FRIDAY CHURCH NEWS NOTES
SEPTEMBER 7, 2012, VOLUME 13, ISSUE 36
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.
FALSE MESSIAH DIES (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church cult, died on September 3 at age 92. Moon claimed that Jesus appeared to him in 1935 and commissioned him to establish the kingdom of God on earth. He founded the Unification Church in Korea in 1954 and moved to the United States in 1971. According to the strange Unification doctrine (the “Divine Principle”), Moon and his wife, “the Heavenly Parents,” were chosen to produce the kingdom of God on earth. (This was Moon’s second wife; he left his first wife in 1960.) Moon claimed that God said to him, “You are the son I have been seeking, the one who can begin my eternal history.” Supposedly, Adam and Eve failed to produce the kingdom because of their sin, and Jesus likewise failed to produce the kingdom of God because he was crucified before he could marry the perfect bride. Thus Moon was chosen to carry on the work. Moon blasphemously claimed that Jesus was born of an immoral relationship between Mary and the father of John the Baptist. Moon conducted mass weddings of interracial and even inter-religious couples, claiming that this is the path to world peace. In Oakland, California, he said to the women in attendance: “If you don’t give birth, you are disqualified as a woman” (“Rev. Moon Stirs Up Fans,” Oakland Tribune, March 13, 2001). In Oklahoma City that year, Moon proclaimed: “I have been to the spirit world. I have met God.” Upon his death, one of his followers said, “I feel like the sky is falling and the whole world has collapsed,” while another said, “You are the eternal king of kings, the messiah of mankind. You will always live in my heart.” (“Church readies huge funeral for ‘messiah,’” Bangkok Post, Sept. 4, 2012). Since 2008 Moon’s youngest son has been in charge of the cult’s religious and business empire.
IT’S WICKEDNESS AS USUAL FOR SOGGY NEW ORLEANS (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Seven years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was hit a hard though lesser blow by Hurricane Isaac. Whereas Katrina hindered some of the city’s infamous debauchery, including the the cancellation of the 2005 gay pride “Southern Decadence” festival, the debauchery continued without a blush this year. The 2012 Decadence festival was hosted by the French Quarters a few days after the hurricane. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light” (Ephesians 5:11-13).
INFLUENTIAL CATHOLIC TEXTUAL CRITIC DIES (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Carlo Martini, one of the editors of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, died last week at age 85. Martini, a Jesuit priest and the Roman Catholic Archbishop Emeritus of Milan, was an editor of the UBS NT from 1967 until 2002. He was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1983. The other original editors of the UBS NT were Kurt Aland, Bruce Metzger, Matthew Black, and Allen Wikgren. I remember how shocked I was when I learned about the gross theological heresies of the men who edited the Greek New Testament that I had used in Bible School. We students were not given this information, though the school was supposed to be a “fundamentalist” one that believed in separation, but at the beginning of my personal research into the Bible version/text issue as a young missionary in the early 1980s I dug the information out by obtaining books written by Metzger and the other men. Eventually I built a large library on that subject and documented the apostasy “from the horse’s mouth.” My first book exposing this was Unholy Hands on God’s Holy Book: A Report on the United Bible Societies in 1985. The information in that book was reproduced widely both with and without proper credit. After 20 more years of research, I published The Modern Bible Version Hall of Shame in 2005, which exposes modern textual criticism’s affinity to and intimate association with end-time apostasy. This book contains documentation pertaining to more than 150 influential textual critics and translators. God has commanded that His people mark and avoid theological heretics (Romans 16:17) and turn away from end-time apostasy (2 Timothy 3:5). There is no biblical justification for using books and Greek Testaments produced by such men. “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Tim. 3:5).
WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS AND ROME (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In our report “Wycliffe Bible Translators and Rome” we document Wycliffe’s longstanding association with the Roman Catholic Church. A recent example of this is from the August 26, 2012, prayer letter of Karl Grebe, Summer Institute of Linguistics missionary in Cameroon, wrote: “While some of the translators and I are focusing on finalizing the manuscript of the OT and NT books, others are helping two Catholic priests to finalize their translation of a number of Deutero-canonical Books (DC books), known by Protestants as Apocryphal Books. Seven of these books will be included in a Catholic edition of the Lamnso Bible. Upon request by the Catholic Church, the Bible Society of Cameroon, which will be the publisher of the Lamnso Bible, agreed to publish two editions, one for Protestants, containing only the canonical books, and one for Catholics, containing in addition a number of DC books. The translation of these books has been going on sporadically over a number of years but is now finally coming to a conclusion. So far I have checked only two of those books because I was giving priority to the canonical books. Our SIL administration is looking for another consultant to help with the remaining checking task so that the publication of the Lamnso Bible will not be unduly delayed.” Unlike its namesake, John Wycliffe, who stood boldly against Rome’s heresies, Wycliffe Bible Translators has been ecumenical and pro-Roman Catholic from its inception. The Lord Jesus Christ commanded His people to beware of false prophets (Matthew 7:15), and His apostles warned the brethren to mark and avoid those who preach false doctrine (Rom. 16:17) and to beware of those who promote false gospels, false christs, and false spirits (2 Cor. 11:1-4). Wycliffe Bible Translators operates in blatant disregard to the very Word of God it professes to revere.
GENETIC MUTATIONS DO NOT ADD UP TO EVOLUTION (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The release of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011 has resulted in genetic mutations in butterflies. These have produced abnormalities such as infertility, aberrant spot patterns, deformed wings, dented eyes, malformed antennas and legs, and the inability to fight their way out of their cocoons (“Mutant Butterflies,” Fox News, Aug. 5, 2012). Timothy Mousseau, a professor of biology at the University of South Carolina who studied the impacts of radiation from Fukushima and Chernobyl, observes that one implication of the research into the mutations is that “harmful mutations can be passed from one generation to the next, and that these might actually accumulate and increase over time.” There is an even greater implication not mentioned in this report, and that is the refutation of the myth of evolution in that genetic mutations are either of little or no consequence (e.g., aberrant spot patterns) or they are destructive (e.g., deformed wings). The evolution of creatures is not even a theory; it is a fairy tale based on zero scientific evidence. The title to Darwin’s influential book was “On the Origin of Species,” but he failed to demonstrate any mechanism that could account either for the origin of life or the origin of species. Darwin proposed “natural selection,” but whatever natural selection is, it has no creative power. It has no power to add the mind-bogglingly complex genetic information and cellular machinery that lies behind the building of complex creatures. Since Darwin, evolutionists have proposed genetic mutation as the mechanism of creation, but there is no scientific evidence that genetic mutations can create complex limbs, organs, or creatures. Complicated things are not built by random, accidental events. Take a piece of writing, such as Genesis chapter one. It could never be created through random typing, and if accidental changes were introduced to the existing text, the result would invariably be degradation and not improvement. Take a machine such as the Space Shuttle. It has two million parts (and is far less complex than a bacterial cell). Random blind changes would never create such a machine nor improve an existing one. When I was a little kid, one of my uncles had a race car that he drove to a family gathering. My cousin and I found his tool kit and decided to add some random mutations to his race car by tinkering with things and removing stuff. I will guarantee you that we didn’t improve his race car! At a fundamental level, the evolution issue is not rocket science.
KNOWLEDGE SHALL INCREASE (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - About 2,500 years ago, during the Medo-Persian Empire, an angel told the prophet Daniel, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Daniel 12:4). We are seeing a dramatic fulfillment of this in our day. Recent inventions include the following: (1) New face-recognition software system can sort through 36 million faces per second (“Video: Face-Recognition System,” Popular Science, Mar. 23, 2012). The Hitachi Kokusai system can monitor video feeds from around the world in real time, scanning for a particular face, and can track the individual if he appears in any supplied feed. (2) A person lying down in an fMRI machine has controlled a robot just by thinking (“Robot Avatar Body,” New Scientist, July 6, 2012). The goal is to give people the ability to interact with the world using a surrogate body. The person was in the Advanced Virtuality Lab at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, while the robot was in the Béziers Technology Institute in France. (3) Major companies are using eye-tracking technology to make heat maps of where consumers’ eyes go on a label or store shelf to fine tune their advertising displays (“Supermarkets Use Retina Trackers,” Popular Science, July 12, 2012). “Doing so allows market researchers into consumers’ heads in a way they never could before.”
(4) The world’s largest laser system unleashed an 1.85-megajoule blast that delivered more than 500 trillion watts of power (“World’’s Most Powerful Laser,” Fox News, July 12, 2012). The fraction-of-a-second blast, at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, produced 1,000 times the energy used by the entire United States at any given instant. It created conditions that had previously only existed deep within the heart of a star. The scientists hope to reach a break-even point, where the energy released is equal to if not greater than the energy that went into the blast. (5) MIT has developed radar that can see through concrete walls (“Radar,” BBC Technology News, Oct. 19, 2011). With the radar, which uses short radio waves and amplifiers, it is possible to detect people behind a concrete wall from as far as 60 feet away. (6) The first swallowable electronic device has been approved by the FDA (“Approved,” Popular Science, July 31, 2012). The pill is powered by a sand-particle-sized silicon chip that generates voltage by contact with digestive juices. The pill signals a patch on the person’s skin, which relays a message to a mobile phone. (7) There are plans to build a 3D printer that can print houses in 20 hours (“3D Printer Could Build a House,” Yahoo News, Aug. 10, 2012). Speaking at the TEDxOjai conference, Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California described plans to build a giant 3D printer that can “print” houses in just a few hours. A scale model has been built and tested. It is called Contour Crafting. (8) Disney has invented a process to clone human faces into silicone-skinned robots (“Disney Invents,” Gizmodo, Aug. 14, 2012). The process uses 3D motion capture cameras to calculate the precise shape, density and composition of the synthetic silicon skin. The cloned face is driven by an underlying robotic actuation machine.
BEWARE OF SIN THAT BLINDS THE EYES (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:12). “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19). This is a loud warning to young people growing up in Christian homes. It is love for unrighteousness that blinds men’s minds to the truth. Apostates who turn their ears away from the truth do so because they walk after their own lusts (2 Timothy 4:3-4). End-time scoffers are scoffers because they walk after their own lusts (2 Peter 3:3). This is what happened to me as a young person growing up in a Baptist church. I heard the truth and knew the truth from my earliest memories and I had no intention to disown Christ or to doubt the Bible, but I did not receive the truth into my heart and I did not embrace the truth in repentance and saving faith and I did not have a personal walk with Christ. Instead I loved the world and the things of the world and that idolatrous love of sin blinded my mind to the truth. Eventually I became so blind that I rejected the Bible as God’s Word, believed in reincarnation rather than resurrection, accepted universalism rather than salvation, and ultimately joined a Hindu society. Taking an apologetics course like An Unshakeable Faith will not protect you if you do not separate from evil and guard your heart from meditating upon those things that displease the Lord. “Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life. Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away” (Proverbs 4:13-14).
TESTIMONY ABOUT “SOWING AND REAPING” (Friday Church News Notes, September 7, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I have purchased ‘Sowing and Reaping: A Course in Evangelism’ for new Bible studies I am running. They are excellent and a tremendous help for soul winning and teaching the true gospel of Christ. Outstanding material and highly recommended for everyone; we all need to understand the gospel better! It is always applicable and enables everyone to hear and understand true Biblical salvation. The book has an excellent layout, content, verse selection, and questions. We use it over and over. Thank you so much!”
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.
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