Friday Church News Notes
Feb/19/10 06:48
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February 19, 2010, Volume 11, Issue 8
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.
FUNERAL MUSIC? (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Recently a brother in Christ shared with me the following: “Some of my friends have described traditional sacred music as ‘funeral music,’ and the Lord has shown me that they are correct in one sense, and in one sense only. Good Christian music is supposed to help us mortify the flesh, to put it to death, so in that sense it should be ‘funeral music” as opposed to party music that appeals to the flesh.” This testimony rings true. One problem with contemporary Christian music is that it does not bring spiritual conviction. It ministers good feelings more than holiness. It is dance music, not dying-to-self music. But if “funeral music” means “boring music,” it is only boring to those who have spoiled their appetite by the world’s pop music or boring when it is sung in a lifeless manner in a dead church.
February 19, 2010, Volume 11, Issue 8
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.
SIX-YEAR-OLD ARRESTED (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A first-grade student in Port St. Lucie, Florida, was arrested, handcuffed, and committed to a mental health facility because the school couldn’t handle her behavior. After her teacher asked her to do something, six-year-old Haley Shalansky stormed out of the classroom and when taken to the principal’s office she flew into a rage, kicking the wall, throwing things, even hitting the principal. Since the public schools are not allowed to spank children, the police were called in. They handcuffed the little girl and hauled her off to a “mental health facility” (WPBF.com, Feb. 10, 2010). America is a sad nation. Having turned from God it has no wisdom. Humanism has replaced God’s Word, and political correctness has replaced common sense. How can America win the “war against terror” when it can’t even discipline its own little children and it puts ridiculous restrictions on its brave military?
ATHEISM ON THE MARCH (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Atheism, which the Bible calls the philosophy of fools, is on the march in these last days. Most recently atheists have purchased space on billboards in Sacramento, California, to advertise their opinions. The signs, which are sponsored by the grossly misnamed Sacramento Area Coalition of Reason, proclaim, “Are you good without God? Millions are.” That is far from reasonable, because millions can easily be wrong as right. What is the evidence that there is no God? Does the existence of a complex universe speak eloquently of no God? If you want to talk numbers, vastly more people believe in God than don’t, but as far as I know, God’s existence isn’t up for election. And if He exists, no one is good without Him, not in this world and certainly not in the next. If atheism is true, it matters not a whit how we live or what we believe, but if the Bible is true it matters greatly how we live and what we believe, because man is a fallen sinner, there is a heaven and a hell after death, and the only way of salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ.
LESBIAN PRIEST RECEIVES MORE VOTES OF APPROVAL (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The Christian Post, Feb. 13, 2010: “A controversial priest who has a lesbian partner has so far received more than half the votes she needs to be consecrated as an assistant bishop. And the 120-day consent process began just a month ago. The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool has 29 consents to become bishop suffragan, according to a recent report by the Diocese of Los Angeles. She needs 56 to be confirmed as the second openly homosexual bishop in The Episcopal Church. ‘Throughout her 30 years of ordained ministry, the Rev. Mary Glasspool has been faithful and consistent to the ministry, doctrine and teaching of the Episcopal Church,’ Bishop Nathan Baxter of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania wrote in a pastoral letter indicating his consent. ... Glasspool has been with her partner, Becki Sander, since 1988. Her election in December to the office of bishop suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles has caused another uproar across The Episcopal Church, six years after it consecrated its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. ... Glasspool, who first came out to the national body 30 years ago, says ‘it’s time for our wonderful church to move on and be the inclusive Church we say we are.’”
COMMUNIST CHINA’S CITIZEN SPY NETWORK (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Officer Boasts of 12,000 Spies,” Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 12, 2010: “The director of an Inner Mongolian public security bureau said officers had recruited 12,093 of his county’s 400,000 inhabitants to provide intelligence, offering an unusual glimpse into the state's surveillance network. Liu Xingchen told the state news agency Xinhua the priorities were to collect information about conflicts that might lead to complaints to higher authorities and to discover ‘non-harmonious elements.’ Experts said it was rare to see information on the numbers of informants or public discussion of the network, although detailed accounts of surveillance work are available in documents intended for internal use. While China's surveillance network is known to be extensive, it is not clear how active the informants in Kailu County are or how typical the figures are of wider practices. ... In the interview, translated by the news website China Digital Times, he said the bureau had sought to ‘dig deep for intelligence information on many fronts, proactively discover non-harmonious elements that affect stability … [and try to] evolve from being passive to being active, to go from punishing after the fact to resolving the problem before the fact.’”
THE SHACK’S SALES AND INFLUENCE CONTINUES TO GROW (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Shack has been in the New York Times Top Ten for Paperback Trade Fiction since June 2008. It has sold seven million copies worldwide and been translated into two languages. Written by William Paul Young, The Shack is about redefining God. Young has said that the book is for those with “a longing that God is as kind and loving as we wish he was” (interview with Sherman Hu, Dec. 4, 2007). What he is referring to is the desire on the part of the natural man for a God who loves “unconditionally” and does not require repentance or obedience, does not judge sin, and does not make men feel guilty for what they do. In that same interview, Young said that a woman wrote to him and said that her 22-year-old daughter came to her after reading the book and asked, “IS IT ALRIGHT IF I DIVORCE THE OLD GOD AND MARRY THE NEW ONE?” Young therefore admits that the God of The Shack is different from the traditional God of Bible-believing Christianity. He says that the God who “watches from a distance and judges sin” is “a Christianized version of Zeus.” This reminds me of the modernist G. Bromley Oxnam, who called the God of the Old Testament “a dirty bully” in his 1944 book “Preaching in a Revolutionary Age.” The Shack depicts God the Father as a large black woman who loves to listen to hip hop. The Shack god is the god of the emerging church. She/He is cool, loves rock & roll, is non-judgmental, does not exercise wrath toward sin, does not send unbelievers to an eternal fiery hell, does not require repentance and the new birth, puts no obligations on people, and doesn’t like traditional Bible churches. Note the following quotes from Young’s god: “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it...” (The Shack, p. 120). Contrast Isaiah 13:11. “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims ... and many who are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. ... I have no desire to make them Christian” (p. 182). Contrast Acts 4:12; 26:28. Young’s god has a strong kinship to the New Age god promoted by Oprah Winfrey. The Shack is another building stone of the end-times Tower of Babel. (For more on this see “The Shack’s Cool God” at the Way of Life web site.)
LIFEWAY SELLS “THE SHACK” AND EMERGING BOOKS (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Lifeway Christian Stores, which are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, are selling “The Shack,” a novel that depicts God as a woman who doesn’t judge people. On a visit to the Lifeway bookstore in Huntsville, Alabama, in June 2009, the book was on display with a notice that said, “This book may contain thoughts, ideas, or concepts that could be considered inconsistent with historical evangelical theology. Therefore, we encourage you to read it with extra discernment.” By means of this disclaimer, Lifeway intends to make money from this popular book while avoiding responsibility for its heresies, but it won’t work. The Bible warns that if we do not disassociate strictly from those who preach false christs, we become partakers of their evil deeds (2 John 7-11). Lifeway is not only associating with William Young and his heresies by selling the book, but they are actually putting funds into his coffers to enable him to promote his heresies. The Lifeway warning says the book “MAY contain” thoughts contrary to sound theology and urges readers to use discernment, but they don’t identify anything in particular and a large percentage of their customers doubtless lack the Bible knowledge and spiritual discernment required to discern truth from error. This is like serving up a dish contaminated with poison to children and warning them to eat with caution! The Lifeway bookstores are filled to the brim with psychology, self-help, self-esteem, romance novels, ecumenical and charismatic literature, undependable Bible versions, and all sorts of “Christian” rock music. On a visit to a Lifeway store in Huntsville in 2009 I found that they had many titles by emerging church authors, including Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis), Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel), Erwin McManus (The Barbarian Way), Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz), and Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution). Lifeway will stand accountable before God for polluting the minds and hearts of their customers with unscriptural material and for refusing to carry sound material from fundamentalist Bible-based publishers that they could and should be stocking but which they refuse to stock because these are “controversial.” (For more information see “What Is the Emerging Church” at the Way of Life web site.)
AUTHOR OF THE SHACK DENIES SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT AND HELL FIRE (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In an interview on March 13, 2009, with Kendall Adams of KAYP radio, William Young, author of The Shack, denied substitutionary atonement and hell fire, two cardinal doctrines of the biblical Christian faith. When asked, “I take it that you wouldn’t agree that the cross was a place of punishment for sin,” Young replied, “No. I don’t; I [don’t hold] a penal substitution point of view.” Young also said, “I don’t think that hell is physical fire and that kind of stuff and it is not an issue of separation from God.” The Shack is very popular among emerging type churches, but it presents a false god.
STEPHEN GOULD’S NOMA (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, who was a bitter enemy of “creationism” and “intelligent design,” proposed that science and religion can find harmony if they are separated into different spheres. He called this NOMA -- Non-Overlapping Magisteria. (Magisterium refers to a teaching authority.) Gould would give the physical world and the issue of origins to evolutionary science while leaving the issues of morality and purpose to religion. Science supposedly deals with “empirical facts,” whereas religion deals with non-testable metaphysics. He said, “We [evolutionists] study how the heavens go, and they [religion] determine how to go to heaven.” (In reality Gould shared John Lennon’s atheistic faith that there is neither heaven nor hell.) According to this policy, religion and science are supposed to treat one another with respect but are not to interfere with the other’s “magisterial.” The Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City promotes this idea. It depicts man as a product of blind Darwinian evolution and brashly contradicts the Bible’s account of creation, but a video presentation features some prominent evolutionists claiming that science and religion are friends. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, says, “I’m a scientist that believes the tools of science are the way to understand the natural world and one needs to be rigorous about that. But I’m also a believer in a personal God. I find the scientific worldview and the spiritual worldview to be entirely complementary. And I find it quite wonderful to be able to have both of those worldviews existing in my life in a given day, because each illuminates the other.” This might sound respectful toward “religion,” but in fact it is a bold repudiation of the Bible, because the Bible refuses to speak only about “religious things.” The Bible begins with the account of how the material universe was made, so it refuses to leave such things to “science.” And if the Bible is wrong about the material universe there is no reason to believe it is right about anything else and no reason to “respect” its teachings on any other subject. NOMA has rightly been called “a gag-order masquerading as a principle of tolerance.”
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.