Friday Church News Notes
January 17, 2025 - Volume 26, Issue 3
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 HOWARD FAMILY: THE DANGER OF WRONG ASSOCIATIONS (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Thomas Howard (1935-2020) was raised in a prominent fundamentalist family. His father Philip Howard, Jr., was the editor in the 1920s of the Sunday School Times, the largest weekly fundamentalist paper. Thomas’s uncle, Charles Trumbell, was the previous editor. The Howard family was a fundamentalist family, both in doctrine and practice. The Howard children had “a strict religious education.” They were taught to have “an earnestness about holy things.” The family practiced separation from the world. The children were taught to fear the temptations of “sex, alcohol, tobacco, bridge, the foxtrot [dancing], the races, and the movies” (“Died: Thomas Howard,” Christianity Today, Oct. 19, 2020). They “were raised to be missionaries.” The family discipline was called “GMT: Good Missionary Training.” The parents had been missionaries to Belgium. Thomas’s sister, Elizabeth (1926-2015) became a missionary to Ecuador where she married Jim Elliot, who was killed by the Auca Indians. As the new evangelicalism of the 1950s leavened the Howard family circles and the institutions with which they were associated, they gradually changed. Thomas encountered the new evangelical philosophy at Wheaton College and “began to question what he’d previously thought was certain” (Ibid.). He devoted himself to British Literature and was an expert on C.S. Lewis. He was influenced by Lewis’s ecumenical philosophy that was expressed in Mere Christianity: Christianity is a big house; the denominations (e.g., Protestant, Baptist, Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic) are the various rooms; Christians should accept every branch as genuine Christianity. Protestants and Baptists and Roman Catholics are just different rooms in “the church.” Instead of giving his life to missionary work, Thomas pursued scholarship, which immersed him in dangerous waters. His doctoral dissertation was on the fantasy novels of Charles Williams, a liberal Anglican who exalted a spirit of doubting. Williams was a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, which promoted the mysticism and false gospel of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy. This is demonic territory. By the influence of his intimate study of Anglican literature, Thomas eventually joined the ultra-liberal Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism. In 1985 he joined the Roman Catholic Church, left his teaching job at Gordon College and taught at St. John’s Seminary in Boston. In 1997 he published On Being Catholic. By his example and literature, he influenced others to join the Catholic Church. In September 1997, Elizabeth Elliot spoke at an interdenominational meeting in Wisconsin. When asked, “Can a person be Catholic and Christian in union?” she replied, “Yes, we can have unity in diversity; my brother is a Catholic and a Christian.” This unscriptural thinking was the product of new evangelical blending and merging. Instead of anchoring themselves in the old paths of God’s Word, the Howard children allowed themselves to be carried away by the new evangelical tide. The result was spiritual and doctrinal disaster. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
FACEBOOK DUMPS “FACT CHECKERS” AND ADDS TRUMP FRIEND/FREE SPEECH ADVOCATE TO THE BOARD (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Facebook Dumps,” PowerLine, Jan. 7, 2025, and “Meta Goes MAGA,” Jan. 6, 2025: “In another victory for free speech, Meta has announced that Facebook will no longer employ third-party ‘fact checkers.’ Instead, it will adopt a system similar to X’s ‘community notes’ feature: ‘The Community Notes model will allow users on Meta’s social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads to call out posts that are potentially misleading and need more context, rather than placing the responsibility on independent fact checking organizations and experts. ... A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor, Meta said.’ Of course, it was always intended as a method of censorship. Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues have apparently now figured that out. Zuckerberg himself issued a video statement: ‘It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,’ Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had ‘reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.’ ... In one of the most interesting corporate developments in a long time, Meta announced today that it is bringing three new members into its board of directors. One of them is Dana White, proprietor of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a speaker at the Republican National Convention, and one of Donald Trump’s closest friends. ... Mark Zuckerberg has not been on the liberal plantation lately, if he ever was. He has expressed regret for enforcing the federal government’s censorship demands. ... I think Zuckerberg is serious about staking out a position for Meta/Facebook that is not subservient to the Left. ... White is an outspoken advocate of free speech and is unabashedly patriotic, and I think Zuckerberg, and likely others at Meta, are signaling that the days when Facebook will censor conservatives are over.”
HOW DEI DESTROYED THE LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) is run by three lesbians named ‘Kirsten,’” World Israel News, Jan. 10, 2024: “The most important thing to know about Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is that she is the first LGBTQ fire chief in the history of the Los Angeles Fire Department. ... Crowley’s status as the first LGBTQ fire chief appears at the top of her bio on the LAFD site. ... But DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] wasn’t done with the LAFD just yet. Not until two other lesbian ‘Kirstens’ were also running the LAFD. Kristina Kepner, the first lesbian Assistant Chief and ... Kristine Larson ... was rewarded with the title of the LAFD’s first lesbian Equity Bureau Chief with a $399,000 salary. Diversity mandates had led to three lesbians named some version of ‘Kirsten’ running the LAFD. Meanwhile, Jamie Brown became the LAFD’s first lesbian Training Commander. ... Many glass ceilings were being broken, but there was no one who actually knew how to fight fires. Unless it was by asking the fire about its preferred pronouns. Crowley, Kepner, and Brown were all paramedics, not firefighters. ... Even before the worst firestorms in over a decade hit, there were warnings that the DEI LAFD brass had wrecked one of the country’s greatest firefighting services. ... Crowley succeeded Chief Ralph Terrazas, hailed as the first Latino chief who replaced Chief Douglas Barry, the first black chief, and in the ordinary way of things, Crowley will be replaced by the first transgender fire chief who will then have to be replaced by someone even more diverse. Assuming that there is still a Los Angeles to pay them/it/xem a six-figure salary. ... Now the LAFD has been reduced to begging for volunteers with firefighting experience.”
THE RISE OF NO-NAME CHRISTIANITY (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A report entitled “Non-Denominationalism Is the Strongest Force in Religion, and Maybe in American Society too” (Graphs about Religion, Jan. 9, 2025) examines the rapid disappearance of denominational churches (e.g., churches that identify as Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, etc.) and the rapid growth of no-name churches. It describes “the rise of the nons--that is those folks who identify as non-denominational Christians.” In the early 1970s, only 3% of Protestant Christians identified as non-denominational, whereas by 2022 this had grown to 33%. Biblically, this is a description of the merging and blending process that is gradually producing a one-world “church.” Everything is changing, moving, merging, blending, homogenizing. In dramatic fulfillment of Bible prophecy, the stage is being set for the day of the Lord and the rise of Mystery Babylon. The doctrine of apostasy is a doctrine that is clearly taught in God’s Word, and it is no small matter. It is a fundamental doctrine and a fundamental issue. In brief, the doctrine of apostasy is the Bible’s teaching that there will be a falling away from the New Testament faith beginning even in the days of the apostles and progressing in strength throughout the church age, ending in an explosion of apostasy at the end of the age (e.g., Mt. 13:33; 1 Ti. 4:1-5; 2 Ti. 3:1-5; 4:3-4; 2 Pe. 2-3; Jude). That’s where we are! The black and white of absolute truth is being replaced with the gray of ecumenical compromise. There are many factors at work in this process, such as the widespread popularity of a non-judgmental, be positive philosophy with its distaste for such things as separatism, doctrinal division, reproof, warnings, and labeling. Contemporary worship music is another major factor. It is a music with no boundaries--no boundaries with the world and no boundaries among Christians. It is uniting every type of church. In the middle of everything sits “evangelicalism, which encompasses the broadest tent conceivable. Today’s evangelicalism is friendly with Roman Catholicism, with theological liberalism, with Mormonism, even with 21st century fundamentalism (such as a rapidly growing number of biblically shallow, soft on separation independent Baptists).
A FISH STORY (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, December 11, 2024: “School biology textbooks offer students good facts but often bad interpretation of those facts. For example, when explaining how fish evolved into air-breathing land animals, students are usually offered a great deal of misinformation about living and extinct fish. It is not true that lungfish are an odd class of fish and that no other fish have lungs--many do, and some have lungs as well as gills. The textbook explanation says that all early fish had air-filled swim bladders, as most fish do today. The textbooks go on to say that the bladders in some of these fish eventually evolved into lungs. Then, as these fish spent more time on land, some of them gradually lost their gills and developed from amphibians into reptiles. The facts are shown in the fossil record where, according to evolutionists’ own inflated system of dating, lungs actually appeared in fish before swim bladders! A logical evolutionist would have to conclude that the fish’s air bladder evolved from lungs. The problem for evolutionists is that this is precisely opposite of what they need for the theory. If we telescope the evolutionary years into historical years, however, the fossil record agrees with Scripture. In other words, fish with lungs and fish with swim-bladders both appeared on day five of creation. The lesson for us here is that when science tells the truth, it actually confirms those seemingly simple statements found in the Bible. Notes: Joachim Vetter, ‘Something fishy about lungs,’ Creation ExNihilo, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 46-47.”
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).
FACEBOOK DUMPS “FACT CHECKERS” AND ADDS TRUMP FRIEND/FREE SPEECH ADVOCATE TO THE BOARD (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Facebook Dumps,” PowerLine, Jan. 7, 2025, and “Meta Goes MAGA,” Jan. 6, 2025: “In another victory for free speech, Meta has announced that Facebook will no longer employ third-party ‘fact checkers.’ Instead, it will adopt a system similar to X’s ‘community notes’ feature: ‘The Community Notes model will allow users on Meta’s social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads to call out posts that are potentially misleading and need more context, rather than placing the responsibility on independent fact checking organizations and experts. ... A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor, Meta said.’ Of course, it was always intended as a method of censorship. Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues have apparently now figured that out. Zuckerberg himself issued a video statement: ‘It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,’ Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had ‘reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.’ ... In one of the most interesting corporate developments in a long time, Meta announced today that it is bringing three new members into its board of directors. One of them is Dana White, proprietor of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a speaker at the Republican National Convention, and one of Donald Trump’s closest friends. ... Mark Zuckerberg has not been on the liberal plantation lately, if he ever was. He has expressed regret for enforcing the federal government’s censorship demands. ... I think Zuckerberg is serious about staking out a position for Meta/Facebook that is not subservient to the Left. ... White is an outspoken advocate of free speech and is unabashedly patriotic, and I think Zuckerberg, and likely others at Meta, are signaling that the days when Facebook will censor conservatives are over.”
HOW DEI DESTROYED THE LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) is run by three lesbians named ‘Kirsten,’” World Israel News, Jan. 10, 2024: “The most important thing to know about Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is that she is the first LGBTQ fire chief in the history of the Los Angeles Fire Department. ... Crowley’s status as the first LGBTQ fire chief appears at the top of her bio on the LAFD site. ... But DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] wasn’t done with the LAFD just yet. Not until two other lesbian ‘Kirstens’ were also running the LAFD. Kristina Kepner, the first lesbian Assistant Chief and ... Kristine Larson ... was rewarded with the title of the LAFD’s first lesbian Equity Bureau Chief with a $399,000 salary. Diversity mandates had led to three lesbians named some version of ‘Kirsten’ running the LAFD. Meanwhile, Jamie Brown became the LAFD’s first lesbian Training Commander. ... Many glass ceilings were being broken, but there was no one who actually knew how to fight fires. Unless it was by asking the fire about its preferred pronouns. Crowley, Kepner, and Brown were all paramedics, not firefighters. ... Even before the worst firestorms in over a decade hit, there were warnings that the DEI LAFD brass had wrecked one of the country’s greatest firefighting services. ... Crowley succeeded Chief Ralph Terrazas, hailed as the first Latino chief who replaced Chief Douglas Barry, the first black chief, and in the ordinary way of things, Crowley will be replaced by the first transgender fire chief who will then have to be replaced by someone even more diverse. Assuming that there is still a Los Angeles to pay them/it/xem a six-figure salary. ... Now the LAFD has been reduced to begging for volunteers with firefighting experience.”
THE RISE OF NO-NAME CHRISTIANITY (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A report entitled “Non-Denominationalism Is the Strongest Force in Religion, and Maybe in American Society too” (Graphs about Religion, Jan. 9, 2025) examines the rapid disappearance of denominational churches (e.g., churches that identify as Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, etc.) and the rapid growth of no-name churches. It describes “the rise of the nons--that is those folks who identify as non-denominational Christians.” In the early 1970s, only 3% of Protestant Christians identified as non-denominational, whereas by 2022 this had grown to 33%. Biblically, this is a description of the merging and blending process that is gradually producing a one-world “church.” Everything is changing, moving, merging, blending, homogenizing. In dramatic fulfillment of Bible prophecy, the stage is being set for the day of the Lord and the rise of Mystery Babylon. The doctrine of apostasy is a doctrine that is clearly taught in God’s Word, and it is no small matter. It is a fundamental doctrine and a fundamental issue. In brief, the doctrine of apostasy is the Bible’s teaching that there will be a falling away from the New Testament faith beginning even in the days of the apostles and progressing in strength throughout the church age, ending in an explosion of apostasy at the end of the age (e.g., Mt. 13:33; 1 Ti. 4:1-5; 2 Ti. 3:1-5; 4:3-4; 2 Pe. 2-3; Jude). That’s where we are! The black and white of absolute truth is being replaced with the gray of ecumenical compromise. There are many factors at work in this process, such as the widespread popularity of a non-judgmental, be positive philosophy with its distaste for such things as separatism, doctrinal division, reproof, warnings, and labeling. Contemporary worship music is another major factor. It is a music with no boundaries--no boundaries with the world and no boundaries among Christians. It is uniting every type of church. In the middle of everything sits “evangelicalism, which encompasses the broadest tent conceivable. Today’s evangelicalism is friendly with Roman Catholicism, with theological liberalism, with Mormonism, even with 21st century fundamentalism (such as a rapidly growing number of biblically shallow, soft on separation independent Baptists).
A FISH STORY (Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, December 11, 2024: “School biology textbooks offer students good facts but often bad interpretation of those facts. For example, when explaining how fish evolved into air-breathing land animals, students are usually offered a great deal of misinformation about living and extinct fish. It is not true that lungfish are an odd class of fish and that no other fish have lungs--many do, and some have lungs as well as gills. The textbook explanation says that all early fish had air-filled swim bladders, as most fish do today. The textbooks go on to say that the bladders in some of these fish eventually evolved into lungs. Then, as these fish spent more time on land, some of them gradually lost their gills and developed from amphibians into reptiles. The facts are shown in the fossil record where, according to evolutionists’ own inflated system of dating, lungs actually appeared in fish before swim bladders! A logical evolutionist would have to conclude that the fish’s air bladder evolved from lungs. The problem for evolutionists is that this is precisely opposite of what they need for the theory. If we telescope the evolutionary years into historical years, however, the fossil record agrees with Scripture. In other words, fish with lungs and fish with swim-bladders both appeared on day five of creation. The lesson for us here is that when science tells the truth, it actually confirms those seemingly simple statements found in the Bible. Notes: Joachim Vetter, ‘Something fishy about lungs,’ Creation ExNihilo, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 46-47.”
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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