Mara

I know that the woman, Junia, was an apostle and that Pheobe was a deacon. I also know Priscilla was a teacher and a teacher to the apostle Paul.
These things are true. Though ignored by Grudem et al., they are written, plainly in the Bible.

Also, Deborah was an O.T. Judge and Huldah was a prophet to Hebrew kings. God did not silence these women. He gave them voices to speak boldly. But men, to this day, try to silence these Bible women warriors. Because how can they tell women in the churches to make themselves small to fit into tiny, manmade boxes when Junia, Pheobe, Priscilla, Deborah, and Huldah speak freely to us from the Bible. So comp. teachers work over time to silence them.

Thank you, Susanna. Just wish I had more early church, outside the biblical text, evidence of such things.

Could someone give me links to info about female clergy found in on tombstones, letters, inscriptions, etc.

I’d like that information for future use.

Thanks.

Sue: “Authoritarian erotic love is deeply problematic and the source of the greatest human evil.”

Authoritative erotic love is not far from pornography.
The third quote in the video I linked below states:
“The fusion of erotic pleasure with the domination of females is a very dangerous place to have reached.”
Sadly, there is a slippery slope going from ‘authoritarian erotic love’ to ‘the fusion of erotic pleasure with the domination of females.’

Most comps I know don’t see erotic love as a place for male authority over female. And it is a good thing. Authoritative and erotic combined lead to pornography.

Suzanne: “A very apt description of the practice of the man’s headship, don’t you think?”

Yes. I’ve seen this cancer destroy more than one marriage.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutley.
Crazy how men understand this in human government and church government but have a complete disconnect when it comes to husbands and wives.

BTW (if this hasn’t been mentioned), using military or boss/employee examples of authority completely undermines the argument. Sex between Sr. officers and their subordinates and between bosses and employees is highly frowned upon in authority models.
Sex between husband and wife where the husband holds all the authority is not a marriage. It is a master/slave(or concubine) or owner/property arrangement.

wow, I missed e pogue’s comment.
e pogue, these verses aren’t for Piper. They are for men who gather scriptures out of context, fit them together to form a club and use them to shamelessly abuse women.

Psalm 14:2&3 The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the SONS OF MEN, to see if there are any who understand (acts wisely) who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. (also found in Psalm 53:2&3, in the presence of two witnesses, so this MUST be true of all men for all time)
Judges 3:7 And the SONS of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
Psalm 62:9 Men of low degree are only vanity, and men of rank are a lie; In the balances they go up; They are together lighter than breath.
Romans 3:4a May it never be! Rather, let God be true, though every man be found a liar…
Psalm 116:11 I said in my alarm, “All men are liars!”
(Oooo. Another twofer. All men must be liars since it is found in two places)
Isaiah 2:22 Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils’ For why should he be esteemed.
Isaiah 2:11 The proud look of man will be abased, And the loftiness of men will be humbled.

I have more scriptures than these. I keep finding them throughout the Bible. And I’ve only begun to look for them.

Is this a fun game e pogue?
Do you like this?

The difference between you and me is that I really don’t think the Bible should be used as a club on anyone, male or female.
You think it IS a club for beating women and freely abuse the Word of God by so doing. Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you beat your children with God’s word with the same hatred you beat your wife?

Wonder what God thinks of you mishandling His words like this?
I’d hate to think.

ChadH,

Waneta is fully capable of answering you for herself.

But while we wait for her to come visit, thought I’d throw a couple things out that you may not know.

Emotional, Spiritual, and even physical abuse is at a much higher percentage among pastors than what polite people want to know about. Many of the women I know who came out of abusive situations were actually married to pastors, missionaries, evangelists that were completely beloved by their congretions, churches. The abuse was totally hidden within the home.

Chances are, if Piper really holds to the things he teaches, what Waneta speaks of, in part if not in total, are completely possible.
Men who believe the things Piper teaches concerning women, family, and abuse set themselves up for a very real ‘pride before the fall’ crisis. What Piper teaches sets men up to glory in their ‘manly’ flesh and think more highly of themselves than they ought. It sets them up to stand proud rather than kneeling in utter dependance before God.

He may not be guilty of the things Waneta describes. But chances are, these pride issues that he leaves un-named may very well be linked to his wrong views on gender, marriage, and authority.

My prayer for him, Pastor Piper, is that he would be fully able to take hold of God in prayer and learn the meaning of the words of Jesus who washed the disciples feet.

I do want all my brothers and sisters (and I include myself because I know I have far to go), I want us all to have a deeper knowledge and understanding of the heart of God.

John McArthur: “It might leave the impression that woman sort of lies under God’s permanent displeasure.”

John McArthur’s teaching leaves me with the impression that women lie under John McArthur’s permanent displeasure.

Because reading the Bible without all the vast amounts of ‘adding to the Word’ that McArthur liberally engages in doesn’t leave me with any impression of God’s displeasure of women more than men.

Me thinks McArthur projects his own displeasure towards women onto his understanding of God.

Thanks.
Yep heard of that one. Never actually saw it though. So, good to see it.
Boy, he really is a toddler that won’t share his toys. Unless they are broken. And men consider submission ‘broken’ therefore good enough for the female but not for themselves.

Toddler property laws:
http://www.kellymom.com/writings/children/property.html

What was Grudem’s quote?

I don’t have the patience to look through over 200 comments.

The women of that school need to vote with their feet and walk. They need to pull their kids and their money and take them where women are appreciated and not relegated to non-personhood.

Thanks Cheryl.
And since no one else has jumped in here and said, YES, non-egals ARE trying to take away the woman’s portion, I will.

You have it so right. Sometimes I fear for non-egals and the judgement they heap upon themselves in trying to be the ‘ministry police’ and enforcing the traditions of men on the church and stealing away the woman’s portion. If Jesus says it’s not to be taken away, where is their fear of God as they snatch away what doesn’t belong to them? Where is their fear as they enforce with “thus saith the Lord” when the Lord hasn’t said it?

Frustrating to no end.

In my translation Mark 14:6 it says, “Stop troubling the woman…”

I really like that. And I wish these non-egals would take the words of Jesus, the Living Word of God to heart and STOP TROUBLING WOMEN!

Most cults are started by men (Nearly all).

Also watched a show on polygamy where several of the guys talked like they really didn’t want ‘plural wives’ but “God told” them to take the second wife, and third, etc.

Sorry, but the woman being more easily deceived argument doesn’t cut it. Men are just as easily deceived. And where sex is concerned… often more so.

kw, I see that you are angry over this too.

It upsets me so bad that I can no longer go to anything linked to CBMW ever again. I want to shake some sense into them.

But since I can’t and since I don’t have the patience of people like Cheryl [ YOU GO GIRL! 🙂 ], I find other things to do, like helping the walking wounded that CBMW (and like ministries) have created by their “blind guide leading the blind” doctrines.

Glad to see you here. And glad to see you dealing with your anger, as I’ve have to do, on and off, when I hear about the ‘latest’ from CBMW.

Congrats Cheryl. You deserve it.
The combination of your research and gracious spirit make this blog and awesome place to visit.

All right, already!

Somebody say something!

It’s hard to lurk here when you all are so quite! 😉

“If it is God’s design, then women need to find their joy and contentment in that design and not rebel against it.”

The big word in that sentence is ‘if’. Is it really God’s design, or is it the traditions of men?

http://submissiontyranny.blogspot.com/

Waneta Dawn is tell women that they have the right to rebel against what men want to put forth as ‘God’s design’ but is not.
And she’s using the example of the Declaration of Independence to do it.

Ah, no. And here’s their loop hole.
Saphira lied against the Holy Spirit. Her husband led her into sin, and she followed.
You can bring her up and they won’t bat an eye.
But this difficult Abigail character…
They just try to pretend she doesn’t exist.
Or worse, they say the blood of her husband is on her head because she commited the sin of independant thought, or something like that.

Nicole, many of us maintain that the CBMW teachings are bad for both men and women.
But usually we hear only from the women that it has hurt.
Thank you for sharing your dad’s story.
I know it still hurts.
CBMW doctrine hurts entire families.
And they have their heads in the sand over it.

Good point LMB

Here is what jumped out at me.

“We must not explain away difficult, but clear, instruction. As Christians, we must trust God?s counsel for the home. Failure to trust God?s will can only bring turmoil and unrest.”

Crazy thing is, there are hundreds, if not thousands or even more, women who worked very hard to obey the CBMW teaching (or gothard or piper) and all they got was turmoil and unrest.

There is a scripture that says you shall know them by their fruit.
The fruit of such teaching has not proven a shelter from turmoil and unrest for many, but rather that teaching has produced turmoil and unrest.

“For women who have had men “pull rank” on them and hold them down to restrict their ability to serve their only Master, the Lord Jesus, the pain is very real. Hierarchy can bring great harm to a woman inside her very soul and cause her to lose her sense of trust. Sadly a woman may even transfer the actions of these men who are practicing hierarchy, to the nature of God that they are said to represent. God now can become “like” the men to her and this can harm her trust in God.”

This is very true. One of the first things a woman has to do is actually find out who God is and stop listening to men trying to tell her who God is. She must search the scriptures and find His true nature for herself.

One part of the parable of the talents that not everyone sees is the part where the servant with one talent said he buried his talent because he knew the master to be a hard man, reaping where he didn’t sow.
This is a lie. If the master wanted to reap where he did not sow, he would not have handed out 5, 2, or 1 talent(s) respectively. He would have given them nothing and expected them to produce something out of nothing if he thought he could reap where he did not sow.
The servant believed a lie about him. And believed that he was a hard man.

In the same way, women believe lies about God because of what they have been taught. They have been taught the doctrines of men which are very restricting and these women believe God is that restrictive, as well.
And so women bury their talents.
And they are going to be very surprised when God calls them into account.

gengwall: “and Deborah? She was an anomaly.
and Esther? She knew her place.
and Rahab? She doesn’t count because of her vocation.
and the Proverbs 31 woman? Aw, she was just a sweet little homemaker.
and Priscilla? Well, she was not in “church”.
and Phoebe? Don’t you know that Greek words like diakonos and prostatis mean subservient things when applied to women?
and Junia? Wasn’t she a man? Oh no, now I remember, the apostles thought she was a-okay!
and Mary, Mary, Joanna, and the other women? They just happened to be the ones who saw Jesus first. It’s was coincidence. And what they did was no big deal.”

You know, I started a blog about this sort of attack on Bible women. I’m not recommending it because I never got past the first post. Too much to do and no time to do it in. The name of the blog was “Why this attack?”

You get used to preachers attacking Deborah and start learning to let it go in one ear and out the other. Deborah was a tough cookie. She knew her God and was strong and did exploits before Daniel uttered those words. I’d hate to see her in a cage match with any one of the preachers who feel free to not only bash her, but they also bash all the men of her time.

So it wasn’t the attack on Deborah that made me think of starting a blog about this hatred of actual, Biblical women… i.e. women in the Bible, not to be confused with the biblical womanhood pablum being passed off as sound doctrine.

Nor was it the attack on Dinah or Tamar. These Biblical women bashers don’t mind kicking a Bible woman when she was down. Both these women are blamed for their rapes. They weren’t displaying biblical womanhood to the degree these preachers thought needed. If they were, they would have never been raped. (Anyone smell a Taliban?)

Actually, it was the attack on Abigail that inspired me to start that blog. It made me realize that these preachers with their agenda know no bounds. Any woman mention in the Bible is fair game by virture of her gender. These preachers consider any Bible women suspect and will turn up and make up anything they can think of because they are intent on bashing women.

What dirt could they possibly have on Abigail.
Well, I read where Gothard holds Abigail responsible for the death of her husband Nabel because of her ‘scheming’ and ‘betrayal’.
How he got that from the Bible, I don’t know. But he didn’t get it honestly.

He, and these other preachers, have deep-seated, unresolved issues with women. They need to get healed so they stop these unrightous attacks they carry out on true Biblical women.

Sorry. Another rant.

Heidi,
The wolves have already come in.
They have stolen callings, killed dreams, and destroyed true understanding of God’s Word. The wolves have already made portions of scripture null and void by taking verses out of context and spinning them into something they were never intended to be and calling it sound doctrine and biblical manhood and womanhood.
The traditions of men have cemented women into a lesser place of freedom and called it gospel, making a woman’s very salvation dependant on whether or not she properly submits to a man (not to God, but to a man who is just as sinful in nature as she is herself).
It is no gospel. It has no power to save but is driving away the very ones God wants to reach, heal, and deliver.
The true Gospel is not dependent on anything relating to gender. Gender is not a primary issue. It may very well not be an issue at all. But the wolves make it primary and use it to hurt and control already wounded women who need to know God’s love, healing, forgiveness and, yes, freedom. Not rebellion… freedom. It is ours in Christ. Not to sin against another, but to be free to love and serve one another and to serve God in whatever capacity God calls us. This is true submission.

You said:
“All this debate comes down to one thing, either Jesus Christ is the Lord of our life, or we are. If we are not surrendered to His word and His will, we can always find a loophole to justify our rebellion.”

And I agree. Women have been rebelling against the call of God on their lives for hundreds of years because they prefer to serve men rather than God and avoid the persecution that comes with making the choice to serve God rather than men.
When God comes and asks these women why they have buried their talents, what are they going to say?
What judgement will be on them?
And what worse judgement will be on the teachers who taught women to bury their talents and said that God would be pleased with them if they buried what He gave them?

Hannah.

What you have said is very profound.
Order is all the importance in the world to these men when it comes to Genesis.
Order means absolutely nothing at all when it comes to something far greater, the ushering in of the the Kingdom of heaven on earth among people.

Amazing.
Over-the-top amazing.

I’m at work so can’t look these scriptures up and give you their address.
In my freetime (Ha! Ha! Ha! What freetime???) I ought to look these scriptures up and commit large portions to memory.

Anyway, these verses are found in one of the Old Testament books of prophecy and the gist of them is this.

You cannot tell a true prophet from a false one by whether or not their words come true.
You tell the difference on whether or not they encourage people toward their God or against Him.
There is no mention of gender. It’s all about fruit.
A female teacher is not a false teacher by being female. Look at her fruit.
There are male teachers who are false inspite of being male. You can tell by their fruit. They turn the hearts of the people toward themselves and/or toward pet doctrines that they lift up. Some of these ‘pets’ become so important to them that these teachers and their followers trample on the true gospel, the true Words of Jesus in order to follow and obey their ‘pets’ that have turned into idols, or even monsters.

My anti-spam word was ‘proper’.
Sorry Cheryl if it wasn’t proper for me to address this ‘false vs true’ argument after you told Mark that wasn’t what this was about.

Thanks Alison.
I needed that.

Dave, If you comment is negative as sarcastic, I’d hate to think what my post is. I know I have attitude. I know I get tired of certain men who think it is their job and divine right to put women in their places. It gets old. Sometimes I ignore it and go on and obey God to the best of my ability. Sometimes I have to stop and say something.

But often when I stop and say something, it is more for the benefit of the “mighty women of valor” in training than the men who want to oppose them. It’s for the timid ones who feel God tugging on their hearts and whispering in their ears, “Is it better to obey God or men?”

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. This is for men AND women.
But they that know their God shall be strong and do exploits. Again, this is for men AND women.
And no Christian man need fear a Christian woman who is stong and does exploits for her God.
If a Christian man does fear such a woman, well, he needs to take it up with his God, not try to stop women from following the Bible.

My anti-spam word is pain. I hope I’m not being one to Cheryl, Dave, pinklight, or any of the other regulars.
I don’t really care if I am one to Liebens. If I need to care, then may God deal with my heart.

Liebens quotes from the Bible: “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh him ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.” Proverbs 12:4

I find it quite humorous that you quote this as some sort of proof of gender roles.

Did you know the Hebrew word translated virtuous is chayil (#2428 in a Strong’s Concordance) and it means…
a force, whether of men, means or other resources; and army, wealth, virtue, valor, stength- able active , band of men (soldiers), company (great) forces, goods, host, might, power, riches, strength, strong, substance, train, valiant, valour, virtuous, war, worthy…

It is the same word translated as valor and valiant concerning men in
Joshua 1:14; 2:6; 8:3; 10:7
2 Sam 11:16 1 Kings 11:28; 1 Chron 5:24
And so many more I’m getting exhausted at the thought of trying to type them all out for you. Look it up in your concordance.
Please look it up for yourself. Don’t take my word for it.

You use a verse that says a valiant women, an mighty woman of substance is a crown to her husband in the same post you declare Deborah, a mighty woman of valor, a product of her era that had confusion over gender roles.
There was no confusion.
The confusion comes when men try to discredit Deborah and her era concerning gender role because they are threatened by strong women.

Me thinks that if God has in His word, “a virtuous (valiant, valor, strong, able, force) woman, who can find. Her worth is far above jewels” (Pr31:10) that He must not be threatened by powerful women. Actually, He seems to be indicating that there aren’t enough powerful women because they seem hard to find.

Nor is He obssessing over gender roles. This obssessing is the product of the traditions of men.

K. Liebens : “These examples are prevalent in biblical prose representative of an era where there was an established distortion of gender roles within a society captivated by generalised disobedience and evil.”

Cheryl has answered you well and I’ll not belabor the point except to give you my initial reaction to the statement you wrote above.

What magician’s hat did you pull this completely unsupportable concept?

Because you didn’t get it from the Bible. The Bible does not say anything about there being any distortion of gender roles in that era. Not one word. That concept came from the fertile imagination of a man (or men) who can’t deal with the idea of a strong woman in a leadership position.
Men have been attacking the concept and character of Deborah for hundreds of years. But their attacks are based on jealousy, not on rightly dividing the Word of truth.

Yes, Ted.
God says to sinful man. Come let us reason together.

Yet some ‘authorities’ who claim to represent God will not have that. They crave blind devotion. A mindless, voiceless following. Something that God doesn’t even ask for.