Friday Church News Notes
September 18, 2026 - Volume 27, Issue 38
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.
UNITED BIBLE SOCIETIES’ 80 YEAR ANNIVERSARY (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The United Bible Societies (UBS) marks its 80th anniversary this year, having distributed a reported 25 billion printed Scripture resources, including 1.1 billion complete Bibles. Digital and audio resources are also distributed in the billions. The United Bible Societies was formed in 1946 and coordinates the work of most of the world’s national Bible societies. As of 2004, there were 142 member societies. (The British and Foreign Bible Society, was formed in 1804; the American Bible Society, in 1814, and similar societies multiplied through the years.) The world’s most commonly used Greek New Testament is the one published by the United Bible Societies, and a majority of new Bible translations produced since the 20th century are based upon this Greek text (or one practically identical to it). The problems are manifold. UBS Bibles are corrupt textually and a large percentage of them are corrupt by the translation methodology (dynamic equivalency). The UBS itself is a major player in the one-world church movement, being in close association with the Roman Catholic Church. The UBS is a product of end-time apostasy, not revival. For more on this, see the free eBook Unholy Hands on God’s Holy Book at the Books section of wayoflife.org.
30% OF COLLEGE STUDENTS SAY VIOLENCE ACCEPTABLE WAY TO STOP SPEAKERS ON CAMPUSES (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “30% of college students,” Fox News, Sept. 11, 2026: “Thirty percent of college students nationwide believe using violence is an acceptable way to stop a controversial speaker at a campus event, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Specifically, 3% said it was always acceptable, 12% said it was sometimes acceptable and 16% said it was rarely acceptable to use violence as a means of prohibiting a speaker from appearing on a college campus ... The data comes a year after Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a college event held by his organization, Turning Point USA, on Sept. 10, 2025, while Kirk was engaging in debate with students.”
DEATH OF THE D.L. MOODY CAMPAIGNS (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists: “By the 1890s, Moody could no longer draw a crowd of unsaved to mass meetings. In 1896, Moody announced a New York campaign that would be his biggest since 1876, but it wasn’t to be. ‘One well-known minister maintained there was no evidence that Moody’s past campaigns had made any substantial or permanent increase in church attendance and expressed doubts whether the projected November campaign would be helpful or desirable for the local churches’ (Bernard Ruffin, Fanny Crosby, p. 155). Moody opened in Carnegie Music Hall but ended up speaking to small crowds in various churches. He wound up in a church that was ‘virtually empty’” (The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists is available from the Books section of www.wayoflife.org.)
SILLY WOMEN LADEN WITH SIN (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts” (2 Timothy 3:6-7). This has multiple applications. It applies to women in congregations which are easy targets for male leaders, to cults that are led by women (e.g., Ann Lee, Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, Joanna Southcott), to Pentecostal denominations that ordain women, and to modernist Protestant denominations that appeal to silly women, among others. The following is excerpted from The World Council of Churches, 2013, available as a free eBook from www.wayofllife.org: “At the Re-imagining conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1993, some 2,000 women ‘seeking to change Christianity’ attended. Sponsoring and participating denominations included the United Methodist Church, United Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, United Church of Canada, Church of the Brethren, American Baptist Convention, Episcopalian, and Mennonite. There were 234 Roman Catholic participants. Speakers included Virginia Mollenkott, an avowed pro-abortion lesbian, Elizabeth Bettenhausen, professor at Harvard Divinity School, and Jose Hobday, a Roman Catholic nun. The attendees heard speakers denounce the substitutionary blood atonement of Christ. Delores Williams of Union Theological Seminary said, ‘I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. I think Jesus came for life and to show us something about life. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff ... we just need to listen to the God within’ (AFA Journal, Feb. 1994). They addressed a goddess called ‘Sophia’ with this prayer, ‘Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image.’ Sue Seid-Martin of the University of St. Thomas School of Divinity in St. Paul, Minn., claimed that this Sophia is ‘the suppressed part of the biblical tradition, and clearly the female face of the human psyche.’ Attendees were taught to pray to trees for ‘life energy.’ They were taught that ‘the Bible is basically an open book’ to which new chapters can be added from feminist theology (AFA Journal, Feb. 1994). Korea’s Chung Hyung Kyung, professor at Ewha Women’s University, the world’s largest university for women with 20,000 students, said, ‘My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain.’ Roughly 100 ‘lesbian, bi-sexual, and transsexual women’ gathered on the platform and were given a standing ovation. They were ‘celebrating the miracle of being lesbian, out, and Christian.’”
WOKE AGENDA TAUGHT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin: “The battlefield for the hearts and minds of our kids is the 16,000 hours they spend inside American classrooms from kindergarten to twelfth grade ... Through a seemingly unstoppable progressive pipeline—teachers union priorities, teachers colleges, Common Core prerogatives, and unchecked teachers and administrators—the woke, social justice agenda is showing up in the youngest of classrooms. Often the books and curricula are hidden from parents, or at least largely until now. In one Idaho school district alone, books like A Is for Activist, Antiracist Baby, and Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness are being read to elementary students. Not only is A for Activist, but L is for L-G-B-T-Q, T is for Trans, X is for Malcom X ... Anti-racist babies are taught to ‘confess when being racist’ and that ‘whiteness is a bad deal. It always was.’ At Creekside Intermediate School in Michigan, students read Black Brother, Black Brother, which highlights a black student who feels like he is ‘constantly swimming in whiteness.’ Cambridge, Massachusetts, public schools’ ‘Early Childhood Curriculum’ teaches black families to be ‘free from patriarchal practices’ as part of the ‘disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics’ and a return to the ‘collective village.’ Kindergarten students in Illinois and fourth and fifth graders in parts of Pennsylvania also read Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness. The book pounds home the idea that being white is inherently evil and that being black means you are inherently oppressed. This is being taught to six-year-olds in America. These books—and so many more like them—are designed to divide students by race and gender; that is the goal, not just the result. ... Maybe your sixth or seventh grader will encounter the ‘gender unicorn’ instead—a widely used Barney look-alike purple unicorn who explains concepts like gender identity, gender expression, and sexual attraction” (Battle for the American Mind, pp. 9, 10).
HIERAPOLIS AND THE GATEWAY TO HELL (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In 2019, Italian archaeologists uncovered the remains of Pluto’s gate, which was considered the entrance to hell in the Greco-Roman world (Biblical Archaeology Society, Apr. 8, 2019). Like all Roman cities, Hierapolis (meaning “holy city”) was devoted to a multiplicity of gods and goddesses. The temple of Pluto was famous for its oracle which was a priest or priestess who delivered prophecies for a fee while supposedly under control of the god. Pluto being “the god of the underworld,” his temple was known as “the gateway to Hades.” There was a hole in a small cave from which issued poisonous carbon dioxide vapors that were thought to be the breath of Pluto. The priests showed their alleged supernatural powers and association with Pluto by leading animals into the cave. The animals died while the priests survived because they were taller and the poison gas pooled in the lower level. Deadly gases still emerge from the cave. For more about Hierapolis, see the free PowerPoint series Cities and Places of the Bible consisting of over 2,652 slides in 54 presentations. See the PowerPoint section of wayoflife.org.
IGNAZ PHILIPP SEMMELWEIS AGAINST THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “When Science Errs: The Oft Times Lonely Stand for Truth,” ChristianAnswers.net: “In his work at the Vienna General Hospital, Ignaz saw many victims of the highly contagious and often deadly puerperal fever. Slowly he began to suspect an increased risk for anyone having contact with fever victims. In time his suspicions became firm convictions. He reasoned that physicians in the hospital were somehow carrying the disease from the autopsy room and transmitting it to women in the maternity ward. Therefore, Ignaz ordered all of the physicians to wash their hands thoroughly in a solution of chlorinated lime before examining patients. This was a radical and controversial move, and it resulted in big trouble for the young doctor. Keep in mind that Ignaz took this stand years before Louis Pasteur, with his microscope, scientifically documented the danger of infectious bacteria. At the time in which Ignaz lived, such a radical position was not accepted by the medical field. As a result, great pressure was brought to bear on the young man. He was ridiculed. His character was attacked. He stood his ground, entirely alone, one man against the entire scientific establishment of his day. No one agreed with him. But in the end, the pressure got to him. Ignaz had a mental breakdown, and he died on August 1, 1865, at age 47. Shortly thereafter, Joseph Lister performed his first antiseptic operation, and Ignaz, dead less than a year, was on his way to a full vindication.”
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).
30% OF COLLEGE STUDENTS SAY VIOLENCE ACCEPTABLE WAY TO STOP SPEAKERS ON CAMPUSES (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “30% of college students,” Fox News, Sept. 11, 2026: “Thirty percent of college students nationwide believe using violence is an acceptable way to stop a controversial speaker at a campus event, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Specifically, 3% said it was always acceptable, 12% said it was sometimes acceptable and 16% said it was rarely acceptable to use violence as a means of prohibiting a speaker from appearing on a college campus ... The data comes a year after Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a college event held by his organization, Turning Point USA, on Sept. 10, 2025, while Kirk was engaging in debate with students.”
DEATH OF THE D.L. MOODY CAMPAIGNS (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists: “By the 1890s, Moody could no longer draw a crowd of unsaved to mass meetings. In 1896, Moody announced a New York campaign that would be his biggest since 1876, but it wasn’t to be. ‘One well-known minister maintained there was no evidence that Moody’s past campaigns had made any substantial or permanent increase in church attendance and expressed doubts whether the projected November campaign would be helpful or desirable for the local churches’ (Bernard Ruffin, Fanny Crosby, p. 155). Moody opened in Carnegie Music Hall but ended up speaking to small crowds in various churches. He wound up in a church that was ‘virtually empty’” (The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists is available from the Books section of www.wayoflife.org.)
SILLY WOMEN LADEN WITH SIN (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts” (2 Timothy 3:6-7). This has multiple applications. It applies to women in congregations which are easy targets for male leaders, to cults that are led by women (e.g., Ann Lee, Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, Joanna Southcott), to Pentecostal denominations that ordain women, and to modernist Protestant denominations that appeal to silly women, among others. The following is excerpted from The World Council of Churches, 2013, available as a free eBook from www.wayofllife.org: “At the Re-imagining conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1993, some 2,000 women ‘seeking to change Christianity’ attended. Sponsoring and participating denominations included the United Methodist Church, United Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, United Church of Canada, Church of the Brethren, American Baptist Convention, Episcopalian, and Mennonite. There were 234 Roman Catholic participants. Speakers included Virginia Mollenkott, an avowed pro-abortion lesbian, Elizabeth Bettenhausen, professor at Harvard Divinity School, and Jose Hobday, a Roman Catholic nun. The attendees heard speakers denounce the substitutionary blood atonement of Christ. Delores Williams of Union Theological Seminary said, ‘I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. I think Jesus came for life and to show us something about life. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff ... we just need to listen to the God within’ (AFA Journal, Feb. 1994). They addressed a goddess called ‘Sophia’ with this prayer, ‘Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image.’ Sue Seid-Martin of the University of St. Thomas School of Divinity in St. Paul, Minn., claimed that this Sophia is ‘the suppressed part of the biblical tradition, and clearly the female face of the human psyche.’ Attendees were taught to pray to trees for ‘life energy.’ They were taught that ‘the Bible is basically an open book’ to which new chapters can be added from feminist theology (AFA Journal, Feb. 1994). Korea’s Chung Hyung Kyung, professor at Ewha Women’s University, the world’s largest university for women with 20,000 students, said, ‘My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain.’ Roughly 100 ‘lesbian, bi-sexual, and transsexual women’ gathered on the platform and were given a standing ovation. They were ‘celebrating the miracle of being lesbian, out, and Christian.’”
WOKE AGENDA TAUGHT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin: “The battlefield for the hearts and minds of our kids is the 16,000 hours they spend inside American classrooms from kindergarten to twelfth grade ... Through a seemingly unstoppable progressive pipeline—teachers union priorities, teachers colleges, Common Core prerogatives, and unchecked teachers and administrators—the woke, social justice agenda is showing up in the youngest of classrooms. Often the books and curricula are hidden from parents, or at least largely until now. In one Idaho school district alone, books like A Is for Activist, Antiracist Baby, and Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness are being read to elementary students. Not only is A for Activist, but L is for L-G-B-T-Q, T is for Trans, X is for Malcom X ... Anti-racist babies are taught to ‘confess when being racist’ and that ‘whiteness is a bad deal. It always was.’ At Creekside Intermediate School in Michigan, students read Black Brother, Black Brother, which highlights a black student who feels like he is ‘constantly swimming in whiteness.’ Cambridge, Massachusetts, public schools’ ‘Early Childhood Curriculum’ teaches black families to be ‘free from patriarchal practices’ as part of the ‘disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics’ and a return to the ‘collective village.’ Kindergarten students in Illinois and fourth and fifth graders in parts of Pennsylvania also read Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness. The book pounds home the idea that being white is inherently evil and that being black means you are inherently oppressed. This is being taught to six-year-olds in America. These books—and so many more like them—are designed to divide students by race and gender; that is the goal, not just the result. ... Maybe your sixth or seventh grader will encounter the ‘gender unicorn’ instead—a widely used Barney look-alike purple unicorn who explains concepts like gender identity, gender expression, and sexual attraction” (Battle for the American Mind, pp. 9, 10).
HIERAPOLIS AND THE GATEWAY TO HELL (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In 2019, Italian archaeologists uncovered the remains of Pluto’s gate, which was considered the entrance to hell in the Greco-Roman world (Biblical Archaeology Society, Apr. 8, 2019). Like all Roman cities, Hierapolis (meaning “holy city”) was devoted to a multiplicity of gods and goddesses. The temple of Pluto was famous for its oracle which was a priest or priestess who delivered prophecies for a fee while supposedly under control of the god. Pluto being “the god of the underworld,” his temple was known as “the gateway to Hades.” There was a hole in a small cave from which issued poisonous carbon dioxide vapors that were thought to be the breath of Pluto. The priests showed their alleged supernatural powers and association with Pluto by leading animals into the cave. The animals died while the priests survived because they were taller and the poison gas pooled in the lower level. Deadly gases still emerge from the cave. For more about Hierapolis, see the free PowerPoint series Cities and Places of the Bible consisting of over 2,652 slides in 54 presentations. See the PowerPoint section of wayoflife.org.
IGNAZ PHILIPP SEMMELWEIS AGAINST THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “When Science Errs: The Oft Times Lonely Stand for Truth,” ChristianAnswers.net: “In his work at the Vienna General Hospital, Ignaz saw many victims of the highly contagious and often deadly puerperal fever. Slowly he began to suspect an increased risk for anyone having contact with fever victims. In time his suspicions became firm convictions. He reasoned that physicians in the hospital were somehow carrying the disease from the autopsy room and transmitting it to women in the maternity ward. Therefore, Ignaz ordered all of the physicians to wash their hands thoroughly in a solution of chlorinated lime before examining patients. This was a radical and controversial move, and it resulted in big trouble for the young doctor. Keep in mind that Ignaz took this stand years before Louis Pasteur, with his microscope, scientifically documented the danger of infectious bacteria. At the time in which Ignaz lived, such a radical position was not accepted by the medical field. As a result, great pressure was brought to bear on the young man. He was ridiculed. His character was attacked. He stood his ground, entirely alone, one man against the entire scientific establishment of his day. No one agreed with him. But in the end, the pressure got to him. Ignaz had a mental breakdown, and he died on August 1, 1865, at age 47. Shortly thereafter, Joseph Lister performed his first antiseptic operation, and Ignaz, dead less than a year, was on his way to a full vindication.”
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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