My Call(was Feminine Mystique)

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This post is in response to the testimonial posts sent in last week. I
had meant to post it last week, but it took some time.


> Bro. Welch]:
> >But He has not called women to Preach.
> 
> 
> [Matthew]:
> How do you classify great Pentecostal sisters such as Sis. 
> Willie Johnson, Sis. Oma Ellis, Sis. Nona Freeman, Sis. Carrie
> Eastridge, etc.?

Out of the will of God.

God has not called women to preach to men.  We all like to scream, shout
and bounce off the walls when we want something bad enough, and the
preacher encourages us by saying that God's word will not return void.
We have hope in that promise of God.  Indeed, the very fact that the
above women were effective (I'm told) is because His word is potent.
However, just because God's word is effective, it doesn't mean that we
always wield it properly.  That His word didn't return void doesn't
prove that women are called to preach.  For the principle, we must
consult the word of God, and in consulting that word, there is no
indication that God has given women to preach to a mixed congregation.

People get confused by the results.  They misinterpret them as being a
sign of God's approval.  It isn't.  If a Catholic or Muslim made the
contention that some sort of pilgrimage to Lourdes or Mecca cured them
of a bodily ill, and ergo, was evidence that "their" God bade them do
was the correct, you'd all flip through your bibles and give a Holy
Ghost hair cut showing them how what they believe is wrong.  "But it was
effective," they'd say.  And what would be your response?  "A wonderful
healing yes, but what does the word of God say about who is the healer,
and why and how He heals?"  The message you'd give them is that they
can't confuse the results with the truth (principle).  

I'm constantly amazed and bored that the "Aquila and Priscilla" example
gets dragged out every time as evidence that women can preach and/or
pastor, when it doesn't say that explicitly or implicitly AT ALL.  They
were one as a couple, but does that mean they did the exact same things,
or did they have different roles?  For their roles, there is ample
evidence of the DIFFERENT roles of men and women to fill in what isn't
stated in Acts.  However, y'all skip right by Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10)
where it talks about offering "strange fire" and miss the direct
application that worship of God and ministering to Him are on His terms,
not ours.  Don't assume that you can worship God and minister to Him in
any other way than the ways He has ordained, or that whatever you think
is right is the way to do it.  It's not biblical to hold to that idea.

I don't mean to be offensively disagreeable, and I don't say this with
malice, but it's a shame that SOME (not all) church elders have
succumbed to the modern notion that we ought not to rock the boat over
little issues, or we'll offend people.  I'm not talking about smoking,
drinking, or anything like that, but issues of women preaching, holy
living, etc.  People are looking for bold leadership, and the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, when preached without compromise, is just that, bold
leadership.
   
The idea that women should preach from the pulpit to a mixed audience,
or that a woman can pastor is not born from any doctrine, theme or
tradition that is delineated, espoused, or capable of being read from
the biblical text.  Don't you get it?  We're deciding on our own that
we're capable of turning God's order upside down because it's fair, or
we've wrested the scriptures long enough and hard enough that we can see
how, maybe, what we believe can be found in the scriptures.  God has a
natural order that reveals the supernatural.  Ask yourselves why you're
so intent on changing what has been established.

Those who believe that it's not a principle to strongly hold against
need to decide exactly what is worth holding onto.  The reason is this:
your ox isn't being gored today, but you might want to see if there are
any sacred cows you do care about enough to fight and "die" for.  T.F.
Tenney (yeah, I know he doesn't mind women preachers) once preached on
the name of Jesus and brought up an argument he had with a Trinitarian
over the name.  In that argument, the Trinitarian got all heated up
about baptizing in the titles.  T.F. asked if he prayed in the name of
Jesus.  

"Yes."  
"Do you lay hands in the name of Jesus?"
"Yes."
"Do you do all you do in the name of Jesus?"
"Yes."
"Then why aren't you baptizing in His name also?"

He then went on to make a statement that made a deep impression on me. 
He said (rough paraphrase) "At some point you're going to make an issue
over the name, and since you do everything in His name, you ought to
draw the line before you give up on baptism in His name, because that's
where the power is."  I think we would all die before we renounced our
baptism in the name of Jesus.  Why do we fold so easily over shrill
voices that suggest we give up on other things in the name of "fairness"
or "why not?", things that aren't explicitly in the bible, or things
that are only supportable by uncommonly broad isegesis?  Compromise here
will lead to compromise elswhere.  

One of the reasons that it keeps on coming up as an issue is that people
won't speak up and say that not only is it wrong, but it's abiblical
(not in the bible) and rebellious.  When we don't cast this in plain
language, contrarians are emboldened and more wont to spread their
heresy.  They then get bolder and go on the attack using (in this issue)
the straw men arguments that men who oppose this are mysoginists,
insecure, blah, blah, blah.  It isn't of God to try and shame someone of
their convictions by such ad hominem attacks.  Can I get any plainer?

You ought to read an article in this month's American Spectator
magazine.  In it, there is an essay on the Southern Baptist Convention
and the miraculous turnaround it has made.  It used to be rock solid,
conservative and dedicated to holy living to the Lord.  Even this
conservative political magazine didn't quite get the "no drinking, no
dancing" convictions they had.  Sometime in the forties, fifties and
sixties, they let down their guard.  Their seminaries got so bad, that
their professors weren't holding to beliefs that most denominal
Christians hold to.  They were refuting the immaculate conception,
creation of the earth, Jesus' divinity.  That sepsis infected the church
and got so bad that SBC was known as the "Squishy Baptist Convention." 
Their failure to hold onto the precious things left them unable to hold
on to anything.  Somehow, they turned things around in the last twenty
years to the point that these folks acutally hold to something, and are
making an impact in this world.  Their churches are growing, and they've
got more of them.  While the Episcopalians are dying on the vine,
they're prospering.  How did they do it?  They went back to the
fundamentals and they held on to them.  They girded themselves for a
fight, they got on their knees and prayed, and then they went to
battle.  They knew there was going to be blood, people were going to
leave (one seminary president left to become a unitarian at Harvard!),
but they held on anyway.  Why get squishy over the issue of women
preachers?  Who are we afraid of losing?  Why are we afraid?  If we hold
on, we'll gain souls for the Lord precisely because people will know
what we stand for!

You can get upset all you want, you can give all the tearful testimonies
you want, but it won't change the fact that God hasn't ordained women to
preach.  You can call me insecure and "pray for my wife", but it won't
change the word of God.

God bless you,
Bro. Steven