Friday Church News Notes
October 30, 2026 - Volume 27, Issue 44
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.
Pope Leo XIV & King Charles III
THE POPE AND THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The one-world “church” is making splendid progress in preparation for the full-blown Mystery Babylon of Revelation 17. In 1521, Martin Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X and the Protestant Reformation began with Lutheran churches spreading across the German states and Scandinavia. In 1525, Ulrich Zwingli broke from Rome in Zurich, Switzerland, and led the Protestantism of that region. In 1530, John Calvin broke with Rome and six years later published The Institutes of the Christian Religion which became the doctrinal foundation of Presbyterian and Reformed Protestant churches. In 1534, King Henry VIII broke with Rome and founded the Church of England with himself as the head. Between 1545-1563, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent hurled 125 anathemas (eternal damnation) at all non-Catholic Christians, including those who believe that salvation is by God’s grace alone without works. Since the 20th century we are witnessing a reversal of the Reformation and the ecumenical unification of Protestants and Rome. The following event is the latest step in the Church of England’s reconciliation with Rome. It is excerpted from “The King of England bestows an honor,” Zenit News, Oct. 23, 2026: “Pope Leo XIV has accepted an honorary title at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, completing a symbolic exchange of brotherhood with King Charles III that highlights the gradual improvement in relations between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition. The announcement was made on October 23, 2026, by the Dean and Canons of Windsor, with the approval of the British monarch and the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope has been named a Papal Confrater of the College of St George, a gesture described by the Royal Household as a visible expression of spiritual communion, ecumenical friendship and Christian brotherhood. The appointment came exactly one year after Charles III and Queen Camilla’s historic state visit to the Vatican on October 23, 2025, when the royal couple met Leo XIV and visited several important religious sites, including the Sistine Chapel and the Pauline Chapel. During that visit, the King was welcomed as a Royal Confrater of the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, with the Pope’s approval. The new honor reciprocates that gesture, turning mutual respect into a public symbol of the two institutions’ shared commitment to Christian unity.”
PALESTINIAN FLAGS FLY OVER FRENCH RIOTS (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Paris synagogue ransacked,” Israel365News, Oct. 20, 2026: “A synagogue in Paris was ransacked and Jewish-owned shops in Marseille were set ablaze over the weekend as cost-of-living protests across France erupted into the country’s worst riots in decades, marked by Palestinian flags and chants of ‘Intifada.’ ... In Marseille, home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities, the head of the local Jewish umbrella organization called for a state of emergency and the deployment of the army. The weekend of October 17–18 brought some of the worst urban violence France has seen in decades. The Interior Ministry reported nearly 2,400 arrests on Saturday alone and almost 1,000 police officers and gendarmes injured, seven seriously. ... France’s Retail and Trade Federation estimated that around 1,500 businesses were damaged, with losses in the hundreds of millions of euros. ... The demands were economic, but the imagery told a different story. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Palestinian flags and keffiyehs were a recurring motif in most of the violent protests, vandalism, and looting. ... In Marseille, Bruno Benjamin, president of the Marseille-Provence branch of CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish institutions, reported that many marchers carried Palestinian flags and chanted ‘Intifada,’ the Arabic word for ‘uprising’ and the name given to the two waves of Palestinian terror that began in 1987 and 2000, which included suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings. ... The banners say bread, fuel, and teachers. The chants say ‘Intifada.’ The cardboard sign in Paris says the quiet part out loud. Hatred of Jews has always borrowed the clothing of whatever grievance is fashionable that season: the treasury in Shushan, the economy in Weimar Germany, Gaza in Paris. The disguise changes. The target stays the same. French Jews are reading the signs the same way. More than 4,000 have moved to Israel so far this year, the highest pace in a decade.”
THE SOCIALIST’S IGNORANCE (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Frank-Christian Hansel, “Paradise from the Wall Socket,” American Greatness, Oct. 21, 2026: “In February 2025, Germany’s Die Linke—the direct legal successor of the East German communist party—became the strongest party among voters under 25, taking 27.3 percent of their votes. In November 2025, Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, won the mayoralty of New York City with three-quarters of voters under 30, carrying renters by wide margins and winning six in ten voters who named the cost of living as the city’s biggest problem. Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic reached for the usual explanations: TikTok, charisma, a tired establishment, the housing crisis. All true, all insufficient. Because the same pattern is showing up in countries with different housing markets, different media, and different politicians. Something deeper is at work, and it has less to do with what the young are being told than with what they have never had to learn. Electricity comes from the wall socket. Money comes from the ATM. Food comes from the store, the pension from the government, the apartment from the landlord. The water runs, the heat works, the ambulance arrives. Nothing about this needs to be understood in order to be used. You are born into it, and it is simply there. ... What is available merely needs to be fairly distributed. And whatever does not flow equally to everyone is a scandal. ... So prosperity becomes a pile to be divided. The question ‘how does this come into being?’ disappears behind the question ‘why doesn’t everyone get the same amount?’ And with it disappears the half of reality on which the other half stands. Nothing in that pile is unconditional. Behind it stand generations of work, invention, investment, and capital formation. It rests on property that can be pledged, contracts that hold, firms that take risks, markets that signal scarcity, and an energy supply without which no industrial division of labor exists. Wealth is produced inside a legally ordered world. It does not fall from the sky. ... The arithmetic is simple and merciless. Money can be redistributed; goods and services have to be produced. A legislature can raise pensions, but the economy still has to produce the nurses. It can borrow, but scarcity does not vanish; it is merely moved into the future. A city council can freeze rents, but it cannot freeze the cost of building, and the apartments that are never built do not appear on any ballot. Whoever does not know these preconditions cannot protect them. He can tax capital until nobody invests, price energy until industry leaves, regulate construction until nothing gets built—and remain convinced, at every step, that he is creating justice.”
IRAN VOTES TO WHIP CITIZENS WHO SPREAD THE GOSPEL (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Iran Votes,” Israel365News, Oct. 15, 2026: “An Iranian convert who goes on a Christian satellite channel to tell how he found faith may soon pay for it with 31 to 74 lashes. Last week Iran’s parliament approved Article 22 of a bill titled ‘Countering the Infiltration of Foreign Intelligence Services and Governments or Entities,’ which makes it a crime for Iranian citizens to give interviews to, or hold conversations with, any media outlet or ‘media figure’ that the Ministry of Intelligence has publicly designated as hostile. That list already names the leading Persian-language Christian broadcasters. ... The bill must still clear further legislative steps, including Guardian Council approval, before it becomes law. The vote puts teeth in a list the Ministry of Intelligence made public in July, naming the evangelical networks Sat-7, Nejat, Seven, and Mohabat TV alongside BBC Persian and Iran International. Iran Alive reports that its channel was also designated. Any ‘cooperation’ with listed outlets, including sending them photos or videos, can already be prosecuted under the espionage law passed after Iran’s 12-day war with Israel in 2025. At least five Christians have been charged under that law, receiving combined sentences of more than 40 years in prison. The law’s official title names the target: the ‘Intensification of Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with the Zionist Regime and Hostile States.’ It classifies cooperation with Israel and the United States as ‘corruption on earth,’ a capital offense.”
THE AMAZING MOSQUITO HAWK (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, August 26, 2026: “Flight is a big problem for those who believe that we owe our existence to evolution. Birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, and even some fish fly or at least glide through the air in controlled flight. So many different creatures fly that evolutionists must say that flight evolved several different times. The dragonfly is among the best fliers in the animal kingdom. The dragonfly can beat its four wings in unison or separately depending on the maneuver it wants to make. Dragonflies can fly at speeds up to 25 miles an hour and even faster. They can hover, take off backward and even make an unbanked turn. The dragonfly eats small insects, including mosquitoes, earning it the nickname ‘mosquito hawk.’ A dragonfly can see a gnat from three feet away, fly to it, capture it and return to its original position in just over one second! One- third to one-half of its body mass is made up of flight muscles. Its two eyes have a total of 60,000 lenses and are situated so that its range of vision is nearly 360 degrees. Dragonflies not only appear in the fossil record fully formed, but in much greater variety than today. One fossilized dragonfly was the size of a crow! Even the United States Air Force has studied the dragonfly to learn how it flies. The dragonfly is no product of natural selection. It is clearly a specially designed creature whose Designer understands flight better than we do. This Designer is our Creator God. Ref: Richard Conniff, ‘The Lord of Time,’ Reader’s Digest.”
CONCLUSION: The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will not be discouraged. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mt. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Ro. 13:11-14).
PALESTINIAN FLAGS FLY OVER FRENCH RIOTS (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Paris synagogue ransacked,” Israel365News, Oct. 20, 2026: “A synagogue in Paris was ransacked and Jewish-owned shops in Marseille were set ablaze over the weekend as cost-of-living protests across France erupted into the country’s worst riots in decades, marked by Palestinian flags and chants of ‘Intifada.’ ... In Marseille, home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities, the head of the local Jewish umbrella organization called for a state of emergency and the deployment of the army. The weekend of October 17–18 brought some of the worst urban violence France has seen in decades. The Interior Ministry reported nearly 2,400 arrests on Saturday alone and almost 1,000 police officers and gendarmes injured, seven seriously. ... France’s Retail and Trade Federation estimated that around 1,500 businesses were damaged, with losses in the hundreds of millions of euros. ... The demands were economic, but the imagery told a different story. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Palestinian flags and keffiyehs were a recurring motif in most of the violent protests, vandalism, and looting. ... In Marseille, Bruno Benjamin, president of the Marseille-Provence branch of CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish institutions, reported that many marchers carried Palestinian flags and chanted ‘Intifada,’ the Arabic word for ‘uprising’ and the name given to the two waves of Palestinian terror that began in 1987 and 2000, which included suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings. ... The banners say bread, fuel, and teachers. The chants say ‘Intifada.’ The cardboard sign in Paris says the quiet part out loud. Hatred of Jews has always borrowed the clothing of whatever grievance is fashionable that season: the treasury in Shushan, the economy in Weimar Germany, Gaza in Paris. The disguise changes. The target stays the same. French Jews are reading the signs the same way. More than 4,000 have moved to Israel so far this year, the highest pace in a decade.”
THE SOCIALIST’S IGNORANCE (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Frank-Christian Hansel, “Paradise from the Wall Socket,” American Greatness, Oct. 21, 2026: “In February 2025, Germany’s Die Linke—the direct legal successor of the East German communist party—became the strongest party among voters under 25, taking 27.3 percent of their votes. In November 2025, Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, won the mayoralty of New York City with three-quarters of voters under 30, carrying renters by wide margins and winning six in ten voters who named the cost of living as the city’s biggest problem. Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic reached for the usual explanations: TikTok, charisma, a tired establishment, the housing crisis. All true, all insufficient. Because the same pattern is showing up in countries with different housing markets, different media, and different politicians. Something deeper is at work, and it has less to do with what the young are being told than with what they have never had to learn. Electricity comes from the wall socket. Money comes from the ATM. Food comes from the store, the pension from the government, the apartment from the landlord. The water runs, the heat works, the ambulance arrives. Nothing about this needs to be understood in order to be used. You are born into it, and it is simply there. ... What is available merely needs to be fairly distributed. And whatever does not flow equally to everyone is a scandal. ... So prosperity becomes a pile to be divided. The question ‘how does this come into being?’ disappears behind the question ‘why doesn’t everyone get the same amount?’ And with it disappears the half of reality on which the other half stands. Nothing in that pile is unconditional. Behind it stand generations of work, invention, investment, and capital formation. It rests on property that can be pledged, contracts that hold, firms that take risks, markets that signal scarcity, and an energy supply without which no industrial division of labor exists. Wealth is produced inside a legally ordered world. It does not fall from the sky. ... The arithmetic is simple and merciless. Money can be redistributed; goods and services have to be produced. A legislature can raise pensions, but the economy still has to produce the nurses. It can borrow, but scarcity does not vanish; it is merely moved into the future. A city council can freeze rents, but it cannot freeze the cost of building, and the apartments that are never built do not appear on any ballot. Whoever does not know these preconditions cannot protect them. He can tax capital until nobody invests, price energy until industry leaves, regulate construction until nothing gets built—and remain convinced, at every step, that he is creating justice.”
IRAN VOTES TO WHIP CITIZENS WHO SPREAD THE GOSPEL (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Iran Votes,” Israel365News, Oct. 15, 2026: “An Iranian convert who goes on a Christian satellite channel to tell how he found faith may soon pay for it with 31 to 74 lashes. Last week Iran’s parliament approved Article 22 of a bill titled ‘Countering the Infiltration of Foreign Intelligence Services and Governments or Entities,’ which makes it a crime for Iranian citizens to give interviews to, or hold conversations with, any media outlet or ‘media figure’ that the Ministry of Intelligence has publicly designated as hostile. That list already names the leading Persian-language Christian broadcasters. ... The bill must still clear further legislative steps, including Guardian Council approval, before it becomes law. The vote puts teeth in a list the Ministry of Intelligence made public in July, naming the evangelical networks Sat-7, Nejat, Seven, and Mohabat TV alongside BBC Persian and Iran International. Iran Alive reports that its channel was also designated. Any ‘cooperation’ with listed outlets, including sending them photos or videos, can already be prosecuted under the espionage law passed after Iran’s 12-day war with Israel in 2025. At least five Christians have been charged under that law, receiving combined sentences of more than 40 years in prison. The law’s official title names the target: the ‘Intensification of Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with the Zionist Regime and Hostile States.’ It classifies cooperation with Israel and the United States as ‘corruption on earth,’ a capital offense.”
THE AMAZING MOSQUITO HAWK (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2026, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, August 26, 2026: “Flight is a big problem for those who believe that we owe our existence to evolution. Birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, and even some fish fly or at least glide through the air in controlled flight. So many different creatures fly that evolutionists must say that flight evolved several different times. The dragonfly is among the best fliers in the animal kingdom. The dragonfly can beat its four wings in unison or separately depending on the maneuver it wants to make. Dragonflies can fly at speeds up to 25 miles an hour and even faster. They can hover, take off backward and even make an unbanked turn. The dragonfly eats small insects, including mosquitoes, earning it the nickname ‘mosquito hawk.’ A dragonfly can see a gnat from three feet away, fly to it, capture it and return to its original position in just over one second! One- third to one-half of its body mass is made up of flight muscles. Its two eyes have a total of 60,000 lenses and are situated so that its range of vision is nearly 360 degrees. Dragonflies not only appear in the fossil record fully formed, but in much greater variety than today. One fossilized dragonfly was the size of a crow! Even the United States Air Force has studied the dragonfly to learn how it flies. The dragonfly is no product of natural selection. It is clearly a specially designed creature whose Designer understands flight better than we do. This Designer is our Creator God. Ref: Richard Conniff, ‘The Lord of Time,’ Reader’s Digest.”
CONCLUSION: The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will not be discouraged. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mt. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Ro. 13:11-14).
_____
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.
Way of Life Literature - www.wayoflife.org
copyright 2025 - Way of Life Literature
