Greg Anderson

Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t it say in Acts 15:19&20 (spoken by James) and then again in verses 28&29 in the form of a letter sent to Antioch by the council of Jerusalem and accompanied by Paul as verbal witness that there are only four “essentials” that we as believers are charged with observing? If so, how come there are so many today who say it’s heresy for Godly women to teach sound Christian doctrine to men? If Acts 15 removed a yoke that as Peter said “neither we nor our fathers were able to bear”, does it make sense that Paul would turn around and slap a new yoke on the church restricting the “roles” of women? No it doesn’t. Now I can understand how E.W. Bullinger (hardly a militant feminist) could write in his introductory notes in 1 Tim.: “To Timothy were given the earliest instructions for orderly arrangement in the church, these instructions being of the simplest nature, and as Dean Alford well observes with regard to the Pastoral Epistles as a whole, the directions given “are altogether of an ethical, not of an hierarchical kind.” These directions afford no warrant whatever for the widespread organizations of the “churches” as carried on today.” (from: The Companion Bible p-1799 first published in 1922) Regardless of what Bullinger and Alford say, scripture interprets scripture and from the vantage point of Acts 15, we have the freedom and liberty in Christ Jesus to allow Godly women to exercise their gifts as they are called by the Holy Spirit.