Friday Church News Notes
October 23, 2026 - Volume 27, Issue 43
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.
A PARTY GIRL COMES TO CHRIST (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). The strait gate must be entered individually. Consider the following account of two bosom friends, Caroline and Julia. They were one in the things of the world, but they had to be saved individually. “At an 1837 protracted meeting in Eatonton, Georgia, a young woman named Caroline, having experienced conviction and conversion, expressed the exclusiveness of baptism and church membership with unusual force. Seeking admission to the Baptist church, she ‘related a most interesting experience,’ confessing that she had struggled with the need ‘to give up worldly amusements of a sinful nature, especially dancing.’ The struggle having ended, Caroline testified: ‘I desire to be even more devoted to my Savior than I have ever been to the world.’ A longtime friend later described her baptism in a creek the following night, an event that gave new impetus to the revival there: Of course everybody was there. The banks of that little stream were lined with crowds of interested spectators. ... Julia, of Monticello, her bosom friend and companion in her worldly course, seemed loath to leave her even for a moment, and clung to her till she reached the water’s edge. A hymn was sung, [minister C.D.] Mallary made a few remarks and offered prayer, when [minister John] Dawson took Caroline by the hand and led her down the shelving bank into the limpid stream. They had attained about half the desired depth, when she requested him to stop a moment, and, turning to those on the bank, waving her hand, she said, ‘Farewell, young friends! Farewell, Julia!’ The effect was electrical. The whole audience convulsed, and tears rained from eyes unused to weeping. ...Upon coming up out of the water, Julia rushed forward to meet her friend, embracing her, and crying out in agonizing tones, ‘Oh, Carrie, you must not leave me! Mr. Dawson, pray for me! Mr. Mallary, pray for me?’” (Gregory Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900, p. 16).
MARRIAGE DESERTS IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Traditional two-parent families vanish,” Fox News, Oct. 13, 2026: “The traditional two-parent nuclear family is far less common in parts of major American cities than in suburban communities, with fewer than a quarter of households with children headed by married couples in some neighborhoods in Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee and Detroit, according to a new report. The study from the Institute for Family Studies showed that the share of households with children headed by married couples varies by roughly 70 percentage points across the areas studied, highlighting a divide between urban ‘married-family deserts’ and suburban ‘married-family gardens.’ ... Suburban Dallas-Fort Worth stands as the nation’s largest grouped ‘marriage garden,’ while Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn form the largest grouped ‘marriage desert,’ covering nearly 686,000 householders, more than two-thirds of whom are unmarried. ... Those in married-family gardens grow up with married parents, in neighborhoods, schools and after-school activities where most peers experience the same. These children ‘will be observing marriage as a stable, ordinary feature of adult life,’ the study explained. ‘By contrast, for children in married-family deserts, there is likely to be much greater churn in adult relationship stability, and greater inconsistency in supervision, where marriage and stable relationship bonds are atypical or distant from everyday norms--both for these children and their peers.’ ... Areas with some of the lowest shares of married-parent households nationwide included eastern Cleveland and nearby Bratenahl Village, Ohio, with only 18% of households with children headed by a married couple, followed closely by eastern Washington, D.C., at 20% and central Milwaukee at 22%. In suburban ‘married-family gardens’ like Fremont City, California, Lakewood, New Jersey, and parts of Utah County, Utah, up to 89% of households with children are headed by married couples.”
PAUL YOUNG’S NEW BOOK RETURN TO THE SHACK (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is a brief excerpt from A Self-Confessed Universalist and His Return to the Shack: 10 Critical Warnings, by William B. Smith, Oct. 6, 2026, LighthouseTrailsResearch.com: The Shack is back! And with Young’s new book Return to the Shack, so is the heresy and deception. Filled with drama and emotion, Return to the Shack is already a best-selling novel--even though it was just released. William Young says, ‘One of the marvels about writing fiction is that you can take all sorts of license that you cannot in nonfiction,’ and that is exactly what Young did in his best-selling novel The Shack. And he continues to do so in his 2026 book, Return to the Shack. But there is nothing commendable about taking unwarranted license to write ‘Christian’ novels that play upon one’s emotions to make the case for a ‘new’ kind of Christianity that is no Christianity at all. On the surface, Return to the Shack is a story about the power of forgiveness and the need to abolish capital punishment. The plot evolves as its main character, Mackenzie Allen Phillips, meets with his daughter’s killer who is awaiting execution in a Nashville prison. ... After all of the story’s tears and drama, and with his unsuspecting readers being open and vulnerable to suggestion, Young drops his heretical New Age bomb. Quoting his friend C. Baxter Kruger, Young writes: ‘The recognition of the sacred presence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in every person, place and event, is the beginning of Wisdom.’ By stating that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are ‘in’ every person and that this understanding is ‘the beginning of wisdom,’ Young would have his readers believe this false teaching is true. However, this is the same foundational lie that is at the very heart of the New Age movement. It is completely contrary to the Bible, which states that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Proverbs 9:10), not Young and Kruger’s New Age perversion of that important Bible verse. It seems obvious these men have no fear of the Lord as they put their own chosen words in the mouths of whomever they choose--whether that be God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit--or their next door neighbor. The following verses are just a few of the many in the Bible that show that the Holy Spirit is not ‘in’ everyone--but is a ‘gift’ given to those who believe in and follow the Lord: ‘Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost’ (Acts 2:38). See also Luke 11:13 and Acts 5:32.”
WORLDLY VIDEO GAMERS IN FUNDAMENTAL BAPTIST HOMES (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - I received the following note from a reader who saw the warning about addiction to video games in an issue of the Friday Church News Notes: “I am writing with a heavy heart. Your Church Notes on the video and computer games is true. I haven’t experienced it firsthand but I see video games and movies have taken over the children’s lives in my church. Our preacher preaches against it all and sets the best example. As a matter of fact, when we travel, we haven’t found a better church than ours. I just have seen so much TV and video games creep into homes and then it gets uncontrollable. The moms say they allow this in their homes because they don’t want to let their children out into the world and they don’t want them to be bored. [Note from Brother Cloud: How reasonable is it to bring the world into the home in the name of keeping kids out of the world?] The sad thing is that it overtakes their lives and I am observing that when the children are getting into their teens and even 18, 19, 20, 21, etc., they are even deeper into the video games. Yes, 21-year-olds spending every free second playing X Box, Play Station, Nintendo, etc. These same children when it comes to the church services, don’t sing hymns, sit on the back pew, and don’t seem to care much about the things of God. They get up several times during the preaching service to get a drink of water. It’s so sad.”
NELLIE BLY’S AROUND THE WORLD VENTURE (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The revolutionary change in world communication and travel in the last half of the 19th century is illustrated by Nellie Bly’s 72-day journey around the world in 1889. Except for the leg across America, she traveled on British steamships and steam trains and stayed in British territory under British government protection and communicated via British telegraph systems. Nellie was a newspaper reporter, and the journey was a publicity stunt for the World newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer. The famous French writer Jules Verne had published Around the World in Eighty Days in 1873, a fictional account of an Englishman who traveled around the world in 80 days using the new transportation technology of the times. Nellie proposed that she try to make the journey in less than 80 days, and via the new British international telegraph system the newspaper could publish a progress of her journey and sell a lot of newspapers. A competitor paper sent its own reporter to try to beat Nellie, so it became a race, with Nellie traveling east and Elizabeth Bisland traveling west. Nellie traveled from New York City across the Atlantic to England and down through France, where she met Jules Verne. She traveled across the Mediterranean to Egypt and down through eastern Africa, then to India and Singapore, where she bought a monkey. (Joan Blos wrote Nellie Bly’s Monkey to describe the journey from the eyes of the monkey, which was named McGinty.) From China Nellie Bly traveled across the Pacific to the west coast of America. Then she crossed the 2,600 miles across the vast North American continent on the new transcontinental railroad. She arrived back in New York City after 72 days, a new record. (She beat Elizabeth.) She wore the same dress the entire journey in order to travel as light as possible, carrying only one small bag. The same British international travel and communications infrastructure that Nellie Bly used for her publicity stunt was used by missionaries for the Lord’s Great Commission. The British Empire made it possible for the Bible to travel to every part of the world. It was like a modern-day Roman Empire, which provided the infrastructure for the beginning of the Great Commission in the days of the apostles.
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).
MARRIAGE DESERTS IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Traditional two-parent families vanish,” Fox News, Oct. 13, 2026: “The traditional two-parent nuclear family is far less common in parts of major American cities than in suburban communities, with fewer than a quarter of households with children headed by married couples in some neighborhoods in Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee and Detroit, according to a new report. The study from the Institute for Family Studies showed that the share of households with children headed by married couples varies by roughly 70 percentage points across the areas studied, highlighting a divide between urban ‘married-family deserts’ and suburban ‘married-family gardens.’ ... Suburban Dallas-Fort Worth stands as the nation’s largest grouped ‘marriage garden,’ while Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn form the largest grouped ‘marriage desert,’ covering nearly 686,000 householders, more than two-thirds of whom are unmarried. ... Those in married-family gardens grow up with married parents, in neighborhoods, schools and after-school activities where most peers experience the same. These children ‘will be observing marriage as a stable, ordinary feature of adult life,’ the study explained. ‘By contrast, for children in married-family deserts, there is likely to be much greater churn in adult relationship stability, and greater inconsistency in supervision, where marriage and stable relationship bonds are atypical or distant from everyday norms--both for these children and their peers.’ ... Areas with some of the lowest shares of married-parent households nationwide included eastern Cleveland and nearby Bratenahl Village, Ohio, with only 18% of households with children headed by a married couple, followed closely by eastern Washington, D.C., at 20% and central Milwaukee at 22%. In suburban ‘married-family gardens’ like Fremont City, California, Lakewood, New Jersey, and parts of Utah County, Utah, up to 89% of households with children are headed by married couples.”
PAUL YOUNG’S NEW BOOK RETURN TO THE SHACK (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is a brief excerpt from A Self-Confessed Universalist and His Return to the Shack: 10 Critical Warnings, by William B. Smith, Oct. 6, 2026, LighthouseTrailsResearch.com: The Shack is back! And with Young’s new book Return to the Shack, so is the heresy and deception. Filled with drama and emotion, Return to the Shack is already a best-selling novel--even though it was just released. William Young says, ‘One of the marvels about writing fiction is that you can take all sorts of license that you cannot in nonfiction,’ and that is exactly what Young did in his best-selling novel The Shack. And he continues to do so in his 2026 book, Return to the Shack. But there is nothing commendable about taking unwarranted license to write ‘Christian’ novels that play upon one’s emotions to make the case for a ‘new’ kind of Christianity that is no Christianity at all. On the surface, Return to the Shack is a story about the power of forgiveness and the need to abolish capital punishment. The plot evolves as its main character, Mackenzie Allen Phillips, meets with his daughter’s killer who is awaiting execution in a Nashville prison. ... After all of the story’s tears and drama, and with his unsuspecting readers being open and vulnerable to suggestion, Young drops his heretical New Age bomb. Quoting his friend C. Baxter Kruger, Young writes: ‘The recognition of the sacred presence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in every person, place and event, is the beginning of Wisdom.’ By stating that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are ‘in’ every person and that this understanding is ‘the beginning of wisdom,’ Young would have his readers believe this false teaching is true. However, this is the same foundational lie that is at the very heart of the New Age movement. It is completely contrary to the Bible, which states that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Proverbs 9:10), not Young and Kruger’s New Age perversion of that important Bible verse. It seems obvious these men have no fear of the Lord as they put their own chosen words in the mouths of whomever they choose--whether that be God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit--or their next door neighbor. The following verses are just a few of the many in the Bible that show that the Holy Spirit is not ‘in’ everyone--but is a ‘gift’ given to those who believe in and follow the Lord: ‘Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost’ (Acts 2:38). See also Luke 11:13 and Acts 5:32.”
WORLDLY VIDEO GAMERS IN FUNDAMENTAL BAPTIST HOMES (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - I received the following note from a reader who saw the warning about addiction to video games in an issue of the Friday Church News Notes: “I am writing with a heavy heart. Your Church Notes on the video and computer games is true. I haven’t experienced it firsthand but I see video games and movies have taken over the children’s lives in my church. Our preacher preaches against it all and sets the best example. As a matter of fact, when we travel, we haven’t found a better church than ours. I just have seen so much TV and video games creep into homes and then it gets uncontrollable. The moms say they allow this in their homes because they don’t want to let their children out into the world and they don’t want them to be bored. [Note from Brother Cloud: How reasonable is it to bring the world into the home in the name of keeping kids out of the world?] The sad thing is that it overtakes their lives and I am observing that when the children are getting into their teens and even 18, 19, 20, 21, etc., they are even deeper into the video games. Yes, 21-year-olds spending every free second playing X Box, Play Station, Nintendo, etc. These same children when it comes to the church services, don’t sing hymns, sit on the back pew, and don’t seem to care much about the things of God. They get up several times during the preaching service to get a drink of water. It’s so sad.”
NELLIE BLY’S AROUND THE WORLD VENTURE (Friday Church News Notes, October 23, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The revolutionary change in world communication and travel in the last half of the 19th century is illustrated by Nellie Bly’s 72-day journey around the world in 1889. Except for the leg across America, she traveled on British steamships and steam trains and stayed in British territory under British government protection and communicated via British telegraph systems. Nellie was a newspaper reporter, and the journey was a publicity stunt for the World newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer. The famous French writer Jules Verne had published Around the World in Eighty Days in 1873, a fictional account of an Englishman who traveled around the world in 80 days using the new transportation technology of the times. Nellie proposed that she try to make the journey in less than 80 days, and via the new British international telegraph system the newspaper could publish a progress of her journey and sell a lot of newspapers. A competitor paper sent its own reporter to try to beat Nellie, so it became a race, with Nellie traveling east and Elizabeth Bisland traveling west. Nellie traveled from New York City across the Atlantic to England and down through France, where she met Jules Verne. She traveled across the Mediterranean to Egypt and down through eastern Africa, then to India and Singapore, where she bought a monkey. (Joan Blos wrote Nellie Bly’s Monkey to describe the journey from the eyes of the monkey, which was named McGinty.) From China Nellie Bly traveled across the Pacific to the west coast of America. Then she crossed the 2,600 miles across the vast North American continent on the new transcontinental railroad. She arrived back in New York City after 72 days, a new record. (She beat Elizabeth.) She wore the same dress the entire journey in order to travel as light as possible, carrying only one small bag. The same British international travel and communications infrastructure that Nellie Bly used for her publicity stunt was used by missionaries for the Lord’s Great Commission. The British Empire made it possible for the Bible to travel to every part of the world. It was like a modern-day Roman Empire, which provided the infrastructure for the beginning of the Great Commission in the days of the apostles.
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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