Disclaimer: I present this little newsletter as a different perspective on the news. I will give you a fair warning; the author of this newsletter is a Fundamental Baptist. In the interest of full disclosure, I am, doctrinally, also a Fundamentalist. This is not to say that I do not have issue with the 21 century Fundamentalist movement, especially among the Baptists. But I do agree with most of this newsletter. This is the difference between Conservatives and liberals. We Conservatives, and yes, even “Right of Centers” like me, are quite tolerant of others opinions. Unlike Liberals, who will turn on someone who disagrees with them. Having said all that, I present the newsletter…
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FRIDAY CHURCH NEWS NOTES
May 7, 2010, Volume 11, Issue 19
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.
THE WORST PROBLEM WITH IB FRIENDS INTERNATIONAL (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – In my estimation, the worst problem with Clarence Sexton’s Independent Baptist Friends International movement is that it has circled the wagons against “criticism.” The reason I joined an Independent Baptist church in 1973 not long after I was converted was the separated Christian living, the willingness to take the whole Bible seriously, even “fanatically,” and the bold defense of the faith. I had grown up in Billy Graham’s denomination, the king of non-judgmentalism and the chief enemy of Biblical separation in our generation. Being convinced that the Graham philosophy is unscriptural, I joined the Independent Baptists. It was in the early 1990s that I first saw signs of a bold rejection of separation among Independent Baptists and the spread of the damnable New Evangelical “judge not” philosophy. This occurred in conjunction with the rapid growth of Contemporary Christian Music and its contemporary Southern Gospel counterpart. Widespread love for carnal music accelerated the spread of the non-judgmental philosophy among Independent Baptists. Music, we are told, is an inconsequential issue. The Promise Keepers movement was another catalyst for the non-judgmental philosophy. When I exposed the ecumenism of Promise Keepers, I was rebuked and mocked by the some IB leaders. They argued that the good outweighed the bad and that we should be glad that men were being taught to assume their spiritual responsibilities. This is the theme-song of Independent Baptist Friends International. When I wrote a lengthy e-mail to Pastor Sexton, a gracious and respectful e-mail expressing my concerns, he did not even acknowledge its receipt. He knows of me and my ministry; he has preached in my home church and has talked with my pastor on several occasions. I have heard from several other men who have tried to communicate with Sexton about this matter and have been ignored, some of whom consider him a personal friend and all of whom appreciate him as a brother in the Lord and a fellow soldier for Christ. I am not talking about ignoring warnings from a man’s hateful enemies; I am talking about ignoring warnings from friends. And not just ignoring the warnings, but even treating the warners as troublemakers. I have received angry e-mails from several men rebuking me for speaking out against IB Friends. They say that I should shut up and just focus on the “big issues.” Well, I’m not going to shut up. Big problems usually grow from small ones. God has instructed me to prove ALL things, to preach with rebuke and reproof, to earnestly contend for the faith. Without judging and reproof, there is no mechanism of correction and error can grow apace. Sexton urges all of us to be friends, and I am all for it. God’s Word tells me that the wounds of a friend are faithful (Prov. 27:6). Paul was a friend when he rebuked Peter’s “small” hypocrisy. He was a friend when he reproved the church at Corinth for their errors, including such “small” things as the sin of misusing the Lord’s supper and taking one another to court. I urge Clarence Sexton to stop stonewalling reproof, to stop pretending that criticism of IB Friends is some sort of carnal persecution. I urge him to publicly acknowledge that his friends have every biblical right and responsibility to criticize what he is doing. I have a suspicion that his critics in this matter are the best friends that he has.
PREACHER ARRESTED IN ENGLAND FOR SAYING HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is from “Christian Preacher on Hooligan Charge,” Daily Mail, May 1, 2010: “A Christian street preacher has been arrested and charged with a public-order offence after saying that homosexuality was sinful. Dale Mcalpine was handing out leaflets to shoppers when he told a passer-by and a gay police community support officer that, as a Christian, he believed homosexuality was one of a number of sins that go against the word of God. Mr. Mcalpine said that he did not repeat his remarks on homosexuality when he preached from the top of a stepladder after his leafleting. But he has been told that police officers are alleging they heard him making his remarks to a member of the public in a loud voice that could be overheard by others. Mr. Mcalpine, 42, who earns about £40,000 a year in the energy industry, was arrested and taken to the local police station in the back of a police van after preaching in the Cumbrian town of Workington on April 20. After seven hours locked up in a cell, he was charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour contrary to the Public Order Act 1986. Mr. Mcalpine–who has delivered open-air sermons and handed out leaflets in Workington for years, and has never been in trouble with the police–said the incident was one of the worst moments of his life. ‘I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know,’ he said. ‘My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn’t apply.’ … Mr Adams [the officer who had Mcalpine arrested] has been a member of Cumbria police’s LGBT staff association and last year represented the force at the Gay Pride festival in Manchester … On the social networking site MySpace, he describes his orientation as gay and his religion as atheist. … Shoppers in Workington were bemused by what had happened to Mr. Mcalpine. Rob Logan, the assistant manager of the O2 mobile phone store near where Mr Mcalpine preached, said he had no complaints. ‘He hands out leaflets, he says his piece and then he leaves,’ said Mr. Logan. ‘He is not aggressive or threatening. He is gentle.’ The Rev. Arthur Bentley-Taylor, 68, vicar of the Emmanuel evangelical church where Mr. Mcalpine worships, said: ‘As far as I am concerned, this is about free speech. If we arrested everybody who said something we found offensive, everyone would be in prison.’ The Public Order Act 1986 has been used by the police in a number of similar cases.”
NOAH’S ARK FIND PROBABLY A HOAX (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is from “Latest Noah’s Ark ‘Just Wood Planted on Ararat,” WorldNetDaily, April 28, 2010: “Has the real Noah’s Ark spoken of in the Bible truly been found? At least two seasoned archaeologists who have made numerous expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of Noah’s Ark are throwing cold water on this week’s claim the Old Testament vessel has finally been discovered, saying it’s a hoax involving wood hauled in from the Black Sea region. ‘To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake,’ said Randall Price, director of Judaic Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. [Price thinks the wood was brought to the site from near the Black Sea.] ‘This is not Noah’s Ark,’ adds Bob Cornuke of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute. ‘This is a fake. It’s a fraud and it’s of the highest caliber according to what I can assess from the evidence and talking to eyewitnesses and people from Turkey.’ WND reported yesterday that Chinese and Turkish explorers with Noah’s Ark Ministries International said they were ‘99.9 percent sure’ they found the remnants of the legendary biblical vessel high up on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey. The 15-member team claims it recovered wooden specimens from a structure at an altitude of 13,000 feet and that carbon dating suggested it was 4,800 years old. … Another ark-hunter, Richard Rives of Tennessee-based Wyatt Archaeological Research … noted that the wood reportedly discovered appeared in excellent condition. ‘The wood’s in too good a shape to be that old,’ he said. Regarding some of the photos published online, Cornuke told American Family Radio, ‘There are cobwebs up in the beams. You’re not going to have wood at 14,000 feet in a glacier to have cobwebs in it. It’s impossible to have that situation.’”
BRITISH JUDGE SAYS CHRISTIAN BELIEFS HAVE NO PROTECTION UNDER LAW (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from “British Judge: Christian Beliefs Have No Legal Standing,” The Huffington Post, May 1, 2010: “A top British judge has ruled that Christian beliefs have no standing under secular law because they lack evidence and cannot be proven. Lord Justice John Grant McKenzie Laws made the declaration on Thursday (April 29) in throwing out a defamation suit by Christian relationship counselor who refused to offer sex therapy to gay couples. Gary McFarlane protested that he was fired because offering sex therapy to same-gender couples violates his Christian principles. But Laws said ‘religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.’ He added that to use the law to protect ‘a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified.’ No religious belief, said the judge, can be protected under the law ‘however long its tradition, however rich its culture.’” This foolish decision bodes evil for religious liberty in Great Britain.
MORMON GLENN BECK ADDRESSES LIBERTY UNIVERSITY GRADUATION (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Conservative talk show personality Glenn Beck was one of two commencement speakers scheduled to speak at Liberty University on May 15. The school, founded by Jerry Falwell and led today by his son, praised Beck as “one of the few courageous voices in the national media standing up for the principles upon which this nation was founded.” The other speaker was Paige Patterson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s seminary in Texas. Beck is politically conservative, but he is a Mormon and thus worships a false christ. God forbids His people to yoke together with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14-18) and associate with heretics (Romans 16:17; 2 John 8-11), but Liberty stopped caring about separation decades ago when Falwell formed the misguided Moral Majority and then moved from independent Baptist to the more “broadminded” Southern Baptist fold. The root problem in America is not politics, and America will not be saved by conservative talk show personalities. The root problem is the compromise and apostasy in the churches, and the source of that is the ignorance, heresy, and cowardice in the pulpits. In light of that, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, et al, are more a part of the problem than the solution. America does not fear God because the fear of God is not being preached in its churches. In spite of the massive amount of conservative political activity of the last 40 years, including that done by conservative Baptists, American slide into moral filth has been unabated. If all of that political activity and fussing and fretting had been channeled into repentance and prayer, the nation would probably have been saved. (See also “Jerry Falwell: The Billy Graham of Independent Baptists” at the Way of Life web site.)
HUGH HEFNER SAVES HOLLYWOOD SIGN (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has helped save the famous Hollywood sign by donating nearly one million dollars to purchase the land as a public trust. By raising $12 million the Trust for Public Land purchased the Cahuenga Peak area where the sign sits, saving it from investors who planed to build luxury estates there. The pornography mogul said, “My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies, and the images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life and Playboy.” We have no doubt that this is true. Hollywood is a symbol for decadence and the flaunting of God’s laws and has had a incalculable influence for evil in modern society throughout the world, encouraging people to live in a fantasy world without God. Hollywood actor and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the sign is “a symbol of dreams and opportunity.” Indeed it is, but the dream is the one that John Lennon sang about, the vain dream that there is no heaven or hell, particularly the latter.
SAMARITANS STILL FOLLOW A MIXED RELIGION (Friday Church News Notes, May 7, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The Samaritan religion is a corrupt mixture of paganism and Judaism which began with the transportation of pagans into the region by the king of Assyria (2 Kings 17:24-41). Amazingly it is still alive today. The Samaritans observe the sabbath and have an annual sacrifice called Pessah which is partly based on the Passover, but their holy mountain is Mt. Girizim (today called Grizim) instead of Mt. Moriah. Girizim was the mountain that the Woman at the Well alluded to in her conversation with Jesus (John 4:20). At Pessah each family sacrifices and eats a sheep without breaking a bone and they eat it hurriedly with a staff in hand as if leaving Egypt, like the Passover. But the accompanying bread, called maza, is not unleavened; it is soft and round like pita. And there are other differences. This year the Samaritan festival was observed on April 28 and 7,000 attended, most of whom were non-participating observers. The Jews pride themselves in being People of the Book and look down on the Samaritans, but in reality neither are people of the book today. In fact, in one way the Samaritan feast is more like the biblical Passover than what the Jews observe today, because at least they shed the blood of a lamb which the Bible requires, though they don’t have the slightest idea what the lamb signifies. The typical Jewish Passover today focuses not on the lamb but on the unleavened bread, called matzo. The focus of the Passover for religious Jews is the Seder, which is a ritualistic meal that has little to do with the true Passover. It is preceded by the painstaking removal of all leaven (chametz), but the definition of leaven has been greatly enlarged by vain Jewish tradition. For Orthodox Jews it consists of anything made from grain that has not been completely cooked within 18 minutes after coming into contact with water, plus all rice, corn, peanuts, and beans. In fact, such things cannot even be fed to one’s pets or cattle and must be either destroyed or sold to non-Jews. The main things that are eaten at the Jewish Seder are unleavened bread and bitter herbs, but also eaten are such things as fish, roast chicken or turkey, and beef brisket. But no lamb! The rest consists of washing hands, drinking wine (four cups), various blessings, and reading of Scripture and Jewish tradition. The Scripture says that “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17:11). John the Baptist testified that the Passover Lamb pictures Jesus the Messiah (John 1:29). But “blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25).
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). This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list. To SUBSCRIBE, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/subscribe.html. TO UNSUBSCRIBE OR CHANGE ADDRESSES, go to the very bottom of any email received from us and click “Manage My Subscription.” Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org.