The following is another installment of the Friday Church News Notes designed especially for use in churches. It is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.

PSYCHOTIC ROCK & ROLLER BEING TRIED FOR MURDER (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Phil Spector, one of the most famous names in rock music, is being tried for the murder of Lana Clarkson, who died in his home of a gunshot wound in February 2003. Spector, the legendary rock producer who created the “wall of sound” effect that helped change pop music in the 1960s, is one of the many people in this field who have demonstrated psychotic behavior. He shot a hole in the roof of the recording studio during recording sessions with John Lennon and pulled a gun on the Ramones during a recording session in 1980. In an interview with the London Daily Telegraph in early January 2003, Spector said, “I have a bipolar personality ... I have devils inside that fight me. ... I’ve been a very tortured soul. I have not been at peace with myself.” He said that he has feared that his daughter would grow up “unwell herself” and be attracted to “men like that” who are “psychotic or cuckoo.” He said, “I can’t stand to be talked about. I can’t stand to be looked at. I can’t stand to be photographed.” Spector’s former wife, Ronnie, said there were “two Phil Spectors,” one who was charming and “gets everyone laughing ... But I've seen the dark rage that can suddenly rise out of nowhere in the dead of night when the gates to the mansion are closed and locked tight, and that Phil Spector is terrifying” (“Be My Baby, Spector Begs Ex,” The Australian, March 19, 2007). Spector produced the Beatles’ Let It Be album, George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, John Lennons’ Rock ‘n’ Roll, and rock classics such as “Be My Baby” and “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling.” Not every one who listens to rock music goes insane or becomes mentally imbalanced, of course, but it cannot be disputed that a spirit of insanity accompanies this type of music more than any other in modern times. The curse of God is upon the rock & roll scene because of its open rebellion against His laws. The divine curse is evident in the turmoil that envelopes the lives of rock and roll musicians, the countless early deaths, and the mental instability that has accompanied this music.

BEER EVANGELISM (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A church in St. Louis, Missouri, called The Journey has a weekly evangelistic outreach that mixes beer drinking with Bible talk. Called “Theology at the Bottleworks,” the outreach located in a pub consists of a “free-flowing spirited debate among hip young people in scruffy beards and T-shirts” (“Beer and the Bible,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 11, 2007). Pastor Darrin Patrick says, “We want to go where people are.” I agree with that, but what does that have to do with drinking beer? Churches should most definitely evangelize the beer drinkers but should in no wise encourage beer drinkers in their drinking! The Journey is associated with the Missouri Baptist Convention, the state arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the state association appears to be taking steps to distance itself from the beer evangelism. At its annual convention last year the SBC passed a resolution that stated “our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing and consuming of alcoholic beverages.” The Journey is one of the so-called Emerging Churches.

MESSIANIC JEWS PERSECUTED IN ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Persecution continues against Messianic Jews in Israel by ultra-orthodox Jews, the modern-day Pharisees who are still enraged that any Jew would believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The following is excerpted from “Messianic Jew Attacked, Arrested in Israel,” Baptist Press, March 14: “The arrest of a Messianic Jewish evangelist in Israel reflects the strife that often confronts Messianic Jews despite Israel’s guarantees of religious liberty and without any repercussion from law enforcement officials, the leader of a Messianic congregation told Baptist Press. Messianic evangelist Eddie Beckford was arrested outside his business, the Chess and Bible Shop in Arad, after a mob of ultra-Orthodox Haradim Jews surrounded his van in the parking lot and beat him Feb. 25. … Beckford’s arrest followed a call to police when the confrontation with the ultra-Orthodox mob broke out. The Haradim complained that Beckford attacked them, according to an e-mail from Beckford’s wife Lura. ‘[The police] blame us for the disturbances the Haredim cause,’ Lura Beckford wrote in a message posted at israelprayer.com. ‘They tell us, If you weren’t here, we wouldn’t have to deal with this trouble. So, they arrested Eddie and put him in leg irons and took him to jail. They completely ignored the Bedouin’s testimony that Eddie did nothing and the Haredim attacked him. He spent the night in a small filthy cell with five other men, and in the middle of the night they transferred him to another filthy cell,’ Lura added. … ‘I had the privilege of being hit by the chief rabbi of Arad. Why? Just because I believe in Y’shua as the Savior of the Jewish people and the world,’ she wrote. ‘S, a visiting friend of ours, has been terribly harassed while giving out literature, including being beaten and spit upon. All this because we have committed the crime of being believers.’ Beckford’s arrest preceded the introduction of a bill by an Orthodox political party seeking to sentence proselytizers in Israel to one year in prison.”

HOMOSEXUALS IN FRANCE TO APPEAL LEGALITY OF THEIR “MARRIAGE” TO EUROPEAN COURT (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Two French men who were “married” in June 2004 will appeal the legality of their relationship to the European Court of Human Rights now that it has been declared void by France’s highest court. The homosexuals were “married” in a ceremony officiated by Noel Mamere, the mayor of the town of Begles. The French Supreme Court ruled that “under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman” and refused to try to make law from the judicial bench. Mamere claims that in performing the ceremony he was enforcing the European Convention for Human Rights which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. It will be interesting to see what the European Court rules in this case, seeing that France is a member of the European Union.

BBC WORLD SERVICE IN ARABIC (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The British Broadcasting World Service is planning to start an Arabic television service this fall. It has been broadcasting in Arabic on the radio for more than 60 years and has a large audience, but it is very anti-Western. Frank Stewart, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, warns: “For example, that a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service discussion program about torture discussed only one specific allegation, which came from the head of an organization representing some 90 Saudis imprisoned at Guantanamo. This speaker stated that the prisoners were subject to horrible forms of torture and suggested that three inmates reported by the United States to have committed suicide were actually killed. Another participant insisted that the two countries guilty of torturing political prisoners on the largest scale were Israel and the United States. The authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world get sympathetic treatment on BBC Arabic. When Saddam Hussein was in power, he was a great favorite of the service, which reported as straight news his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, when he got 100 percent of the vote. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria enjoys similar favor. When a State Department representative referred to Syria as a dictatorship, his BBC interviewer immediately interrupted and reprimanded him. The Arabic Service not only shields Arab leaders from criticism but also tends to avoid topics they might find embarrassing: human rights, the role of security forces, corruption and censorship. ... If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western anti-democratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen” (“Bad News for the US,” Frank Stewart, New York Times).

ISLAMIC TERRORIST ATTACKS IN AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The Berean Call, March 9, 2007: “While it is true that in the US the danger of home-grown jihadists to national security is lower than it is in Britain, it is also true that there is a growing phenomenon of jihadist violence being perpetrated by Muslim men against American civilians in the name of jihad. The Investors Business Daily published an editorial enumerating a partial list of acts of terrorism carried out by Muslim men against their fellow Americans since the September 11 attacks. Most recently, Sulejman Talovic entered a shopping mall in Salt Lake City, murdered five and wounded four unsuspecting shoppers before being killed by an off-duty police officer. As was the case when Derrick Shareef, another Muslim male, was arrested in early December for plotting to carry out a similar attack at a shopping mall in Illinois just before Christmas, the media and the law enforcement agencies covering the Salt Lake City massacre have made light of the fact that the perpetrator was a Muslim. While Talovic is dead and so cannot explain his motives to authorities, Shareef was arrested after telling an FBI informant of his plans to murder Jews specifically and Americans in particular for Allah. As Shareef told the informant, ‘I swear by Allah man, I'm down for it too. I’m down for the cause. I'm down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man.’ [Yet upon] announcing Shareef’s arrest, US Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that he was acting on his own and that he had no outside inspiration for his decision to commit mass murder for Allah. As was the case with Talovic and with Naveed Afzal Haq, who murdered one woman and wounded five during his shooting rampage at the Seattle Jewish Federation last July, the media and federal authorities have hushed up and failed to investigate the jihadist motives for the Illinois attacker or link him to any larger phenomenon.”

THE POSITIVE ONLY APPROACH VS. HUMAN NATURE (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The Doctrine and Administration of the Church by Paul R. Jackson: “Modern psychology objects to a negative approach and opposes commandments and warnings. God’s Word does not support such a theory, for the theory ignores the awful fact of a depraved human nature. It would be ideal if men could be encouraged to live godly lives without any warning of judgment upon ungodliness. But to suppose they will do so is idealistic and contrary to all observation, as well as to Scripture. God warns of impending judgment and says, ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb. 10:31). ‘Because there is wrath, beware...’ (Job 36:18). If sin goes unjudged in a church, we are thereby inviting others to become self-indulgent. It will not do to plead ‘love’ as a basis for neglect. ... God does not put love and punishment in opposition to each other. He says, ‘For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth...’ (Heb. 12:5-11). The church has a solemn responsibility to restrain sin by proper discipline. If we do not exercise the judgment, the Lord will (1 Cor. 11:31-32).” 

THE REAL CAUSE OF FAILURE IN MARRIAGE (Friday Church News Notes, March 23, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Life in the Spirit by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “The real cause of failure, ultimately, in marriage is always self and the various manifestations of self. Of course that is the cause of trouble everywhere and in every realm. Self and selfishness are the greatest disrupting forces in the world. All the major problems confronting the world, whether you look at the matter from the standpoint of nations and statesmen, or from the standpoint of industry and social conditions, or from any other standpoint--all these troubles ultimately come back to self, to ‘my rights,’ to ‘what I want,’ and to ‘who is he?’ or ‘who is she?’ Self, with its horrid manifestations, always leads to trouble, because if two ‘selfs’ come into opposition there is bound to be a clash. Self always wants everything for it-self. That is true of my self, but it is equally true of your self. You at once have two autonomous powers, each deriving from self, and a clash is inevitable. Such clashes occur at every level, from two people right up to great communities and empires and nations.”