Friday Church News Notes
July 25, 2025 - Volume 26, Issue 30
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.
Illustration: SAMAA DIGITAL
EMBRYO RESEARCH: NO FEAR OF GOD (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Researchers in the United Kingdom are creating babies from the DNA of three people. Eight such babies have been born in the last five years. The goal is supposedly to “spare them from mitochondrial disease,” but Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, warns, “In the creation of a three-parent baby, two other embryos are destroyed, which means two individual human beings have their lives ended to create a third” (“Creation of ‘3-parent babies,’” The Christian Post, July 20 2025). The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is requesting to “extend the point at which human embryos can legally be experimented on from 14 days to 22.” But Right to Live observes, “At around 22 days, the central nervous system is formed and by 28 days, the developing heart can sometimes be seen beating, the brain has begun to develop, and a baby’s eyes, ears and nose have begun to emerge.” In Psalm 139, the prophet David described the formation of the baby in the womb as a personal act of God and medical researchers would do well to take heed. “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Ps. 139:14-16).
AMERICA THE REPROACH (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 24:34). Next year will be America’s 250th anniversary, and there will doubtless be parades and fireworks and parties and speeches, but the America of the 21st century is nothing to celebrate if one is looking at things through a biblical lens. America is a sinful nation, and sin is a reproach, and a reproach is nothing to celebrate. The nations have a Judge, who is the righteous God, and He judges them on the basis of righteousness. He hates sin and will not overlook it. There was a time when America’s laws and judicial system and the principles that guided men’s daily lives were greatly influenced by the Bible. Speaking generally, “old America” was a nation of reverence to God, of Bible-believing churches, of gospel preaching, of sermons, of thanksgiving, of law and order, of low crime, of peaceful neighborhoods, of benevolence, of neighborly kindness. The government was a minister of God to bless the good and “to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Ro. 13:3-4). But America has become a nation of irreverence, blasphemy, apostate churches, worldly churches, injustice, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, lovers of money, lovers of moral perversion, fornicators, adulterers, effeminate, unthankful, unholy, boasters, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, liars, trucebreakers, murderers of babies, incontinent, despisers of those that are good, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. America’s sin is great, and the reproach is great. America is a nation of massive debt. Its money is corrupted by inflation. It is visited by an unending deluge of billion dollar disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires. Its cities are violent, dangerous, and crime-ridden. Its public schools squander outrageous sums of money while producing ignorant citizens steeped in ungodliness and humanistic philosophy. Its enemies are multiplying and increasing in power. Politically, America is engaged in a civil war. How can America be made great again without addressing the sin issue, and how can politics address the sin issue? Foundationally, the sin issue is an issue of the church and the home. The inner city problems, the education problems, the crime problems, the economic problems, they can be addressed fundamentally only at the level of the church and home. God’s redeemed people need to focus on the fundamentals and let the unredeemed focus on politics.
N.T. WRIGHT’S NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - N.T. (Tom) Wright, an influential Anglican theologian, defends the historicity of Jesus against liberal views, but all considered he is no friend of the truth. He does not hold the Bible to be the infallible Word of God which is warning enough for those who have ears to hear. To deny the infallibility of biblical inspiration is a damnable heresy. Wright’s “new perspective on Paul” in the book What Saint Paul Really Said is a heretical leaven that has confused many and resulted in the overthrow of the faith of some. Wright bases his “new perspective” on the teachings of rank heretics such as Albert Schweitzer. Wright audaciously claims that the old Protestant and Baptist confessions on justification were wrong. Wright claims that the Jews of Paul’s day actually believed in salvation by grace alone and did not believe in works justification and Paul was not dealing with how to be right with God but “how you define the people of God.” If you think those things make no sense in light of the clear teaching of Scripture, you are right, but multitudes of professing Christians are not born again, do not have the light of the Spirit, are not effectual students of Scripture, and are easy prey for the heresies that proliferate in these last days. Phil Johnson warns, “[W]herever you find the influence of N.T. Wright and the New Perspective, you will find the historic formulations of the doctrine of justification under fire. Wherever you find a proponent of the New Perspective on Paul, you will find a critic of the classic Protestant stance on sola fide” (“What’s Wrong with Wright,” ligonier.org). Johnson also warns that Wright’s New Perspective leads to “a debate over the issue of whether Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was actually a penal substitution.” This is a clear and loud warning of the evil of Wright’s influence, for the Pauline (biblical) doctrine of justification, which is the doctrine of “penal substitution,” is the very gospel itself, which is salvation by grace alone through faith alone without works on the basis of Christ’s propitiatory blood atonement. This is plainly and unquestioningly taught in Acts 15:7-9; Romans 3:19-28; Romans 4:1-6; Galatians 3; Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 3:4-8; among other Scriptures. That Christ’s sacrifice was substitutionary and penal (referring to punishment required by the law) is plainly taught in Isaiah 53; Romans 3:25; 4:25; 5:6, 8, 10; 6:10; 8:32; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 18, 19, 21; Galatians 2:20; 3:13; 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:7; 2:13, 16; 5:2, 25; Colossians 1:14, 20-22; 2:14; 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10; 1 Timothy 2:6; Titus 2:14; Hebrews 7:27; 9:12, 15, 26, 28; 10:12; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 2:24; 3:18; 1 John 2:2; 3:16; 4:10; Revelation 1:5; 5:9. There can be no legitimate debate on these things. N.T. Wright is a clever heretic and the wise will mark and avoid him in obedience to Romans 16:17-18.
N.T. WRIGHT UNBIBLICAL COUNSEL (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - N.T. (Tom) Wright, an influential Anglican theologian, refused to tell a self-identified trans-woman” that she needs to repent. In the podcast, Ask N.T. Wright Anything, May 18, a caller, who said she is a “lover of Christ” who has undergone surgery and been living as a “man” for 10 years, asked Wright, “What would the Bible have to say to someone in my case?” Wright refused to speak plainly about the Bible’s command to repent of sin. He said, “God meets us where we are and loves us as we are,” and that is true, of course, but God demands repentance in no uncertain terms. “... except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5; see also Luke 24:47; Acts 17:20; 20:21; 26:20; 2 Peter 3:9). The Bible tells the woman to repent of her sin in rejecting what God made her (a woman), of her capitulation to the fallen culture’s false philosophies, of living by her feelings rather than by divine truth, of her sinful uncleanness and lusts. Wright said in a case such as this woman’s there should not be “condemnation” and saying, “Oh, you’re a sinner; you shouldn’t be doing this, that, or the other.” But the Bible does condemn sin and does command sinners that they shouldn’t be doing this, that, or the other! The law of God is the necessary schoolmaster to show men their sin and God’s holiness and justice and to bring them to Christ for salvation (Galatians 3:24). Wright should have warned the woman that she is deceived if she thinks that she “loves God,” because Scripture says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). On June 3, in an interview on the Premiere Unbelievable podcast, Wright discussed the late Marcus Borg, who denied Christ’s deity and bodily resurrection. Wright said Borg was “a muddled Christian,” but a Christian nonetheless. In fact, Paul addressed this matter in his epistles. In 1 Corinthians 15, he said the bodily resurrection of Christ is an essential part of the gospel of salvation and it was attested by hundreds of eyewitnesses. Paul warned that some were saying even then “there is no resurrection of the dead” and he treated this issue as damnable heresy. He called such people “fools” and said, “if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Co. 15:17, 36). He said those who deny the resurrection “have not the knowledge of God” (1 Co. 15:34). In 2 Timothy 2:16-18, Paul addressed some in his day who were spiritualizing the resurrection, which is what Borg did, and Paul said such err concerning the truth and “overthrow the faith of some.” Beware of “theologians” who do not speak with the same clarity and forthrightness as Scripture!
WHAT YOU CAN LOSE THROUGH PORNOGRAPHY (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The strange woman of Proverbs leads to great loss. “Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly” (Proverbs 5:8-14). An article in the Baptist Press that described two ministers who became addicted to pornography, concluded with these words: “Both of the guys I’m dealing with right now, here’s what they’ve lost: They’ve lost their marriage. They’ve lost their job. They lost a lot of friends in the sense it will never be the same. They’ve lost custody of their children and now they are both doing something that they don’t really want to do or feel called to do, and they’re just trying to get by” (“Flood of Pornography Breaching the Church,” Baptist Press, Jul. 6, 2007). (We recommend The Pornographic Age and Victory in Christ which is both a book and a Bible course, www.wayoflife.org.)
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).
AMERICA THE REPROACH (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 24:34). Next year will be America’s 250th anniversary, and there will doubtless be parades and fireworks and parties and speeches, but the America of the 21st century is nothing to celebrate if one is looking at things through a biblical lens. America is a sinful nation, and sin is a reproach, and a reproach is nothing to celebrate. The nations have a Judge, who is the righteous God, and He judges them on the basis of righteousness. He hates sin and will not overlook it. There was a time when America’s laws and judicial system and the principles that guided men’s daily lives were greatly influenced by the Bible. Speaking generally, “old America” was a nation of reverence to God, of Bible-believing churches, of gospel preaching, of sermons, of thanksgiving, of law and order, of low crime, of peaceful neighborhoods, of benevolence, of neighborly kindness. The government was a minister of God to bless the good and “to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Ro. 13:3-4). But America has become a nation of irreverence, blasphemy, apostate churches, worldly churches, injustice, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, lovers of money, lovers of moral perversion, fornicators, adulterers, effeminate, unthankful, unholy, boasters, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, liars, trucebreakers, murderers of babies, incontinent, despisers of those that are good, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. America’s sin is great, and the reproach is great. America is a nation of massive debt. Its money is corrupted by inflation. It is visited by an unending deluge of billion dollar disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires. Its cities are violent, dangerous, and crime-ridden. Its public schools squander outrageous sums of money while producing ignorant citizens steeped in ungodliness and humanistic philosophy. Its enemies are multiplying and increasing in power. Politically, America is engaged in a civil war. How can America be made great again without addressing the sin issue, and how can politics address the sin issue? Foundationally, the sin issue is an issue of the church and the home. The inner city problems, the education problems, the crime problems, the economic problems, they can be addressed fundamentally only at the level of the church and home. God’s redeemed people need to focus on the fundamentals and let the unredeemed focus on politics.
N.T. WRIGHT’S NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - N.T. (Tom) Wright, an influential Anglican theologian, defends the historicity of Jesus against liberal views, but all considered he is no friend of the truth. He does not hold the Bible to be the infallible Word of God which is warning enough for those who have ears to hear. To deny the infallibility of biblical inspiration is a damnable heresy. Wright’s “new perspective on Paul” in the book What Saint Paul Really Said is a heretical leaven that has confused many and resulted in the overthrow of the faith of some. Wright bases his “new perspective” on the teachings of rank heretics such as Albert Schweitzer. Wright audaciously claims that the old Protestant and Baptist confessions on justification were wrong. Wright claims that the Jews of Paul’s day actually believed in salvation by grace alone and did not believe in works justification and Paul was not dealing with how to be right with God but “how you define the people of God.” If you think those things make no sense in light of the clear teaching of Scripture, you are right, but multitudes of professing Christians are not born again, do not have the light of the Spirit, are not effectual students of Scripture, and are easy prey for the heresies that proliferate in these last days. Phil Johnson warns, “[W]herever you find the influence of N.T. Wright and the New Perspective, you will find the historic formulations of the doctrine of justification under fire. Wherever you find a proponent of the New Perspective on Paul, you will find a critic of the classic Protestant stance on sola fide” (“What’s Wrong with Wright,” ligonier.org). Johnson also warns that Wright’s New Perspective leads to “a debate over the issue of whether Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was actually a penal substitution.” This is a clear and loud warning of the evil of Wright’s influence, for the Pauline (biblical) doctrine of justification, which is the doctrine of “penal substitution,” is the very gospel itself, which is salvation by grace alone through faith alone without works on the basis of Christ’s propitiatory blood atonement. This is plainly and unquestioningly taught in Acts 15:7-9; Romans 3:19-28; Romans 4:1-6; Galatians 3; Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 3:4-8; among other Scriptures. That Christ’s sacrifice was substitutionary and penal (referring to punishment required by the law) is plainly taught in Isaiah 53; Romans 3:25; 4:25; 5:6, 8, 10; 6:10; 8:32; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 18, 19, 21; Galatians 2:20; 3:13; 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:7; 2:13, 16; 5:2, 25; Colossians 1:14, 20-22; 2:14; 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10; 1 Timothy 2:6; Titus 2:14; Hebrews 7:27; 9:12, 15, 26, 28; 10:12; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 2:24; 3:18; 1 John 2:2; 3:16; 4:10; Revelation 1:5; 5:9. There can be no legitimate debate on these things. N.T. Wright is a clever heretic and the wise will mark and avoid him in obedience to Romans 16:17-18.
N.T. WRIGHT UNBIBLICAL COUNSEL (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - N.T. (Tom) Wright, an influential Anglican theologian, refused to tell a self-identified trans-woman” that she needs to repent. In the podcast, Ask N.T. Wright Anything, May 18, a caller, who said she is a “lover of Christ” who has undergone surgery and been living as a “man” for 10 years, asked Wright, “What would the Bible have to say to someone in my case?” Wright refused to speak plainly about the Bible’s command to repent of sin. He said, “God meets us where we are and loves us as we are,” and that is true, of course, but God demands repentance in no uncertain terms. “... except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5; see also Luke 24:47; Acts 17:20; 20:21; 26:20; 2 Peter 3:9). The Bible tells the woman to repent of her sin in rejecting what God made her (a woman), of her capitulation to the fallen culture’s false philosophies, of living by her feelings rather than by divine truth, of her sinful uncleanness and lusts. Wright said in a case such as this woman’s there should not be “condemnation” and saying, “Oh, you’re a sinner; you shouldn’t be doing this, that, or the other.” But the Bible does condemn sin and does command sinners that they shouldn’t be doing this, that, or the other! The law of God is the necessary schoolmaster to show men their sin and God’s holiness and justice and to bring them to Christ for salvation (Galatians 3:24). Wright should have warned the woman that she is deceived if she thinks that she “loves God,” because Scripture says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). On June 3, in an interview on the Premiere Unbelievable podcast, Wright discussed the late Marcus Borg, who denied Christ’s deity and bodily resurrection. Wright said Borg was “a muddled Christian,” but a Christian nonetheless. In fact, Paul addressed this matter in his epistles. In 1 Corinthians 15, he said the bodily resurrection of Christ is an essential part of the gospel of salvation and it was attested by hundreds of eyewitnesses. Paul warned that some were saying even then “there is no resurrection of the dead” and he treated this issue as damnable heresy. He called such people “fools” and said, “if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Co. 15:17, 36). He said those who deny the resurrection “have not the knowledge of God” (1 Co. 15:34). In 2 Timothy 2:16-18, Paul addressed some in his day who were spiritualizing the resurrection, which is what Borg did, and Paul said such err concerning the truth and “overthrow the faith of some.” Beware of “theologians” who do not speak with the same clarity and forthrightness as Scripture!
WHAT YOU CAN LOSE THROUGH PORNOGRAPHY (Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The strange woman of Proverbs leads to great loss. “Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly” (Proverbs 5:8-14). An article in the Baptist Press that described two ministers who became addicted to pornography, concluded with these words: “Both of the guys I’m dealing with right now, here’s what they’ve lost: They’ve lost their marriage. They’ve lost their job. They lost a lot of friends in the sense it will never be the same. They’ve lost custody of their children and now they are both doing something that they don’t really want to do or feel called to do, and they’re just trying to get by” (“Flood of Pornography Breaching the Church,” Baptist Press, Jul. 6, 2007). (We recommend The Pornographic Age and Victory in Christ which is both a book and a Bible course, www.wayoflife.org.)
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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