Friday Church News Notes
December 26, 2025 - Volume 26, Issue 52
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.
ELON MUSK PREDICTS AI WILL CREATE “UNIVERSAL HIGH INCOME” (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, speculated in a post on X this month that “there will be no poverty in the future and so no need to save money. There will be universal high income.” In May 2024, he said, “In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job. There will be universal high income--and not universal basic income--universal high income. There’ll be no shortage of goods or services. The question will really be one of meaning, of how--if a computer can do, and the robots can do everything better than you--does your life have meaning?” (“Musk predicts,” Fox Business, Dec. 17, 2025). Musk is the head of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X (formerly Twitter). His thinking reminds us that regardless of how intelligent and highly placed a man is, he is ignorant of the most fundamental issues of life apart from divine revelation in Scripture. The Bible describes man’s future in great detail, and there will be no universal high income and abundance of goods until Christ’s kingdom. In fact, the Bible describes a time of trouble greater than any the world has yet experienced, including billions dying from war, famine, and pestilence. Christ called it “the great tribulation.” See Isaiah 2:8-22; Matthew 15:15-24; Revelation 6, 8, 9, 16. As for meaning in life, it is only found by believing that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life as He said (John 14:6). He is the Creator and sustainer of life. Man’s independent existence apart from God is a lie that was foisted by Satan in the Garden of Eden. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:20). Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation from the terrible dilemma of sin and consequent eternal judgment. By faith in Jesus Christ, man finds not only true meaning in life, but life itself. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
AMERICAN PASTORS TARGETED BY COORDINATED HATE CAMPAIGN FOR SUPPORTING ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “American Pastors,” Israel365News, Dec. 12, 2025: “A delegation of more than 1,000 clergy and religious leaders, organized by evangelical leader Mike Evans with the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was met almost immediately with coordinated harassment on social media. Within 24 hours of their departure, many found their accounts flooded with identical hostile messages and accusations aimed at undermining their support for Israel’s defense against Hamas terrorism. This outpouring of online hate illustrates the broader hostility toward open support for Israel that has taken hold in parts of U.S. public discourse in 2025. ... ‘No coordinated digital campaign will silence those who stand for truth,’ said Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem ... [T]ens of millions of online users were exposed to misleading narratives circulating around the delegation. ... The following are [some of] the key accusations circulating online ... 1. Israel is committing genocide. 2. Netanyahu is a war criminal. 3. Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Qatar. 4. Palestine deserves immediate recognition as a state. 5. Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the disputed territories. 6. Israel assassinated Charlie Kirk.” The report “An Army of Christian Watchmen for Israel,” Dec. 28, Israel365News, stated: “It was the largest delegation of its kind ever to arrive in Israel, composed of approximately one thousand influential pastors, faith leaders, and opinion-shapers from the United States. Among them were television network owners, leading media figures, and digital influencers with millions of followers, who came to witness Israel’s reality firsthand during this challenging time. ... Dr. Mike Evans, founder of the summit, announced an ambitious goal to bring 10,000 ambassadors over the next 36 months, as part of an international vision to strengthen global support for Israel.”
WHAT ARE BIBLE BELIEVERS TO MAKE OF ISRAEL? (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Jews and the nation Israel are the subject of global controversies. The bottom line for the born again child of God is that he must measure these things through the lens of God’s Word. Israel owns that land by divine right (1 Chronicles 16:13-18; Deuteronomy 30:1-5), but Israel today is in rebellion to God and is back in the land in preparation to build the third temple and to make a covenant with the Antichrist according to Daniel 9:27 and other prophecies. Israel is fulfilling Ezekiel 37:1-14. She is back in the land but has no breath (verse 8), meaning she is spiritually dead. Most Jews care nothing for the Word of God, being atheists and agnostics and humanists and moral perverts (e.g., Tel Aviv’s annual gay rights party), while the religious ones exalt their vain tradition over Scripture. Jesus fulfilled every prophecy of the suffering Messiah, but Israel rejected Him and has wandered in spiritual darkness ever since. The Jew, like the Gentile, needs the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only Lord and Saviour. All have sinned; none are righteous by God’s standard; all need to be born again (Romans 3; John 3). That is what pastors must focus on. Christians who support Israel but do not reprove Israel for her sin against God and proclaim Jesus as the Christ and instruct Israel to be born again are as apostate as Israel is. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17). Romans 11:25-27 is another key to understanding the prophetic times in which we live. “Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” This refers to the worldwide preaching of the gospel of Christ and the ingathering of believers from the nations. When God’s plan for the church age is completed, “all Israel shall be saved.” Israel will repent and submit to Jesus as the Christ and be converted. Christ will return and establish His global kingdom with its headquarters in a glorified Jerusalem. The New Covenant will be fulfilled. This is the subject of a great many prophecies, such as Deuteronomy 30:1-10; Psalm 72; Isaiah 2:1-5; 52:6-12; Jeremiah 31:23-37; 33:7-26; Zechariah 12:8-14; 14:1-21.
ALL OF FRANCE IS A NO-GO ZONE (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “All of France,” World Israel News, Dec. 17, 2025: “Every year huge crowds gather in Paris at the Champs-Élysées to ring in the new year with fireworks and concerts. Much like the New Year’s Eve parties in Times Square in New York City, the joyous festivities are a key link in the chain of worldwide celebrations of the year to come. No more. New Year’s has been canceled in Paris. The New Year’s Eve concert was pre-recorded with actors pretending to be the audience. The fireworks will appear on TV. And there will be no one to count the countdown because the Champs-Élysées has become France’s latest ‘no-go zone’. Ten years ago, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris had threatened to sue FOX News for [supposedly] correctly reporting that there were ‘no-go-zones’ in Paris. ‘The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honour of Paris has been prejudiced,’ she fumed. Now, Mayor Hidalgo decided that even with the 6,000 police officers that had been deployed to secure the Paris event last year, the Champs-Élysées could not be protected against Islam. It began when Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned that there was a ‘very high’ terrorist threat aimed at Christmas. ‘Christmas markets are targets of terrorist organizations,’ he revealed and cited the previous Strasbourg Christmas market attack in which an Algerian Muslim terrorist with 27 previous convictions had opened fire, killing 5 people and wounding 11 more, and the Berlin Christmas market attack in which a Tunisian Muslim refugee drove a truck into the market killing 11 and wounding 56 people as examples of possible incoming attacks. ... France recently marked the 10th anniversary of the 2015 Paris attacks during which Islamic terrorists tried to blow up a soccer stadium, massacred people in the Bataclan theater and attacked local cafes in an orgy of bloodshed killing 130 people and wounding over 400 more.”
IN SALVATION, 99% CHRIST DOESN’T WORK (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4). “Christ is the entire bridge; on him you may cross safely. But if only one foot of that bridge is made of something else, the whole bridge collapses. This is a case of either all or none; ninety-nine percent Christ plus one percent anything else is just as fatal as no percent of Christ” (Robert Lenski).
BACTERIA’S EYES AND EARS (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, November 28, 2025: “Modern researchers are learning that bacteria are not a simple form of life. Rather, a bacterium is a tremendously complex creature that thinks. Scientists have discovered that bacteria actually have molecule-sized sensors. Some of these sensors act as eyes, while others act as ears. A dozen other proteins have been discovered that receive the information gathered by the bacteria's ‘eyes’ and ‘ears.’ The collected information is then processed the same way your brain gathers and makes sense of information. Bacteria have specialized senses and a brain. In fact, bacteria are better at sensing some things than you and I are. A bacterium can, for example, sense the difference between two parts and one part in 10,000. This is the same as if you could tell the difference between one jar with 9,999 pennies and another jar with 10,000 pennies! The idea that bacteria are just ‘simple’ forms of life comes from evolution. Growing research is showing that even one-celled creatures are not simple at all. Think of it. Every single-celled bacterium must accomplish, within that one cell, all the tasks we accomplish using the trillions of cells in our bodies. Eating, digestion, metabolism, waste removal, reproduction--and even thinking--all take place within a single cell! There is no such thing as a simple form of life. Science certainly argues against the idea that life began by accident. What science is learning urges us to think about the wise and thoughtful Creator Who made us! Ref: Pietsch, Paul. ‘The mind of a microbe,’ Science Digest.”
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).
AMERICAN PASTORS TARGETED BY COORDINATED HATE CAMPAIGN FOR SUPPORTING ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “American Pastors,” Israel365News, Dec. 12, 2025: “A delegation of more than 1,000 clergy and religious leaders, organized by evangelical leader Mike Evans with the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was met almost immediately with coordinated harassment on social media. Within 24 hours of their departure, many found their accounts flooded with identical hostile messages and accusations aimed at undermining their support for Israel’s defense against Hamas terrorism. This outpouring of online hate illustrates the broader hostility toward open support for Israel that has taken hold in parts of U.S. public discourse in 2025. ... ‘No coordinated digital campaign will silence those who stand for truth,’ said Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem ... [T]ens of millions of online users were exposed to misleading narratives circulating around the delegation. ... The following are [some of] the key accusations circulating online ... 1. Israel is committing genocide. 2. Netanyahu is a war criminal. 3. Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Qatar. 4. Palestine deserves immediate recognition as a state. 5. Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the disputed territories. 6. Israel assassinated Charlie Kirk.” The report “An Army of Christian Watchmen for Israel,” Dec. 28, Israel365News, stated: “It was the largest delegation of its kind ever to arrive in Israel, composed of approximately one thousand influential pastors, faith leaders, and opinion-shapers from the United States. Among them were television network owners, leading media figures, and digital influencers with millions of followers, who came to witness Israel’s reality firsthand during this challenging time. ... Dr. Mike Evans, founder of the summit, announced an ambitious goal to bring 10,000 ambassadors over the next 36 months, as part of an international vision to strengthen global support for Israel.”
WHAT ARE BIBLE BELIEVERS TO MAKE OF ISRAEL? (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Jews and the nation Israel are the subject of global controversies. The bottom line for the born again child of God is that he must measure these things through the lens of God’s Word. Israel owns that land by divine right (1 Chronicles 16:13-18; Deuteronomy 30:1-5), but Israel today is in rebellion to God and is back in the land in preparation to build the third temple and to make a covenant with the Antichrist according to Daniel 9:27 and other prophecies. Israel is fulfilling Ezekiel 37:1-14. She is back in the land but has no breath (verse 8), meaning she is spiritually dead. Most Jews care nothing for the Word of God, being atheists and agnostics and humanists and moral perverts (e.g., Tel Aviv’s annual gay rights party), while the religious ones exalt their vain tradition over Scripture. Jesus fulfilled every prophecy of the suffering Messiah, but Israel rejected Him and has wandered in spiritual darkness ever since. The Jew, like the Gentile, needs the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only Lord and Saviour. All have sinned; none are righteous by God’s standard; all need to be born again (Romans 3; John 3). That is what pastors must focus on. Christians who support Israel but do not reprove Israel for her sin against God and proclaim Jesus as the Christ and instruct Israel to be born again are as apostate as Israel is. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17). Romans 11:25-27 is another key to understanding the prophetic times in which we live. “Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” This refers to the worldwide preaching of the gospel of Christ and the ingathering of believers from the nations. When God’s plan for the church age is completed, “all Israel shall be saved.” Israel will repent and submit to Jesus as the Christ and be converted. Christ will return and establish His global kingdom with its headquarters in a glorified Jerusalem. The New Covenant will be fulfilled. This is the subject of a great many prophecies, such as Deuteronomy 30:1-10; Psalm 72; Isaiah 2:1-5; 52:6-12; Jeremiah 31:23-37; 33:7-26; Zechariah 12:8-14; 14:1-21.
ALL OF FRANCE IS A NO-GO ZONE (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “All of France,” World Israel News, Dec. 17, 2025: “Every year huge crowds gather in Paris at the Champs-Élysées to ring in the new year with fireworks and concerts. Much like the New Year’s Eve parties in Times Square in New York City, the joyous festivities are a key link in the chain of worldwide celebrations of the year to come. No more. New Year’s has been canceled in Paris. The New Year’s Eve concert was pre-recorded with actors pretending to be the audience. The fireworks will appear on TV. And there will be no one to count the countdown because the Champs-Élysées has become France’s latest ‘no-go zone’. Ten years ago, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris had threatened to sue FOX News for [supposedly] correctly reporting that there were ‘no-go-zones’ in Paris. ‘The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honour of Paris has been prejudiced,’ she fumed. Now, Mayor Hidalgo decided that even with the 6,000 police officers that had been deployed to secure the Paris event last year, the Champs-Élysées could not be protected against Islam. It began when Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned that there was a ‘very high’ terrorist threat aimed at Christmas. ‘Christmas markets are targets of terrorist organizations,’ he revealed and cited the previous Strasbourg Christmas market attack in which an Algerian Muslim terrorist with 27 previous convictions had opened fire, killing 5 people and wounding 11 more, and the Berlin Christmas market attack in which a Tunisian Muslim refugee drove a truck into the market killing 11 and wounding 56 people as examples of possible incoming attacks. ... France recently marked the 10th anniversary of the 2015 Paris attacks during which Islamic terrorists tried to blow up a soccer stadium, massacred people in the Bataclan theater and attacked local cafes in an orgy of bloodshed killing 130 people and wounding over 400 more.”
IN SALVATION, 99% CHRIST DOESN’T WORK (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4). “Christ is the entire bridge; on him you may cross safely. But if only one foot of that bridge is made of something else, the whole bridge collapses. This is a case of either all or none; ninety-nine percent Christ plus one percent anything else is just as fatal as no percent of Christ” (Robert Lenski).
BACTERIA’S EYES AND EARS (Friday Church News Notes, December 26, 2025, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, November 28, 2025: “Modern researchers are learning that bacteria are not a simple form of life. Rather, a bacterium is a tremendously complex creature that thinks. Scientists have discovered that bacteria actually have molecule-sized sensors. Some of these sensors act as eyes, while others act as ears. A dozen other proteins have been discovered that receive the information gathered by the bacteria's ‘eyes’ and ‘ears.’ The collected information is then processed the same way your brain gathers and makes sense of information. Bacteria have specialized senses and a brain. In fact, bacteria are better at sensing some things than you and I are. A bacterium can, for example, sense the difference between two parts and one part in 10,000. This is the same as if you could tell the difference between one jar with 9,999 pennies and another jar with 10,000 pennies! The idea that bacteria are just ‘simple’ forms of life comes from evolution. Growing research is showing that even one-celled creatures are not simple at all. Think of it. Every single-celled bacterium must accomplish, within that one cell, all the tasks we accomplish using the trillions of cells in our bodies. Eating, digestion, metabolism, waste removal, reproduction--and even thinking--all take place within a single cell! There is no such thing as a simple form of life. Science certainly argues against the idea that life began by accident. What science is learning urges us to think about the wise and thoughtful Creator Who made us! Ref: Pietsch, Paul. ‘The mind of a microbe,’ Science Digest.”
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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