MUSIC SERIES (Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I wanted to thank you for your video series The Satanic Attack on Sacred Music. I just finished listening to it yesterday, and I wish there was a way to give that to every single Christian in the world (or rather, make them listen to it)--especially fundamental Baptists like myself. Before, I was pretty sure I understood the danger of wrong music and the reasons why. Now I KNOW and can have solid reasons and understanding behind what I believe. There was music that I really enjoyed listening to on YouTube--literally just straight a-cappella hymns that I thought were perfectly acceptable, not pushing the line at all. But after listening to the series I realized that music can be ever so slightly heading south with scooping and sliding, and I didn’t even realize that is part of what I liked about it. It has given me a burden for having the right music. I am very blessed to be part of our church that teaches Godly music and has high music standards. But even in our church I can see how easy it would be for that very slow, very gradual decline starting with a special that just has the rhythm a little off, or ending on the wrong [chord.] (I need to listen to the series again; not having a musical background at all, some of it was Greek to me, but very fascinating.) I have started praying daily for the standards of our church that they will be upheld, and that we will not degrade over time. I just wanted to thank you again for your many years of sacrifice and service. You helped me make some big changes in my life many years ago that saved me from a lot of garbage, and I will always be grateful.”
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).
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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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