Friday Church News Notes
February 28, 2025 - Volume 26, Issue 9
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.
Diante do Trono
EVANGELICALS AND CATHOLICS MERGING THROUGH CCM (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Evangelicals and Catholics in Brazil are merging through contemporary worship music. Consider a recent Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) report “Amazing Salvation Numbers.” At first glance, it appears that there is a great turning from Catholicism to “evangelicalism,” but on closer examination, the evolving one world “church” comes into focus. On one hand, the percentage of Brazilians identifying as Catholic has fallen from 93% in 1950 to about 65% today. The biggest growth is found among Pentecostal-Charismatic churches. At the same time, the radical ecumenism of contemporary worship music is uniting Catholics and “evangelicals.” Contemporary worship artist Ana Paula Valadao, whose praise band Diante do Trono has sold more than 15 million albums, is at the center of this phenomenon. Her concerts draw massive ecumenical crowds, and her songs are featured in every type of church, including Baptist and Catholic. Priest Antonio Ferreira says, “Today, a growing number of Catholics are returning precisely because prayer meetings are conducted in a more Pentecostal style” (“Amazing Salvation Numbers,” CBN, Feb. 18, 2025). Nothing is facilitating the blending of Christianity more effectively than contemporary worship music, including that of Getty-Townend. Fundamental Baptists that are messing around with contemporary worship, “adapting it,” “toning it down,” are playing with fire. The leaders are the blind leading the blind.
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PROMOTES “WORLD HIJAB DAY” (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “NEA Promotes World Hijab Day,” PJMedia, Jan. 24, 2025: “Saturday, Feb. 1, is another World Hijab Day, a Western feminist expression of solidarity with Muslim women in the United States who are supposedly oppressed and discriminated against because they wear the hijab. ... For innumerable women in Iran, the hijab is the most visible sign of their second-class status, and of the brutality of the regime that will imprison them for years or even kill them outright for daring to venture out in public without wearing it. Also, the oppression related to the hijab is not linked to wearing it, but to not wearing it. ... In Mississauga, Ontario, a few years back, Aqsa Parvez’s Muslim father choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it. Amina Muse Ali was a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab. Forty women were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab. Alya Al-Safar’s Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain. Amira Osman Hamid faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab. An Egyptian girl, also named Amira, committed suicide after being brutalized by her family for refusing to wear the hijab. ... women in Chechnya were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing the hijab. When is the NEA’s day for all these women, and so many others who have been brutalized or even killed for not wearing hijab?”
IDAHO LEGISLATURE CALLS FOR OVERTURNING THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Idaho state’s legislature has issued a joint resolution to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex “marriage” and required all 50 states to perform and recognize them on the same footing as God-appointed man-woman marriages. This invented “right” by five arrogant, ungodly, activist justices has resulted in persecution of Bible-believing Christians. The Idaho legislature boldly reproves this faulty decision. The following is excerpted from “Idaho Drafts Resolution to Overturn,” The Disntr, Jan. 27, 2025: “Leftists and LGBT activists are predictably losing their collective minds over Idaho’s new resolution against Obergefell v. Hodges ... They claim to stand for ‘justice’ and ‘equality,’ but their real fear is glaringly obvious, they’re terrified that their grotesque crimes against nature, humanity, and God will have to retreat back into the shadows--where they belong--instead of being paraded around to the world as a badge of ‘progress’ while the rest of us reflexively gag on what they’re force-feeding us. The Idaho resolution, a joint memorial of the state’s legislature, doesn’t pussyfoot. It calls out Obergefell as an illegitimate overreach, a decision that ‘arbitrarily and unjustly rejected’ the time-tested definition of marriage in favor of ‘a novel, flawed interpretation’ of the Constitution. The resolution correctly identifies that Obergefell relies on the ‘dangerous fiction of treating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a font of substantive rights,’ a doctrine that gives unelected judges power they were never meant to have. ... In simpler terms, the Supreme Court fancied itself a legislative body and trampled over the will of the people, the Constitution, and 2,000 years of moral sanity--all in one fell swoop. Idaho’s resolution methodically dismantles the lies propped up by Obergefell.”
AI AND CHRISTIAN TRANSLATION WORK (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Recently I received the following communication from Edward Habal, edward.habal@okiweb.com: “Bro Cloud, I have recently been looking at AI for video translations and in particular for Sunday School and discipleship material for some missionaries in other countries. I was wondering if you have looked into it at all. I just spoke to some in our church about my vision for IT for the Gospel. I think your vision for your Bible college can match up with other visions to really have an impact. I think the timing is right. I have been in IT for 30 years and just recently started looking at AI and it is amazing. I got a free account at Heygen https://heygen.com and did test translations and was so impressed I signed up for a paid account. You can scan your image and input script, you can translate existing video to many different languages and other things that I have not investigated yet. In my church Spanish speakers said the translation was perfect. Chinese speakers said it was robotic. Indonesian speakers said 97%. Filipino speakers said not KJV. It was off a little there also.”
“BISEXUAL” CAST AS JESUS IN NEW RENDITION OF JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In a sign of the frightful blasphemy of the times, Cynthia Erivo, an “LGBT-identified British actress known for her role in ‘Wicked’ has been cast to play Jesus in an upcoming production of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’” (“Cynthia Erivo,” Christianity Today, Feb. 21, 2025). Erivo told Elle magazine, “I have a deep belief that God makes people as they’re meant to be. The rules for themselves that people put upon others have nothing to do with me and my faith.” The movie “Wicked: For Good,” scheduled for release in November, portrays “same-sex attraction.” Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in multiple prophecies of the end-times, such as the following by Peter: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; And turning 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: (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: 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 2:4-10).
A BACKSLIDDEN CHURCH FOR ITS MOTHER AND THE WORLD FOR ITS FATHER (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Human religion’s enterprises have an atmosphere of earthliness about them. It despises the day of small things and scorns little humble people and lonely ways. It is eager to jump to the height of prosperity. Its music has no pathos in it, its laughter lacks divine cheerfulness, its worship lacks supernatural love, its prayers bring down no huge answers, it works no miracles, calls forth no criticism from the world, and has no light of eternity in its eyes. It is a poor, sickly thing, born of the union of the heart of the world with the head of Christian theology--a mongrel, bastard thing with a backslidden church for its mother and the world for its father. Oh, my dear brother and sister, never forget that this unnatural monster will be destroyed at the coming-again of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ” (James A. Stewart, Evangelism, 1940s, p. 28).
A BUSY, SUPER-SMART PROTEIN (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, February 4, 2025: “Blood is made up of many components. Red blood cells carry oxygen to all parts of the body. And even though hemoglobin is based on iron, the healthy body, protected by rust inhibitors, doesn’t rust. White cells and other blood components fight infection. It’s difficult to decide which of the components of blood are more amazing in their design. But if awards were given to the various components of blood for the amazing ways in which they work, serum albumin would certainly be in the running. Like one of those gadgets advertised on cable television, serum albumin seems to do more things in the bloodstream than seems possible. Serum albumin, which is made by the liver, regulates the volume of your blood, helping to keep your blood pressure healthy. It also controls your blood chemistry so that all the components are there in the right concentration. It stores molecules and moves them to where they are needed when they are needed. When you take an aspirin or a drug, serum albumin sees to it that the medicine gets to where it is needed. Serum albumin also prevents an enzyme which digests proteins in your digestive tract from digesting the proteins in the rest of your body. Indeed, as the Bible says, much of our physical life happens in our blood. But eternal life is only found in the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross in our place--His death in our place--the forgiveness of our sins before our Creator.”
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).
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PROMOTES “WORLD HIJAB DAY” (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “NEA Promotes World Hijab Day,” PJMedia, Jan. 24, 2025: “Saturday, Feb. 1, is another World Hijab Day, a Western feminist expression of solidarity with Muslim women in the United States who are supposedly oppressed and discriminated against because they wear the hijab. ... For innumerable women in Iran, the hijab is the most visible sign of their second-class status, and of the brutality of the regime that will imprison them for years or even kill them outright for daring to venture out in public without wearing it. Also, the oppression related to the hijab is not linked to wearing it, but to not wearing it. ... In Mississauga, Ontario, a few years back, Aqsa Parvez’s Muslim father choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it. Amina Muse Ali was a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab. Forty women were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab. Alya Al-Safar’s Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain. Amira Osman Hamid faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab. An Egyptian girl, also named Amira, committed suicide after being brutalized by her family for refusing to wear the hijab. ... women in Chechnya were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing the hijab. When is the NEA’s day for all these women, and so many others who have been brutalized or even killed for not wearing hijab?”
IDAHO LEGISLATURE CALLS FOR OVERTURNING THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Idaho state’s legislature has issued a joint resolution to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex “marriage” and required all 50 states to perform and recognize them on the same footing as God-appointed man-woman marriages. This invented “right” by five arrogant, ungodly, activist justices has resulted in persecution of Bible-believing Christians. The Idaho legislature boldly reproves this faulty decision. The following is excerpted from “Idaho Drafts Resolution to Overturn,” The Disntr, Jan. 27, 2025: “Leftists and LGBT activists are predictably losing their collective minds over Idaho’s new resolution against Obergefell v. Hodges ... They claim to stand for ‘justice’ and ‘equality,’ but their real fear is glaringly obvious, they’re terrified that their grotesque crimes against nature, humanity, and God will have to retreat back into the shadows--where they belong--instead of being paraded around to the world as a badge of ‘progress’ while the rest of us reflexively gag on what they’re force-feeding us. The Idaho resolution, a joint memorial of the state’s legislature, doesn’t pussyfoot. It calls out Obergefell as an illegitimate overreach, a decision that ‘arbitrarily and unjustly rejected’ the time-tested definition of marriage in favor of ‘a novel, flawed interpretation’ of the Constitution. The resolution correctly identifies that Obergefell relies on the ‘dangerous fiction of treating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a font of substantive rights,’ a doctrine that gives unelected judges power they were never meant to have. ... In simpler terms, the Supreme Court fancied itself a legislative body and trampled over the will of the people, the Constitution, and 2,000 years of moral sanity--all in one fell swoop. Idaho’s resolution methodically dismantles the lies propped up by Obergefell.”
AI AND CHRISTIAN TRANSLATION WORK (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Recently I received the following communication from Edward Habal, edward.habal@okiweb.com: “Bro Cloud, I have recently been looking at AI for video translations and in particular for Sunday School and discipleship material for some missionaries in other countries. I was wondering if you have looked into it at all. I just spoke to some in our church about my vision for IT for the Gospel. I think your vision for your Bible college can match up with other visions to really have an impact. I think the timing is right. I have been in IT for 30 years and just recently started looking at AI and it is amazing. I got a free account at Heygen https://heygen.com and did test translations and was so impressed I signed up for a paid account. You can scan your image and input script, you can translate existing video to many different languages and other things that I have not investigated yet. In my church Spanish speakers said the translation was perfect. Chinese speakers said it was robotic. Indonesian speakers said 97%. Filipino speakers said not KJV. It was off a little there also.”
“BISEXUAL” CAST AS JESUS IN NEW RENDITION OF JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In a sign of the frightful blasphemy of the times, Cynthia Erivo, an “LGBT-identified British actress known for her role in ‘Wicked’ has been cast to play Jesus in an upcoming production of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’” (“Cynthia Erivo,” Christianity Today, Feb. 21, 2025). Erivo told Elle magazine, “I have a deep belief that God makes people as they’re meant to be. The rules for themselves that people put upon others have nothing to do with me and my faith.” The movie “Wicked: For Good,” scheduled for release in November, portrays “same-sex attraction.” Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in multiple prophecies of the end-times, such as the following by Peter: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; And turning 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: (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: 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 2:4-10).
A BACKSLIDDEN CHURCH FOR ITS MOTHER AND THE WORLD FOR ITS FATHER (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Human religion’s enterprises have an atmosphere of earthliness about them. It despises the day of small things and scorns little humble people and lonely ways. It is eager to jump to the height of prosperity. Its music has no pathos in it, its laughter lacks divine cheerfulness, its worship lacks supernatural love, its prayers bring down no huge answers, it works no miracles, calls forth no criticism from the world, and has no light of eternity in its eyes. It is a poor, sickly thing, born of the union of the heart of the world with the head of Christian theology--a mongrel, bastard thing with a backslidden church for its mother and the world for its father. Oh, my dear brother and sister, never forget that this unnatural monster will be destroyed at the coming-again of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ” (James A. Stewart, Evangelism, 1940s, p. 28).
A BUSY, SUPER-SMART PROTEIN (Friday Church News Notes, February 28, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, February 4, 2025: “Blood is made up of many components. Red blood cells carry oxygen to all parts of the body. And even though hemoglobin is based on iron, the healthy body, protected by rust inhibitors, doesn’t rust. White cells and other blood components fight infection. It’s difficult to decide which of the components of blood are more amazing in their design. But if awards were given to the various components of blood for the amazing ways in which they work, serum albumin would certainly be in the running. Like one of those gadgets advertised on cable television, serum albumin seems to do more things in the bloodstream than seems possible. Serum albumin, which is made by the liver, regulates the volume of your blood, helping to keep your blood pressure healthy. It also controls your blood chemistry so that all the components are there in the right concentration. It stores molecules and moves them to where they are needed when they are needed. When you take an aspirin or a drug, serum albumin sees to it that the medicine gets to where it is needed. Serum albumin also prevents an enzyme which digests proteins in your digestive tract from digesting the proteins in the rest of your body. Indeed, as the Bible says, much of our physical life happens in our blood. But eternal life is only found in the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross in our place--His death in our place--the forgiveness of our sins before our Creator.”
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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