Friday Church News Notes – Feb. 18, 2022

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.

BLASPHEMOUS SONG POPULAR ON TIKTOK (Friday Church News Notes, February 18, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from “Peace PCR’s ‘God Is a Freak’ Becomes Exvangelical TikTok Anthem,” Christian Headlines, Feb. 7, 2022: “God Is a Freak, a new song by Australian artist Peach PRC, was rushed into release early Thursday (Feb. 3) after ex-evangelicals embraced a leaked TikTok clip of the track as a rallying cry against purity culture and LGBTQ exclusion. ‘God is a bit of a freak–like what’s the fixation on hating the way he creates?’ asks Peach PRC in the song lyrics. ‘So why would I spend my eternity with God when hе’s a freak?’ Sporting her signature pink hair and matching outfit, Peach PRC, whose real name is Shaylee Curnow, leaked a short section of the song to TikTok on Jan. 10 with the caption: ‘an anti worship song for my religious trauma girlies.’ … The video immediately took off and as of Friday morning had been viewed over 2.5 million times. The song has been used more than 7,700 times as a backing track for other videos by TikTok users.”

CONCLUSION: The God against whom these people rage and blaspheme is the Author of all good things. Every individual owes his very being and every breathe to his Creator, “seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” and “in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:25, 28). God is so kind and compassionate and gracious that He Himself paid the awful price that His fallen creatures owe for their sin against His holy and just laws. Those who rage against this gracious God and reject the salvation He offers in Jesus Christ deserve what they will get as their just reward. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Psalm 2:1-6).

DEBUNKED ICONS FOR EVOLUTION STILL BEING USED (Friday Church News Notes, February 18, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from “Khan Academy Pushes Haeckel’s Phony Embryo Drawings,” Evolution News, Feb. 6, 2022: “[W]hen it comes to the ‘evidence for evolution,’ Khan Academy shows that what biologist Jonathan Wells has called the ‘icons of evolution’–lines of evidence refuted long ago–are alive and well on the internet. The ‘Evidence for Evolution’ video seems intent on recapitulating many such icons … Those include Ernst Haeckel’s notorious embryo drawings, in addition to the homology in vertebrate limbs, fossil horse, and human-chimp genetic similarity icons. In fact, these are centerpieces of their argument for evolution. … The late Stephen Jay Gould called Haeckel’s work ‘fraudulent’ because Haeckel ‘simply copied the same figure over and over again.’ The journal Science … quoted embryologist Michael Richardson slamming them as ‘one of the most famous fakes in biology.’ Science went on to explain that the drawings: show vertebrate embryos of different animals passing through identical stages of development. But the impression they give, that the embryos are exactly alike, is wrong, says Michael Richardson, an embryologist. … He hopes once and for all to discredit Haeckel’s work, first found to be flawed more than a century ago. … Not only did Haeckel add or omit features, Richardson and his colleagues report, but he also fudged the scale to exaggerate similarities among species, even when there were 10-fold differences in size. Khan says that the ‘early stages’ of embryos ‘look eerily similar.’ But the figure below, from Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, compares Haeckel’s embryos to accurate drawings of vertebrate embryos. … Sometimes evolution apologists like to claim that no one uses Haeckel’s embryos anymore and when we mention these drawings, supposedly we are attacking a straw man. Well, as long as Khan Academy leaves its video on YouTube we can definitely say this is no straw man.” [see PDF graphical version for illustration]

CHRISTIAN DRUG CULTURE (Friday Church News Notes, February 18, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from Psychedelic Seduction: Drugging the World and the Church by Richard and Linda Nathan, available from lighthousetrailsresearch.com: “‘I am a youth pastor at a large church, and I smoke weed everyday [sic] that I am not at service (Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday). My lord still loves me.’ That quote reveals a bizarre phenomenon that couldn’t have existed even thirty or forty years ago—a ‘Christian’ drug culture. Today, this drug culture not only exists, but it extends far beyond marijuana. That’s partly because, unlike any other drug, a broad social movement already promotes and glorifies marijuana. Unfortunately, many Christians seem to join in it. ‘Weed is so normalized in America that it’s hardly cool anymore.’ If you think marijuana is rare or couldn’t be in your Christian community, think again. Pot communities and pot churches are on the rise nationwide, spreading bizarre forms of spirituality and taking advantage of religious freedom laws to act as medical dispensaries and avoid tax laws. Big Weed’s deceptive campaign promotes pot as harmless and medicinal, and the big profits entice Christian businesspeople. Furthermore, pastors generally don’t understand marijuana’s negative spiritual effects. Sad to say, the drug culture is everywhere, and it’s here to stay. As one youth said, ‘All you have to do is listen to a lot of popular music to hear about marijuana. All you have to do is watch TV or movies to see marijuana. And just attend a concert if you want to stand around inhaling it secondhand. It’s everywhere.’ … Minimizing the biblical teachings about holiness and sanctification can invite lawlessness and drug use by Christians. Furthermore, some popular pastors and leaders encourage the culture of rebellion (e.g., John Piper’s philosophy of ‘Christian hedonism’). The words ‘Christian’ and ‘hedonism’ are opposites because hedonism is the ethical theory that pleasure is the highest good. … By 2021, 18 states and Washington, DC, had legalized recreational marijuana, and 36 states had legalized medical marijuana. Now, more than a third of Americans live where marijuana is legal, and it’s becoming part of mainstream American culture. Marijuana’s dangerous THC content (tetrahydrocannabinol) has skyrocketed from around 3% in the 1970s to as high as 99% available in a huge variety of products today. And more teenagers are smoking pot and all its derivatives than cigarettes.”

CHURCH HOSTS “SCREAM NIGHT” TO EXPRESS FRUSTRATION WITH COVID-19 PANDEMIC (Friday Church News Notes, February 18, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Duke Memorial United Methodist Church of Durham, North Carolina, recently hosted a “scream night” to express their frustrations with life in general and Covid-19 in particular. “Rev.” Laura Crosskey, event organizer and a licensed psychologist, said, “We wanted to provide people with a space to let it out with the intention of knowing that they were not alone in their struggles or in their efforts to heal” (“North Carolina church hosts ‘scream night,’” Christian Post, Feb. 8, 2022). Pastor Crosskey led the congregation in five scream sessions: a regular scream; a scream combined with cursing; a vehement, pointed scream (e.g., “My partner is driving me crazy” or “I hate Covid”); and a scream competition. Finally, Pastor Crosskey “invited people to get quiet, to notice … how the scream resonated in our bodies.” This is what professing Christians do when they are not born again and lack the wonderful supernatural spiritual resources of God’s Word and God’s Spirit. Having turned away their ears from the truth of God’s Word, they heap to themselves teachers who scratch their itching ears with fables such as scream therapy. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

THE BUCK STOPS HERE (Friday Church News Notes, February 18, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – There is a saying “the buck stops here,” which means that an individual takes responsibility for things that happen under his area of supervision. It is the opposite of “pass the buck,” which means passing the responsibility on to someone else. President Harry Truman had that saying inscribed on a plaque that sat on his desk in the White House. He was a man of courage and honor. He is the U.S. president who recognized the new state of Israel in 1948 when many powerful people in government were strongly advising him not to do so for pragmatic reasons (e.g., the Muslim oil cartel). He was the president who made the extremely difficult and widely criticized decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan in an attempt to shorten the war. He said, “I made that decision in the conviction it would save hundreds of thousands of lives–Japanese as well as American.” He was the president that raised Europe up from the devastation of war by the Marshall plan, saved west Berlin from starving by the Berlin airlift, kept the communists from capturing South Korea, and other historic accomplishments. In his farewell address to the American people in January 15, 1953, he said, “The greatest part of the President’s job is to make decisions–big ones and small ones, dozens of them almost every day. The papers may circulate around the Government for a while but they finally reach this desk. And then, there’s no place else for them to go. The President–whoever he is–has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job..” Only an honest man will accept responsibility. Others will always try to shift blame. It is part of the fallen nature. As soon as they sinned, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Genuine biblical confession of sin is to judge oneself and to refuse to blame someone or something else.

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).

_____