Friday Church News Notes
April 4, 2025 - Volume 26, Issue 14
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.
INEFFECTUAL PRAYER FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On March 18, Christian leaders prayed for U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. The meeting was led by Paula White-Cain, “Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office and Trump’s longtime spiritual advisor” (“Evangelical Leaders Pray with Trump,” Christianity Daily, Mar. 23, 2025). Vice President J.D. Vance was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2019 (“Vance Becomes Catholic,” The American Conservative, Aug. 11, 2019). On March 19, Trump hosted a Catholic for Catholics Gala at Mar-a-Largo in Palm Beach. We delight in prayer for the nation, but prayer led by those who blatantly disobey God’s Word is ineffectual. God says so. “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination” (Proverbs 28:9). “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). See also Job 27:8-9; Psalm 66:18; Proverbs 15:29; Isaiah 1:15; John 9:31; James 4:3; 1 Peter 3:12. “Evangelicalism” today is apostasy, or, at the very least, a dangerous bridge to apostasy. It is laying the groundwork for Mystery Babylon. In an interview with the Tennessean, Jonathan Cain of the rock band Journey says his wife, Paula White-Cain, was taking care of President Trump’s soul (“He Kept Believin’: Journey’s Jonathan Cain on his wife, her role with Trump, and faith,” Tennessean, May 7, 2018). Paula delivered the invocation at Trump’s first inauguration. She claims to have had a vision in which God called her to preach and told her “that every time I opened my mouth and declared the Word of the Lord, there was a manifestation of His Spirit where people were either healed, delivered, or saved” (Shanye Lee, Holy Mavericks, pp. 107-128). Paula and her second husband, Randy White, were co-pastors of Without Walls International, a multi-location church in Tampa and Lakeland, Florida, but they divorced in 2007 and the operation folded. “A Senate report found that the couple had used tax-exempt ministry money to pay for a private jet, salaries to family members and nearly $900,000 for a waterfront mansion” (“Who Is Paula White-Cain?” Newsweek, Feb. 7, 2025). Paula traveled frequently to New York City where she had a Trump Tower condo and conducted services at New Life by Design Empowerment Center as a motivational speaker. In 2015, Paula married Jonathan Cain, the third marriage for both. After the wedding, she tweeted, “We’re so excited to share our wedding vows and celebration with our church family tonight.” Her “vows” must be something like, “I vow to remain married to you until I don’t want to remain married to you.” At Unleashed 2016, Jonathan advised women that “if he [your husband] likes to watch porn, watch porn with him.” At this foolish, wicked, unscriptural statement, Paula laughed (Tennessean, May 7, 2018). Paula White-Cain exemplifies American Christianity today, and this is the nation’s fundamental problem. The grace these people preach is not the true grace of God as described in Titus 2:11-14. It is the “live according to your own lusts” Christianity prophesied in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. Try bringing up the subject of modest dress or worldly music and see what happens. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
PRESIDENT OF TURKEY PRAYS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Leading prayers marking the end of Ramadan at the Grand Camica Mosque, Turkey’s largest, President Recep Erdogan prayed, “May Allah, for the sake of his name Al-Qahhar [All-Prevailing One], destroy and devastate Zionist Israel. And may we all, witnessing what is happening there [in the Gaza Strip], stay united, strong and resilient as brothers; may Allah keep our unity everlasting” (“May Allah Destroy Israel,” World Israel News, Mar. 30, 2025). In this objective, Erdogan joins Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other avowed enemies of Israel. In August 2012, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called Israel a “cancerous tumor” and said “the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel” (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 2, 2012). In 2024, Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, reaffirmed Tehran’s dedication to destroying Israel (Israel Today, July 9, 2024). The rage against Israel is setting the stage for the great Gog Magog prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39. Russia is the northern power that will lead an attack on Israel with a vast military alliance. Persia and Togarmah are listed as members of this alliance. Persia’s name was changed to Iran in 1935. As for Togarmah, “Both Christian and Jewish writers tell us that Togarmah refers to the Turkoman tribes of Central Asia--enemies of the Jews and anti-Christian all!” (Louis Bauman, Russian Events in the Light of Bible Prophecy). The threats will turn out to be hot air. The Gog Magog alliance will suffer destruction. Jehovah God says, “And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 38:22-23). This will mark the time of Israel’s repentance and conversion. See Ezekiel 39:7, 21, 22, 28, 29. (For a study on Gog Magog, see The Future According to the Bible, www.wayoflife.org.)
IRISH COURT SEIZES LIFE SAVINGS OF TEACHER DENYNG TRANS IDEOLOGY (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Irish Court,” PJMedia, Mar. 25, 2025: “Teacher Enoch Burke respectfully refused to use invented pronouns for a student who claimed to be transgender. Since he was teaching at a Christian school, the young Irishman believed that his Christian belief that there are only two sexes would be respected. He was wrong. The Church of Ireland has been silent as the Irish courts railroad Burke for his beliefs. And according to Burke, schools across Ireland are sexualizing children and demanding fidelity to the religion of wokeness. ... Burke is facing the complete robbery of his life and livelihood. Burke’s X account shared details. In one video, Burke explained that on payday, he received no salary and his bank account was raided. As he makes €750 weekly, and has to put aside a little at a time, the loss of his life savings--€40,000--is indeed a significant blow. ... he simply refused in 2022 to refer to a student as ‘they’ when his principal demanded it. The Church of Ireland has apparently gone as woke as its counterpart, the Church of England. Simply for refusing to violate his conscience and submit to transgender ideology, Burke said he subsequently spent 500 days in jail. ‘I refused to be compelled into promoting an anti-Christian belief in the [Christian] school where I was employed,’ the young teacher said. ... It is worth noting that the European Union, of which Ireland is a member, is currently planning to expedite its digital euro, which would make it even easier for the government to seize an individual’s money, even potentially without any trial. In Communist China, the government can immediately shut off digital funds for dissidents.”
MUSIC’S ROLE IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MORAL FIBER OF BLACK CULTURE (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The world’s music has played a major role in the destruction of the moral character of black churches and homes. We could address hip-hop, but let’s go farther back than that. Consider the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which is featured in the documentary Summer of Soul. The festival consisted of six concerts attended by 300,000. Called a “revolution,” it was driven by music. There was the mixing of every type of music: filthy blues and boogie woogie and rock (B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder) with Gospel (Mahalia Jackson “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”; Staple Singers “Help me, Lord Jesus”; Gladys Knight and the Pips - “We join our hands and said prayers before going on stage”). The Fifth Dimension mixed “Aquarius” from the filthy new age opera Hair with “Let the Sun Shine In,” a 1954 gospel song by Stuart Hamblin. The Edwin Hawkins Singers performed “O Happy Day” (“when Jesus washed my sins away; He taught me how to watch and pray and live rejoicing every day”). This is a jazzed up version of a godly hymn by Philip Doddridge 1755. The Edwin Hawkins Singers’ version consists of endless repetition of the chorus divorced from its rich theology; “O Happy Day” is repeated 21 times. The Harlem Cultural Festival was a merging of philosophy and religion. There was Black Marxism (Nina Simone shouted to the crowd, “Are you ready to smash White things, to burn things?”); Black Power (represented by the Black Panthers); Voodoo (there was a voodoo dance); Black Islam; Christianity; Jesse Jackson said, “I want us to bow our heads in prayer. It does not really matter who your God is, whether you call him Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, Elohiym, or Yahway” (Summer of Soul).
YOUR FAIL-SAFE HEART (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, January 16, 2025: “Your heart will beat some 100,000 times today. That’s over 36 million heartbeats a year and over 2.5 billion times in a 70-year lifespan. A healthy heart ticks along, producing beat after beat, whether we are awake or asleep. If we become more active, the heart increases its beating to meet the increasing needs of the rest of our body. Doctors tell us that it’s amazing how few of these beats are faulty. They say that it’s perfectly normal for even a healthy heart to produce an occasional irregular heartbeat. Sometimes an irregular heartbeat is noticeable, but most often it’s not. Doctors say that when your heart seems to skip a beat, it has really only beat prematurely. The premature beat leaves a pause before the next regular beat, making it feel as if your heart skipped a beat. The clockwork precision of the heart’s continuing beats is controlled by a built-in pacemaker. The pacemaker, called the sinus node, is a group of cells in the heart’s upper right chamber. However, research has shown that every cell in the heart is able to send the electrical signal needed to produce a heartbeat if the sinus node fails. Using highly complex computer models, medical researchers have only begun to understand within the past few years, the electrical action within the heart. The human heart is much more than a pump, as once believed. It is also a computer and regulator. Every beat of this wondrously designed biological machine glorifies the Creator Who made it!”
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).
PRESIDENT OF TURKEY PRAYS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Leading prayers marking the end of Ramadan at the Grand Camica Mosque, Turkey’s largest, President Recep Erdogan prayed, “May Allah, for the sake of his name Al-Qahhar [All-Prevailing One], destroy and devastate Zionist Israel. And may we all, witnessing what is happening there [in the Gaza Strip], stay united, strong and resilient as brothers; may Allah keep our unity everlasting” (“May Allah Destroy Israel,” World Israel News, Mar. 30, 2025). In this objective, Erdogan joins Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other avowed enemies of Israel. In August 2012, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called Israel a “cancerous tumor” and said “the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel” (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 2, 2012). In 2024, Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, reaffirmed Tehran’s dedication to destroying Israel (Israel Today, July 9, 2024). The rage against Israel is setting the stage for the great Gog Magog prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39. Russia is the northern power that will lead an attack on Israel with a vast military alliance. Persia and Togarmah are listed as members of this alliance. Persia’s name was changed to Iran in 1935. As for Togarmah, “Both Christian and Jewish writers tell us that Togarmah refers to the Turkoman tribes of Central Asia--enemies of the Jews and anti-Christian all!” (Louis Bauman, Russian Events in the Light of Bible Prophecy). The threats will turn out to be hot air. The Gog Magog alliance will suffer destruction. Jehovah God says, “And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 38:22-23). This will mark the time of Israel’s repentance and conversion. See Ezekiel 39:7, 21, 22, 28, 29. (For a study on Gog Magog, see The Future According to the Bible, www.wayoflife.org.)
IRISH COURT SEIZES LIFE SAVINGS OF TEACHER DENYNG TRANS IDEOLOGY (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Irish Court,” PJMedia, Mar. 25, 2025: “Teacher Enoch Burke respectfully refused to use invented pronouns for a student who claimed to be transgender. Since he was teaching at a Christian school, the young Irishman believed that his Christian belief that there are only two sexes would be respected. He was wrong. The Church of Ireland has been silent as the Irish courts railroad Burke for his beliefs. And according to Burke, schools across Ireland are sexualizing children and demanding fidelity to the religion of wokeness. ... Burke is facing the complete robbery of his life and livelihood. Burke’s X account shared details. In one video, Burke explained that on payday, he received no salary and his bank account was raided. As he makes €750 weekly, and has to put aside a little at a time, the loss of his life savings--€40,000--is indeed a significant blow. ... he simply refused in 2022 to refer to a student as ‘they’ when his principal demanded it. The Church of Ireland has apparently gone as woke as its counterpart, the Church of England. Simply for refusing to violate his conscience and submit to transgender ideology, Burke said he subsequently spent 500 days in jail. ‘I refused to be compelled into promoting an anti-Christian belief in the [Christian] school where I was employed,’ the young teacher said. ... It is worth noting that the European Union, of which Ireland is a member, is currently planning to expedite its digital euro, which would make it even easier for the government to seize an individual’s money, even potentially without any trial. In Communist China, the government can immediately shut off digital funds for dissidents.”
MUSIC’S ROLE IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MORAL FIBER OF BLACK CULTURE (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The world’s music has played a major role in the destruction of the moral character of black churches and homes. We could address hip-hop, but let’s go farther back than that. Consider the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which is featured in the documentary Summer of Soul. The festival consisted of six concerts attended by 300,000. Called a “revolution,” it was driven by music. There was the mixing of every type of music: filthy blues and boogie woogie and rock (B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder) with Gospel (Mahalia Jackson “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”; Staple Singers “Help me, Lord Jesus”; Gladys Knight and the Pips - “We join our hands and said prayers before going on stage”). The Fifth Dimension mixed “Aquarius” from the filthy new age opera Hair with “Let the Sun Shine In,” a 1954 gospel song by Stuart Hamblin. The Edwin Hawkins Singers performed “O Happy Day” (“when Jesus washed my sins away; He taught me how to watch and pray and live rejoicing every day”). This is a jazzed up version of a godly hymn by Philip Doddridge 1755. The Edwin Hawkins Singers’ version consists of endless repetition of the chorus divorced from its rich theology; “O Happy Day” is repeated 21 times. The Harlem Cultural Festival was a merging of philosophy and religion. There was Black Marxism (Nina Simone shouted to the crowd, “Are you ready to smash White things, to burn things?”); Black Power (represented by the Black Panthers); Voodoo (there was a voodoo dance); Black Islam; Christianity; Jesse Jackson said, “I want us to bow our heads in prayer. It does not really matter who your God is, whether you call him Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, Elohiym, or Yahway” (Summer of Soul).
YOUR FAIL-SAFE HEART (Friday Church News Notes, April 4, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, January 16, 2025: “Your heart will beat some 100,000 times today. That’s over 36 million heartbeats a year and over 2.5 billion times in a 70-year lifespan. A healthy heart ticks along, producing beat after beat, whether we are awake or asleep. If we become more active, the heart increases its beating to meet the increasing needs of the rest of our body. Doctors tell us that it’s amazing how few of these beats are faulty. They say that it’s perfectly normal for even a healthy heart to produce an occasional irregular heartbeat. Sometimes an irregular heartbeat is noticeable, but most often it’s not. Doctors say that when your heart seems to skip a beat, it has really only beat prematurely. The premature beat leaves a pause before the next regular beat, making it feel as if your heart skipped a beat. The clockwork precision of the heart’s continuing beats is controlled by a built-in pacemaker. The pacemaker, called the sinus node, is a group of cells in the heart’s upper right chamber. However, research has shown that every cell in the heart is able to send the electrical signal needed to produce a heartbeat if the sinus node fails. Using highly complex computer models, medical researchers have only begun to understand within the past few years, the electrical action within the heart. The human heart is much more than a pump, as once believed. It is also a computer and regulator. Every beat of this wondrously designed biological machine glorifies the Creator Who made it!”
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).
_____
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.
Way of Life Literature - www.wayoflife.org
copyright 2018 - Way of Life Literature
