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 does not imply an endorsement. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.
A WARNING ABOUT BIBLE TRANSLATION WORK TODAY (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The amount of Bible translation work that has occurred over the past 100 years appears impressive. In 1910, the Bible in whole or in part was available in 722 languages, whereas today the number is roughly 2,500. The problem is two-fold. First, the vast majority of the new translations are based on the exceedingly corrupt critical Greek text, which omits 2,886 words from the Greek Received Text upon which the old Reformation Bibles were based. This is equivalent to omitting the entire books of 1 and 2 Peter from the Bible. These omissions include 45 entire and 185 partial verses and have significant doctrinal implications (Everett Fowler, Evaluating Versions of the New Testament). Further, the modern translation methodology itself is corrupt. Created by Eugene Nida fifty years ago, it is called “dynamic equivalency.” By this method, the translator is allowed to take frightful liberties with the infallible words of God, modifying and adapting the Scripture to “the culture.” The dynamic equivalency methodology even adopts pagan names for God. For example, the United Bible Societies and Wycliffe Bible Translators have used the following names for God: In Samba of Africa they used Nyaama (the sun); in Lame in Chad they used Yafray (mother of the heavens); in Ga in Ghana they used Ataa Naa Nyonmo (the father mother God). Philip Noss of the American Bible Society says, “God reveals himself through his word and through each culture” (“Bible Translation in History and into the Future,” Lausanne World Pulse, September 2009). (For more on this see the report “Dynamic Equivalency: Its Influence and Errors” at the Way of Life web site.)
EPISCOPAL NUNS JOIN ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Ten nuns of the Episcopal Church in America joined the Roman Catholic Church this month. The nuns, from the All Saints Sisters of the Poor of Maryland, left the Episcopal Church because it has “become too liberal in its acceptance of homosexuality” (“Episcopal Nuns Leave,” USA Today, Sept. 9, 2009). The community’s chaplain, Warren Tanghe, also joined Rome. Christina Christie, the order’s superior, said, “We were drifting farther apart from the more liberal road the Episcopal Church is traveling. We are now more at home in the Roman Catholic Church.” In truth, they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The Roman Catholic Church is not only permeated with its own heresies (e.g., the papacy, a sacramental gospel, veneration of Mary, priests who allegedly stand in the place of Chris t, the transubstantiation of the mass wafer), it is also filled with theological modernism. Pope John Paul II stated that the theory of evolution must be taken seriously by Christians (Vatican Information Service, October 23, 1996). Pope Benedict XVI calls Mary “Heaven’s Gate” (“All can enter eternal life, but the door is narrow,” Catholic News Agency, Aug. 27, 2007). As for homosexuality, it has been stated that 50% of Roman Catholic seminarians in America are homosexual (David France, “Gay and the Seminary,” Newsweek, April 20, 2002). This article describes “an aggressive gay ethos.” The total payout for sex abuse by the Roman Catholic Church in America is well over $2 billion. A conservative Catholic organization documented this wretched business in the fall/winter 2002 issue of the magazine Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, observing, “… the overwhelming majority of sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church–about 90%–inv olve homosexual priests preying on teenage boys.” By forbidding to marry (among other things), Rome has long identified itself as an institution that has departed from the faith and that is giving heed to doctrines of devils (1 Timothy 4:1-4).
DEATH-TOLL BY ABORTION GREATER THAN THAT OF WORLD WAR II (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from LifeSiteNews, Sept. 9, 2009: “‘The death-toll of World War II was a tragic prelude to the far greater slaughter by abortion and euthanasia that has happened since,’ John Smeaton, Britain’s leading pro-life advocate, told a national pro-life conference last weekend. ‘Deaths of unborn children worldwide through abortion vastly outnumber the total of military and civilian war deaths,’ he added. In his address ‘The Pro-Life Battle Ahead,’ Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told his audience, ‘We’re not fighting Nazi tyranny but the tyranny of politicians who promote legislation worldwide that destroys the lives of unborn children.’ Smeaton warned about the challenges ahead for Britain, including the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a protocol developed to help make health care rationing decisions in Britain’s nationalised health system that has resulted in effectively legalising euthanasia by dehydration. Smeaton said the LCP ‘is just the tip of the iceberg in relation to euthanasia practices in hospitals.’”
HOMOSEXUAL SUES BIBLE PUBLISHER FOR “MENTAL ANGUISH” (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from WorldNetDaily, September 9, 2009: “A homosexual man is suing a third national Bible publisher for ‘mental anguish’ after he says the company published Bibles with a negative connotation toward homosexuals. Bradley LaShawn Fowler of Canton, Mich., alleges William Tyndale Publishing manipulated Scripture when it published Tyndale’s New Living Translation Holy Bible and the New Life Application Study Bible by using the term ‘homosexuals’ in a New Testament passage, 1 Corinthians 6:9. … Fowler, who had a blog on Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign website last year, filed his initial complaint against Christian publishers Zondervan and Thomas Nelson Publishing. Fowler, who represented himself in both lawsuits, said in his complaint against Zondervan that the publisher intended to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion to cause ‘me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence … including murder.’ He told the Grand Rapids’ WOOD-TV in 2008 that he wants to ‘compensate for the past 20 years of emotional duress and mental instability.’ … When Fowler filed his initial claim against Zondervan, he alleged its Bibles’ references to homosexuality as a sin made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of ‘demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.’”
SUPPORT FOR SUICIDE BOMBINGS AND BIN LADEN HIGH AMONG SOME MUSLIMS (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from CNSNews, Sept. 11, 2009: “A new survey gauging Muslim attitudes indicates that backing for suicide bombings against civilians, while generally down from earlier years, remains significant in some Islamic countries–challenging the assertion that Muslims supporting terrorism constitute a ‘tiny minority.’ In the Pew Global Attitudes Project poll released on Thursday, 68 percent of Palestinian Muslim respondents said suicide bombings against civilians were justifiable ‘to defend Islam from its enemies.’ That view was shared by 43 percent of respondents in Nigeria and 38 percent in Lebanon, where 51 percent of Shi’ites held the view compared to 25 percent of Sunnis. … Pakistan recorded the most striking drop: In 2004, 41 percent of respondents ju stified suicide terrorism, whereas the number recorded this year was five percent. … The Pew survey also found although majorities in Nigeria (54 percent) and the Palestinian territories (52 percent) expressed “confidence in the al Qaeda leader [Osama bin Laden] to do the right thing regarding world affairs. … The poll comes amid reports that the New York Police Department–after taking flak from Muslim organizations–has inserted into a key report on terrorism a ‘statement of clarification,’ saying among other things that ‘a tiny minority of Muslims … subscribe to al-Qaeda’s ideology of war and terror.’”
DEVELOPMENT AND THE CHARACTER ISSUE (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is reprinted from The Baptist Bookshelf: “The United Nations is deeply involved in ‘development.’ Countless dollars disappear down this rat hole with little visible results. The reason is that the UN doesn’t address one of the most basic causes of poverty, which is lack of moral character. Recently, for example, the 2009 edition of the Nepal Human Development Report was released. It measures the condition of Nepal by UN standards such as the Human Development Index, the Human Poverty Index, and the Gender Empowerment Measure. What these reports glaringly lack is a Character Index. Nepal is not poor because it doesn’t get enough foreign aid and is oppressed by some outside power. Typical for ‘Third World’ nations, it is poor because the people are lacking in character and discipline. Thi ngs such as lying, cheating, stealing, indolence, irresponsibility, bribing and taking bribes, are deeply ingrained at every level of society. Selfishness is endemic and there is no sense of civic pride or duty. These things hinder development more than the factors typically considered by the United Nations, and the lack of character is not the fault of the West. It is the fault of the people themselves, and until the character issue is faced, no amount of UN involvement and foreign aid will change things significantly. The UN doesn’t deal with the character issue, because character is largely the fruit of religion and philosophy, and the UN promotes the myth that all religions are of equal value.”
EVOLUTION IS A RELIGION (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – “Belief in evolution requires a vitally important element of faith. According to one of the most popular theories on the origin of the universe, all energy and matter of the universe was once contained in a plasma ball of electrons, protons, and neutrons and other subatomic particles (how it got there, no one has the faintest notion). This huge cosmic egg then exploded–and here we are today, several billion years later, human beings with a three-pound brain composed of twelve billion neurons each connected to about ten thousand other neurons in the most complicated arrangement of matter known to man. If this is true, then what we are and how we came to be were due solely to the properties inherent in electrons, protons, and neutrons. To believe this obviously requires a tremendous exercise of faith. Evolution theory is indeed no less religious no r more scientific than creation” (Duane Gish, Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No, pp. 19, 20; Gish has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley).
RICHARD DAWKINS’ ANSWER TO THE QUESTION “WHAT IF YOU ARE WRONG?” (Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Mocking and personal attacks tend to be tactics used by those who can’t refute another man’s argument. Consider, for example, the answer that the atheist Richard Dawkins gave to the question, “What if you are wrong?” This was asked by a young woman during the Q&A session following Dawkin’s reading of excerpts from his book The God Delusion at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, Virginia, October 23, 2006. Dawkins said: “Anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the flying spaghetti monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. You happen to be brought up, I presume, in the Christian faith. You know what it is like not to believe in a particular faith, because you are not a Muslim, you are not a Hindu. Why aren’t you a Hin du? Because you happen to have been brought up in America not in India. If you were brought up in India you would be a Hindu. If you were brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you would be believing in Thor. If you were brought up classical Greece, you would be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up central Africa, you would be believing in the great JuJu of the mountain. There is no particular reason to pick on the Judea-Christian God in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up, and ask me the question what if I’m wrong. Well, what if you’re wrong about the great JuJu at the bottom of the sea” (Richard Dawkins). CONCLUDING COMMENT FROM BROTHER CLOUD: I am not surprised that Dawkins would want to huff and puff his way out of answering that question. The real answer is that if Dawkins is wrong and the Bible is right, he is going to be punished in the lake of fire forever because of his rebellion against God and His rejectio n of God’s offer of salvation in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, if Dawkins is right and the Bible is wrong, nothing matters, because everything is the product of blind chance and there is no eternal life. If Dawkins is right, the Bible-believing Christian has lost nothing of substance by living for Jesus Christ. He has a better quality of life in this world even if death were the end. Compared to the life I lived before I was a Christian, the only thing I have lost in following Jesus Christ are the hangovers, the drug haze, the guilt, and the fear of death, the spiritual blindness, the relationships broken by sin and selfishness, and the consequences of being a scofflaw.
WAY OF LIFE LITERATURE SHARING POLICY: Much of our material is available for free, such as the hundreds of articles at the Way of Life web site. Other items we sell to help fund our very expensive literature, video, and foreign church planting ministry. Way of Life’s content falls into two categories: sharable and non-sharable. Things that we encourage you to share include the audio sermons, video presentations, O Timothy magazine, and FBIS articles. You are free to make copies of these at your own expense and share them with friends and family. Things we do not want copied and distributed freely are items like the Fundamental Baptist Digital Library, print edition of our books, PDFs of the books, etc. These items have taken years to produce at enormous expense in time and money, and we need the income from the sale of these to help fund the ministry. We trust that your Christian honesty will preserve the integrity of this policy.