Friday Church News October 29, 2021

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.

PRAY FOR THE NATION! PRAY FOR CHURCHES TO WAKE UP! PRAY FOR PREACHERS TO WAKE UP! “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” (Romans 13:11-12).

TWITTER CONTINUES DRACONIAN CENSORSHIP POLICY (Friday Church News Notes, October 29, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from “Rep. Banks’ Twitter account suspended,” Just the News, Oct. 24, 2021: “The official Twitter account of Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) was suspended after he called Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman, a man. Banks’ original tweet said, ‘The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man,’ referring to Levine becoming the first openly transgender four-star officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Banks announced the suspension on his personal Twitter account Saturday: ‘My tweet was a statement of fact. Big Tech doesn’t have to agree with me, but they shouldn’t be able to cancel me. If they silence me, they will silence you. We can’t allow Big Tech to prevent us from telling the truth. When Republicans take back the House next year, we must restore honesty to our public forums and hold Big Tech accountable.’ A Twitter spokesperson gave a statement to The Hill regarding Banks’ account suspension, saying: ‘The account referenced has been temporarily locked for violating our Hateful Conduct Policy. The account owner is required to delete the violative Tweet before regaining access to their account.’” CONCLUSION: In reality, Twitter is the hateful party in this situation. They want to destroy the precious liberty of freedom of speech.

CRUSADER SWORD FOUND IN WATERS OFF ISRAEL’S NORTH SHORE (Friday Church News Notes, October 29, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – “Shlomi Katzin came across the 900-year-old weapon on the floor of the Mediterranean sea while scuba diving Saturday off the Carmel coast in northern Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement. … The sword, measuring about four feet long, was encrusted in marine life but in otherwise ‘perfect condition,’ according to Nir Distelfeld, an official with the IAA. Distelfeld, in a statement, described it as a ‘beautiful and rare find’ that probably belonged to a Crusader knight. ‘It is exciting to encounter such a personal object, taking you 900 years back in time to a different era, with knights, armor and swords’” (“Israeli diver finds,” The Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2021). The History of the Church from a Baptist Perspective, available from Way of Life Literature, contains the account of the Crusades from beginning to end. The last major Crusader fort to fall to the Mamluks of Egypt was Acre, north of Carmel, which fell in 1291 after a seven-week siege. The surviving knights fled the Acre fortress through an underground passage to ships in the harbor, where they departed down the coast to the small fortress at Atlit. After they buried their dead in the cemetery by the sea, they departed for Europe in August, leaving all of the Holy Land in possession of the Muslims. The 200-year crusader presence was ended. The Crusader fortress at Acre is an impressive museum today, and visitors can walk through the escape tunnel. The Crusader cemetery near Atlit lies in desolation surrounded by a flimsy fence when we visited it a few years ago.

AMERICA’S FOUNDERS PUT THE U.S. ON A PATH TO END SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, October 29, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from Michael Medved, “How the nation’s Founders,” USA Today, May 15, 2021: “When critics attack the nation’s founders as irredeemably racist, they ignore the Constitution’s anti-slavery time bomb. While disparaging that document’s accommodations to slavery, detractors also forget the hammer-blow against the evil institution delivered just weeks before the fateful gathering in Philadelphia to establish a new government. Rather than treating slavery as an essential, enduring element of the Republic they designed, the leaders of the founding generation shared Lincoln’s hope, expressed 71 years later, that ‘the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.’ During the eight years of Revolutionary struggle (1775-83), all thirteen colonies made a significant start along that path by legally and separately banning the transatlantic slave trade. Following the American victory and the resulting treaty with Britain, three states (South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia) resumed the importation of captives from Africa. At the Constitutional convention, most delegates denounced ‘the infernal traffic’ (George Mason of Virginia) as ‘a nefarious institution’ and ‘the curse of heaven’ (Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania), but South Carolina threatened to exclude itself from the new nation unless the other states agreed not to interfere with the commerce in slaves for a set period of time. The resulting compromise (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1) declares that the despised commerce ‘should not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight…’–twenty years after ratification. James Madison initially deemed this concession to be ‘dishonorable’ but later, in Federalist 42, hailed it as ‘great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever with these states … the unnatural traffic’ that was ‘the barbarism of modern policy.’ … To their everlasting credit, the founders’ time bomb went off, right on schedule, ending America’s involvement in the international slave trade on the earliest day Constitutionally permitted: January 1, 1808. President Thomas Jefferson signed the bill proudly, having argued for it in his annual message to Congress at the end of 1806. … Of course, it’s easy to sneer at Jefferson’s hypocrisy–owning slaves even while he repeatedly denounced the very institution that sustained his private wealth–but his role in the public sphere left no doubt that he sought the ‘ultimate extinction’ of human bondage, as President Lincoln put it. … It’s true that the enlightened achievements of the organizers of the new government didn’t eliminate the manifold horrors of enslavement that afflicted millions for more than two generations after the United States began. But the statesmen of our founding still deserve our gratitude for launching the Republic in a direction that eventually delivered Lincoln’s ‘new birth of freedom,’ and justified [America’s] status as ‘the last, best hope of earth.’”

YELLOW JOURNALISM (Friday Church News Notes, October 29, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – “Yellow journalism” was a name given in the 1890s to a style of newspaper reporting that emphasizes sensationalism. It was reckless, lurid, and provocative, anything to sell papers and increase circulation. Truth was of little or no concern. Politics was covered from an extreme partisan stance. The newspapers featured oversize headlines and colored political cartoons. The name was coined to describe the competition between two New York City newspapers, Joseph Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Hearst’s Journal. Yellow journalism got its name from a popular cartoon in the World called the Yellow Kid from the yellow color of the hero. Hearst hired the cartoonist from Pulitzer, who then hired a new cartoonist to continue the Yellow Kid, resulting in the battle of the Yellow Kids. In October 1910, NYC Mayor William Gaynor issued this warning: “They are absolutely without souls. … The journalism of New York City has been dragged to the lowest depths of degradation. The grossest railleries and libels, instead of honest statements and fair discussion, have gone unchecked.” Two months earlier, Gaylor was shot in the neck in an assassination attempt. He blamed the attack “on the vitriolic yellow press that had poisoned the populace against him.” By means of the internet and social media, yellow journalism has risen to a realm unimaginable to Pulitzer and Hearst.

THE ANIMAL WITH TWO LIFE CYCLES (Friday Church News Notes, October 29, 2021, www.wayoflife.orgfbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is from CreationMoments.com, Aug. 10, 2021: “The jellyfish almost seems like a creature from a bad science fiction movie. Around 500 species of jellyfish, ranging in size from small marbles to several feet across, inhabit the world’s oceans. Jellyfish have several mouths and will try to eat anything, including each other. Thankfully, the stings of most jellyfish have no effect on human beings. The jellyfish lives two very different lives, each with different lifestyles and methods of reproduction. The familiar jellyfish form is a swimming lifestyle in which the creatures reproduce sexually. However, in another phase of their life, they are called polyps. In the polyp stage, they look like small anemones, cling to rocks and reproduce by cloning. Jellyfish cannot move fast enough to chase prey. However, careful study of jellyfish swimming patterns shows that jellyfish don’t swim at random. The pattern in which they swim produces the greatest mathematical likelihood of encountering prey. Biologically jellyfish have only two internal organs: a stomach and sex organs. Although evolutionists tell us jellyfish were among the earliest creatures, some of them have sophisticated brain functions that–outside of jellyfish–are found only in mammals and human beings! The jellyfish is a tribute to God’s creativity and imagination. Even though the jellyfish appears to be one of the simplest forms of life on Earth, it is also a mathematically precise hunter. Even this living bag of lukewarm Jell-O praises God through its existence. Author: Paul A. Bartz. Ref: Brownlee, Shannon. 1987, ‘Jellyfish aren’t out to get us,’ Discover, Aug. p. 49.”

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; Mat. 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” (Rom. 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. IS 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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