APES GRANTED RIGHT TO LIFE AND FREEDOM (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On June 25 Spain’s parliament voiced support for the Great Apes Project that grants apes rights formerly reserved for humans, and the sentiment is expected to become law. It will then be illegal to use apes in experiments, to keep them for circuses, or to use them in television commercials or movies (“Spanish Parliament to Extend Rights to Apes,” Reuters, June 25). It will be legal to keep apes in zoos, but their living conditions will have to be improved dramatically. The Great Ape Project (GAP) was founded in 1993 with the objective of giving apes the right to life, freedom, and protection. We wonder why apes are not given the right to express their will in this business. Who are these Great Apes Project folk to think that they can speak for all apes? What if an ape wants to run away with a circus or star in a movie? How can GAP say that Cheeta didn’t enjoy being the star of Tarzan? He’s still alive, by the way. He retired from movies in 1968 and has been living ever since at a primate sanctuary in Palm Springs, watching television, banging on a piano, and making abstract paintings. He even watches his old movies with his grandson, Jeeter (“Cheeta,” Wikipedia). The 76-year-old chimpanzee’s ghost-written autobiography is scheduled for publication in October. Now if Jeeter moves to Spain he will have to hire a lawyer just to get a job, not to speak of book rights. We are living in ridiculous times. In reality, if evolution is true, there is no such thing as rights, neither for monkeys nor for humans. Blind chance does not produce rights.

MANY EVANGELICALS EXCHANGING SOUL WINNING FOR KINGDOM BUILDING (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - There is a widespread move among evangelical Protestants and Baptists to exchange soul winning for kingdom building. This is one of the hallmarks of the so-called emerging church. Christianity Today recently published a positive review of the Christian Vision Project and its “Big Story” approach to evangelism. It was developed by James Choung of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and is used by World Vision and others. Choung explains the Big Story like this: “The world, our relationships, and each of us were designed for good, but all of it was damaged by evil because of our self-centeredness and inclination to seek our own good above others. But God loved the world too much to leave it that way, so he came as Jesus. He took everything evil with him to death on the cross, and through his resurrection, all of it was restored for better. In the end of time, all will be fully restored, but until then, THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS ARE SENT TOGETHER TO HEAL PEOPLE, RELATIONSHIPS, AND THE SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD” (“Christian Vision Project,” Christianity Today, June 27, 2008). Choung says that the overriding spiritual question is, “What will really help the planet be a better place?” and claims that “our faith better have an answer for it to be relevant today.” We beg to differ. This is NOT the question that is raised and answered in the New Testament. The apostle Paul said: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). The Great Commission that Christ gave to the disciples following His resurrection does not say anything about making the planet a better place (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; Acts 1:8). And nowhere in the book of Acts do we see the disciples pursuing a kingdom-building program that involved grandiose social-justice projects. When supposed Christians have the same world-saving agenda as unbelievers, there is something deeply wrong with their Christianity. The preaching of the apostles and prophets of the early churches had a great sense of urgency. They preached that today is the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2) and were aware that Christ could come at any time (1 Peter 4:7). They did not see themselves as world architects but as ambassadors. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). For more about the error of kingdom-building, see http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/kingdom-of-god.html.

GERMAN PARENTS SENTENCED TO JAIL FOR HOMESCHOOLING (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Parents Sent to Jail for Homeschooling,” WorldNetDaily, June 18, 2008: “A mother and father who have been homeschooling their children each have been ordered by a German judge to serve three-month prison terms after a prosecutor said he was unhappy with fines the family paid and he wanted the parents jailed. The sentences for Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek were announced in Germany’s equivalent of a district court today in the state of Hesse, according to a staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The group, the premier homeschooling advocacy organization in the world, has been monitoring and helping in the Dudeks’ case since before a federal prosecutor announced his intention more than a year ago to see the parents behind bars. ... It was just a year ago when WND reported the prosecutor, Herwig Muller, appealed a lower court’s imposition of fines against the Dudeks. The prosecutor said at the time he would demand jail sentences of three months each for the parents. Muller also said he would not permit the case to be resolved with probation for the parents. A newspaper reporter in Hesse, Harald Sagawe, said the parents previously paid fines because ‘they did not send their children to school, for religious reasons.’ He continued, ‘The parents, Christians who closely follow the Bible, teach their children themselves.’ ... [H]omeschooling has been stamped on since the Nazi era, critics say. Practical Homeschool Magazine has noted one of the first acts by Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools and school-related issues. ... HSLDA officials estimate there are some 400 homeschool families in Germany, virtually all of them either forced into hiding or facing court actions.”

THE PAGAN REVIVAL (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - According to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, the number of neopagans is doubling every 18 months. Neopaganism is a freewheeling label akin to New Age that encompasses a wide range of ancient heathen forms of “spirituality,” including Wiccan, druidism, goddess worship, Gaia (earth worship), astrology, and Asatru (the worship of Odin and other Norse gods). The drawing card is paganism’s lack of authoritative dogma and non-judgmental philosophy. It is a bold rejection of the God of the Bible and salvation through Jesus Christ alone. The Wiccan law is, “As long as it harms none, do what you will.” Carridwen Brennan, a Wiccan who lives in Denver, says: “In Wicca, there is no ‘you have to’ and ‘you can’t.’ There is no orthodoxy” (“Neopaganism Growing Rapidly,” The Denver Post, June 26, 2008). Kantis Walter, who along with her husband Jesse owns the Witches Brew coffee shop in Denver, says it was the nonjudgmentalism that drew her to paganism. J.J. Steelman says, “Being a pagan means I’m free.” “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), and, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

BARACK OBAMA PRESENTED WITH MONKEY GOD (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - After learning that a “prominent American politician carries a miniature Hanuman idol in his pocket for luck,” the All-India Congress party decided to present Barack Obama with a larger edition of the Hindu monkey god (“11-day Prayer for Obama’s Success,” The Hindu, June 25, 2008). Hoping to assist Obama in his presidential campaign, the Indian party organized an 11-day Hindu ceremony. The first day featured pranapratishta, which is a ritual performed by a dozen Hindu priests “to infuse divine life” into the two foot high, 33-pound, gold-plated idol. Carolyn Sauvage-Mar, chairperson of Democrats Abroad-India, accepted the idol for Obama and promised to ensure that it reaches him by August 24, a day before the Democratic National Convention (“Obama to Get Hamuman Idol,” Times of India, June 24). We wonder why a professing Christian would carry a Hindu idol in his pocket for “luck”? “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (1 Corinthians 10:20).

CONSERVATIVE ANGLICANS FORM NEW GLOBAL NETWORK (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Conservative Anglicans meeting in Jerusalem formed a new global network that challenges the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The new network could represent one-half of the world’s Anglicans (The Guardian, June 29, 2008). Called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, the network intends to sever ties with liberal Anglicans in the USA and Canada. It will return to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, train its own priests, and require theological orthodoxy of its member churches. The final straw for these schismatic Anglicans was the ordination of homosexual V. Gene Robinson as the Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. The participants at the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem included 300 bishops and archbishops. Though they denied that they are splitting from the Anglican Communion, they plan to have their own “primates council” and do not intend to submit to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Peter Jensen, Anglican archbishop of Sydney, said: “The consequences have been unfolding over the last five years, now their church is divided; it looks as though there will be permanent division, one way or the other. All around the world the sleeping giant that is evangelical Anglicanism and orthodox Anglicanism has been aroused by what happened in Canada and the United States of America. It was an act of folly.”

AIDS: THE POLITICALLY CORRECT DISEASE (Friday Church News Notes, July 4, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “HIV ‘Is a Gay Disease,’” Baptist Press, June 20, 2008: “The Centers for Disease Control estimates there are 50,000 new cases of HIV infection reported each year. Currently 1.1 million people in the United States are believed to be infected with HIV. All HIV infections are a result of someone’s behavior. According to the CDC, in 2006 59 percent of new HIV infections were caused solely by male-to-male sexual contact, and 7 percent by both male-to-male contact and drug use. That means that homosexual men, who comprise approximately 2 percent of the population, accounted for 66 percent of new HIV cases two years ago. Of the remaining HIV cases, 17 percent were transmitted by high-risk heterosexual contact and 16 percent solely by drug use. The one thing that all the HIV infections have in common is they are a direct result of behavior. For years homosexual activists insisted that HIV was not a homosexual disease. That has changed. Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, told the organization national conference in February, ‘Folks, with 70 percent of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bisexual, we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that.’ Foreman acknowledged what many of us have known for decades: HIV and its companion disease AIDS is dramatically disproportionate among male homosexuals. ... What I find utterly amazing is that while STDs, including HIV, are spread solely on the basis of behavior, society continues to send a message of safety rather than abstinence. And homosexual sex continues to be portrayed as some civil right rather than an incubator for a deadly disease.”