Friday Church News Notes
February 27, 2026 - Volume 27, Issue 09
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.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
(screen grab from Getfile)
(screen grab from Getfile)
BILLY GRAHAM’S FAVORITE ARCHBISHOP NEARING SAINTHOOD (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Catholic Church is moving Archbishop Fulton Sheen toward sainthood, the Vatican having approved his “beatification,” in which he will be declared “Blessed” (“Venerable Fulton Sheen,” National Catholic Register, Feb. 9, 2026). When Sheen died in December 1979, Billy Graham said that he had “known him as a friend for over 35 years” (Religious News Service, Dec. 11, 1979). Sheen was a faithful son of Rome whose confidence of salvation was in Mary. He devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography (Treasure in Clay) to Mary, “The Woman I Love.” He said, “When I was ordained, I took a resolution to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist every Saturday to the Blessed Mother to solicit her protection of my priesthood ... All this makes me very certain that when I go before the Judgment Seat of Christ, He will say to me in His Mercy: ‘I heard My Mother speak of you.’ During my life I have made about thirty pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and about ten to her shrine in Fatima” (Treasure in Clay, p. 317). In his 1997 autobiography, Graham described his first meeting with Sheen on a train traveling from Washington D.C. to New York City (Just as I Am, p. 692). This occurred in 1944, according to Graham’s statement upon Sheen’s death. Graham said, “We talked about our ministries and our common commitment to evangelism, and I told him how grateful I was for his ministry and his focus on Christ. ... We talked further and we prayed; and by the time he left, I felt as if I had known him all my life.” Thus, Graham, by his own testimony, accepted Fulton Sheen’s sacramental, Mary-centered gospel as truth three years before his first citywide crusade. This exposes a serious deception. While Graham was meeting with Fulton Sheen and befriending him as a fellow evangelist, Graham was assuring fundamentalist leaders, such as Bob Jones Sr. and John R. Rice, that he was a fundamentalist who was opposed to Catholicism and liberalism.
QATAR, LARGEST FOREIGN FINANCIER OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Qatar,” Washington Free Beacon, Feb. 20, 2026: “Qatar more than tripled its funding of U.S. colleges and universities between 2024 and 2025 after becoming the largest foreign financier of higher education in the United States in 2022, according to Department of Education disclosure records. The Gulf state increased its funding from $396 million in 2024 to $1.2 billion in 2025 in an unprecedented year-over-year spike, the data show. The surge coincides with Qatar’s expanded lobbying and influence-buying efforts, and indicates that it has no plans to trim its spending on higher education even as Congress has investigated its role in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity on U.S. campuses. ... Qatar is believed to be one of Hamas’s largest bankrollers and offered its leaders asylum after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. ... The Gulf state’s influence operations extend beyond college campuses to K-12 schools as well, pushing for ‘social justice’ lessons in U.S. classrooms. Suggested lesson plans include the controversial 2005 Palestinian film Paradise Now, which tells the story of two Palestinian friends plotting a suicide bomber attack on Israel and has been criticized for its sympathetic portrayal of terrorists. Over the past year, Qatar has expanded those operations to influencers on both the right and left, flying podcasters, social media figures, lawmakers, and celebrities into the country for all-expense-paid junkets in an attempt to shore up its reputation.”
NEW YORK CITY AND ISLAM (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - New York City’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, took the oath of office on January 1 with his hand on a Koran and promises of turning New York into a Marxist heaven. On February 20, a gathering of Muslims crowded Times Square for the Tarawih prayers associated with Ramadan. That same day, Mamdani attended the Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens where the Imam chanted, “I ask Allah to send blessings upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad and to make me among those who await you [the Mahdi], follow you, and support you against your enemies, and among those who are martyred before you, among the ranks of your loyal ones. Through your hands comes the relief for the believers and the killing of the infidels by your sword” (“Mamdani attends,” World Israel News citing MEMRI TV, Feb. 23, 2026).
SCHOOL CHOICE EXPLODING IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following important report is excerpted from Ryan Helfenbein, “School Choice,” Standing for Freedom, Feb. 18, 2026: “According to a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberly Strassel, it would seem that the losses are piling up for America’s teachers’ unions. After decades of monopolistic control, the cracks are now showing. ... Back in 1979, the Department of Education was created as a political payoff to these same unions that helped to get President Jimmy Carter elected. But today, that Department of Education under President Trump is working tirelessly to upend the political monopoly that unions have held over education policy in America. ... [L]et’s start with the obvious numbers. The United States spends approximately $15,000 to $17,000 a year per student--the fifth highest in the developed world. We allocate 5.56 percent of our GDP to education, more than most OECD nations. Yet despite this massive investment, our students are failing at historic rates. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 45 percent of high school seniors scored below basic proficiency in mathematics, 32 percent can’t read at a basic level, and these are the worst scores in more than 30 years. ... [A]t the center of this failure sits the Department of Education, an agency that was never about improving education in the first place but an agency that would provide political cover and policy enforcement for the teachers’ unions. ... But here’s the good news: Parents are finally fed up with union-run education. School choice participation has jumped 25 percent in just one year--from 1 million to 1.3 million students coming out of COVID. Thirty-four states now offer vouchers, scholarships, or educational savings accounts. Nineteen have universal choice programs. Homeschooling has exploded, growing 51 percent--2.5 million students in 2019 to 4.3 million in 2022. Growth continues annually, and this is not a pandemic hangover--it’s a fundamental shift in how American families think about education since the ‘great reveal,’ when students had to show parents what they were learning from home. So what about teachers’ unions? They’re hemorrhaging power. The Supreme Court’s Janus decision allows teachers to opt out, producing steadily declining membership. Their lawfare campaigns are failing--courts in Idaho, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and West Virginia have all upheld school choice programs. ... we’re witnessing the collapse of an educational monopoly that has failed our children for more than 45 years.”
MARXISM A COMPLETE FAILURE (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Marxism has never worked, and cannot work, because it is based on a false view of human nature. Man is a fallen sinner and is selfish by nature. His character cannot be changed by a revolution. In the end, man is the same under any economic or social system. Man must be motivated by personal profit and private ownership of wealth and property. Thus, wherever Marxist collectivism has been tried, it has failed and eventually has been replaced by some form of capitalism. Consider Israel’s kibbutzim. When Jews began returning to Israel in significant numbers in the early 20th century, they established kibbutzim, which are communal agricultural settlements. There were advantages. It allowed the country to be developed with fewer people by the pooling of manpower and resources, and it contributed to security, since the settlers were surrounded by enemies. Many of Israel’s early leaders came from the kibbutzim, including Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir. But the kibbutzim were established on a socialist, collectivist principle that produced failure. By the 1980s, many of the kibbutzim were bankrupt. Today only a small number of the kibbutzim are fully collective, and the number is dwindling. They have learned that most people need a personal profit motive to do their best work. Omer Moav, former kibbutz member, says, “People respond to incentives. We are happy to work hard for our own quality of life, we like our independence. It is all about human nature--and a socialist system like the kibbutz does not fit human nature” (“The Rise of the Capitalist Kibbutz,” Financial Times, Jan. 26, 2010). Most of the kibbutzim now have a differential wage scale, depending on how much one contributes, and members who work outside contribute only part of their wages to the collective. Many members now own their own homes.
BARE BONE FACTS (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, January 20, 2026: “When an engineer builds a building, a bridge, or some other structure, he must build it so that it can withstand both stretching and compressing forces. In designing the structure to withstand both kinds of these forces, he must anticipate how much of each force the structure might face in its lifetime. Some materials, like cast iron and concrete, are very good at withstanding compression forces but very poor in handling stretching forces. Using one of these materials to build a structure that undergoes tensile or stretching forces could lead to disaster. Now let’s apply our basic engineering information to the problem of building a frame or skeleton for a living creature. Although you may weigh only 130 pounds, your long leg bone will very likely have to be prepared to deal with more than 1,000 pounds of compression and hundreds of pounds of tension from the muscles that are anchored to it. It’s a good thing, then, that normal bone is three times as strong as good solid wood and nearly as strong as iron! Tests have shown that the tensile strength of bone is 35,000 pounds per square inch, while iron is 40,000 pounds per square inch. But bone material is better than iron because it is three times lighter and much more flexible. The structure of your bones is too carefully engineered to have been an accident. If life was the result of impersonal evolution, evolution would still be trying to engineer the best material for skeletons, and there would be an awful lot of jellyfish around!”
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).
QATAR, LARGEST FOREIGN FINANCIER OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Qatar,” Washington Free Beacon, Feb. 20, 2026: “Qatar more than tripled its funding of U.S. colleges and universities between 2024 and 2025 after becoming the largest foreign financier of higher education in the United States in 2022, according to Department of Education disclosure records. The Gulf state increased its funding from $396 million in 2024 to $1.2 billion in 2025 in an unprecedented year-over-year spike, the data show. The surge coincides with Qatar’s expanded lobbying and influence-buying efforts, and indicates that it has no plans to trim its spending on higher education even as Congress has investigated its role in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity on U.S. campuses. ... Qatar is believed to be one of Hamas’s largest bankrollers and offered its leaders asylum after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. ... The Gulf state’s influence operations extend beyond college campuses to K-12 schools as well, pushing for ‘social justice’ lessons in U.S. classrooms. Suggested lesson plans include the controversial 2005 Palestinian film Paradise Now, which tells the story of two Palestinian friends plotting a suicide bomber attack on Israel and has been criticized for its sympathetic portrayal of terrorists. Over the past year, Qatar has expanded those operations to influencers on both the right and left, flying podcasters, social media figures, lawmakers, and celebrities into the country for all-expense-paid junkets in an attempt to shore up its reputation.”
NEW YORK CITY AND ISLAM (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - New York City’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, took the oath of office on January 1 with his hand on a Koran and promises of turning New York into a Marxist heaven. On February 20, a gathering of Muslims crowded Times Square for the Tarawih prayers associated with Ramadan. That same day, Mamdani attended the Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens where the Imam chanted, “I ask Allah to send blessings upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad and to make me among those who await you [the Mahdi], follow you, and support you against your enemies, and among those who are martyred before you, among the ranks of your loyal ones. Through your hands comes the relief for the believers and the killing of the infidels by your sword” (“Mamdani attends,” World Israel News citing MEMRI TV, Feb. 23, 2026).
SCHOOL CHOICE EXPLODING IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following important report is excerpted from Ryan Helfenbein, “School Choice,” Standing for Freedom, Feb. 18, 2026: “According to a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberly Strassel, it would seem that the losses are piling up for America’s teachers’ unions. After decades of monopolistic control, the cracks are now showing. ... Back in 1979, the Department of Education was created as a political payoff to these same unions that helped to get President Jimmy Carter elected. But today, that Department of Education under President Trump is working tirelessly to upend the political monopoly that unions have held over education policy in America. ... [L]et’s start with the obvious numbers. The United States spends approximately $15,000 to $17,000 a year per student--the fifth highest in the developed world. We allocate 5.56 percent of our GDP to education, more than most OECD nations. Yet despite this massive investment, our students are failing at historic rates. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 45 percent of high school seniors scored below basic proficiency in mathematics, 32 percent can’t read at a basic level, and these are the worst scores in more than 30 years. ... [A]t the center of this failure sits the Department of Education, an agency that was never about improving education in the first place but an agency that would provide political cover and policy enforcement for the teachers’ unions. ... But here’s the good news: Parents are finally fed up with union-run education. School choice participation has jumped 25 percent in just one year--from 1 million to 1.3 million students coming out of COVID. Thirty-four states now offer vouchers, scholarships, or educational savings accounts. Nineteen have universal choice programs. Homeschooling has exploded, growing 51 percent--2.5 million students in 2019 to 4.3 million in 2022. Growth continues annually, and this is not a pandemic hangover--it’s a fundamental shift in how American families think about education since the ‘great reveal,’ when students had to show parents what they were learning from home. So what about teachers’ unions? They’re hemorrhaging power. The Supreme Court’s Janus decision allows teachers to opt out, producing steadily declining membership. Their lawfare campaigns are failing--courts in Idaho, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and West Virginia have all upheld school choice programs. ... we’re witnessing the collapse of an educational monopoly that has failed our children for more than 45 years.”
MARXISM A COMPLETE FAILURE (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Marxism has never worked, and cannot work, because it is based on a false view of human nature. Man is a fallen sinner and is selfish by nature. His character cannot be changed by a revolution. In the end, man is the same under any economic or social system. Man must be motivated by personal profit and private ownership of wealth and property. Thus, wherever Marxist collectivism has been tried, it has failed and eventually has been replaced by some form of capitalism. Consider Israel’s kibbutzim. When Jews began returning to Israel in significant numbers in the early 20th century, they established kibbutzim, which are communal agricultural settlements. There were advantages. It allowed the country to be developed with fewer people by the pooling of manpower and resources, and it contributed to security, since the settlers were surrounded by enemies. Many of Israel’s early leaders came from the kibbutzim, including Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir. But the kibbutzim were established on a socialist, collectivist principle that produced failure. By the 1980s, many of the kibbutzim were bankrupt. Today only a small number of the kibbutzim are fully collective, and the number is dwindling. They have learned that most people need a personal profit motive to do their best work. Omer Moav, former kibbutz member, says, “People respond to incentives. We are happy to work hard for our own quality of life, we like our independence. It is all about human nature--and a socialist system like the kibbutz does not fit human nature” (“The Rise of the Capitalist Kibbutz,” Financial Times, Jan. 26, 2010). Most of the kibbutzim now have a differential wage scale, depending on how much one contributes, and members who work outside contribute only part of their wages to the collective. Many members now own their own homes.
BARE BONE FACTS (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, January 20, 2026: “When an engineer builds a building, a bridge, or some other structure, he must build it so that it can withstand both stretching and compressing forces. In designing the structure to withstand both kinds of these forces, he must anticipate how much of each force the structure might face in its lifetime. Some materials, like cast iron and concrete, are very good at withstanding compression forces but very poor in handling stretching forces. Using one of these materials to build a structure that undergoes tensile or stretching forces could lead to disaster. Now let’s apply our basic engineering information to the problem of building a frame or skeleton for a living creature. Although you may weigh only 130 pounds, your long leg bone will very likely have to be prepared to deal with more than 1,000 pounds of compression and hundreds of pounds of tension from the muscles that are anchored to it. It’s a good thing, then, that normal bone is three times as strong as good solid wood and nearly as strong as iron! Tests have shown that the tensile strength of bone is 35,000 pounds per square inch, while iron is 40,000 pounds per square inch. But bone material is better than iron because it is three times lighter and much more flexible. The structure of your bones is too carefully engineered to have been an accident. If life was the result of impersonal evolution, evolution would still be trying to engineer the best material for skeletons, and there would be an awful lot of jellyfish around!”
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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