Cheryl Schatz

Rose, (and I do understand your hesitancy to use your real name), here are my thoughts on your questions:

1. It’s always bothered me that angels have always taken male form in the Bible when they’ve appeared to human beings. If females really *are* equal to God in His sight, why are there no female angels? When God talks about the angels appearing before Him in Job, why are they “the sons of God”? If God loves women equally to men, why can there not be angelic “sons AND daughters of God”?

Spirits do not have body parts to they are not named as “male” and “female”. Yet they do appear as “male” when they come to earth. I believe that this is on purpose for a couple of reasons. The first reason would be that angels are seen as all in one category, so seeing them as “male” and “female” would divide them rather than keep them as one. Secondly those who are “of God” are ALL called “sons” so that even women are God’s “sons” and joint heirs with God. The image then is “sons” and not divisions between “sons” and “daughters”. Perhaps another reason would be that seeing angels as women might be too distracting to men.

Any thoughts about these reasons?
You also said:

That kind of suggests to me that women are second-class citizens in God’s eyes, but I know that cannot be the case, so somebody please help me there!

I do not think that this suggests that women are second-class citizens, but rather that we are all in one class. All of us as “sons” of God is a position of equality, not lifting the male as better than the female.

You asked:

2.) Whenever there were births announced by angels, why is it always the birth of *males*??? Why didn’t God ever send angels to announce to Mary’s parents, for example, that they would have a daughter who would be that one special woman that *every* Jewish woman wanted to be, who would be the mother of the foretold Messiah? John the Baptist’s birth was foretold. Most importantly, Jesus’s birth was foretold. Why couldn’t Mary’s birth have been foretold? Why was it always male babies that got to be foretold? That, too, kind of suggests that God doesn’t consider female babies to be as important as male babies.

I believe that John the Baptist’s birth was foretold because there was to be one forerunner of Christ who would be filled with the Spirit from conception. But Mary’s birth was not special. She was not filled with the Spirit from conception, nor was her birth anything of the ordinary. Her life lived out in humility was what brought her into the place of giving her consent to be the mother of the Lord Jesus.

Another thing to look at, regarding women as having equal importance with the male, is to look at Sarah. It wasn’t Abraham’s seed that was important except through her. God indicated that only the son born through Sarah would be the child of promise.

I hope this helps a bit for your questions. Please feel free to post whatever questions you have. Please excuse me whenever I am slow. I try my best to fit my time here on my blog, within all my other ministry responsibilities and sometimes I am much faster than at other times.