
President Donald Trump
BILL MCCARTNEY DIES (Friday Church News Notes, January 24, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers (PK), died on Jan. 10 at age 84. McCartney was a successful coach for the University of Colorado football team and enthusiastic promoter of professional sports. Promise Keepers was hugely successful in the 1990s. A crowd of 4,200 men attended the first convention at the Coors’ Event Center in Boulder in 1991. The organization reached its peak in 1997 when its “Stand in the Gap” rally in Washington, D.C. drew a half million or more men. It achieved great success in creating ecumenical unity, drawing participation from every denomination, including independent Baptist. Promise Keepers encourages men to adopt the “Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper,” number six being, “A Promise Keeper is committed to reaching beyond any ... denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of biblical unity.” That is ecumenism. McCartney, though a member of a Vineyard church, never renounced the Roman Catholic Church, and there was a strong Catholic element in the PK movement. In an interview with a Catholic publication, McCartney said that full Catholic participation was his intention from the start. “Back in 1992, at our first [large] stadium event [Folsom Field, Colorado], we very clearly stated from the podium that we eagerly welcomed the participation of Roman Catholics, and we’ve had scores of Roman Catholics attend and go back to their churches excited” (Our Sunday Visitor, July 20, 1997, p. 10). In an interview on the national radio program “Promise Keepers This Week” (August 31, 1996), McCartney said, “Promise Keepers is going to have to understand that more and more Catholics are going to participate. And what every guy needs to do is, STOP LOOKING AT PEOPLE’S LABELS ... LET’S NOT START CATEGORIZING PEOPLE.” Catholic priests, including Jim Berlucchi, John Salazar, and Michael Scanlon, were speakers at various PK events. Mike Timmis, a Roman Catholic, was added to the PK board of directors in 1997. Don Jasmin, who attended a PK conference in western Michigan with media credentials in 1998, warned, “The PK emphasis is more dangerously ecumenical than ever, with Roman Catholics now occupying strategic places of prominence in administration and operation” (Calvary Contender, February 15, 1999). Some Promise Keepers representatives stated that their only motive in inviting Roman Catholics to participate was to win them to Christ. The facts refute this. Promise Keepers is trying to make a comeback after largely fading from the limelight after McCartney’s resignation in 2003.
CALGARY PASTOR APPEALS HARSH SENTENCE FOR OPPOSING DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR (Friday Church News Notes, January 24, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Calgary Pastor,” Western Standard, Jan. 19, 2025: “Calgary pastor Derek Reimer has been sentenced to a year of house arrest and two additional years of probation after opposing drag queen story hour events, prompting a fundraising campaign amidst concerns over free speech. ... Reimer’s legal troubles began in February 2022 when the Pastor of Mission 7 Ministries attended a drag queen story hour at the Seton Public Library in Calgary. Reimer approached the library manager to voice his disapproval of the reading aimed at children aged six to eight. ... in the following weeks, he protested at other libraries and was successful in shutting down about 15 events. He was arrested and re-arrested three times in five weeks, ultimately spending 43 days in jail. Derek has received multiple criminal charges and by-law tickets totaling thousands of dollars. ... ‘This could be the test case,’ Reimer’s lawyer Andrew MacKenzie warned. ‘This could open the door to a lot of individuals around Canada being criminalized for posting the wrong thing on social media.’”
FEDERAL COURT INVALIDATES TITLE IX REWRITE (Friday Church News Notes, January 24, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “A Colossal Win,” Standing for Freedom, Jan. 10, 2025: “A federal court in eastern Kentucky has dealt a ‘death knell’ to the Biden administration’s radical Title IX rewrite, an effort to expand the definition of biological sex to include gender identity at K-12 schools and higher education institutions. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Danny C. Reeves granted summary judgment in a challenge brought by the state of Tennessee and other plaintiffs, meaning that he found the rule to be so constitutionally and legally problematic based on just the most cursory examination that there was no reason for it to even go to trial. The plaintiffs in this case included nine other states, among them Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio; the Christian Educators International Association; and a 15-year-old female student-athlete. Reeves, who temporarily blocked the new Title IX rule last summer, found that the Biden administration’s effort to change the clear meaning and intent of the 50-year-old amendment to the Civil Rights Act is ‘unconstitutional,’ ‘overly broad and vague,’ and ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ He also stated that the Department of Education had exceeded its statutory authority and violated the Spending Clause. ... The decision completely vacates the rule nationwide, according to legal observers... ‘This is a huge win for Tennessee, for common sense, and for women and girls across America,’ said Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. ‘The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking.’”
WHY ARE SO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE SUDDENLY IDENTIFYING AS TRANSGENDER? (Friday Church News Notes, January 24, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Why Are So Many?” Standing for Freedom, Jan. 16, 2025: “A recent study found that there was a 422 percent increase among 18- to 24-year-olds identifying as transgender from 2014 to 2023 ... The question is, why the generational gap and the exponential increase in young Americans and whites identifying as transgender? ... there are numerous reasons behind the rise. Here are just a few: Social Media, Internet. ... The outsize influence of social media, the Internet, and even traditional media outlets that have embraced LGBTQ ideology have a profound impact on younger generations. In example after example parents say their teenager began believing they were a different gender after spending large amounts of time in their room on the Internet. ... Federal Funding. The U.S. began funding LGBT programs long before Joe Biden became president; however, no administration accepted, promoted, or bankrolled the LGBT ideology more than this one. For example, investigative reporting by the Epoch Times found that over the last three fiscal years, the federal government spent $4.1 billion in taxpayer dollars on LGBT programs. ... Public Education. ... Schools are now pushing gender theory on children as young as preschool and even hiding the gender confusion of children and teens from their parents. As a result, conflicts between parents and schools have become widespread as parents seek to stop schools from indoctrinating their children and introducing them to sexually explicit material. ... The Medical Field. Against all scientific logic, evidence, and common sense, many doctors and the country’s most prestigious medical associations are aggressively pushing gender ideology on vulnerable patients. Why? One reason is profit. A Daily Wire report caught doctors from the Pediatric Transgender Clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center calling transgender surgeries ‘big moneymakers.’ And it’s not just major surgeries that promise a new revenue stream. When a person begins on the path to gender transition, he or she becomes a lifelong patient.”
THE MIRACLE OF HEARING (Friday Church News Notes, January 24, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, December 20, 2024: “Your high school biology textbook may have given you the idea that modern science understands how hearing works. While science understands the general principles, researchers are still trying to understand the details. Hearing starts with the skin and cartilage on the outside of our heads that we call the ear. This tissue is carefully designed to collect sound waves and focus them into the hole in the lower center part of the external ear. That hole is a tube that runs for about an inch to the eardrum. As the eardrum vibrates with the incoming sound, tiny specialized bones pick up the vibrations. One of these bones changes the vibrations into hydraulic pressure. The sound, now converted to hydraulic pressure, is sent to the cochlea. This coiled, bony canal is lined with tissue that has four long rows of hair cells. A vibration as small as the width of an atom will move these hairs. Each movement of the hair causes a change in the electrical potential of the hair cell’s membrane. This change triggers a current that is fed to the auditory nerve and interpreted as sound by the brain. Each of the hairs in the ear responds best to a specific frequency. The ability to hear could have been engineered using a much less complex design. Such a design, however, would leave us unable to hear the subtleties of an orchestra or a bird’s song. Our Creator is not only capable of excellent workmanship, but also generous in His creation.”
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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