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.
ELON MUSK BUYS TWITTER ON FREE SPEECH PRINCIPLE – On April 25, Twitter announced its agreement to be sold to Elon Musk for $44 billion. On that occasion, Musk made the following statement, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Twitter has tremendous potential–I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” If this does result in greater freedom of speech and Twitter stops taking sides in political/social issues, it will be a victory over the leftist orientation of big social media. We suspect it will also be a very good financial investment for the inventor tycoon. In last week’s Friday Church News Notes we published our “Prayer against Big Tech Censorship.” The heart of the prayer is as follows: “I pray that God will confound the totalitarian spirit in Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc. In today’s context, these are more like telephone companies and postal systems. Though privately owned, they are public carriers of information, and they should not be engaged in censorship. The Antichrist will be totalitarianism personified, but it is not yet his time, so we pray against the spirit of antichrist that is in proud men in high places who think they are in control of ‘right-speak.’”
DUKE DIVINITY SCHOOL BLASPHEMOUSLY WORSHIPS “THE GREAT QUEER ONE” – Duke Divinity School, a bastion of apostasy, is one of 13 seminaries associated with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1924 with an endowment by tobacco magnate James Duke. The following is excerpted from “Duke Divinity School,” The College Fix, Apr. 20, 2022: “A recent worship service co-hosted by Duke Divinity School and the Duke Divinity Pride student organization invited students to praise the ‘great queer one.’’ ‘We want to affirm everyone to be who they truly are,’ second year Master of Divinity student Caroline Camp began. ‘To step into the holy one’s fire that burns away all that says we are not good enough and refines us by the Pentecostal fire to be who exactly the great queer one calls us to be. Let the spirit move you today, lift your hands and voices and dance in whatever way is most freeing to you.’ The one-hour March 22 ‘service of word’ took place in Goodson Chapel, described as the center of worship life at Duke Divinity School. A video of the event on YouTube shows several dozen in attendance. … Camp, in her opening prayer, praised a God she described as ‘strange one, fabulous one, fluid and ever becoming one.’ ‘Do not allow us to make our ideas of you into an idol,’ Camp said. ‘You are as close to us as our own breath, and yet your essence transcends all that we can imagine. You are mother, father, and parent. You are sister, brother, and sibling. You are drag queen and trans man and genderfluid, incapable of limiting your vast expressions of beauty, embodied in us, your creation.’ We recognize our flesh, in all its forms, is made holy in you. With thanksgiving, we celebrate your manifestation in all its glorious forms.’ … Third-year Master of Divinity student Tirzah Villegas told the audience that ending her relationship with the ‘white male god’ of her childhood allowed her to begin another ‘with a deliciously queer god who loved in scandalous ways and created us for pleasure and wholeness.’ … Event co-sponsor and student group Divinity Pride, which describes its main purpose as affirming the ‘dignity, faithfulness, and strength of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and gender/sexuality non-conforming Christians,’ is part of a broader push that seeks to redefine orthodox Christianity–and to redefine God.” The apostle Peter prophesied of these things: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. … God spared not the angels that sinned … And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness … And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly” (2 Peter 2:1-2, 4-6).
NEW JERSEY TO BRAINWASH PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN IN HOMOSEXUAL/TRANSSEXUAL FILTH – The following is excerpted from “N.J. to Require 2nd Graders,” Christian Headlines, Apr. 21, 2022: “New sex-education standards that are set to go into effect in New Jersey this year have sparked a nationwide controversy … The standards, approved in 2020, are scheduled to be implemented this fall and will expand what students across all grades will learn about several issues, including LGBTQ+ matters. … A state-approved lesson plan and activity for first graders teaches kids that gender identity is how they ‘feel.’ A child can look like a boy on the outside but be a girl on the inside, according to the lesson. … the lesson plan, called ‘Pink Blue Purple,’ says in sample dialogue for the teacher. ‘You might feel like you are a boy, you might feel like you are a girl. … And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal!’ … By the end of grade 12, students should be ‘advocate[s]’ for ‘school and community policies and programs’ that promote ‘dignity and respect for people of all genders, gender expressions, gender identities, and sexual orientations.’ Controversy over the new standards grew when state Rep. Holly Schepisi spoke out against them on her Facebook page. … Teachers, she said, are instructed to promote a website and its YouTube channel to children as young as nine that calls porn ‘something everyone watches.’”
NO FAULT DIVORCE – The following is excerpted from “No Fault Divorce Ignores Data, Science, and Children,” BreakPoint, Jan. 24, 2022: “A couple of weeks ago, Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister for the United Kingdom, praised what he called an ‘important’ debate in Parliament. He was referring to a law effective April 6, under which married couples no longer have to name any faults before seeking a divorce. … What Mr. Raab and our friends across the Pond should do is look before they leap. A look at the American experience reveals how this so-called ‘freedom’ has played out here, and the enduring scars it’s left upon children. … In the early 1970s, an incredible (and incredibly sad) study was launched, which was later published in book form under the title The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. It told some of the tragic stories of these children. Drs. Judith Wallerstein and Julia Lewis interviewed over a hundred children of divorce in California, hoping to get at the real-world impact of divorce on the increasing number of children growing up in broken homes. They didn’t only interview these individuals as children, but also followed them over the next 25 years. What this study found was devastating. As one reviewer described their findings: ‘[O]nly seven of the 131 children from the original sample experienced a post-divorce home in which they had a good relationship with a step-parent. At this 25-year mark, only 60 percent had contracted for marriage. Two-thirds of the sample decided not to have children.’ This story is about far more than stats. It’s about the heartbreaking impact divorce had on these kids’ lives. There’s the woman who almost 30 years later could still see in her mind the details of ‘the sun striking the patterns on the living room carpet’ the day her father left when she was only 4. There’s the boy who refused to take off his heavy coat at school despite the day’s heat in case he’d have to leave at a moment’s notice. There’s the little girl who kept telling her teacher about her new baby brother, except there was no baby, only her little heart’s plea to imagine her parents were still together. Then, there was the 5-year-old who said she needed a new mommy because hers had been ‘a tense, cranky, unavailable stranger.’ There are times when divorce is necessary, but it is always tragic in the same sense as when catastrophic cures like amputation or chemotherapy are necessary. To pretend otherwise is a dangerous fantasy. The Bible sees marriage as a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, but, recognizing the frailty of human nature after the Fall, it allows for divorce in extreme cases, such as abandonment, adultery, or abuse.”
TINY TIME BOMBS – The following is from CreationMoments.com, April 15, 2022: “The discovery of tiny pollen grains in rock shows just how inflated the billions of years claimed by evolutionists really are. This discovery, by a creation scientist, has turned those pollen grains into tiny time bombs that continue to damage the theory of evolution. In 1964, Dr. Clifford Burdick devised a new, better way to collect pollen samples, and he used this method to gather samples in the Grand Canyon. These pollen samples, when viewed under the microscope, allowed scientists to identify what kinds of trees they came from. The Hakatai shale, dated by evolutionists at 600 million years old, was among the layers Dr. Burdick examined for pollen. According to evolutionary dating, this layer would not have contained pollen from conifer trees. Conifers supposedly hadn’t yet evolved. When conifer pollen was discovered in the samples, evolutionists quickly claimed that they were modern pollen grains that had contaminated the sample. The problem with the evolutionists’ explanation is that pollen is resistant to staining. Yet, this pollen was stained with red from the shale itself. It must have been there a long time. The experiment was repeated in 1970. Not only were grains of conifer pollen again found, but pollen from oak trees and evidence of other flowering plants were found as well. The discovery of these pollen grains offers scientific evidence that evolution’s time scale and story of history is wrong. The evidence does support the accuracy of the Bible that tells us that all life began during the first week of the Earth’s history a few thousand years ago. Author: Paul A. Bartz. Ref: Burdick, Clifford L. 1981, ‘Pine pollen in the Grand Canyon,’ Bible-Science Newsletter, June, page 1.”
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).
Friday Church News Notes, April 29, 2022, www.wayoflife.orgfbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143
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