Friday Church News Notes
March 13, 2026 - Volume 27, Issue 11
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.
Jerry Johnson
PROMINENT SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVERTS TO ROME VIA DANGEROUS LITERATURE AND ECUMENICAL VENTURES (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Prominent Southern Baptist Jerry Johnson recently announced his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. Johnson grew up Southern Baptist, professed Christ at age 8 and was baptized at age 9, pastored SBC congregations, was a leader in the “conservative resurgence” of the 1990s, served as President of Criswell College, Academic Dean of Midwestern Baptist Seminary, Dean of Boyce College, and Chairman of the Board of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. On January 24, Johnson delivered an address entitled “A Path to Rome: My Conversion Experience to the Catholic Church” at the Tradition, Family, Property Washington Bureau in McLean, Virginia. “Dr. Johnson highlighted that his work in pro-life and pro-family causes brought him into contact with many Catholics. The examples of these leaders played a significant role in helping him take the step” (“TFP Bureau Hosts Dr. Jerry Johnson,” American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, Jan. 30, 2026). Johnson also said his reading of C.S. Lewis and the church fathers influenced him toward Rome, as we have warned. (See the free eBook C.S. Lewis and Evangelicals Today and the report “The Church Fathers: A Door to Rome” at www.wayoflife.org.) Johnson disobeyed the multiple warnings of Scripture about associating with error (e.g., Psalm 1:1-3; Acts 20:28-31; Romans 16:17; 1 Corinthians 15:33; 2 Corinthians 6:14; 11:1-4, 12-15; 2 Timothy 2:15-21; 2 John 1:8-11) and was devoured by the devourer (1 Peter 5:8). Evangelicalism today, with its decades-old renunciation of separatism, is a bridge to every sort of error in end-time, apostate Christianity. It is definitely a potential bridge to Rome. In 2025, the Pew Research Center said, “Catholicism continues to attract a steady stream of converts in the United States.” The most fundamental issue is born again salvation through the one true gospel of grace alone without works on the sole basis of Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement. It is impossible for a born again believer to accept a false gospel. When some of Paul’s converts began to entertain a false gospel, the apostle wrote the forceful, shocking epistle to the Galatians. He twice said any gospel other than the pure grace of Christ is accursed (Ga. 1:6-9). He said, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you” (Ga. 4:19-20). The issue of a false gospel is not one of mere doctrine; it is an issue of heaven or hell. We must warn that Jerry Johnson is deceived in his handling of the Scriptures (e.g., accepting Rome’s impossible interpretation of Matthew 16:17-19 and Matthew 26:26) and in his presentation of the teachings of Rome. He claims, for example, that Rome teaches the same gospel as the one he held as a Baptist, but that is pure nonsense. Rome’s gospel is salvation through the sacraments, beginning with baptism. That is not an opinion; it is the clear teaching of Rome’s most authoritative and up-to-date statements of doctrine, such as the Second Vatican Council and the New Catholic Catechism. In fact, Rome’s Council of Trent cursed anyone who preaches that salvation is by grace alone, and this curse has never been rescinded. (See the free eBook Is the Roman Catholic Church Changing? at the Books section of www.wayoflife.org.)
SOUTHERN BAPTISTS 1920s and 1930s (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Born in 1949, I grew up in Southern Baptist churches, and most of my relatives were Southern Baptist. The churches were lukewarm and spiritually powerless: careless in child evangelism, careless in receiving members, not geared to a regenerate membership, the church covenant a museum piece, worldly, biblically shallow, ignorant of world missions except for long dead missionaries like Lottie Moon. This awful condition had existed since the turn of the 20th century. Z.T. Cody, editor of South Carolina’s Baptist Courier, wrote in 1921, “Our churches have practically no discipline. As to worldliness and minor offences, many of our churches do nothing. But what is far worse, our churches often allow the most serious moral transgressions to go unnoticed. Even at times, to save a disturbance in the church, they will grant a minister a letter who, as they know, has grossly violated, not only the proprieties of life, but the moral law of God. ... What we dread today more than aught else is a disturbance in the ‘peace’ of a church.” In the next decade, when fundamentalist leader J. Edwin Orr toured the South in 1935, he was dismayed to find that “quite a majority of believers go to the movies once a week, as well as other questionable amusements, and the unpainted face is more an exception than the rule. The converted Christians behave almost exactly the same as the non-Christians do--there is no separation” (Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again, p. 59). When I joined an independent Baptist church in 1973, not long after I was converted, independent Baptists tended to be stronger in biblical and spiritual character than the denominational Baptists. Today, I am very sad to say, a large percentage of independent Baptist churches are no different in character than the Southern Baptist churches of my childhood. What value is a church that is “King James” and “sings the hymns,” yet is lukewarm and worldly? It is time to have a revival, not merely a recovery of the old paths of traditional independent Baptist polity, but a recovery of the much older paths of a biblical New Testament church. We need to return, not to J. Frank Norris, Lee Roberson, John Rice, and Jack Hyles; we need to return to Paul and John and James and Peter. We recommend Fundamental Baptists: History, Collapse, and Revival available from the books section of www.wayoflife.org.
JESSE JACKSON’S DEATH (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Jesse Jackson, prominent civil rights leader, died on Feb. 17 at age 84. Though highly honored in his death--lying in state at the SC Statehouse, SC flag at half mast, three former presidents speaking at his funeral (Clinton, Obama, Biden), eulogized by prominent civil rights leaders--when tested by the standard of truth and righteousness, it is evident that the man did not deserve praise and harmed his people more than helped them. Called “Reverend,” Jackson was an ordained Baptist minister, but he was disqualified by his covetousness and lack of financial ethics, his adultery and the fathering of a child out of wedlock, and the preaching of a false gospel of social change and universalism. Speaking at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, Jackson said, “I want us to bow our heads in prayer. It does not really matter who your God is, whether you call him Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, Elohiym, or Yahway” (Summer of Soul). Jackson was a race baiter who strived to keep Americans perpetually divided and victimized. Jackson helped create the pro-abortion, Marxist-tinged, Jihad-sympathizing, racist, open borders, trans-sexualized, anti-law enforcement, anti-old America Democratic party of our day. In 2012, Dr. Thomas Sowell, a black conservative who understood the true essence of the welfare state created by civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson, said, “The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date of what President Barack Obama’s America looks like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly. It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism, hatred, class warfare and murder are all promoted as acceptable means of overturning the American civil society. It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level of animals: of defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of basic hygiene. It is an America where the basic tenets of a civil society, including faith, family, a free press and individual rights, have been always rejected. It is an America where our founding documents have been now shredded and, with them, every person's guaranteed liberties. It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to the American people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal college professors, union bosses and all other loyal liberal/Communist Party members will live in opulent splendor. It is the America that Obama and the Democrat Party have now created with all the willing assistance of the American media, Hollywood, unions, universities, the Communist Party of America, the Black Panthers and numerous anti-American foreign entities.”
WAGING ON JESUS’ RETURN (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Online betting company Polymarket is offering a 4% chance of Jesus returning before 2027. If Jesus does return in 2026, a $100 bet would win $2,500. Obviously betters don’t understand Bible prophecy. Jesus’ return to Rapture the church-age saints and carry them to heaven is imminent and could occur in 2026, but Jesus’ return in power and glory is at least seven years away, which is the length of the Antichrist’s reign. Winning $2500 wagering on Jesus’ return is a fool’s errand. Saved people don’t believe in luck and don’t bet, and unsaved people who see the events leading up to Christ’s return will be the objects of “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:8-12).
THE CYANIDE DEFENSE (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, February 9, 2026: “Wouldn't it be amazing if a creature developed a chemical defense that is deadly to practically every other creature but itself--especially if that defense meant exposing itself and its enemy to deadly cyanide? Yet there is a species of millipede called Apheloria that does just this. Apheloria has, on each segment of its body, special glands that produce the chemical needed for defense. When the millipede is attacked by an enemy, it mixes this chemical with a catalyst. The result is a chemical that is a mild irritant plus hydrogen cyanide gas--the same lethal chemical used in the gas chamber. In this defense, the millipede, as well as his enemies, are engulfed in a cloud of deadly cyanide gas. His attacker dies, but the millipede simply walks away unharmed. This truly amazing defense clearly has a purpose. Even more amazing, if evolution is right, the millipede developed this remarkable defense quite accidentally, and at the same time he became immune to deadly cyanide gas! This defense is completely unlikely to develop without a planner. The millipede's immunity to cyanide makes sense if there was a planner, and it makes no sense at all if there wasn’t. God's fingerprints are all over the creation as He seeks to draw us all to Himself.”
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).
SOUTHERN BAPTISTS 1920s and 1930s (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Born in 1949, I grew up in Southern Baptist churches, and most of my relatives were Southern Baptist. The churches were lukewarm and spiritually powerless: careless in child evangelism, careless in receiving members, not geared to a regenerate membership, the church covenant a museum piece, worldly, biblically shallow, ignorant of world missions except for long dead missionaries like Lottie Moon. This awful condition had existed since the turn of the 20th century. Z.T. Cody, editor of South Carolina’s Baptist Courier, wrote in 1921, “Our churches have practically no discipline. As to worldliness and minor offences, many of our churches do nothing. But what is far worse, our churches often allow the most serious moral transgressions to go unnoticed. Even at times, to save a disturbance in the church, they will grant a minister a letter who, as they know, has grossly violated, not only the proprieties of life, but the moral law of God. ... What we dread today more than aught else is a disturbance in the ‘peace’ of a church.” In the next decade, when fundamentalist leader J. Edwin Orr toured the South in 1935, he was dismayed to find that “quite a majority of believers go to the movies once a week, as well as other questionable amusements, and the unpainted face is more an exception than the rule. The converted Christians behave almost exactly the same as the non-Christians do--there is no separation” (Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again, p. 59). When I joined an independent Baptist church in 1973, not long after I was converted, independent Baptists tended to be stronger in biblical and spiritual character than the denominational Baptists. Today, I am very sad to say, a large percentage of independent Baptist churches are no different in character than the Southern Baptist churches of my childhood. What value is a church that is “King James” and “sings the hymns,” yet is lukewarm and worldly? It is time to have a revival, not merely a recovery of the old paths of traditional independent Baptist polity, but a recovery of the much older paths of a biblical New Testament church. We need to return, not to J. Frank Norris, Lee Roberson, John Rice, and Jack Hyles; we need to return to Paul and John and James and Peter. We recommend Fundamental Baptists: History, Collapse, and Revival available from the books section of www.wayoflife.org.
JESSE JACKSON’S DEATH (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Jesse Jackson, prominent civil rights leader, died on Feb. 17 at age 84. Though highly honored in his death--lying in state at the SC Statehouse, SC flag at half mast, three former presidents speaking at his funeral (Clinton, Obama, Biden), eulogized by prominent civil rights leaders--when tested by the standard of truth and righteousness, it is evident that the man did not deserve praise and harmed his people more than helped them. Called “Reverend,” Jackson was an ordained Baptist minister, but he was disqualified by his covetousness and lack of financial ethics, his adultery and the fathering of a child out of wedlock, and the preaching of a false gospel of social change and universalism. Speaking at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, Jackson said, “I want us to bow our heads in prayer. It does not really matter who your God is, whether you call him Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, Elohiym, or Yahway” (Summer of Soul). Jackson was a race baiter who strived to keep Americans perpetually divided and victimized. Jackson helped create the pro-abortion, Marxist-tinged, Jihad-sympathizing, racist, open borders, trans-sexualized, anti-law enforcement, anti-old America Democratic party of our day. In 2012, Dr. Thomas Sowell, a black conservative who understood the true essence of the welfare state created by civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson, said, “The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date of what President Barack Obama’s America looks like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly. It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism, hatred, class warfare and murder are all promoted as acceptable means of overturning the American civil society. It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level of animals: of defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of basic hygiene. It is an America where the basic tenets of a civil society, including faith, family, a free press and individual rights, have been always rejected. It is an America where our founding documents have been now shredded and, with them, every person's guaranteed liberties. It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to the American people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal college professors, union bosses and all other loyal liberal/Communist Party members will live in opulent splendor. It is the America that Obama and the Democrat Party have now created with all the willing assistance of the American media, Hollywood, unions, universities, the Communist Party of America, the Black Panthers and numerous anti-American foreign entities.”
WAGING ON JESUS’ RETURN (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Online betting company Polymarket is offering a 4% chance of Jesus returning before 2027. If Jesus does return in 2026, a $100 bet would win $2,500. Obviously betters don’t understand Bible prophecy. Jesus’ return to Rapture the church-age saints and carry them to heaven is imminent and could occur in 2026, but Jesus’ return in power and glory is at least seven years away, which is the length of the Antichrist’s reign. Winning $2500 wagering on Jesus’ return is a fool’s errand. Saved people don’t believe in luck and don’t bet, and unsaved people who see the events leading up to Christ’s return will be the objects of “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:8-12).
THE CYANIDE DEFENSE (Friday Church News Notes, March 13, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, February 9, 2026: “Wouldn't it be amazing if a creature developed a chemical defense that is deadly to practically every other creature but itself--especially if that defense meant exposing itself and its enemy to deadly cyanide? Yet there is a species of millipede called Apheloria that does just this. Apheloria has, on each segment of its body, special glands that produce the chemical needed for defense. When the millipede is attacked by an enemy, it mixes this chemical with a catalyst. The result is a chemical that is a mild irritant plus hydrogen cyanide gas--the same lethal chemical used in the gas chamber. In this defense, the millipede, as well as his enemies, are engulfed in a cloud of deadly cyanide gas. His attacker dies, but the millipede simply walks away unharmed. This truly amazing defense clearly has a purpose. Even more amazing, if evolution is right, the millipede developed this remarkable defense quite accidentally, and at the same time he became immune to deadly cyanide gas! This defense is completely unlikely to develop without a planner. The millipede's immunity to cyanide makes sense if there was a planner, and it makes no sense at all if there wasn’t. God's fingerprints are all over the creation as He seeks to draw us all to Himself.”
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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