Friday Church News Notes
June 13, 2025 - Volume 26, Issue 24
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.
Screenshot from anglicanmainstream.org
DOWN SYNDROME ABORTIONS (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Scotland’s shame,” The Bridgehead, May 30, 2025: “According to a 2013 study, almost 99 percent of people with Down syndrome report being happy with their lives; 96 percent like how they look; 97 percent like who they are. While rates of mental illness, loneliness, and chronic misery are at all-time highs across many Western countries, people with Down syndrome are a happy exception. Despite that, babies with Down syndrome are being systematically targeted and killed in the womb specifically because they have Down syndrome. ... Every few years, there is another ugly story about the unseen and ongoing prenatal genocide of people with Down syndrome. In 2017, it was the news that Down syndrome has ‘almost disappeared’ in Iceland. In 2019, only 18 children with Down syndrome were born. In Norway earlier this year, parents spoke out against the pressure to abort babies with a Down syndrome diagnosis. This week, a new report indicated that Scotland has seen ‘a dramatic rise in abortions involving Down syndrome diagnoses, with government figures showing an 82% increase since 2021.’ ... According to Lynn Murray of the advocacy group Don’t Screen Us Out, the increase can be largely attributed to the roll-out of ‘non-invasive prenatal tests’ known as NIPT, which has made it easier to detect Down syndrome. ... In the United Kingdom, abortion is illegal after 24 weeks--unless the child is diagnosed with Down syndrome, in which case it is permitted up until birth. Healthy baby boys and girls with Down syndrome can be decapitated, dismembered, and disemboweled long past the point where they are capable of feeling excruciating pain simply because they have Down syndrome. ... As Charlotte Helen Fien once observed: ‘You can try to kill off everyone with Down syndrome by using abortion, but you won’t be any closer to a perfect society. You will just be closer to a cruel, heartless one.’ She’s right. We’re already there.”
MUSLIM TERRORIST ATTACKS IN EUROPE 2024-2025 (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The European Conservative recently published a list of 33 separate Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe and England for March 2024 to May 2025 (“A Timeline of Evil,” May 28, 2025). In some cases, the attacks were thwarted, but at least 437 people were injured and 22 killed in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and England. A European Conservative report on the same day documented that “The EU Is Officially Becoming an Anti-Israel Bloc.” Why? It makes no sense from a practical standpoint. It isn’t the Jews who are causing mayhem in Europe, beating, stabbing, shooting, burning, raping, ramming automobiles into shopping crowds. In Gaza, Israel is simply trying to defend its tiny nation from the vicious enemies that have vowed her absolute destruction. On a practical level, Israel’s only good choice is to try to root out these enemies from their hiding places in schools and hospitals and take control of Gaza, which is her God-given land. So why is Europe “officially becoming an anti-Israel bloc?” Because most of Europe, historically, has been anti-Israel, and today Europe is at war with God as never before. Europe is the bastion of apostate Christianity, Humanism, Existentialism, Darwinism, Marxism, Mohammedanism, atheism, agnosticism, and every other anti-God, anti-Bible ism on the face of the earth. It is a fulfillment of Psalm 2. While Israel today is spiritually dead, Israel is still God’s chosen people and God’s promises will be fulfilled to a remnant who will repent in the last days, perhaps in the very near future. After the Rapture of redeemed New Testament saints, the Antichrist will rise out of Europe as a peace superman, but it will be a lie. Europe and Israel’s future is described in great detail in Bible prophecies. “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins” (Romans 11:25-27).
NEITHER CALVINIST NOR ARMINIAN (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - We are convinced that biblical theology is neither Calvinist nor Arminian. We refuse to be forced to make a choice between John Calvin or James Arminius. Both were fallible men who attempted to describe biblical truth in a systematic theology. Both rejected biblical baptism and held the gross heresy of infant baptism. Neither man understood the New Testament church. Neither understood Bible prophecy. We have no obligation to follow either of these men. The only infallible systematic theology is the Bible itself. We believe in the everlasting consolation of the born again believer because this is what the Bible teaches, not because it is what John Calvin believed. We believe that Christ died to make it possible for all men to be saved and that all men can be saved, because that is what the Bible teaches, not because it is what James Arminius taught. We believe that God is sovereign and “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” because the Bible teaches it, and we praise Him for it, and we believe in the wonderful doctrines of election and predestination, but we don’t believe what John Calvin taught as a disciple of the fifth century heretic Augustine. Calvinists claim for themselves the right to examine Calvinism and to define it in a multitude of ways. We claim for ourselves the same right, and we reject all of it.
CHRISTIANS ARRESTED FOR SIGNS SAYING “CHILDREN ARE NEVER BORN IN THE WRONG BODY” (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pro-Life Christians Arrested,” LifeNews, June 9, 2025: “Yesterday in Brussels, Belgian police arrested Lois McLatchie Miller, a Senior Legal Communications Officer with ADF International, and Billboard Chris, a Canadian child protection advocate, for peacefully holding a sign that read: ‘Children are never born in the wrong body.’ An angry mob surrounded them, yet it was the peaceful pair--not the agitators--who police arrested. They were transported to separate police stations, strip-searched, and detained for several hours. Ultimately, no charges were filed. But even after admitting no crime had been committed, police announced that the signs they had carried--signs peacefully expressing a viewpoint--would be destroyed. Let that sink in: No charges. No conviction. But property confiscated and destroyed by the government--all for the ‘crime’ of expressing an inconvenient truth in public. This happened in Brussels--the very heart of the European Union, not Beijing. In Europe, not North Korea. And it should alarm every American--especially Christians and pro-life advocates. This is just the latest episode in a disturbing trend sweeping Western Europe. Peaceful, moral, fact-based speech is being punished under the guise of public order or tolerance.”
A NATION’S RESPONSE TO GOD IS THE REALLY DETERMINING FACTOR IN ITS HISTORY AND DESTINY (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book, Studies on Chronicles: “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 of time 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!” (J. Sidlow Baxter).
ALL PURPOSE FOOT/UNDERWATER SUPER GLUE (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, May 26, 2025: “Nothing is more frustrating than glue that refuses to stick. And nothing is harder on an adhesive's ability to stick than water. Water can prevent adhesives from solidly touching the surfaces that are to adhere. Freezing and thawing temperatures can force glued surfaces apart. Yet, biological adhesives constantly work without fail in continual contact with water. The mussel is the champion in the creation and use of biological adhesives. When a mussel finds a suitable spot, it extends its all-purpose foot. The foot, which is like a rubber plunger, searches the surface until it finds the exact spot that will make the best bond. The foot then cleans the glue point. Next, the foot presses to the surface and, as the plunger-shaped foot flattens, water is pumped out. The mussel then lifts the center of its ‘plunger' and creates a small vacuum. Now the ingredients for its adhesive are pumped down through the foot and into the vacuum. This material creates a foamy foundation for the individual glue threads. The glue itself is made of several proteins. They are mixed in various ratios to provide just the right amount of strength, flexibility and resistance to compression needed for each unique anchoring spot. Some of these proteins are very unusual in structure. Scientists suspect that they change their properties in response to changing conditions--what scientists call a ‘smart’ material. The mussel is not only a wonder of design, but a sophisticated chemist as well. Modern science is still trying to learn what the Creator has taught the mussel about glue. Ref: Amato, Ivan, ‘Stuck on mussels,’ Science News, v. 139.”
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).
MUSLIM TERRORIST ATTACKS IN EUROPE 2024-2025 (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The European Conservative recently published a list of 33 separate Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe and England for March 2024 to May 2025 (“A Timeline of Evil,” May 28, 2025). In some cases, the attacks were thwarted, but at least 437 people were injured and 22 killed in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and England. A European Conservative report on the same day documented that “The EU Is Officially Becoming an Anti-Israel Bloc.” Why? It makes no sense from a practical standpoint. It isn’t the Jews who are causing mayhem in Europe, beating, stabbing, shooting, burning, raping, ramming automobiles into shopping crowds. In Gaza, Israel is simply trying to defend its tiny nation from the vicious enemies that have vowed her absolute destruction. On a practical level, Israel’s only good choice is to try to root out these enemies from their hiding places in schools and hospitals and take control of Gaza, which is her God-given land. So why is Europe “officially becoming an anti-Israel bloc?” Because most of Europe, historically, has been anti-Israel, and today Europe is at war with God as never before. Europe is the bastion of apostate Christianity, Humanism, Existentialism, Darwinism, Marxism, Mohammedanism, atheism, agnosticism, and every other anti-God, anti-Bible ism on the face of the earth. It is a fulfillment of Psalm 2. While Israel today is spiritually dead, Israel is still God’s chosen people and God’s promises will be fulfilled to a remnant who will repent in the last days, perhaps in the very near future. After the Rapture of redeemed New Testament saints, the Antichrist will rise out of Europe as a peace superman, but it will be a lie. Europe and Israel’s future is described in great detail in Bible prophecies. “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins” (Romans 11:25-27).
NEITHER CALVINIST NOR ARMINIAN (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - We are convinced that biblical theology is neither Calvinist nor Arminian. We refuse to be forced to make a choice between John Calvin or James Arminius. Both were fallible men who attempted to describe biblical truth in a systematic theology. Both rejected biblical baptism and held the gross heresy of infant baptism. Neither man understood the New Testament church. Neither understood Bible prophecy. We have no obligation to follow either of these men. The only infallible systematic theology is the Bible itself. We believe in the everlasting consolation of the born again believer because this is what the Bible teaches, not because it is what John Calvin believed. We believe that Christ died to make it possible for all men to be saved and that all men can be saved, because that is what the Bible teaches, not because it is what James Arminius taught. We believe that God is sovereign and “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” because the Bible teaches it, and we praise Him for it, and we believe in the wonderful doctrines of election and predestination, but we don’t believe what John Calvin taught as a disciple of the fifth century heretic Augustine. Calvinists claim for themselves the right to examine Calvinism and to define it in a multitude of ways. We claim for ourselves the same right, and we reject all of it.
CHRISTIANS ARRESTED FOR SIGNS SAYING “CHILDREN ARE NEVER BORN IN THE WRONG BODY” (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pro-Life Christians Arrested,” LifeNews, June 9, 2025: “Yesterday in Brussels, Belgian police arrested Lois McLatchie Miller, a Senior Legal Communications Officer with ADF International, and Billboard Chris, a Canadian child protection advocate, for peacefully holding a sign that read: ‘Children are never born in the wrong body.’ An angry mob surrounded them, yet it was the peaceful pair--not the agitators--who police arrested. They were transported to separate police stations, strip-searched, and detained for several hours. Ultimately, no charges were filed. But even after admitting no crime had been committed, police announced that the signs they had carried--signs peacefully expressing a viewpoint--would be destroyed. Let that sink in: No charges. No conviction. But property confiscated and destroyed by the government--all for the ‘crime’ of expressing an inconvenient truth in public. This happened in Brussels--the very heart of the European Union, not Beijing. In Europe, not North Korea. And it should alarm every American--especially Christians and pro-life advocates. This is just the latest episode in a disturbing trend sweeping Western Europe. Peaceful, moral, fact-based speech is being punished under the guise of public order or tolerance.”
A NATION’S RESPONSE TO GOD IS THE REALLY DETERMINING FACTOR IN ITS HISTORY AND DESTINY (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book, Studies on Chronicles: “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 of time 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!” (J. Sidlow Baxter).
ALL PURPOSE FOOT/UNDERWATER SUPER GLUE (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, May 26, 2025: “Nothing is more frustrating than glue that refuses to stick. And nothing is harder on an adhesive's ability to stick than water. Water can prevent adhesives from solidly touching the surfaces that are to adhere. Freezing and thawing temperatures can force glued surfaces apart. Yet, biological adhesives constantly work without fail in continual contact with water. The mussel is the champion in the creation and use of biological adhesives. When a mussel finds a suitable spot, it extends its all-purpose foot. The foot, which is like a rubber plunger, searches the surface until it finds the exact spot that will make the best bond. The foot then cleans the glue point. Next, the foot presses to the surface and, as the plunger-shaped foot flattens, water is pumped out. The mussel then lifts the center of its ‘plunger' and creates a small vacuum. Now the ingredients for its adhesive are pumped down through the foot and into the vacuum. This material creates a foamy foundation for the individual glue threads. The glue itself is made of several proteins. They are mixed in various ratios to provide just the right amount of strength, flexibility and resistance to compression needed for each unique anchoring spot. Some of these proteins are very unusual in structure. Scientists suspect that they change their properties in response to changing conditions--what scientists call a ‘smart’ material. The mussel is not only a wonder of design, but a sophisticated chemist as well. Modern science is still trying to learn what the Creator has taught the mussel about glue. Ref: Amato, Ivan, ‘Stuck on mussels,’ Science News, v. 139.”
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, BUT 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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