Friday Church News Notes
November 29, 2024 - Volume 25, Issue 48
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.
UNION SEMINARY PERFORMS LAST SUPPER IN DRAG (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Union Seminary,” The Disntr, Nov. 18, 2024: “Union Theological Seminary held a ‘Drag Communion’ event in their chapel, featuring drag performers presiding over the Lord’s Table while attendees were invited to dress in drag or any other ‘fabulous’ way they saw fit. The event promised to explore the ‘queerness’ of the Last Supper and other so-called ‘deep questions,’ all while reducing the sacred act of Communion to a flamboyant costume party hosted by LGBTQ activists Marge Erin Johnson and Chad Manley. Participants were encouraged to strut into the chapel as though the Lord’s Supper were some cabaret sideshow in need of an audience.” CONCLUSION: Union Seminary was founded in 1826 by the Presbyterian Church. It was captured by theological liberalism by the last quarter of the 19th century. In 1891, Charles A. Briggs gave a lecture entitled “The Authority of Holy Scripture” in which he called belief in verbal inspiration, miracles, and predictive prophecy “barriers” that impeded men in understanding the Bible properly. While students laughed and applauded in appreciation, he mocked the miracles of the Old Testament. He claimed that there are many ways to “find God,” including through human reason and the Roman Catholic Church. When the Presbyterian Church deposed Briggs for heresy, Union Seminary disassociated itself from denominational oversight. The Last Supper in Drag is a product of theological liberalism. If the Bible is not the infallible Word of God, there is no absolute authority, Jesus Christ was either deceived or a deceiver, there is no salvation, and nothing matters. Thank God, though, Briggs was the one who was deceived, and Union Seminary has been a vile and ridiculous institution ever since. The Bible’s prophecies prove its divine inspiration. In fact, the Last Supper Drag crew are prophesied: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. ... [God turned] the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly; And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked. ... But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities...” (2 Peter 2:1-2, 6, 7, 10).
EQUIVALENT OF POPULATION OF SMALL CITY EUTHANIZED IN CANADA (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Canada by the numbers,” Gold Report, Sept. 16, 2024: “During the eight years from 2016, when MAiD (medical assistance in dying) was legalized in Canada, through 2023, over sixty-thousand people were killed by doctors. In essence, healthcare professionals have become agents of death, being required to suggest the option to patients (including those who are just disabled or have a chronic illness) and/or by actively killing them. The annual numbers are staggering. As PJ Media's Ben Bartee reported, Canadian euthanists killed 13,241 people in 2022 alone. ‘Last year 4.1% of all deaths in Canada were due to MAiD (medical assistance in dying), according to the country’s health ministry. This amounts to a total of 13,241 people who died under Canada’s MAiD programme in 2022, marking a 31% rise on the previous year.’ The numbers keep growing ... as reported by Daily Mail Social Affairs correspondent James Reinl. ‘Canada is on track to break euthanasia records once again with 15,280 doctor-assisted suicide deaths in 2023--a 15 percent jump on the previous year, a campaign group warns ... MAiD now accounts for 4.6 percent of all fatalities--making it the most common cause of death after cancer, heart disease and accidental injuries, official data show.’ ... What does the disappearance of 60,000 people look like? ... In 2024 Canada’s New Westminster has 58,549 people, Norfolk has 62,563, and Saint-Jérôme has 63,729. In 2024 Florida’s North Miami Beach has 59,008 people.”
TONY CAMPOLO DIES (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Tony Campolo, influential evangelical author/teacher, died on Nov. 19 at age 89. I read his books for research, heard him speak at Missionsfest ’92 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and interviewed him at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta in January 2008, which I attended with media credentials. He was a deeply confused man who misinterpreted Scripture and stumbled into many heresies, thus leading many astray. His foundational error was salvation. He was not born again biblically by his own testimony. He said that his mother, who was saved out of Catholicism, wanted to see her son have a “born-again experience,” but he admitted that “it never worked for me” (Letters to a Young Evangelical). Instead he learned from “reading the Catholic mystics, especially The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola” (co-founder of the Jesuits), that salvation is a process, not an event (Letters to a Young Evangelical, pp. 30-31). Campolo taught that “Christ lives in all human beings, regardless of whether they are Christians” and “Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is being saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving” (A Reasonable Faith). He claimed that the Scripture is not inerrantly inspired of God and is not “the ultimate authority for faith” (Partly Right, p. 99). He held an evolutionary view of the origin of man and the universe. He was an ecumenist who associated with the most liberal of denominations, Roman Catholicism, Seventh-day Adventism, etc. He was on the editorial board for the production of the film Mother Teresa, which exalted the Roman Catholic nun and contained no warning about her false gospel. Campolo preached a social gospel. “[Jesus] saved us in order that He might begin to transform His world into the kind of world that He willed for it to be when He created it” (It’s Friday but Sunday’s Coming, p. 106). He hated and mocked dispensationalism and rejected the biblical doctrine of the imminent return of Christ. He said homosexuals should be allowed to join churches and be ordained without renouncing homosexuality and supported homosexual marriage. A major source of his heretical thinking was Catholic contemplative prayer. He said, “I get up in the morning a half hour before I have to and spend time in absolute stillness. I don’t ask God for anything. I just simply surrender to His presence and yield to the Spirit flowing into my life” (Outreach Magazine, July/ August 2004, pp. 88, 89). He said “a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam” (Speaking My Mind, pp. 149l, 150). This is not biblical meditation. It is a recipe for spiritual delusion. Evangelicalism, with its renunciation of separation and its lack of boundaries, is leavened with every sort of sin and heresy. It is the incipient form of the one-world church, which will reach full blossom in the day of the Lord as described in Revelation 17.
WHAT CHRONICLES SAYS TO AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The books of Chronicles emphasize that Israel’s blessing depends on her obedience to God. This lesson is also for the nations, particularly those with a strong biblical influence such as England and America. The following is by J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book: “Running right through the story of these kings, with its occasional reforms and ever-worsening relapses, is the solemn, vital, urgent truth that a nation’s response to God is the really determining factor in its history and destiny. This was specially true of Israel, but it is universally true of the earth’s people today. ... This truth may not seem so immediately perceptible in our modern world with its international complicatedness; but when we look at processes over a period we find it still in operation. Moral principles and spiritual convictions are the first-important things as regards national progress or decline, not politics and economics--as seems to be the fashionable thought in Government today. The place we give to GOD is that which determines our prosperity or adversity, our history and our destiny. Israel of old--kings, leaders, people--deceived themselves into thinking that they could sin with impunity, imagining that because Jehovah could not be seen He could not see; but they did not deceive God; nor can we. ‘God is not mocked.’ He rules, He chooses, He forbears; but He will not spare the persistent exploiting of privilege. The abuse of high calling by low living always brings ruinous ending. Oh, that nations, leaders, peoples might realise that today!”
GIRAFFES IN ANTIGRAVITY SUITS (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is from CreationMoments.com, October 23, 2024: “On previous ‘Creation Moments’ we have talked about some of the wonderful designs that help make the giraffe possible. The giraffe has a strong heart to pump blood all the way up to its head and strong arteries to withstand the high blood pressure needed to carry the blood to its head. We have also talked about the giraffe’s so called ‘wonder net,’ which is a network of blood vessels that helps to stabilize the blood pressure in the giraffe’s head even when it raises and lowers its head. But modern science continues to uncover engineering wonders that enable the giraffe to keep blood flowing evenly to its brain and keep blood from pooling in its legs. Researchers have discovered that giraffes, unlike human beings, have a valve in the jugular vein. But these valves work in the wrong direction to help blood stay in the head. Instead, they close when a giraffe lowers its head, preventing used blood from backing up into the brain. And how does a giraffe, which stays on its feet all day, keep blood from pooling in its legs? Scientists have found that the skin on a giraffe’s legs is very tight fitting. When a giraffe walks, its muscle movement within that tight skin actually helps pump used blood out of the legs. If life owed its existence to chance and genetic mistakes, we wouldn’t have any giraffes today. But what a wonder of God’s design these stately creatures are! Notes: Pedley, T.J., ‘How giraffes prevent oedema,’ Nature, 29:3, p. 13.”
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).
EQUIVALENT OF POPULATION OF SMALL CITY EUTHANIZED IN CANADA (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Canada by the numbers,” Gold Report, Sept. 16, 2024: “During the eight years from 2016, when MAiD (medical assistance in dying) was legalized in Canada, through 2023, over sixty-thousand people were killed by doctors. In essence, healthcare professionals have become agents of death, being required to suggest the option to patients (including those who are just disabled or have a chronic illness) and/or by actively killing them. The annual numbers are staggering. As PJ Media's Ben Bartee reported, Canadian euthanists killed 13,241 people in 2022 alone. ‘Last year 4.1% of all deaths in Canada were due to MAiD (medical assistance in dying), according to the country’s health ministry. This amounts to a total of 13,241 people who died under Canada’s MAiD programme in 2022, marking a 31% rise on the previous year.’ The numbers keep growing ... as reported by Daily Mail Social Affairs correspondent James Reinl. ‘Canada is on track to break euthanasia records once again with 15,280 doctor-assisted suicide deaths in 2023--a 15 percent jump on the previous year, a campaign group warns ... MAiD now accounts for 4.6 percent of all fatalities--making it the most common cause of death after cancer, heart disease and accidental injuries, official data show.’ ... What does the disappearance of 60,000 people look like? ... In 2024 Canada’s New Westminster has 58,549 people, Norfolk has 62,563, and Saint-Jérôme has 63,729. In 2024 Florida’s North Miami Beach has 59,008 people.”
TONY CAMPOLO DIES (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Tony Campolo, influential evangelical author/teacher, died on Nov. 19 at age 89. I read his books for research, heard him speak at Missionsfest ’92 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and interviewed him at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta in January 2008, which I attended with media credentials. He was a deeply confused man who misinterpreted Scripture and stumbled into many heresies, thus leading many astray. His foundational error was salvation. He was not born again biblically by his own testimony. He said that his mother, who was saved out of Catholicism, wanted to see her son have a “born-again experience,” but he admitted that “it never worked for me” (Letters to a Young Evangelical). Instead he learned from “reading the Catholic mystics, especially The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola” (co-founder of the Jesuits), that salvation is a process, not an event (Letters to a Young Evangelical, pp. 30-31). Campolo taught that “Christ lives in all human beings, regardless of whether they are Christians” and “Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is being saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving” (A Reasonable Faith). He claimed that the Scripture is not inerrantly inspired of God and is not “the ultimate authority for faith” (Partly Right, p. 99). He held an evolutionary view of the origin of man and the universe. He was an ecumenist who associated with the most liberal of denominations, Roman Catholicism, Seventh-day Adventism, etc. He was on the editorial board for the production of the film Mother Teresa, which exalted the Roman Catholic nun and contained no warning about her false gospel. Campolo preached a social gospel. “[Jesus] saved us in order that He might begin to transform His world into the kind of world that He willed for it to be when He created it” (It’s Friday but Sunday’s Coming, p. 106). He hated and mocked dispensationalism and rejected the biblical doctrine of the imminent return of Christ. He said homosexuals should be allowed to join churches and be ordained without renouncing homosexuality and supported homosexual marriage. A major source of his heretical thinking was Catholic contemplative prayer. He said, “I get up in the morning a half hour before I have to and spend time in absolute stillness. I don’t ask God for anything. I just simply surrender to His presence and yield to the Spirit flowing into my life” (Outreach Magazine, July/ August 2004, pp. 88, 89). He said “a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam” (Speaking My Mind, pp. 149l, 150). This is not biblical meditation. It is a recipe for spiritual delusion. Evangelicalism, with its renunciation of separation and its lack of boundaries, is leavened with every sort of sin and heresy. It is the incipient form of the one-world church, which will reach full blossom in the day of the Lord as described in Revelation 17.
WHAT CHRONICLES SAYS TO AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The books of Chronicles emphasize that Israel’s blessing depends on her obedience to God. This lesson is also for the nations, particularly those with a strong biblical influence such as England and America. The following is by J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book: “Running right through the story of these kings, with its occasional reforms and ever-worsening relapses, is the solemn, vital, urgent truth that a nation’s response to God is the really determining factor in its history and destiny. This was specially true of Israel, but it is universally true of the earth’s people today. ... This truth may not seem so immediately perceptible in our modern world with its international complicatedness; but when we look at processes over a period we find it still in operation. Moral principles and spiritual convictions are the first-important things as regards national progress or decline, not politics and economics--as seems to be the fashionable thought in Government today. The place we give to GOD is that which determines our prosperity or adversity, our history and our destiny. Israel of old--kings, leaders, people--deceived themselves into thinking that they could sin with impunity, imagining that because Jehovah could not be seen He could not see; but they did not deceive God; nor can we. ‘God is not mocked.’ He rules, He chooses, He forbears; but He will not spare the persistent exploiting of privilege. The abuse of high calling by low living always brings ruinous ending. Oh, that nations, leaders, peoples might realise that today!”
GIRAFFES IN ANTIGRAVITY SUITS (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2024, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is from CreationMoments.com, October 23, 2024: “On previous ‘Creation Moments’ we have talked about some of the wonderful designs that help make the giraffe possible. The giraffe has a strong heart to pump blood all the way up to its head and strong arteries to withstand the high blood pressure needed to carry the blood to its head. We have also talked about the giraffe’s so called ‘wonder net,’ which is a network of blood vessels that helps to stabilize the blood pressure in the giraffe’s head even when it raises and lowers its head. But modern science continues to uncover engineering wonders that enable the giraffe to keep blood flowing evenly to its brain and keep blood from pooling in its legs. Researchers have discovered that giraffes, unlike human beings, have a valve in the jugular vein. But these valves work in the wrong direction to help blood stay in the head. Instead, they close when a giraffe lowers its head, preventing used blood from backing up into the brain. And how does a giraffe, which stays on its feet all day, keep blood from pooling in its legs? Scientists have found that the skin on a giraffe’s legs is very tight fitting. When a giraffe walks, its muscle movement within that tight skin actually helps pump used blood out of the legs. If life owed its existence to chance and genetic mistakes, we wouldn’t have any giraffes today. But what a wonder of God’s design these stately creatures are! Notes: Pedley, T.J., ‘How giraffes prevent oedema,’ Nature, 29:3, p. 13.”
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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