(Friday Church News Notes, April 1, 2022, www.wayoflife.orgfbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) 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.
CHRISTIAN PUBLISHERS LOCKED OUT OF TWITTER FOR CALLING TRANSGENDER OFFICIAL A MAN – The following is excerpted from Christian Headlines, Mar. 23, 2022: “Twitter has taken action against Christian media platforms the Babylon Bee and The Christian Post for calling Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine, a man. The Babylon Bee, a satirical news site, was locked out of Twitter for ‘hateful conduct’ after posting a tweet naming Levine, a transgender woman on the Biden Administration, as their ‘Man of The Year’ last Saturday. The tweet was a form of mockery against USA Today, which named Levin one of its ‘Women of the Year’ earlier this month. Despite being punished by Twitter, Babylon Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon asserted that they will not delete the tweet. ‘We’re not deleting anything,’ he wrote Monday on his account. ‘Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.’ … Twitter also imposed the same punishment on Christian news publication The Christian Post for tweeting its article with the title, ‘USA Today names Rachel Levine, a man, among its Women of the Year.’ On Friday, Twitter emailed The Christian Post accusing the news outlet of violating its policy against ‘hateful conduct’ and banned the account from posting new articles and ‘temporarily’ limited some other features on its Twitter account. In a statement issued to Faithwire, The Christian Post’s senior investigative reporter on sexual ethics and the trans movement, Brandon Showalter, explained why the outlet refuses to take down the tweet. ‘The reason that The Christian Post is such a stickler for language, especially when reporting on the developments of transgender ideology, is because we value the truth,’ Showalter said. ‘If we fail to maintain the integrity of what and how we report on these hot-button issues, we do a great disservice to our readers who count on us to communicate honestly. We simply cannot, in good conscience, overwrite the truth of our physiology with words that have no meaning or the opposite meaning,’ he asserted.”
ELON MUSK CALLS OUT TWITTER FOR UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY – Elon Musk, one of America’s great inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs, has called out Twitter, the social media giant, for its draconian censorship. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. What should be done?” (@elonmusk, Mar. 26, 2022). “Musk’s 79.1 million followers immediately called on him to either buy Twitter himself or build a new platform. Former CIA analyst and conservative radio host Buck Sexton tweeted, ‘Yes, Buy twitter or please build one. Save the country from these psycho Silicon Valley libs’” (“Elon Musk,” Fox Business, Mar. 26, 2022). Musk is founder of SpaceX and Tesla.
CANADA’STRUDEAU REBUKED BY MEMBERS OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT FOR JACK BOOT TREATMENT OF TRUCKERS – The following is excerpted from “Canada’s Trudeau,” Fox News, Mar. 27, 2022: “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with scathing rebuke from some Members of European Parliament (MEP) last week after he delivered a speech to the European Union. Independent Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic accused Trudeau of engaging in ‘dictatorship of the worst kind’ because of how his government treated the peaceful Freedom Convoy in February. ‘Under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months,’ said Kolakusic, ‘we watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes.’ Alternative for Germany MEP Christine Anderson also called out Trudeau, calling him ‘a disgrace for any democracy.’ … Another Alternative for Germany MEP, Bernhard Zimniok, tweeted, ‘I tried to prevent the speech of PM Trudeau in the EU Parliament because he recently trampled on the core values of democracy.’ … Romanian MEP Cristian Terheș boycotted Trudeau’s speech entirely. Trudeau has also faced backlash at home for how he responded to the Freedom Convoy. … A group of Canadian clergy sent an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau last month rebuking him for invoking the Emergencies Act to quell the Freedom Convoy and for other actions they described as ‘tyrannical.’”
OVER HALF OF U.S. ABORTIONS NOW DONE WITH PILLS – The following is excerpted from “Over Half,” Newsmax, Feb. 24, 2022: “More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than surgery, an upward trend that spiked during the pandemic with the increase in telemedicine, a report released Thursday shows. In 2020, pills accounted for 54% of all U.S. abortions, up from roughly 44% in 2019. The preliminary numbers come from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. The group, by contacting providers, collects more comprehensive abortion data than the U.S. government. … Use of abortion pills has been rising since 2000 when the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone–the main drug used in medication abortions. The new increase ‘is not surprising, especially during COVID,’’ said Dr. Marji Gold, an abortion provider in New York City. She said patients seeking abortions at her clinic have long chosen the pills over the medical procedure. … So far this year, 16 state legislatures have proposed bans or restrictions on medication abortion, according to the Guttmacher report.”
OPPOSITION TOWHO’S PUSH FOR NEW PANDEMIC TREATY – The following is excerpted from “WHO’s push for new treaty,” Just the News, Mar. 17, 2022: “Negotiations have begun to establish a globally binding agreement to combat future pandemics, raising concerns that such an accord would undermine national sovereignty and centralize too much power in the hands of the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations’ health agency. In a recent open letter, the World Council for Health, a coalition of scientists, doctors, lawyers, and civil society advocacy organizations, lambasted the idea as dangerous and illegitimate. ‘The proposed WHO agreement is unnecessary, and is a threat to sovereignty and inalienable rights,’ the council wrote. ‘It increases the WHO’s suffocating power to declare unjustified pandemics, impose dehumanizing lockdowns, and enforce expensive, unsafe, and ineffective treatments against the will of the people.’ Prominent health experts such as Drs. Pierre Kory and Astrid Stuckelberger have endorsed the council’s open letter and been outspoken against the treaty under discussion. The agreement would effectively create one world government under the guise of creating a standardized global pandemic response, according to Stuckelberger, a member of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva and Lausanne.”
POLL: AMERICANS STILL FAVORABLE TOWARD ISRAEL – The following is excerpted from “Poll,” Israel365 News, Mar. 23, 2022: “[A]ccording to a new Gallup poll from February … the favorability of the Jewish state itself remains high, with 71% of U.S. adults saying they have a favorable view of Israel while 27% have a favorable opinion of the Palestinian Authority. That percentage of Americans who side with the Palestinians represents a new high. The poll also found that 77% of Republicans sympathize more with Israelis while only 13% with the Palestinians. Among independents, 54% side with Israelis and 26% with Palestinians. And with Democrats, 40% favor the Israelis and 38% the Palestinians.”
ONE DAY IN ETERNITY – “High in the North in a land called Svithjod, there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away, a single day of eternity will have passed” (Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Story of Mankind). “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:46). “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).
OUR DECEPTIVE EYES – The following is from CreationMoments.com, April 30, 2021: “Do your eyes ever play tricks on you? Our eyes regularly play tricks on us with the help of our brains. Repeated research has shown that the images we see are not exactly what our eyes see. Our eyes and brains work together to construct the images we call sight. It’s not that our eyes are out to hoodwink us. Most of the time our eyes are working to help us. Working together, our brain and eyes add logical details to the images we see. Each of us has a blind spot in our vision because there are no vision cells where the optic nerve is. Instead of showing us a spot of nothing at the blind point in our field of vision, our brain invents an image from surrounding details. Your brain pulls the same trick on you when you proofread your completed manuscript. While others can still find typos, you may not. Your brain knows what you are saying and so it automatically shows you a repaired version, making many of your typing errors invisible. Your pupils can reveal your thoughts. Studies show that when seeing unpleasant scenes the pupils retract. Pleasant or interesting scenes cause the pupils to open wider. Charles Darwin wrote, ‘To suppose that the eye, with all of its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.’ We don’t often agree with Charles Darwin, but this time we do! Author: Paul A. Bartz. Ref: McCutcheon, M. 1989, The Compass in Your Nose, Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.”
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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