O Timothy 2013-02 - Way of Life Literature

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O Timothy
“Keep that which is committed to thy trust...”
A Monthly Newsletter of Warning and Edification
Volume 30 - Issue 2 - February 2013
"Justifying the use of contemporary
worship is a loud warning that a ministry
is heading in the wrong direction, yea, a
most dangerous direction. If you justify it,
you are justifying the end-time apostasy
that ALL of the mainstream contemporary
worship musicians represent. You are
justifying the breakdown in biblical
separatism." Page 4.
Digging in the Walls: A month’s worth
of news items, republished from Friday
Church News Notes. Page 10.
BJU, CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, AND
ROME
By David Cloud
We are witnessing a wholesale collapse among fundamental Baptists in regard to the conviction that contemporary
worship music is wrong and dangerous. Whereas just five
years ago, the overwhelming consensus was that CCM is
simply wrong and unacceptable, today the consensus is
quickly forming around the position that CCM can be
safely used in moderation, that it is OK to mess around
with it.
Lancaster Baptist Church in Lancaster, California, home
of West Coast Baptist College, is leading in this direction,
and we have warned about this because of their wide
influence. In a September blog, Ed Stetzer said, “Pastor Chappell is arguably the most influential IFB pastor in
America.” (See “Analyzing Adapted CCM Songs” for an extensive list of contemporary worship songs used by
Lancaster over the last few years through late 2012 -- www.wayoflife.org/database/analyzing_adapted.html.)
1 Timothy 6:20, 21
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Bob Jones University (BJU) is also promoting this
position. The compiler and copyright holder of
Hymns Modern and Ancient, Fred Coleman, heads up
Bob Jones University’s Department of Church Music. It is published by Heart Publications, a ministry
of Steve Pettit Evangelistic Association.
The hymnal contains 38 songs by Getty/Townend -16 songs by Keith Getty, nine by Stuart Townend,
and 13 co-written by both men.
Soundforth’s 2013 Spring Selections preview CD
contains four Getty/Townend numbers out of 19
songs.
Majesty Music’s Rejoice Hymns features about 10
songs by Getty/Townend, as well as ones by David
Clydesdale, Scott Wesley Brown, Steve Amerson,
Bob Kilpatrick, and Chris Christensen, all of whom
are out-and-out Christian rockers and radical ecumenists who are using music to build the end-time,
one-world church.
Getty/Townend are unapologetic one-world church
builders. Townend enthusiastically supports the Alpha program which bridges charismatic, Protestant,
and Roman Catholic churches. Townend is holding
hands with the “broader church” in all of its facets
and heresies and end-time apostasies, and his objec-
O TIMOTHY Magazine
Volume 30 Issue 2
David W. Cloud, Editor
Subscription information on
back page of the magazine
Copyright 2011 by D.W.Cloud
Way of Life Literature
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tive in writing the “hymn-like” contemporary songs
is ecumenism.
In July 2012, Townend and the Gettys joined Roman
Catholic Matt Maher on NewsongCafe on
WorshipTogether.com. They played and discussed
“The Power of the Cross,” which was co-written by
Getty-Townend. The program promoted ecumenical
unity, with Maher/Townend/Getty entirely one in the
spirit through the music. Major, fundamental
doctrinal differences are so meaningless to these
people that they are not even mentioned. Spiritual
abominations such as papal supremacy, the mass,
infant baptism, baptismal regeneration, and
Mariolatry were entirely ignored. Jude 3 is despised
and Romans 16:17 is completely disobeyed for the
sake of building the one-world church through
contemporary Christian music.
This is the movement and the spirit that is promoted
in Hymns Modern and Ancient. By promoting
Getty/Townend and other radically ecumenical
contemporary worship musicians, bridges are being
built to a most dangerous spiritual world.
In the Preface to the hymnal, BJU’s Fred Coleman
praises the 19th century Oxford Movement in the
Church of England as a “stately stream,” with not a
hint of warning. Actually, it was a Roman stream, and
though Rome might be very stately, it is neither godly
nor scriptural. That was true in the 19th century and
it is equally true in the 21st. (See reports in the Roman
Catholic section of the Article Database at
www.wayoflife.org/database/rccheader.html.)
Coleman says the leaders of the Oxford Movement
wanted “to restore the glory of the ancient church
(Rome and Byzantium).”
That much is true, but it is not something for a Biblebeliever to praise, for the “ancient church of Rome”
is not the “church” found in the pages of Scripture but
an apostate entity that was formed from the vain
tradition of men. It is christianized paganism, or
paganized Christianity, but it is not biblical
Christianity. (See the following page for photos of
Rome’s Mary on Christ’s throne, on God’s ark, and
on the Cross -www.wayoflife.org/database/maryolatry.html.)
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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(The Oxford Movement was so called because of its
association with Oxford University. It was also called
the Tractarian movement for a series of Tracts for
These Times written by John Keble, Richard Froude,
and John Henry Newman.)
A voice for the Tractarian Movement, the Union
Review, stated: “The work going on in England is an
earnest and carefully organized attempt on the part of
a rapidly increasing body of priests and laymen, to
bring our Church and country up to the full standard
of Catholic faith and practice, and EVENTUALLY
TO PLEAD FOR HER UNION WITH [ROME]”
(Union Review, 1867, p. 412).
Another organ for the Oxford Movement said:
“Justification by faith, the most immoral of Protestant
dogmas, has run its tether, and happily died of selfstrangulation” (Church News, November 1867).
It is not surprising that many of the leaders of the
Oxford Movement ended up in Rome’s lap. These
included Frederick Faber as well as John Newman,
who was rewarded for his support of Rome by being
made a cardinal.
In fact, several hundred Anglican clergy joined the
Roman Catholic Church in the 19th century, and a
large number of those who remained were “AngloCatholics.”
The terrible fruit of the Oxford Movement is evident
in the following statistics: In 1840 there were not 500
Roman priests in England, but by 1890 there were
2,600 (H.G. Guinness, Romanism and the
Reformation, 1891, pp. 2-3). In 1840 there were only
16 Catholic convents, but by 1890 there were over
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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400 convents with more than 15,000 nuns. In 1840
there were only two colleges in England for training
Catholic priests; by 1890, there were 29.
Consider the testimony of historian J.A. Froude, who
wrote in great detail of the wretched spiritual climate
in Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Froude’s father was an Anglican parish minister, and
an older brother, Richard Hurrell Froude, joined the
Oxford Movement and wrote one of the Tracts for
these Times which popularized the movement. Thus
J.A. Froude was in a position to have first-hand
information about the religious situation in England
at that hour. He testified that the twin evils of
Rationalism (theological modernism) and Romanism
(via the Oxford Movement) had devastated the
Church of England.
“Now, while one set of men were bringing back
medievalism, science and criticism were assailing
with impunity the authority of the Bible; miracles
were declared impossible; even Theism itself was
treated as an open question. ... Both these movements
[Romanism and Rationalism] began within a short
distance of one another, AND WERE EVIDENTLY
CONNECTED. ... there is scarcely a clergyman in the
country who does not carry upon him in one form or
other the marks of the Tractarian movement. ... The
Church of England has not only admitted Catholic
doctrine but has rushed into it with extraordinary
enthusiasm” (Froude, Short Studies about Great
Subjects, 1883, pp. 163, 164, 218).
The field of Contemporary Worship Music represents
the same spirit as the old Oxford Movement. It is a
back-to-Rome, one-world church movement cloaked
with a form of godliness and a profession of love for
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Christ. And the fact that many independent Baptists
and fundamentalist preachers and leaders cannot see
this is evidence of gross ignorance or frightful
spiritual blindness.
Churches that are messing around with contemporary
worship music are building bridges to this extremely
dangerous world, and the next generation in
particular will walk across this bridge.
We document this extensively in The Foreign Spirit
of Contemporary Worship Music, a multi-media
video presentation that is available as a free download
from www.wayoflife.org.
One reader rightly observed, “Truly, contemporary
music represents the ecumenical spirit of the age.”
Let’s take another look Keith and Kristyn Getty.
Their goal is to “bring everyone together musically”
(www.keithgetty.com). They want to “bridge the gap
between the traditional and contemporary”
(www.gettymusic.com/about.aspx),
but
Biblebelievers should know that this is a “gap” that must
not be bridged, as it is a gap between Christ and the
world, between the Spirit and the flesh, between true
churches and harlot ones. In October 2012 the Getty’s
displayed their spiritual blindness by joining hands
with emerging heretic Leonard Sweet at the National
Worship Leader Conference in San Diego. Sweet
calls his universalist-tinged doctrine New Light and
“quantum
spirituality”
and
“the
Christ
consciousness” and describes it in terms of “the union
of the human with the divine” which is the “center
feature of all the world’s religions” (Quantum
Spirituality, p. 235). He defines the New Light as “a
structure of human becoming, a channeling of Christ
energies through mindbody experience” (Quantum
Spirituality, p. 70). Sweet says that “New Light
pastors” hold the doctrine of “embodiment of God in
the very substance of creation” (p. 124). In Carpe
Mañana, Sweet says that the earth is as much a part
of the body of Christ as humans and that humanity
and the earth constitutes “a cosmic body of Christ” (p.
124). Sweet lists some of the “New Light leaders”
that have influenced his thinking as Matthew Fox, M.
Scott Peck, Willis Harman, and Ken Wilber. These
are prominent New Agers who believe in the divinity
of man, as we have documented in the book The New
Age Tower of Babel. Sweet has endorsed The Shack
with its non-judgmental father-mother god, and he
promotes Roman Catholic contemplative mysticism
and dangerous mystics such as the Catholic-Buddhist
Thomas Merton. (For further documentation see the
Contemplative Prayer section of the Articles
Database at:
Justifying the use of contemporary worship is a loud
warning that a ministry is heading in the wrong direction, yea, a most dangerous direction. If you justify it,
you are justifying the end-time apostasy that ALL of
the mainstream contemporary worship musicians represent. You are justifying the breakdown in biblical
separatism. If you justify it, you will use more and
more of it, and you will give your family and church
an appetite for it, and you will build bridges to that
extremely dangerous world: bridges over which your
church will eventually walk.
Those who are justifying the use of contemporary
worship music are playing with fire, and they will be
accountable to God for their unwise decisions.
(For extensive documentation of the danger of
building bridges to the world of contemporary worship
music, see The Directory of Contemporary Worship
Musicians, a free eBook available from Way of Life
-- www.wayoflife.org/free_ebooks/.)
www.wayoflife.org/database/contemplativeheader.html.)
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1 Timothy 6:20,21
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RICK WARREN PREACHED NO GOSPEL AT TED TALKS
Paul said elsewhere that this gospel was
delivered to him by divine revelation and that if
anyone preaches another gospel, he is under
God’s curse (Galatians 1:6-12).
By David Cloud
When Rick Warren, one of the most influential pastors in
the world, was invited to teach at Ted Talks in February
2006 to a mixed secular audience of some of America’s
most prominent thinkers, a forum that he knew would be
recorded and heard widely beyond the immediate
audience, it was a wonderful opportunity for a Baptist
preacher to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That is what the apostle Paul would have done. It was
what he always did in every forum, whether in the market
place at Corinth or on Mars Hill in Athens, because Paul
was convinced that the gospel alone is the power of God
(Romans 1:16). Thus he testified, “For I determined not
to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him
crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). He knew that Christ had
commanded that the gospel be preached to every soul
(Mark 16:15).
Paul’s gospel is clear. It says that all men are
fallen sinners who are under God’s holy wrath
for their rebellion, that without salvation they
will perish forever, and that Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, came into this world to suffer in the
sinner’s place by dying on the cross, that He
actually died, and that He rose from the dead the
third day. All of this was done in accordance
with the prophecies that were recorded in Old
Testament Scripture before Jesus’ birth.
Rick Warren didn’t preach anything like this in
his Ted Talk. In fact, he didn’t talk about Christ
at all. He said nothing about man’s sin or God’s
holiness or the Cross or the atonement or Jesus’
death or the resurrection. He didn’t mention the
Holy Scripture or Bible prophecy.
He spent most of his time talking about the
success of his book A Purpose Driven Life and
the things he has done, and the money he has
given away, and the projects he has developed.
Then in the last few moments of the 20-minute
talk, having preached zero Christ and zero
gospel to the needy souls of his audience, Rick
Warren concluded with these words:
“So the good life is not about looking
good, feeling good, or having the goods.
It’s about being good and doing good. The
bottom line is that God gets pleasure
watching you be you. Why? He made you.
And when you do what you are made to
do, He goes, ‘That’s my boy.’ ‘That’s my
girl.’ You are using the talent and the
ability that God gave you. So my advice to
you is look at what is in your hand, your
identity, your influence, your income. And
say, ‘It’s not about me; it’s about making
the world a better place. Thank you.”
But Rick Warren does not walk in the steps of the apostle
Paul. He has a different gospel and a different objective
in ministry, his gospel being a human-centered gospel of
doing good, and his objective being to change the world
through his PEACE program.
As for Paul, he summarized his gospel as follows:
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also
received, how that Christ died for our sins according
to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that
he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
1 Timothy 6:20,21
Remember, Warren stated these words to a
secular congregation without having preached
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the biblical gospel. For him to say in that context that
God looks upon those who try to do what He made
them to do as “my boy, my girl” is universalism and
the Fatherhood of God heresy.
Even on his best day, such as in The Purpose Drive
Life, Rick Warren preaches the most shallow, empty
“easy believism” gospel imaginable, as we have
documented in Purpose Driven or Scripture Driven,
which is available as a free eBook from
www.wayof.life.org, but at Ted Talks he preached no
gospel at all, and that was a high crime before
Almighty God.
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Of course, if Warren were a forthright preacher of the
gospel, he would not have been invited to the New
Age-tinged Ted Talks. Those who invited him knew
their man. They knew that he wouldn’t betray their
confidence in him by offending their human arrogance
or reproving their enmity with God.
This deluded Southern Baptist preacher, who is
doubtless the product of rampant easy-believism
himself, is one of the most dangerous men alive today
from a spiritual perspective. He is not building the
kingdom of God. He is building the New Age
“church,” and he is extremely effective at this.
THE HYLES EFFECT
By David Cloud
The following are the introductory chapters to the
new edition of THE TWO JACKS, which we have
renamed THE HYLES EFFECT. It is available as a
free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and Pub formats from
www.wayoflife.org. See the “Free eBooks” tab.
THE HYLES EFFECT
“Close your Bibles and listen to me” (Jack Hyles).
The original title of this book, which was first
published in March 2012, was The Two Jacks,
referring to the ministry and influence of Jack Hyles
and his son-in-law Jack Schaap, who took the
pastorate of First Baptist Church of Hammond,
Indiana, upon Hyles’ death.
We have changed the name to The Hyles Effect: A
Spreading Blight, because the book is still relevant, in
spite of the fact that Jack Hyles is dead and Jack
Schaap is heading to prison. This is for the simple
reason that Hyles’ vast influence continues unabated
and we see it as a spiritual blight. One pastor made the
following comment about the new title:
“Having farmed, one of the things we had to fight
against was blight. Blight will soon ruin a vegeta-
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ble crop like tomatoes, melons or cucumbers.
Blight was our deadly enemy.”
This book has never been just about First Baptist of
Hammond. It’s about a large number of IFB churches
that have been influenced by the cultic pattern
modeled at First Baptist and it’s about large numbers
of IFB preachers who have not spoken out against it
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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A preacher friend made the following comment when
I asked him for suggestions for the new title of the
book:
Another preacher who offered suggestions for the new
title said:
“Years ago, my wife was given a tape of a Hyles
sermon by the wife of our former pastor. When
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Hyles’ philosophy has spread far among IFBaptists.
Take unquestioning loyalty, for example. Try writing
something “negative” of a current IFB leader like Paul
Chappell, Clarence Sexton, or Shelton Smith, or try
offering a critique anything less than worshipful of
IFB leaders of the past such as John Rice or Lee
Roberson, no matter how true and Biblical the
“criticism” might be, and observe the response by their
fans.
Jack Hyles is dead, but his influence lives on.
ISRAEL’S CURRENT SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS
By David Cloud
The following is excerpted from the new book The
Future According to the Bible, which is available in
print and eBook editions from Way of Life Literature -www.wayoflife.org.
“Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these
bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the
word of the Lord. 5 Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into
you, and ye shall live: 6 And I will lay sinews upon
you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you
with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live;
and ye shall know that I am the Lord. 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied,
there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the
bones came together, bone to his bone. 8 And when
I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon
them, and the skin covered them above: BUT
THERE WAS NO BREATH IN THEM” (Ezekiel 37:48).
The most significant sign of the end times is the
restoration of Israel to her land and the creation of the
modern state of Israel.
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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asked who Jack Hyles was, she replied something along the lines of ‘a good man that went a
bit wonky towards the end.’ I have found that
even many preachers who distance themselves
from Hyles have plenty of nice things to say
about him. He seems to have won the hearts of
many of the older generation of IB preachers in
the same way that Paul Chappell seems to be
winning over the younger ones.”
but rather have chosen to bask in the glory of
“bigness” rather than take a stand for truth.
“I wonder if you could title it along the lines of a
disease, a contagion, or an epidemic. That may
be overstatement, but I don't think so. Hyles'
philosophy has permeated even the best of the
IB churches. I threw out his books in the 80's
when I started seeing what he was preaching
and read his son's book on youth ministry, BUT
what I heard him preach in the 60's and 70's
STILL messes with my mind.”
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The continued existence of Israel in spite of 2,000
years of global disbursement is one of history’s
amazing stories and it was prophesied in ancient Bible
passages such as Deuteronomy 28-30. In
Deuteronomy 28 God warned that if Israel turned
away from Him and rebelled against His law she
would be scattered to the ends of the earth and troubled
wherever she went.
“And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord
rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply
you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy
you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be
plucked from off the land whither thou goest to
possess it. 64 And the Lord shall scatter thee
among all people, from the one end of the earth
even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve
other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers
have known, even wood and stone. 65 And
among these nations shalt thou find no ease,
neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but
the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart,
and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: 66 And
thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou
shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none
assurance of thy life: 67 In the morning thou
shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even
thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for
the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear,
and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt
see” (Deuteronomy 28:63-67).
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good, and multiply thee above thy fathers” (Deuteronomy 30:1-5).
Ezekiel gave more information about the return of
Israel, telling us in the prophecy of the valley of dry
bones that she would return in two stages. First, she
would return to the land in a spiritually dead condition
(“no breath in them”). After that she would be
converted. See Ezekiel 37:7-10.
We are witnesses to the fulfillment of the first part of
this prophecy. In May 1948 the new state of Israel was
established. The official declaration said: “Our call
goes out to the Jewish people all over the world to
rally to our side ... and to stand by us in the great
struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations
for the redemption of Israel.”
U.S. President Harry Truman immediately announced
his recognition of Israel. The Jews celebrated
throughout the world. In Rome they paraded under the
Arch of Titus, which was built by the Roman emperors
to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the
Second Temple.
Israel is, indeed, back in the land, but as Ezekiel
prophesied, she remains in a spiritually-dead condition.
This is a perfect description of what happened to Israel
following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple
in 70 A.D. But the same prophecy said Israel would
return to the Lord.
“And it shall come to pass, when all these things
are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse,
which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call
them to mind among all the nations, whither the
Lord thy God hath driven thee, 2 And shalt return
unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice
according to all that I command thee this day,
thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and
with all thy soul; 3 That then the Lord thy God will
turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon
thee, and will return and gather thee from all the
nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered
thee. 4 If any of thine be driven out unto the
outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the
Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will
he fetch thee: 5 And the Lord thy God will bring
thee into the land which thy fathers possessed,
and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee
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A large percentage of Jews today are “secular.” They
might observe a few Jewish traditions and rituals, but
they have no conviction that the Scripture was divinely
inspired and no passion to know God and obey Him
in all things.
Even the leaders of the Zionist movement that ushered
in the modern state of Israel were, for the most part,
“secular, non-observant, Jews, and many were even
anti-religious” (Price, The Battle for the Last Days
Temple, p. 250).
Theodor Herzl, the father of the Zionist movement,
was not motivated by religion but by nationalism (New
World Encyclopedia). He stated in his diary that he
was “agnostic.”
In the official proclamation of the modern state of
Israel in May 1948, there was no mention of “God”-only a vague reference to the “Rock of Israel.” This
was because many of those who founded the state were
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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staunchly opposed to any reference to God. For
example, Aaron Zisling of the Labor Party said, “I
cannot sign a document referring in any way to a God
in whom I do not believe” (cited from My Life, Golda
Meir, p. 223). The word “Redeemer” was left out of
the announcement for the same reason.
Many of Israel’s most revered leaders and war heroes
since 1948 were “secular Jews.”
This includes Israel’s first prime minister, David ben
Gurion. His vision was “of a new type of Jew,
‘emancipated from religion,’ whose Judaism would
be expressed by a national framework” (Motti
Friedman, “The Making of the State,” The Jewish
Agency for Israel, July 1998). Ben Gurion held
“radically anti-Halakha [Jewish Religious Law]
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views” (“Judaism in Israel: Ben Gurion’s Private
Beliefs,” Israel Studies, Vol. 4, Iss. 2, 1999, p. 64).
Golda Meir, one of the greatest of modern Israel’s
heroes, said, “I wasn’t at all pious” (My Life, p. 104).
Her autobiography gives no glory to God for the
restoration of Israel and no faith that God’s promises
to Israel will be fulfilled. Her “vision of our future”
was merely that Israel “remains a flourishing
democracy and a society resting on social justice and
equality” (My Life, p. 460). She was a feminist who
basically abandoned her husband to pursue her
socialistic dream of nation building.
Moshe Dayan, prominent Israeli leader (Minister of
Defense, Minister of Agriculture, Chief of Staff of the
Israeli Defense Forces), was a “secular Jew” whose
faith in God was vague to non-existent. He gave God
no glory in his autobiography, ending it with the
following purely humanistic sentiments: “But our
foremost duty is to live up to the vision of ourselves,
to fashion a pioneering state, a creative society that
flourishes from the fruits of its own labor, a
courageous state prepared to fight to the death to
defend itself, a people of ideas and ideals striving to
achieve their national and historic purpose--the revival
of the Jewish nation in its homeland” (Moshe Dayan:
Story of My Life, 1976, p. 621).
Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel’s Prime Minister
in 2009, the first Prime Minister to have been born in
Israel since it became a state. In A Place Among the
Nations: Israel and the World (1993), Netanyahu
doesn’t mention God or His laws and covenants. For
Israel’s military victories he gives glory to the military
rather than to God (pp. 274, 371, 397). He says that
Bible prophecy does not tell us what to expect for the
future (p. 372). He attributes the modern rise of the
Jewish state to “a human spirit that refuses again and
again to succumb to history’s horrors” (p. 401).
New Book
THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE
Available in print and eBook editions from
www.wayoflife.org
1 Timothy 6:20,21
As for the truly religious Jews, they are walking in the
footsteps of the Pharisees of old who professed to
honor the Holy Scripture but actually exalted Jewish
tradition above God’s Word.
And the greatest evidence that Israel remains in the
condition of spiritual death is the fact that she persists
in rejecting her own Messiah, Jesus.
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God commanded the prophet Ezekiel to dig in
the walls of Israel's temple and observe the evils
being done in secret by apostate religious leaders
of that day. "Then said he unto me, Son of man,
dig now in the wall ... And he said unto me, Go
in, and behold the wicked abominations that
they do here. So I went in and saw. ..." (Ezek.
8:7-10).
Ezekiel was then instructed to preach against
the errors of the leaders and to tell the people the
things he had witnessed.
"Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, O
son of man. ... Then I spake unto them of the
captivity all the things that the Lord had shewed
me" (Ezek. 11:4,25).
The hour in which we live is very similar to that
of Ezekiel's day. Many of those who profess to
be the people of God are apostate. It was
prophesied in the New Testament Scriptures
that such would be the case in the closing hours
of our age. This will culminate in the brief
worldwide rule of an utterly apostate Harlot
"church" (2 Tim. 3-4; 1 Tim. 4; 2 Pet. 2-3; Jude;
Rev. 17).
As in Ezekiel's day much of the apostasy of our
hour is hidden from the view of the average
Christian. We intend by God's grace to "dig in
the walls" of modern ecumenism and to expose
and cry out against the things we find. In this
section we also report on secular events which
are relevant to Christians. May God give us
ears to hear, minds to understand, and hearts to
obey. Is the truth of God not worthy of defense?
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WORLD PARTIES ON THE PRECIPICE OF ETERNITY (Friday Church
News Notes, January 4, 2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) Willfully blind to the fact that mankind
stands on the precipice of facing God,
the world ushered in the New Year with
a sensual party. A telling report in the
Bangkok Post was titled “Revellers
Around the World Welcome 2013.”
Most capitol cities hosted alcohol- and
drug-soaked New Year’s Eve parties,
but the “party of parties” was in New
York City, where an estimated million
people gathered and another billion people watched on television and mobile
devices. The Big Apple extravaganza
climaxed when “the mayor, aided by a
bevy of Rockettes dancers, sent the
huge, glittering ball down at one minute
to midnight.” The crowd went into a
frenzy and partiers wished one another a
happy and prosperous new year, but it
was empty, meaningless emotional mysticism. All of the New Year Eve partying
in the world can’t remove death and
judgment or change the exclusiveness of
salvation in Christ, and all of the wellwishing in the world can’t change tomorrow’s realities. “It is better to go to
the house of mourning, than to go to the
house of feasting: for that is the end of
all men; and the living will lay it to his
heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for
by the sadness of the countenance the
heart is made better. The heart of the
wise is in the house of mourning; but the
heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It
is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
than for a man to hear the song of fools.
For as the crackling of thorns under a
pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this
also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 7:2-6).
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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AMERICA’S MORAL DAM IS
BURSTING (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
4,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The moral dam is bursting in American
society, as witnessed by the recent national election. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize the
possession and sale of marijuana for
“recreational use,” thus moving the
country toward a 24/7 dope/alcohol stupor. (Rapper Snoop Dogg recently said
he smokes 81 joints or “blunts” a week
and that other musicians and actors that
he knows are also avid “weed” smokers.) Marijuana is still illegal under federal law, but a major milestone has been
passed, and there can be little doubt that
enforcement will decrease dramatically,
which is what the American people
want. A USA Today poll recently found
that 70% of Americans age 30 and older, including baby boomers and beyond,
oppose enforcement of existing federal
laws against marijuana use. Further,
three states (Maine, Washington, Maryland) voted to legalize “same-sex marriage.” This is the first time that voters
have directly approved a homosexual
“marriage” law and it is a major milestone. When homosexuality is considered “moral” there can be no absolute
basis for morality. Six other states plus
the District of Columbia currently allow
homosexual “marriage,” but those laws
were not passed by referendum. Thirtynine states prohibit same-sex “marriage” either by statute or constitution,
but it is highly probable that the U.S.
Supreme Court will eventually overturn
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all such laws on the basis of judicial fiat
and liberal activism. The moral dam
burst is evident in the dramatic change
in attitude toward same-sex “marriage”
over the past decade. Whereas in 2004,
42% of the citizens approved it, in 2010
that percentage had risen to 53%, and
among young people 18-29, a whopping
73% approve (“Attitude Toward Gays
Changing Fast,” USA Today, Dec. 6,
2012). In fact, as we have documented
in the book What Is the Emerging
Church? many so-called “evangelicals”
are outspoken in their tolerance of homosexuality.
WHY AMERICA’S MORAL DAM
IS BURSTING (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
4,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The moral dam burst that we are witnessing in America has been a long time
in developing. At a fundamental level, it
began in the 19th century with theological modernism and Darwinian evolu-
tion, in fact, but it was at work
dramatically even in the 1950s which is
often considered the hay-day of morality
and biblical Christianity in modern
America. I was growing up then and
America was anything but biblically
moral, even in the deep South where
Baptist churches were on every corner.
Independent Baptists barely existed
then. It was the Southern Baptists who
were considered the conservatives of the
conservatives, yet they weren’t taking
the Bible seriously. There was more a
form of godliness than the true reality
thereof. Kids typically went through the
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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motions of “trusting Jesus” without a
genuine conversion experience and
without being true disciples of Christ,
and then lived as they pleased and drank
as deeply of the oncoming pop culture as
they wished. It was even expected that
church kids would “sow their wild oats.”
The humanistic philosophy was that parents shouldn’t be too “strict or tightlaced.” When rock & roll blasted on the
scene, there was some resistance by the
elders, but it was party time for the
church kids and it wasn’t long before the
parents were rocking, too! When television and Hollywood foisted their wares
on society, the U.S. churches pretty
much accepted what was offered, except
for the most extreme stuff, walking lock
step with the world. They fussed about
the moral pollution, but they stayed
tuned in, nonetheless, which is a major
form of soul-deadening hypocrisy. It
was a Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Disney kind of Christianity. A major thing
that was missing from “conservative”
American Christianity in the 1950s and
1960s was the obedience to biblical separation. In fact, it was publicly and
brashly renounced by major “evangelicals.” But when God’s people are the
“friends of the world” they are the enemies of Christ (James 4:4), and there is
no power and blessing in that path. The
deep compromise that flowed from the
churches effected the entire nation. For
a long, long time, America’s morals
have been leavened by the licentious
end-time philosophy (2 Timothy 3-4)
promoted through the government
school system, the pop-entertainment
culture, the mainstream news media,
judicial activism, and in many other
ways.
CAMPUS CRUSADE FIRES LEADER FOR OBEYING BIBLE (Friday
Church News Notes, January 4, 2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The director of Campus Crusade at the
University of Louisville has been fired
for obeying the Bible’s command that a
woman is not allowed to teach men (1
Timothy 2:12). Daniel Harman was re-
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Daniel Harman - Fired for
obeying the Bible
moved from his position as Missional
Team Leader at the Louisville chapter of
Cru (Campus Crusade’s cool new name)
when he refused to “carry out the ministry’s policy that male and female staff
share in leadership duties, including
teaching the Bible” (“Cru Leader Demoted,” Christian Post, Dec. 3, 2012).
Harman is a student at Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, and we hope that
he will take a stand for God’s Word in
every point and honor God more than
man. Campus Crusade has not held the
Bible as its ultimate authority from its
founding by the late Bill Bright, a pragmatist who even changed the gospel
presentation in the vain idea that he
could do a better job than the apostle
Paul. Whereas the gospel in the book of
Romans begins with the bad news of
man’s lost condition before a holy God,
Bright wanted to make this more positive, so he began his “Four Spiritual
Laws” with “God loves you and has a
wonderful plan for your life.” All of that
is so true, of course, but no man will flee
to Christ in a saving manner unless he is
first convinced that he is lost and there
is no other means of salvation. The love
of God cannot be understood properly
apart from the holiness of God. We see
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this emphasis in the Bible as a whole,
with a large portion being devoted to the
law of God before we get to the New
Testament. When I preached at an evangelistic meeting in Nepal in 1979, sponsored by Campus Crusade, I preached
directly from Romans and spent a time
building a proper foundation for the
gospel by showing man’s lost condition
and his frightful standing under God’s
wrath. Paul continues on this theme for
nearly three chapters before he mentions
the grace of God and the justification
that is available in Christ toward the end
of Romans 3. After I preached at that
underground meeting (gospel preaching
was illegal in Nepal in those days), the
national head of Campus Crusade told
me that my preaching was “too negative” and that they liked a more positive,
upbeat approach! I reminded the man
that I was preaching directly from Romans and that I didn’t write that book!
It was the first in a long series of conflicts that I had as a young missionary
with compromising, pragmatic New
Evangelicals and Charismatics that
formed the national “evangelical”
church fellowship at that time and that
within a year or so led to a complete
rupture between us (thank the Lord!),
with them condemning me at an ecclesiastical trial as a “divider of the body of
Christ in Nepal.” I was condemned in a
letter that was sent to all of the churches.
The issues between us weren’t complicated, nor were they light matters. They
pertained to such things as whether the
Bible is to be literally interpreted and
whether it is to be the absolute and sole
authority for faith and practice. They
pertained to such things as the gospel
itself and how to present it, God’s standards for church leaders (one of their
pastors was a polygamist who had three
wives and another operated a bookstore
that sold pornography), the nature of
apostolic gifts, the eternal security of a
born-again child of God, and the role of
women in ministry. The experience provided a great, practical education for me
on the character of modern evangelicalism and the importance of biblical separation.
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the report “Cremation: What Does God
Think” at the Way of Life web site.
BRINGING BACK THE VULTURES (Friday Church News Notes,
January 4, 2013, www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The Zoroastrians of the Parsi community in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, are preparing to bring back the
vultures to feed on their dead. Their
ancient custom has been to reject both
burial and cremation and rather to lay
their dead outside to be consumed by the
buzzards. The vultures disappeared 15
years ago by a combination of factors
and after six years of negotiations the
government has agreed to fund the restoration of the birds at a cost of $5
million. In the past, when India had as
many as 400 million vultures, the bodies
were consumed quickly, but over the
past decades they have been disappearing due to the prolific use of the diclofenac painkiller which causes kidney
failure in the birds and other causes. The
Parsis own a 54-acre sanctuary in the
heart of Mumbai where they operate
three Towers of Silence for the disposal
of the dead, with a separate section each
for males, females, and children. The
disposal of the body is a spiritual and
religious issue, though typically it is no
longer thought to be so in secularized
Western society. The Bible enjoins the
burial of the dead and provides the example of burial from Abraham to Jesus,
because the Bible teaches bodily resurrection. The body is “planted” in the
likeness of a seed with the faith that
Christ will raise that individual from the
dead (1 Corinthians 15). Hindus cremate the body because they don’t believe in resurrection; they believe in
reincarnation and the transmigration of
the soul from one body to another. See
1 Timothy 6:20,21
THE CREEPING CULTURE OF
DEATH (Friday Church News Notes,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) That euthanasia is a slippery slope is
obvious in the following report: “Belgium Looks at Euthanasia for Minors,
Alzheimer’s Sufferers,” AFP, Dec. 18,
2012. Belgium’s euthanasia law is only
ten years old, and already it is being
extended to ages younger than 18 and to
Alzheimer’s patients. “Belgium is considering a significant change to its decade-old euthanasia law that would
allow minors and Alzheimer's sufferers
to seek permission to die. The proposed
changes to the law were submitted to
parliament Tuesday by the Socialist party and are likely to be approved by other
parties, although no date has yet been
put forward for a parliamentary debate.
... The draft legislation calls for "the law
to be extended to minors if they are
capable of discernment or affected by an
incurable illness or suffering that we
cannot alleviate.’ Belgium was the second country in the world after the Netherlands to legalise euthanasia in 2002
but it applies only to people over the age
of 18. Socialist Senator Philippe Mahoux, who helped draft the proposed
changes, said there had been cases of
adolescents who ‘had the capacity to
decide’ their future. He said parliamentarians would also consider extended
mercy-killing to people suffering from
Alzheiner's-type illnesses. Euthanasia
was allowed to an Alzheimer's patient
for the first time in the Netherlands last
year.”
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THE RESURRECTION FERN (Friday Church News
Notes, January 4, 2013, www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The resurrection
fern is an air plant that is common in the southeastern part
of the United States, but grows as far north as New York
and as far west as Texas. Typically it attaches itself to the
branches of large trees such as live oaks and draws
nutrients from the air and from the tree’s bark. It gets its
name from the fact that God has designed it to survive
long periods of drought by appearing nearly dead and
then springing to life when a rain comes. In the absence
of water, its attractive, bright green leaves wither up and
turn brownish. On a visit to the Myrkaa State Park in
Florida in December 2012, the resurrection fern was in
its “dead mode.” I took a photo of it in that condition on
a particular tree branch then poured several bottles of
water on it. When I returned the next morning, it had
resurrected! This fascinating, and exceedingly
complicated plant (imagine what is happening at the
cellular level to allow this plant to live, survive, and
reproduce), is a reminder that Jesus, the Son of God, rose
from the dead the third day after His sacrifice whereby
He was punished in the sinner’s place to purchase eternal
salvation for those who receive Him as Lord and Saviour.
God’s world is filled to the brim with testimonies of His
power and wisdom for those who have eyes to see. When
EGYPTIAN MAGAZINE SAYS
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD INFILTRATED OBAMA ADMINISTRATION (Friday Church News Notes,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is excerpted from “Egyptian Magazine,” For the Record, The
Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jan.
3, 2013: “An Egyptian magazine claims
that six American Islamist activists who
work with the Obama administration are
Muslim Brotherhood operatives who
enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.
The Dec. 22 story published in Egypt's
Rose El-Youssef magazine (read an IPT
translation here) suggests the six turned
the White House ‘from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations
in the world to the largest and most
important supporter of the Muslim
Brotherhood.’ The story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to
Egyptian readers. The six named people
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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I travel to beautiful places in various parts of the world,
which I have the great privilege to do frequently, I can
enjoy everything the unbeliever enjoys (sin excluded), such
as the scenery and the facilities, but I have so much more
enjoyment on so many different levels because of God’s
enlightenment. I can see and marvel at His handiwork and
praise Him for His character, because I know Him
personally. I see clearly what is happening today, and I
also see the future through God’s Word. I understand that
this present world is nothing compared to that which is to
come. I can meditate upon that world and my place in it!
include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy
development; Mohammed Elibiary, a
member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the
U.S. special envoy to the Organization
of the Islamic Conference; Salam al-
Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim
Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam
Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of
President Obama's Advisory Council on
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Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships. Alikhan is a founder of the World
Islamic Organization, which the magazine identifies as a Brotherhood ‘subsidiary.’ It suggests that Alikhan was
responsible for the ‘file of Islamic
states’ in the White House and that he
provides the direct link between the
Obama administration and the Arab
Spring revolutions of 2011.”
19,000 DEADLY ISLAMIC ATTACKS SINCE 9-11 (Friday Church
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is excerpted from
“Obama Official Attends ‘Symposium
on
Defamation
of
Islam,’”
Breitbart.com, Nov. 19, 2012: “An
Obama administration official reportedly attended a Monday meeting with Organization of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC) officials to work on banning any
speech that ‘associates Islam or Isla-
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mists to violence.’ The official was U.S.
Consul General in Jeddah Anne Casper
(pictured above), and the meeting took
place in Saudi Arabia. It apparently matters not that ‘Islamic terrorists have carried out over 19,000 deadly attacks in
the name of Islam since the 9-11 attacks
in New York,’ Washington DC, and
Pennsylvania. The meeting was advertised as a ‘Symposium on Defamation
of Islam.’ It was the next step in OIC's
push to ultimately ban criticism of Islam
or Mohammed. OIC got its foot in the
door on this subject when its resolution
for ‘religious tolerance’ was adopted by
the U.N. in December 2011, with strong
support from the Obama administration.”
MORE THAN 11,000 DIED AT
HANDS OF ISLAMIST TERRORISTS IN 2012 (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
11,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) According to a web site that tracts Islamic perpetrated violence, more than
11,000 people died from terror attacks
in 2012. The complete list can be found
at thereligionofpeace.com. The web site
says: “We see no use in pretending that
islam is just another religion, which
always seems to be the assumption of
those preferring not to look too closely.
What other religion’s most devoted
members videotape themselves cutting
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people’s throats while screaming praises
to their god? What other faith has tens of
thousands of terrorists across the globe
united by an explicit commitment to
advance the cause of their religion by
pursuing horrific mass murder and mutilation? What other religion actually
celebrated the 9/11 attacks, described
the carnage as ‘one of the miracles of
the Quran’ and proclaimed it to be
‘God’s work against oppressors’ What
other religion has verses in its holy book
that remind men of their divine permission to beat their wives and rape their
slaves? ... In fact, Islam is more than a
religion. It is a rigid political and cultural system with a mandate to conquer and
govern the lives of others via necessary
force ‘until religion is only for Allah.’
Violence is sanctioned by the Quran
since, as the Ayatollah Khomeini bluntly put it, ‘people cannot be made obedient except with the sword.’”
UPS DEFUNDS BOY SCOUTS AND
SUPPORTS
HOMOSEXUAL
RIGHTS GROUPS (Friday Church
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is excerpted from “UPS
Says No to Boy Scouts, Yes to Gay
Groups,” Christian Newswire, Nov. 20,
2012: “UPS recently announced it
would stop funding the Boy Scouts of
America because the Boy Scouts will
not risk having its scouts led by scoutmasters who might have a sexual interest in the boys. The Boys Scouts of
America faces millions of dollars in
lawsuits because of past abuses by gay
scoutmasters. According to a report
from the Biblically Responsible Invest-
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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ment Institute, UPS has given over
$400,000 to nation's largest LGBT organization,
the
Human
Rights
Campaign. In addition, they have given
thousands of dollars to other gay groups.
The Human Rights Campaign keeps
track of gay-friendly companies and has
consistently given UPS a score of
100%. UPS has even bragged about the
score. The Human Rights Campaign
frequently calls people ‘haters’ and
‘bigots’ if they believe marriage should
only consist of one man and one woman.”
HIV
INFECTION
ON
RISE
AMONG HOMOSEXUAL MEN
(Friday Church News Notes, January
11,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) On World Aids Day, the announcement
was made that “HIV infection rate is on
the rise among gay men,” having increased 11% between 1987 and 2011
(Bangkok Post, Dec. 2, 2012). There are
a half million people with AIDS in Thailand alone, with 9,500 new cases annually. In spite of the attempt by
homosexual activists and the liberal media to paint AIDS as something other
than a homosexual disease, the evidence
to the contrary is clearly seen. It is not
just a sexually-transmitted disease; it is
a sexually-immoral transmitted disease.
The Thai secretary for public health
mentioned that that “men who have sex
with men (MSM)” have a high risk of
the type diseases that we cannot mention in a family paper. This is purely the
result of their unnatural immoral behavior. Whatever AIDS is, it is not a disease
that one gets if he honors God’s law of
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holy matrimony (except by means of
something like a blood transfusion). Homosexual activists are fighting to have
this deadly communicable disease protected by law so that those who have it
cannot be “discriminated” against, but
what about the rights of those who want
to be protected from the very real danger
represented by these people if they are
working in the fields of health care, etc.?
It’s all a sign of the times. Let’s stay
busy in the Lord’s harvest fields while
we have opportunity. Homosexual sinners can be saved through the power of
the gospel just as well as “heterosexual”
sinners. “For I am not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ: for it is the power of
God unto salvation to every one that
believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek” (Rom. 1:16).
ADULTERY AND HEALTH (Friday
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from “Patraeus Affair: Can Cheating Wreck
Your
Health?”
NewsMaxHealth.com, Nov. 19,
2012: “Researchers from the University of Florence analyzed data about
men who had heart attacks. Men who
were cheating on their wives, especially with younger women, were
found to be more likely to have heart
attacks compared to men who were
faithful. But it’s not only physical
stress that takes a toll on health. The
emotional stress is devastating as
well. ‘When you are having an illicit
affair, you are hiding a big secret, and
this adds huge mental stress to every-
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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thing you do,’ said Dr. Crandall. ... Indeed, this is backed up by medical
studies, including one published in May
in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Researchers from the University of Florence analyzed data about men who had
heart attacks. Men who were cheating
on their wives, especially with younger
women, were found to be more likely to
have heart attacks compared to men
who were faithful. But it’s not only
physical stress that takes a toll on health.
The emotional stress is devastating as
well. “When you are having an illicit
affair, you are hiding a big secret, and
this adds huge mental stress to everything you do,” said Dr. Crandall. ...
‘Studies have found that getting divorced can shorten the lifespan for up to
10 years, and I’m not only talking about
the person who has the affair, but also
the children as well,’ said Dr. Crandall,
adding, ‘I tell people that committing
adultery is like a surgical scar – it’s ugly
and it is something that will never go
away.’” The Bible says: “For the lips of
a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil: But
her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as
a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to
death; her steps take hold on hell. Lest
thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
her ways are moveable, that thou canst
not know them. Hear me now therefore,
O ye children, and depart not from the
words of my mouth. Remove thy way
far from her, and come not nigh the door
of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the
cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy
wealth; and thy labours be in the house
of a stranger; And thou mourn at the
last, when thy flesh and thy body are
consumed, And say, How have I hated
instruction, and my heart despised reproof; And have not obeyed the voice of
my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to
them that instructed me! I was almost in
all evil in the midst of the congregation
and assembly. Drink waters out of thine
own cistern, and running waters out of
thine own well. Let thy fountains be
dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in
the streets. Let them be only thine own,
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and not strangers 'with thee. Let thy
fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the
wife of thy youth” (Proverbs 5:3-18).
JANE FONDA AND AMERICAN
CHRISTIANITY (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
11,
2013,
w w w . w a y o f l i f e . o r g ,
Actress and pop icon Jane Fonda
represents American pop Christianity.
She’s currently in the news for a new
“milder and gentler” yoga training video
that she released for “senior citizens”
like herself (she is 75). It really wouldn’t
matter what Jane Fonda is doing, except
that she made a profession of
Christianity in 2001 and she very much
represents the pop Christianity that
predominates in America and that is
spreading across the world as part of the
global culture. It is not a Christianity that
is based on the Holy Bible as God’s
divinely-inspired Word or a Christianity
in which the proponent acknowledges
himself as a fallen sinner deserving of
God’s eternal wrath, repents of sin and
idolatry and trusts exclusively in Christ’s
blood alone for salvation. It’s none of
that. It is a me-centered, me-still-incharge type of Christianity. It is the
end-time Christianity described in 2
Timothy 3-4. Jane’s Jesus is the nonjudgmental Jesus described in The
Shack. Her Christian faith is far more
influenced by pop philosophy than the
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Word of God. She has renounced
marriage for shacking up. She remains
an activist for abortion rights, radical
feminism, and homosexual rights. She
persists in the pagan practice of yoga,
without regard to what the Bible says,
simply because it seems to provide
physical and emotional benefits. Her
thinking and desires remain her
ultimate authority. In fact, she hates
“fundamentalist,”
Bible-believing
Christianity that interprets the Bible
literally. She has “nothing to do with
the
perceived
doctrines
of
fundamentalist Christianity” (Fonda,
“About My Faith,” June 10, 2009). She
despises a church authority structure
over her life. Her Christianity is about
“the need to give ourselves over to our
higher power,” after the fashion of the
third step of the Alcoholics Anonymous
12 Step program. It is about welcoming
a nebulous and vaguely-defined “Holy
Spirit into our innermost selves.” The
focus is on feeling God and mysticism.
She describes ancient Gnosticism as
“the Christianity that is my spiritual
home” (My Life So Far, 2005). She
remains a universalist who loves the
Sufi poem that says, “Every child has
known God, not the God of names, nor
the God of don’ts ... But the God who
knows only four words and keeps
repeating them, saying, ‘Come dance
with Me.’” This “god” is an idol and
Fonda’s Christianity is end-time
apostasy. Beware, friends, of the siren
call of this dangerous generation. There
is only one Creator God, and He is the
God revealed in Holy Scripture. He is
the most loving, compassionate Being
there is, the source of all true love, but
He is at the same time thrice-holy and
righteous and just. We can understand
His character only by looking at the
cross. God is so holy that He had to
sacrifice His own Son in order to
redeem men from the just penalty of
breaking His laws, but God is so loving
that He was willing to do that very
thing. Any other “god” and any other
Christian faith is a lie.
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THE HUMMINGBIRD (Friday Church News Notes, January 11,
2013, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The
300 species of hummingbirds vary in size from the giant
hummingbird, with a length of about eight inches (20 cm.), to the bee
hummingbird, with a length of about two inches (5 cm.). The
hummingbird can swivel its wings through an amazing degree of
angles, and its wings beat a figure eight pattern which allows it to
hover and fly backwards (by moving the wings in a circular path over
its head), sideways, and even upside down. Its long, thin beak is
designed to feed on the nectar of flowers; its tongue has two furrows
that it uses to store the nectar. The tongue can go in and out at a rate
of 13 times per second, and is stored by being curled up at the back
of the bird’s head. Its tongue is also fringed so it can sweep insects
from inside flowers. The Anna’s Hummingbird is the fastest bird on
earth. When he power dives from 90 feet above the ground, in his
effort to impress the female, the male hummingbird experiences more
than nine times the force of gravity, reaching a relative speed of 385
body-lengths per second, which is twice that of a jet fighter on
afterburners or the space shuttle entering earth’s atmosphere. The
ruby-throated hummingbird flies non-stop 450 miles across the Gulf
of Mexico in 20 hours, beating its tiny wings nearly 3 million times
on that amazing journey.
NORTHLAND STUDENTS RAPPING “JESUS LOVES ME” (Friday
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is excerpted from
“Northland Students Perform New ‘Jesus Loves Me,’” In Defense of the Gospel blog, Sept. 21, 2012 -- “In his
1 Timothy 6:20,21
November 2010 Open Letter Northland
International University (NIU) president Dr. Matt Olson declared that in the
area of music philosophy, ‘NIU is unchanged!’ We have in past articles seen
video evidence that NIU has changed
drastically in the area of music performance. Matt Olson wrote that the goal
of NIU will be to, ‘make sure North-
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land’s practice of music ... is built principally on clear teachings from the
Bible...’ Today, I am presenting a new
video recording that challenges the
claim that NIU’s music philosophy is
‘unchanged’ and that clear teachings
from the Bible are behind the practice of
music at NIU. The video was recorded
this semester at the home of current NIU
Academic Chair for Communications,
Mr. Brock Miller. Communication professors Lydia Stewart and Rachel Trach
were also at this gathering. The occasion
of the video was a fellowship for Communications department students. The
participants in the video were described
by students on their FaceBook pages as
students who are proud to display their,
‘rapping skills, beatboxing skills, attempting to harmonize ... Yeah, Communications majors have it all!’ Had this
been a one-time matter, there would be
real disappointment. The video is, however, much like the behavior in NIU’s
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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chapel with the song/dance routine to
‘What is This Feeling’ from the Broadway play WICKED. Do the sensual
chants of RAP measure up to our mandate to sing and make melody to the
Lord? You have just seen students, at
the home and under the supervision of
NIU faculty, disparaging the name of
Jesus. Can anyone honestly say that the
conduct of the students in this video is
‘God-focused?’” The rapping video can
be
seen
at
http://indefenseofthegospel.blogspot.ca
/2012/09/northland-students-performnew-jesus.html
PASTOR FORCED TO WITHDRAW
FROM
DELIVERING
OBAMA’S INAUGURAL BENEDICTION FOR OPPOSING HOMOSEXUALITY (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
18,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
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Pastor Louie Giglio was forced to withdraw from delivering the benediction at
President Obama’s inaugural swearingin ceremony because of his opposition
to homosexuality. In a sermon preached
in the 1990s entitled “A Christian Response to Homosexuality,” Giglio said:
“Homosexuality is not an alternate lifestyle. Homosexuality is not just a sexual
preference. Homosexuality is not gay.
Homosexuality is sin. It is sin in the eyes
of God and it is sin according to the
word of God.” Giglio also said that
same-sex “marriage” would “run the
risk of undermining the whole order of
society.” Because of these true words,
Bible-hating homosexual activists demanded that he not deliver the address
at the presidential inauguration, and
Obama obviously agreed, because the
inaugural committee withdraw its invitation. The growing power of the homosexual movement is evident in that four
years ago they were not able to stop
Rick Warren from speaking at Obama’s
first inauguration, though they tried for
the same reason that they opposed
Giglio. Neither Giglio nor Warren are
staunch Bible believers, or they would
not have received such an invitation in
the first place, but the vicious opposition
even to rock & roll ecumenical preachers such as these reveals the irrationality
and intolerance of the homosexual agen-
da. And why are the enemies of truth so
empowered today? Because of the milktoast preachers in the pulpits who do not
preach the fear of God in a scriptural
fashion and therefore have filled the
land with a nominal Christianity that has
placed the nation under God’s curse.
The solution is for God’s believing
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people to pay undivided attention to
their individual lives, families, and
churches so that for our sake God will
bless instead of curse. We need to forget
the politicking and get serious about
obeying God’s Word. “If my people,
which are called by my name, shall
humble themselves, and pray, and seek
my face, and turn from their wicked
ways; then will I hear from heaven, and
will forgive their sin, and will heal their
land” (2 Chron. 7:14).
IS MARIJUANA A HARMLESS
DRUG? (Friday Church News Notes,
The following information is sobering
in light of the fact that in the November
election Colorado and Washington became the first states in America to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana
for “recreational use” and a USA Today
poll recently found that 70% of Americans age 30 and older oppose enforcement of existing federal laws against
marijuana use. My personal deep experimentation with drugs such as marijuana
before I was converted confirm its danger in my own mind. The following
report doesn’t address the drug’s spiritual dangers. This is excerpted from “Science Suggests Smoking Pot,” Melanie
Haiken, Forbes, Sept. 10, 2012: “Here
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in California, marijuana is now treated
as a minimal vice, with legalization inevitable and decriminalization for possession amounting to a tap on the hand.
Medical marijuana cards are so easy to
obtain, they’re the butts of endless popular jokes. On the famed Venice Beach
boardwalk, booths tout on-the-spot
‘evaluations’ and customers walk out
the door with newly minted photo ID
cards in under an hour. High schools
across the country celebrate April 20th
as ‘420 Day,’ a fact I know because my
daughter’s high school, San Rafael
High, is nationally famous (or infamous,
depending on your perspective) as the
birthplace of the term 420. (Coined,
supposedly, because 4:20 pm was the
time at which kids would meet after
school to light up.) ... Is it really relatively harmless for young men--and
women--to get high? Today’s headline
was pretty bold: ‘Smoking pot leads to
double the risk of developing testicular
cancer.’ ... Those who smoked pot recreationally were twice as likely to develop testicular germ cell tumors, or
nonseminomas, the most common kind
in men under 35, says a study in Cancer.
Nonseminomas are faster growing and
harder to treat--a deadly combination-say researchers at the University of
Southern California. This study, though
small, is actually the third study to link
nonseminomas to pot use; the first two
were also published in Cancer. ... Last
week’s headline was at least as alarming
as this week’s. Researchers followed a
group of youngsters from age 13 to age
38, and found that the IQs of regular pot
smokers fell up to 8 points during the
25-year period, compared with the IQs
of those who didn’t smoke pot, which
stayed the same. ... In a German
study that followed a group of teenagers
for ten years, those who smoked pot at
least 5 times were more than twice as
likely to develop schizophrenia. ... The
health risks of marijuana for women are
much less well known, as of yet. But
what is known is that pot smoking decreases fertility for both men and women, and appears to have the potential for
genetic damage to future children.”
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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PLANNED PARENTHOOD PROUD
OF DESTROYING AN UNBORN
BABY EVERY 94 SECONDS (Friday
www.wayoflife.org,
The following is excerpted from
“Planned Parent’s New Annual Report,” CNSNews, January 7, 2013:
“Planned Parenthood Federation of
America's latest annual report for
2011-2012 says that its affiliated
clinics performed 333,964 abortions
in fiscal 2011. That works out to an
average of one abortion every 94
seconds. The 333,964 abortion
Planned Parenthood did in fiscal
2011 is an increase of 4,519 from the
329,445 abortions it did in 2010,
according to a fact sheet that Planned
Parenthood published last year. Over
two years, Planned Parenthood says,
it has aborted 663,409. The 20112012 report states that Planned Parenthood received $542.4 million in
‘government health services grants
and reimbursements,’ which it states
includes ‘payments from Medicaid
managed care plans.’ The report also
shows that Planned Parenthood’s total assets top $1 billion dollars, specifically $1,244.7 billion. ‘We are so
proud of the year’s many successes,
and deeply grateful for all the partners, sponsors, volunteers, staff and
friends who helped make them possible,’ states the report's introductory
letter, signed by PPFA president
Cecile Richards and Cecelia Boone,
chairwoman of the organization.”
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SCHAAP BLAMES AFFAIR WITH
TEENAGE GIRL ON STRESS (Friday Church News Notes, January 18,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) In a memorandum filed by his attorney,
Jack Schaap argues that he committed
an affair with a 16-year-old girl because
of stress. In September 2012, Schaap,
former pastor of First Baptist Church of
Hammond, Indiana, pleaded guilty to
the charge of transporting a minor
across state lines for sexual relations,
and he is currently in jail awaiting sentencing. The minimum sentence for this
federal offence is 10 years in prison, but
it could be more, and Schaap is asking
for the minimum, arguing that he had
been “regularly working 100-hour
weeks,” struggling to raise more money
for the church, being forced to lay off
staff, and handing additional counseling
responsibilities. The filing was accompanied by 140 letters of support, including those from pastors. Sentencing was
supposed to be given on January 15, but
an assistant U.S. attorney has asked the
judge for a continuance and it has apparently been moved to March 12. In his
guilty plea, Schaap admitted that his
action was “sinful and wrong.” (The
free eBook The Hyles Effect documents
the moral debauchery that has plagued
First Baptist Church since the days of
Jack Hyles.)
SYRIAN MUSLIM REBELS INTEND TO ESTABLISH THE NEW
ISLAMIC CALIPHATE (Friday
www.wayoflife.org,
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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The Muslim rebels who are fighting to
overthrow Assad in Syria and who
might have been involved in the murder
of the U.S. ambassador and other U.S.
government personnel, said in an interview that their objective is to build a
new Islamic Caliphate (“Syrian Rebel
Founding ‘Robin Hood Brigade,’”
MEMRI TV, Dec. 6, 2012). They said,
“When, Allah willing, we cleanse Syria,
we won’t stop there.” Next they will
attack Israel (“all the way to Jerusalem”), Iran, Iraq (“where there is still
some filth”), Spain, and Turkey. They
called Iran, Istanbul, and Spain by their
ancient names of Persia, Constantinople, and Andalusia. They concluded,
“Now that we have weapons, we don’t
intend to ever lay them down.” The
reason this won’t happen is that it is not
described in Bible prophecy. The antichrist will not be a Muslim (contrary to
a new view that has some growing support), but he might be associated with an
Islamic prophet of some sort and at the
dawn of his career he will be the most
dynamic peacemaker the world has even
seen. He will seemingly solve the simmering “Middle East problem” and even
make it possible for Israel to build her
Third Temple, a temple that he will
eventually defile with his own idolatry
and blasphemy.
KNOWLEDGE SHALL INCREASE
(Friday Church News Notes, January
18,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) About 2,500 years ago, during the Persian Empire, an angel told the prophet
Daniel, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the
words, and seal the book, even to the
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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)
An IBM team has taken photographs
of single molecules that show the details of the bonding of individual atoms (“Atomic bond types discernible,”
BBC News, Sept. 13, 2012). The photography uses atomic force microscopy
(AFM). The technique requires complete isolation from any kind of vibration coming from the surroundings and
the cooling of the apparatus to -268C.
(2) A British team is developing a car
that it hopes will break the land speed
record by traveling at 1,000mph
(“Training to break the world land
speed record,” BBC News, Sept. 13,
2012). The rocket-powered Bloodhound Supersonic Car, driven by RAF
fighter pilot Andy Green, will produce
133,000 horsepower and travel 12 miles
in less than two minutes or faster than
the muzzle velocity of a bullet fired
from a .357 magnum handgun. (3) Ultra-thin electronics that dissolve inside the body have been invented by
U.S. scientists (“‘Melt in the Body’
Electronics,” BBC News, Sept. 27,
2012). The technology, part of a field
of research called “transient electronics,” involve the use of super-thin sheets
of silicon encased in a silk shell that
controls the timing of the dissolution.
U.S. PRESIDENT SAYS TRUE
EQUALITY INCLUSIVE OF “HOMOSEXUAL LOVE” (Friday Church
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) In his second inaugural speech, President Barack Obama quoted the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and applied
it to homosexual marriage. Citing the
statement, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights,”
he argued that if this is true then “homosexual love” must be equal as well. He
said the journey to human equality “is
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not complete until our gay brothers and
sisters are treated like anyone else under
the law, for if we are truly created equal,
then surely the love we commit to one
another must be equal as well.” This is
pure nonsense. The Creator God to
whom the Founding Fathers referred is
the Creator God described in Scripture.
THE PELICAN (Friday Church News Notes, January 18, 2013,
www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The
pelican is another one of God’s amazing creatures. It is a large
waterfowl that comes in seven or eight varieties. It has webbed feet,
large wings, a long bill, and a bag of skin below its beak called a gular
pouch. It varies in size from about six pounds to 30. Its skeleton
weighs less than 10% of its body weight. Pelicans live in every
continent except Antarctica and build their nests in colonies. The
brown pelican fishes by plunge-diving headfirst into the water. This
is the type of pelican that we captured in the accompanying photo
from a bridge in Florida. It’s sharp eyes can see the fish from 60-70
feet in the air, in spite of the glare of the water, and it has the amazing
ability to time its plunge and judge its angle perfectly to capture prey.
It has air sacs under the skin to cushion the impact and help it swim
back to the surface. The most distinctive feature is its pouch. It can
hold about three gallons of water and the bird uses it as a net to catch
fish. After scooping up its prey, it contracts the pouch to empty the
water, then jerks its head back to slide the prey down its throat. A
hook at the end of its upper bill helps it grip slippery food. The
pelican’s bill is sensitive and helps the bird locate fish in murky water.
The opening and closing of the pouch is controlled by a complex set
of tongue muscles. By contracting and relaxing the muscles, the bird
can flutter its pouch at a rate of 200 times a minute as a cooling
mechanism. The pelican sleeps by turning its head backwards and
laying its long beak on its back. During courtship the pelican’s bill
and pouch becomes multi-colored, part bright salmon pink, part
yellow, part cobalt blue, with a black diagonal strip appearing from
base to tip of the bill. The eggs are incubated on the parents’ feet, and
the unborn chicks communicate with their mothers as to whether they
are too hot or cold.
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At the beginning of the American Revolution, 99.8% of Americans claimed to
be Christians (Peter Lillback, George
Washington’s Sacred Fire). Though we
know that a majority were not born
again, the fact remains that there was a
huge consensus as to the fact that there
is a God and as to who that God is and
as to what His laws are. The King James
Bible that the U.S. Founding Fathers
often quoted does not grant liberty for
men to “love” as they please. The Ten
Commandments, which were posted
prominently in U.S. schools, legislatures, and courts for 200 years of U.S.
history until removed in recently decades by activist judges, restricts man’s
freedom by God’s holy laws. One of
these is “thou shalt not commit adultery,” and adultery is defined in Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, as the
breaking of the bond of holy matrimony,
and holy matrimony, as affirmed by
Jesus Himself, is one man and one
woman in a lifelong covenant of marriage. Nowhere in Scripture is there
even a hint of support for the “marriage”
of same-sex couples. President Obama
is helping to destroy America morally,
socially, and fiscally, but he is not the
main problem. He did not elect himself.
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He is a reflection of the heart and soul of
a large portion of the nation. His New
Agey type of Christianity--the Oprah
Winfrey/The Shack type of Christianity-is the type of Christianity that is very
popular in America and that is promoted
by the American pop culture throughout
the world. America is still a nation of
churches, and that is the root problem.
Until America’s churches repent and
return to walking in the fear of God, the
nation will remain under God’s judgment and will continue to be led by
unwise men.
BBC NARRATOR SAYS HUMANS
ARE A PLAGUE ON EARTH (Friday
www.wayoflife.org,
David Attenborough
David Attenborough, famous narrator of
BBC documentaries, says that humans
are a plague on earth. He told the Radio
Times: “We are a plague on the Earth.
It’s coming home to roost over the next
50 years or so. It’s not just climate
change; it’s sheer space, places to grow
food for this enormous horde. Either we
limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now”
(“David Attenborough,” The Telegraph,
Jan. 21, 2013). He says the problem in
Ethiopia is that there are “too many
people there,” which is patently ridiculous. China and India, which are far
more populated, do not have a similar
problem with famine. Ethiopia’s population density is 83 people per square
kilometer, whereas China’s is 143 and
India’s is 372, which is four times that
of Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s famines were
caused by war, a corrupt and uncaring
government, human greed, statism,
1 Timothy 6:20,21,
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forced resettlement, and other things. In
fact, BBC’s own documentaries, such as
Planet Earth, prove that lack of space is
not the problem. The vast majority of
the habitable parts of the earth is underpopulated. The problem is not too many
people but too much sinful folly. There
is a sense in which man is a plague on
earth, but it is not because there are too
many of them; it is because man is a
sinner against his Creator God and corruption and ruin has followed in his
wake. It is telling that “population limiters” such as David Attenborough and
Bill Gates never step up to the plate to
volunteer their own lives to reduce the
population load on earth. They have an
elitist mentality. BBC natural history
documentaries are a marvelous showcase for the existence of God and the
glories of His creation. It’s too bad that
they are overladen with evolutionary
and man-made global warming mythology.
TEACHER FIRED FOR GIVING
STUDENT A BIBLE (Friday Church
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) The following is excerpted from Todd
Starnes, Fox News, Jan. 21, 2013: “A
longtime substitute teacher in Phillipsburg, NJ, has been fired after he shared
a Bible verse with a student--and upon
request gave the child a Bible. The Phillipsburg School Board voted Monday
night to terminate the employment of
Walter Tutka. He was accused of breaking two policies--distributing religious
literature on school grounds and another
policy that directs teachers to be neutral
when discussing religious material. ‘It’s
unfortunate the Phillipsburg School
District chose the path of religious hostility and intolerance against a retired
man serving his community and simply
responding to a student’s intellectual
curiosity,’ Hiram Sasser, director of litigation at Liberty Institute, told Fox
News. ‘What’s next--are they going to
ban Shakespeare because his plays have
Bible quotations?’ ... ‘Just because this
guy gave a student a pocket New Testa-
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ment on his lunch hour--that’s enough
to throw you out of school,’ ... Imhof
and Tutka serve together in Gideons
International--a ministry known for providing Bibles to school children across
the world. ‘One of the Gideons in our
local camp is from the Soviet Union,’
Imhof said. ‘In most countries overseas
we are allowed to go into public schools
and give Bibles to students. But since
this is America--you can’t do it here.
When the Soviet Union fell, Bibles were
allowed in the schools, people could
pray in the schools,’ Hussey said. ‘It
seems we have more persecution in
America than they do in Russia.’ ... ‘I
am sure the school would have celebrated if the issue was a Koran or Hindu
text, but this school sent the message
that anything associated with the Bible,
even good, old-fashioned intellectual
curiosity, must be squelched at the
source,’ Sasser told Fox News.”
RUSSIA SEEKS TO ENACT ANTIGAY LAW (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
25,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
The following is excerpted from “Russia to Enact Anti-gay Law Nationwide,”
AP, Jan. 21, 2013: “Legislation that
comes up later this month for first vote,
which is being pushed by the Kremlin
and the Russian Orthodox Church,
would make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is
defined as ‘propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism.’ It includes a ban on holding public
events that promote gay rights. St. Petersburg and a number of other Russian
cities already have similar laws on their
books. The bill is part of an effort to
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promote traditional Russian values as
opposed to Western liberalism, which
the Kremlin and church see as corrupting Russian youth and by extension contributing to a wave of protest against
President Vladimir Putin's rule. ... Denis
Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada
Center, an independent pollster, says the
anti-gay bill fits the ‘general logic’ of a
government intent on limiting various
rights. But in this case, the move has
been met mostly with either indifference
or open enthusiasm by average Russians. Levada polls conducted last year
show that almost two thirds of Russians
find homosexuality ‘morally unacceptable and worth condemning.’ About
half are against gay rallies and same-sex
marriage; almost a third think homosexuality is the result of ‘a sickness or a
psychological trauma,’ the Levada surveys show.”
MATHEMATICIAN MARVELS AT
THE HUMAN BODY (Friday Church
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) Alexander Tsiaras (b. 1952) is the author of From Conception to Birth: A
Life Unfolds and The Architecture and
Design of Man and Woman: The Marvel of the Human Body. As chief of
scientific visualization in the department of medicine at Yale University, he
wrote many of the algorithms and code
for NASA to do virtual surgery in preparation for the astronauts going into
deep space. The following is excerpted
from a lecture on December 10, 2010, at
INK Talk (in association with TED
Talk) in which Tsiaras described some
of the discoveries that are being made
using new kinds of scanning technologies that can track previously unforeseen details of the growth of the infant
Alexander Tsiaras
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in the womb and of the human body in
general. “I remember one of the first
things we were looking at was collagen.
Everything in your body--hair, skin,
bone, nails--is made of collagen. Its a
kind of rope-like structure that swirls
and twirls, and the only place that collagen changes its structure is the cornea of
your eye, and in your eye it forms a grid
formation and it becomes transparent
instead of opaque. The structure is so
perfectly organized it is hard not to attribute divinity to it, because we kept on
seeing this over and over and over again
in different parts of the body. ... [Consider] a trophoblast coming off the blastocyst, all of the sudden burying itself
into the side of the uterus and having a
conversation, saying, ‘I’m here to stay;
plant me’--building this incredible trilinear fetus that becomes within 44 days
something that you can recognize, and
then at nine weeks it is like a little human being. ... And then there is the
instruction set of every other part of the
body. ... And it is not only just our own
existence, but how does the woman’s
body have a genetic structure that not
only builds her own but then has the
understanding that allows her to become
a walking immunological, cardiovascular system that is a mobile system that
can actually nurture this child is such a
marvel that is, again, beyond our comprehension. ... The complexity of the
mathematical model and how these
things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension. Even though I am
a mathematician I look at this with a
marvel of how these instruction sets do
not make mistakes as they build what is
us. It is a mystery. It is magic. It is
divinity. ... By the time you are nine
months old you have almost 60,000
miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries
inside your body that are bringing nutrients and taking waste away. And only
one mile is visible. ... [This is] the magic
that is the existence that is us.” CONCLUSION: No evidence for God, you
say? Not only is the evidence for God
overwhelming, but so is the evidence
that this God has revealed Himself to
man through the Bible.
1 Timothy 6:20,21
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CHURCH USES WAY OF LIFE
MATERIALS IN DISCIPLESHIP
CLASS (Friday Church News Notes,
We received the following testimony
this week, and it is a great encouragement to see churches taking discipleship
seriously and fortifying the Lord’s people against the tide of apostasy of compromise that we are facing: “Our church
is preparing, when we finish the one
year discipleship course, to do your
study on evolution to help prepare our
kids to face it. After that, we’ll move on
to the Bible version issue and use your
materials for that. All of these are done
during what we call our discipleship
class, which we have at 5pm on Sundays
before the evening service. It’s an additional hour of teaching beyond Sunday
School, morning service, evening service and prayer meeting. We’ve been
doing it about two years. Our church
is really enjoying, and being blessed by,
the materials you have produced. They
are critical to our work of preparing our
members, especially children, to deal
with the lies of the present world-view.
Thank you for your faithfulness and
praise the Lord for His!”
THE AMERICAN DREAM (Friday
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) In the 17th to the mid 20th centuries, the
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American Dream was freedom of religion and speech and press, peaceable
assembly, freedom from government
tyranny, the freedoms that were encapsulated in the U.S. Bill of Rights in
1791, which granted the opportunity for
individuals to pursue their dreams. It
was encapsulated by the slogan that
America was “the land of opportunity.”
From mid-20th century, the American
Dream was no longer merely opportunity but prosperity and pleasure itself,
and particularly pleasure without moral
restraint. In the 21st century, the American dream is dependence on a Nanny
State, the pursuit of pop culture vanities
such as having one’s YouTube video go
viral and the dream of winning a state
lottery.
F
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YOUR ONE MILLION TRILLION
KINESINS (Friday Church News
Notes,
January
25,
2013,
www.wayoflife.org,
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) David Bolinsky and his team (a company called XVIVO) illustrate complex
scientific and medical concepts with
computer animation. He has worked
with the BioVision initiative of Harvard’s Department of Molecular and
Cellular Biology. At a talk at TED2007,
he showed a video clip from his animation entitled “The Inner Life of a Cell.”
The following is excerpted from this
talk: “These little walking machines,
they’re called kinesins, that take these
huge loads that would challenge an ant
in relative size. These various machines
that power the inside of the cell are
really quite amazing. They are the basis
of all life, because these machines interact with each other; they pass information to each other; they cause different
things to happen inside the cell; and the
cell will actually manufacture the parts
that it needs on the fly from information
that is brought from the nucleus by the
molecules that read the genes. No life
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would be possible without these micro
machines. The kinesin is the FedEx delivery guy of the cell, and he pulls a sack
that is full of brand-new manufactured
proteins to wherever it is needed in the
cell, whether it is to a membrane or to an
organelle, whether it is to build something or repair something. And each of
us has about 100,000 of these things
running around right now inside each of
our hundred trillion cells. It’s quite
amazing that these micro-machines are
aware enough of what the cell needs that
they do their bidding, they work together, they make the cell do what it needs
to do, and their working together helps
our bodies--huge entities that they will
never see--function properly.”
Aim of O Timothy Magazine
• Exalting the Lord Jesus Christ; His eternal perfect, and preserved Word; and the Gospel of his Grace. (2
Peter 3:1-2, 18)
• Standing for the whole counsel of God. (Acts 20:27; Jude 3)
• Challenging Christian workers to uphold the truth and resist the apostasy of our times. (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
• Exposing the spirit of error and compromise within Christendom (Hosea 4:6a; 2 Tim. 3)
• Upholding the New Testament Church (1 Tim. 6:13-14). O Timothy is a ministry of Bethel Baptist Church of London, Ontario.
• Challenging churches to fulfill the Great Commission of world evangelism (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 13-14)
• Standing for the Received Text of the Holy Scriptures, the Authorized Version in the English Language, and sound translations of the TR
in the languages of the world. (Ps. 12:6-7)
1 Timothy 6:20,21
23
W
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O TIMOTHY MAGAZINE
P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368
866-295-4143 (toll free),
fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail)
http://www.wayoflife.org (web site)
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
T
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PRSRT STD
U.S. Postage
PAID
Port Huron, MI
Permit No. 1061
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
• NEW ONLINE EDITION - Only $10 per year! - To subscribe, go to www.wayoflife.org, click on the Bookstore tab and
then click on O Timothy. Follow the directions from there.
• UNITED STATES: The annual subscription is US $20 for the US. Make checks payable to Way of Life Literature and designate
the amount for O Timothy. Please use the form below for ordering.
• CANADA: The annual subscription for Canada is $26.25 Canadian (GST included). Checks or money orders should be made to O
Timothy. Please use the form below for ordering.
• AUSTRALIA: The subscription cost is A$10. This will not cover the costs of publishing the magazine and sending it out in Australia,
but we plan to take up an offering at the end of each year from those who receive the magazine. Please understand that there will be a
time delay caused by having to ship the magazines in bulk to Australia and then having to mail them to individual addresses. (send
check to Pastor Buddy Smith, P.O. Box 684, Malanda, Queensland 4885 smiletex@bigpond.net.au , (07) 4096 6657)
PHILIPPINES:
O Timothy magazine began publication in the Philippines in January 2005. It is distributed on a free will offering basis
•
in the Philippines at this time, as long as the Lord provides the needs. We take up an annual offering to pay the expenses. If you are
interested in receiving the magazine in the Philippines, contact us c/o: Pastor Medel Barrera, Berean Bible Baptist Church, Blk. 11 Lot
42, Gardenia Valley Molino Bacoor, Cavite, Philippines The phone # is 0916-555-4723
• INTERNATIONAL: The annual subscription for other countries is US $45. Contributions must be sent in US Funds by International
Money Order drawn on a major New York bank. Make the drafts payable to Way of Life Literature and designate the amount for O
Timothy subscription.
SUBSCRIPTIONS (O Timothy is a monthly publication)
USA - One Year Subscription............................$20 US
CANADA .........................................................$26.25 Canadian (GST Included)
FOREIGN..........................................................$45 US
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DATE______________________________________________________________________
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PRINTED IN CANADA
O Timothy
Volume 30 - Issue 2 - February 2013

O Timothy 2013-02 - Way of Life Literature

Transcription

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