Was Jesus the First Feminist?

Lesson Transcript

Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to talk about was Jesus the first feminist? Or perhaps a better title would be" How to Fabricate History." Actually, the issue of fabricating history goes a long way back for me. It first came to my attention when I was a Jehovah's Witness, and I had decided to do some research into the background of Jehovah's Witnesses by reading the original sources. You see, when I was in my mid-20s, I was a very zealous model Jehovah's Witness.

I was serving as an elder in my congregation, and my wife and I were very active in their house-to-house evangelism. Now, up to that time, I had never had any doubts or dissatisfaction with the witnesses. However, for some time, the Watchtower had been predicting that the end of the world would come sometime around the year 1975, and that the millennium would then begin. When that didn't happen, it, of course, made me wonder.

I couldn't help but remember various tracts I had been given by people when I knocked at their doors that said that Charles Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, had made all sorts of false prophecies. Now, I hadn't believed what those tracts said, I assumed that they were lying. But now in the year 1976, I realized that I needed to look into things a little deeper. If this was God's one true church, well, that was fine. I could live with the wrong prediction about 1975.

On the other hand, I didn't want to find out when I was 70 that I had been following the wrong thing my whole life. Now, I thought I already knew everything there was to know about JW history. That's because Jehovah's witnesses published a history book about themselves that I had personally read several times, and that, in fact, we'd all studied in our congregations. But, you know, I had never done any original research using primary sources.

So what would be a primary source for what Jehovah's witnesses originally believed in practice? Obviously, one of the key primary sources would be the actual writings of their founder, Charles Russell. Interestingly, in 1976, Jehovah's Witnesses no longer published the writings of their founder, and they still don't publish them today. But thankfully, my wife had come across copies of his writings and used bookstores and sometimes garage sales. So we had a pretty full collection of his works in our library.

Now, they had always merely sat there on the shelf. Neither one of us had ever looked at him. My wife had bought them as collector's items. But now I wanted to read them and see what Russell actually taught. Jehovah's witnesses liked to trumpet the fact that Russell had made bold predictions about the year 1914. The history book they published said that Russell never predicted exactly what would happen in 1914, only that something dramatic would take place in that year.

It would mark the beginning of the time of the end, and it would usher in a time of woe, and they cherry pick quotations from Russell's writings to give that impression. Of course, World War I started in 1914, so it appeared that certainly God had been speaking through Russell. However, when I read Russell's writings for myself, it was immediately obvious that he made all kinds of specific predictions about 1914.

He had not said that a time of woe would begin in 1914, but that all earthly woes would be over with by 1914. He said that the millennium would begin in 1914. It would not be the beginning of the time of the end, which he said began in the late 1700s, but the termination of it. So it was obvious that no matter how well-intentioned the man was, Russell was a false prophet. And Jesus told us to beware of false prophets.

So I knew that there was no way that Jesus would use a false prophet to restore His church in the last days. Not only that, I saw that Jehovah's Witnesses were not being honest about their own history. They had fabricated a false history in order to mislead those of us who were Jehovah's Witnesses. My wife and I realized we could no longer trust them, and so we left. After leaving Jehovah's Witnesses, I immediately started college and began studying to become an attorney.

One of the first books I read in college was George Orwell's book, 1984. This book describes life in a future totalitarian society where absolutely everything is controlled by the central government. The hero or protagonist in the story opposes this government, but he's powerless to do anything about it. In fact, his job is to help the government to falsify history. Now, I don't remember the various names of countries in the book, but we'll call his country country X.

For example, if Country X is presently at war with Country Y, the government wants the people to believe that their country has always been at war with Country Y. Yet history might show that at one time the two countries were actually allies. So the hero's job is to go back and actually physically change what various newspaper articles or magazine articles might have said in the past that would reveal the truth.

That way, if the people were to come across an old newspaper article, those articles would now be changed to show that Country X has always been at war with Country Y. Now, as you can imagine, I could really relate to the scenario portrayed in Orwell's book, 1984. I felt like I had gone through a similar experience with Jehovah's Witnesses. I remember thinking what a terribly wicked thing it is to fabricate history. It is basically lying on a mass scale.

It's what the communist governments had been doing for decades. However, what I didn't realize at the time was that the United States and most of the free world was about to enter George Orwell's world, where history is fabricated at will. Thankfully, I grew up at a time when history books, at least here in the West, were still fairly objective. To be sure, every history book of every country was biased in that it presented history from the perspective of one's own country.

However, other than that, the history books I grew up with and that I read in college were neither liberal nor conservative, neither Democrat or Republican. They presented neither a male nor a female perspective on history. They tried to relate the important events that shaped history and to educate their readers to various people who made a big difference in history. However, all of that was about to change.

Actually, George Orwell had written his book to warn the world about the dangers of totalitarian governments, such as those of the fascists and communists. Ironically, here in the U.S., it was neither fascism nor communism that ushered in the 1984 world described by Orwell. Rather, it was feminism. It was in the early 1980s when I first became aware of what feminists were doing to history. One night I was leafing through my son's fifth grade American history textbook.

American history had always been one of my favorite subjects, and I thought it would be interesting to see what my son was learning. So I turned to the chapter in the book about the American Revolution. As I started reading, I was utterly shocked. In relating the war, the book devoted as much space to women who participated in the war as they did to the men who were involved in the war. I don't mean it devoted a large section to what women did behind the scenes to aid the revolution.

Rather, I'm saying it devoted as much space to the two or three women who in some way physically participated in one or two battles of the war. Now, these were women whom I doubt most college history professors would have ever heard of. I don't even know if they were real. Unfortunately, this section on the American Revolution consisted of only a few pages.

So in order to devote such a large section to these obscure women, the textbook made no mention whatsoever to a large number of men who played a very important part in the war. I'm talking about men such as Lafayette and Nathanael Greene. Famous men like John Paul Jones, Israel Putnam of Thomas Paine, and Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, were completely omitted. In the end, the textbook made it look like the American Revolution was an equal opportunity war, with men and women shouldering the load equally.

The point of all of this in the end was so the book could promote its agenda. At the end of its description of the American Revolution, the book argued it was unfair that women were not given the right to vote right after the war. In reality, the American Revolution had nothing to do with voting rights. That was not one of the issues the war was fought over.

Furthermore, the textbook failed to point out that a large number of the men who actually fought in the war, many of the men who died in the war, did not have the right to vote either. Since the history book was interested in promoting a feminist agenda, it didn't mention that it was primarily the men who suffered and died so that the colonies could win their independence. The textbook made no mention of the terrible suffering the men underwent during the winter at Valley Forge.

Finally, the book failed to mention that in every colony, all males from age often 16 or 17 on up were conscripted into the army to fight on behalf of the colonies. Females were exempt. Yes, at the time of the revolution, men had some privileges that women didn't have. But at the same time, they also bore heavy responsibilities from which women were exempt. The great weight of suffering and dying in the Revolution fell almost totally on the men.

Decades later, when I was working on the book in God we don't trust, I noticed that this trend to falsify history and to use it to promote an agenda has only increased since the 1980s. Now, I should mention that if you're under 50 years old and you went to public school, what I've described probably doesn't sound the least bit strange to you. That's because sadly, you've probably grown up in this Orwellian world where history is shaped and fabricated at will.

You may assume that this is the way history has always been taught, but it hasn't. That's not the way things used to be. But this evening, we're not going to focus on American history or JW history. I've mentioned those two incidents only as examples of how people fabricate history to promote a particular agenda. Sadly, feminists have not only reshaped and fabricated American history, but they've largely reshaped New Testament history as well. And that should be of deep concern to all Christians.

That's because the agenda of feminism is in direct opposition to the order God has set forth in the Scriptures for the home, the church, and society. I was 18 years old when the latest wave of the feminist movement began in the late 1960s. At that time, the feminist movement made no bones about being in direct opposition to Christianity and to the Bible. Feminists weren't pretending that the two were compatible. They ridiculed and attacked the Bible. They even ridiculed the practice of referring to God as Father.

Although what feminists were saying was blasphemous, at least there was a clear line of demarcation between their agenda and the teaching of Scripture. However, almost immediately the liberal Christian churches jumped on board the feminist bandwagon. But unlike the secular feminists, they weren't willing to say that feminism was in opposition to Christianity. So they began teaching that Christianity actually introduced feminism. In fact, they said Jesus was the first feminist.

Now, if this had gone no further than the liberal, so-called Christians, I don't know that it would be worth our time addressing the matter, but it didn't. Now, at first, conservative Christians resisted feminism. But within just a few years, the conservative segment of the world accepted many of the changing views that feminism brought in. They resisted some of them. But once the conservative segment of the world accepted much of feminism, then the conservative Christian churches accepted them too.

To be sure, with their words, conservative Christians still try to distance themselves from feminists. To their credit, they have remained steadfast in their opposition to abortion. And most conservative Christian churches do not allow female pastors. Since I'll be using the word feminist a lot this evening, I should define what I mean by that term.

When I use the term feminist, I mean somebody, whether male or female, who rejects God's order of headship in the home, the church, and society as taught in the New Testament. Now, in this message, I will be primarily referring to professed Christians who reject God's order. Yet I recognize that most Christians will pay lip service to God's order. In fact, they embrace half of God's order.

They do believe that men carry special responsibilities that God is not put on women, but they deny men any real authority along with those responsibilities. In truth, they're not at all comfortable with what the New Testament teaches on headship. So rather than teaching it and supporting it, they actually undermine it. Now, very few of these professed Christians would think of themselves as feminists.

Feminist doctrine has so permeated both society and the church since the 1960s that unless you were born around 1950 or earlier, you probably have been indoctrinated with feminist thinking most of your life without realizing it. In other words, you're very likely a feminist yourself and don't even realize it. In reality, the so-called Bible-believing churches have embraced most of the tenets of feminism where it clashes with Christianity.

In fact, if they were honest with themselves, most pastors would have to admit that they are ashamed of the New Testament gospel, that they do not believe it. Either that, or they're afraid of the reaction they would get from their wives and from the sisters in their churches if they truly preached what the New Testament teaches on order in the home and headship.

In fact, feminism has been so far-reaching, and men have been so affected by it as well, that pastors would get opposition from most of the men in their congregation as well if they truly preach what the Bible teaches. If you think I'm exaggerating, let's look at just four passages in the New Testament that address the role of women in the home in church.

As we read these passages, ask yourself," Could my pastor actually preach what those passages say without watering them down or explaining them away?" In most churches, he could not. The first passage is 1 Corinthians 11 verses 3 through 8. It reads," But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head.

But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head. For that is one and the same as if her head were shaved. For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God. But woman is the glory of man, for man is not from woman, but woman from man. Now the second passage is just a few chapters later.

It's in 1 Corinthians 14, verses 33 through 37. It reads," Let your women keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is shameful for women to speak in church, or did the Word of God come originally from you? Or was it you only that it reached?

If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord. The third one, 1 Timothy 2:8-15. I desire, therefore, that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. In like manner also that the women adorned themselves in modest apparel with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women professing godliness with good works.

Let a woman learn in silence with all submission, and I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control. Okay, now one more I want to read.

And as of course, you, I think, fully understand, there are plenty of teachings in the New Testament about the responsibilities and role of men as well. No churches have any problem teaching those today. The problem is dealing with these passages, and that's why I'm singling them out. And so the last one we're going to look at is 1 Peter 3:1 through 6.

It says," Wives likewise be submissive to your own husbands that even if some do not obey the Word, they without a Word may be won by the conduct of their wives when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Do not let your adornment be outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel. Rather let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.

For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. Let me ask you a question. Do you think that for one minute any prominent woman today would accept those teachings? For example, Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama or Condoleezza Rice, it doesn't matter if they're liberal or conservative.

No, there is no way they would accept those teachings as they're presented. In fact, the feminists of the world, the secular feminists, cite those very passages as proof that the Bible is written by males and that it can therefore be ignored. Now we can expect that response from the world. The sad thing, however, is that the vast majority of 21st century women who claim to be Bible-believing Christians, who claim the Bible is inerrant, aren't going to accept what those passages say either.

In fact, neither are most 21st century men who claim to believe the Scriptures. But these Christians are not willing to say the Bible is a worthless book that can be discarded. So what are they to do? Well, as a first step, pastors simply tried to avoid those four passages I've just quoted. Ask yourself, how often have I heard any sermons that focus on those passages? In most churches, the answer would be none.

Second, the New Testament also places responsibilities on men as the heads of their homes and leaders in the church. So most pastors focus on the New Testament teachings directed to men, and they either skip or hurry past the passages directed to women. They expand on and enlarge the teachings directed to men, and they either minimize or totally ignore the commandments directed to women. Now that's a cowardly way to treat God's Word, but it is the politically correct thing to do.

But what do you do if you're systematically going through the Bible chapter by chapter? Or what are so-called Bible-believing Christians supposed to do with these passages when they're brought up either by unbelievers or by Christians who do believe in obeying all of the New Testament? To put it another way, what does a professing Christian do when the teachings of Scripture are squarely against what you're willing to accept? Well, this is a similar situation to what we discussed in law school.

That situation was, what do you do when the law is squarely against your client? Well, our professor told us this, when the law is against you, then you pound the facts. I should explain that in the context of trial law, the facts, and put that word in quotation marks, means your narrative about what happened. And you, the lawyer, write that narrative. Now, lawyers don't write the narrative based on what the truth is, but on what will sway a jury.

Now, don't get me wrong, the law doesn't allow an attorney to persuade his client to perjure himself on the witness stand, but it does allow a lawyer to stretch the truth. It allows him to essentially fabricate a story of what happened, so long as the lawyer loosely acknowledges the known facts. For example, let's suppose a man murders his boss and all of the evidence shows that he is guilty. Let's suppose there's no way around the evidence. And let's further suppose that you're the attorney representing this man.

What do you do? Well, obviously, the law is squarely against you. A person can quit if he doesn't like his boss, but he's not allowed to murder his boss. So, what do you do? Well, you paint a picture of that boss that portrays him as being so incredibly mean, cruel, and hateful that someone needed to kill him, that whoever killed him did the human race a favor. And at the same time, you paint a picture of your client, the employee, as an innocent meek person who simply cracked under the pressure.

Your client is the real victim, not the man who was murdered. And if you do your job well, by the time you get through painting your picture of what happened, the jury won't care what the law says. They'll find some way to find your client not guilty. Modern Christian women and the theologians who enable them use the exact same tactic. They portray first-century men as incredibly oppressive, cruel, and self-centered. At the same time, they portray women of that period as their meek, innocent victims.

First century women had no rights, we are told, and they were abused and taken advantage of by their husbands and by men in general. Well, by the time feminists get through with their fabricated story, their hearers aren't going to care what the Scriptures say. They're going to look for a way to free women from the oppressive chains men have put on them. If that were not enough, modern Christian women and men put forward no less person than Jesus Himself as their champion.

He is the one who freed women from their yoke of bondage, we're told. They claim He ushered in a new era for women. But Jesus didn't teach feminism someone might object. When he introduced a number of new teachings to mankind, but he never said a single word indicating that God's order of headship needed changing. He rebuked three classes of people during his ministry, the religious leaders, the rich, and the Jews as a nation. But he never said one word against men as a class.

He chastised the religious leaders for a number of things, but not for the way they treated women. His enemies accused him of a number of things, but they never said he was causing women to rebel against their husbands. They never accused him of challenging the social order in any way. So how could anyone possibly argue that Jesus was the first feminist? Well, it might seem like an impossible task, and indeed it is an impossible task if you stick to the facts.

But if you're willing to bend the facts and fabricate history, it isn't difficult at all. Anyone who reads the gospel accounts sees that Jesus treated women kindly as fellow humans. He didn't treat them any differently than men. Aha! All you have to do now is to claim that no other men in Jesus' time treated women that way. And you have your case. Well, first it was the liberals who made this claim. But within a few years, so-called Bible-believing conservative Christians followed suit.

Actually, this is a fairly easy trick to pull off because few people know anything about first-century history. Don't believe anything they hear, particularly if it's what they want to hear. And feminists, whether they be men or women, have a trump card up their sleeve. That trump card is an ancient Jewish work known as the Mishna. It was written around the year 200, and it collects together the views of various rabbis on the different facets of the Law of Moses.

Feminists allege that the Mishna reveals that Jesus' treatment of women was nothing short of revolutionary in his day. Before we delve into the Mishna, I want to explain a little bit about how I came to make this recording. For the past 10 or 15 years, most of the CD recordings I make are in response to questions or topics suggested by my readers. Not that every suggestion my readers make turns into a CD recording. Actually, most of them don't.

I generally only select the questions that are asked by a lot of different people. Also, for many questions that readers ask me, there is no clear answer. I'm not normally going to make a CD recording about a subject if I can't furnish sufficient evidence from primary sources to provide an accurate authoritative answer.

Anyway, a short time ago, I received a letter from one of my readers in which he wrote," I have a question on a comment you made in the book, will the theologians please sit down concerning the Mishna?" And he gives an example. He says," However so-and-so in his book also mentions the Mishna, and it seems in conflict with what you wrote. Would you please explain this to me?" Now, he gave me the name of the author, but I would prefer to leave him anonymous.

He then set forth some of the quotations from this author, which I'll quote for you in a moment. Now, I debated for quite a while whether or not to answer this man's questions. For one thing, I don't appreciate situations where someone is trying to draw me into a quarrel with some other author. However, in this case, I decided that's not what the reader was trying to do. He was asking an honest question. Second, I've read a number of books by this author, and he's someone I respect very much.

Now, although I've never met him, I do appreciate his work. So I have no desire to shoot down something he has said in one of his books. On the other hand, the kind of arguments this author has made citing the Mishna, they're made so often today. And because the issue of headship and God's order is such an important issue in the church today, I felt I should address the issue.

As the reader indicated in his letter, I addressed this subject in my book," Will the Theologians Please Sit Down?" In fact, three chapters from that book particularly talk about this whole issue of fabricating history. They're entitled The First One Counterfeit History, and then when fiction is presented as fact. And the third one is men didn't talk to women and other lies. That last chapter addressed a claim that is part of the fabricated myth of Jesus being the first feminist.

Feminists make the claim that Jewish men didn't talk to women in Jesus' day because they looked down on women. So the fact that Jesus spoke to women was something revolutionary, they say. I'll read you the passage from Will the Theologians Please Sit Down that speaks to this issue.

It reads," One of the most absurd claims being made today is that Jewish men disdained women and therefore refused to talk to them." This claim is usually made when commentators discuss Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman, described in the fourth chapter of John. While His disciples were buying food in a nearby city, Jesus conversed with a woman at a well. When His disciples returned, the Scriptures say," They marveled that He talked with a woman."" Aha," our theologians tell us.

See, men and Jesus they looked down on women and refused to talk to them in public. So according to modern commentators, Jesus was doing something revolutionary merely by talking to a woman. They argued that it was Jesus who started the feminist movement. But what do the facts show? Well, taken out of context, that sentence, they marveled that he talked with a woman, sounds as though men didn't speak to women in Jesus' day.

However, when we read the entire passage, we immediately see that this wasn't the issue at all. The context is that Jesus and His disciples were passing through Samaria. While the disciples were purchasing food at the nearby town of Sychar, Jesus waited outside the city by a well. When a Samaritan woman came to the well to fetch water, Jesus asked her for a drink. The Samaritan woman was surprised that Jesus talked to her. But why was the woman surprised? Because Jewish men didn't talk to women? Not at all.

The Scripture tells us exactly why. It says," Then the woman of Samaria said to him," How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?" Ah, right there we have the answer. She didn't say," For men have no dealings with women, but Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." The unusual thing was not that a man was speaking to a woman, but that a Jew was speaking to a Samaritan.

When the disciples returned from the town, they too were surprised that Jesus was speaking to a Samaritan woman. But it had nothing to do with gender. It had to do with her ethnicity. This is evident from what followed. When the woman left Jesus, the Scripture says," She went her way into the city and said to the man,' Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" So right there, the Samaritan woman felt free to converse with the men of the city.

There was no gender barrier to such conversation. Did the men brush the woman off in scorn when she spoke to them? Not at all. They went and did exactly what she asked them to do. Of course, anyone who has read the Bible knows that men spoke with women throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus didn't do anything unusual. In fact, in Genesis, we have a situation very similar to the Samaritan woman at the well. Abraham's servant rested at a well outside of the city of Nahor.

When a young woman came to the well to draw water, he said essentially the same thing that Jesus said to the Samaritan woman. He said, quote," And the servant ran to meet her and said,' Please, let me drink a little water from your pitcher." End quote. Now, did this woman draw back and say," How is it that you, a man, speak to me, a woman?" Of course not. She replied," Drink my Lord," and she gave the man a drink. No, there was nothing unusual about men speaking to women.

Jacob spoke to Rachel before they were married. The men of Israel came to Deborah, the prophetess for judgments, Boaz spoke to Ruth, and Eli spoke to Hannah. That passage was from my book, will the theologians please sit down? Okay, back to the letter from my reader. The letter goes on to list at least four claims that this particular author makes. First, the author says one of the six major divisions of the Mishna is devoted entirely to rules about women.

None of the divisions, of course, deal exclusively with men. The second claim," The Mishna section on uncleanness has 79 legal paragraphs on the ritual contamination caused by a woman's monthly period." His third claim:" Women were excluded from public life. They belonged at home. When walking outside the house, they cover themselves with two veils to conceal their identity." End quote. And number four, he says," It's difficult to grasp the dismal state of women in Hebrew culture.

They were stashed at the bottom with slaves and children." So what do you do when you're confronted with quotations like that? How do you know whom to believe? Well, it reminds me of a joke I heard at a legal conference. The question was asked, how can you tell when a lawyer's lying? The answer? When his mouth is moving. Yes, we lawyers enjoy telling jokes about ourselves at our conferences. So let me ask you a similar question. How can you tell when a commentator or Christian author is lying?

Answer: When he pretends to have inside information about biblical times, that ends up one, either adding to, or two, taking away from, or three, negating a commandment or theological doctrine of Scripture. The reason I say that is because I've made early Christian history my life study, and I have yet to come across any authentic historical information that ever adds to or takes away or negates a scriptural commandment.

Instead, what I have found is that there are a ton of bogus claims out there that are not based on even a shred of real historic evidence. That is particularly true when it comes to feminist issues. So let's talk for a minute about how to do research right. If you've listened to very many of my CD messages, you're probably tired of hearing me say this, but I'm going to repeat it because it is the only way to do authentic research. That is, to do research right, you need to do two things.

One, start with a blank slate, and number two, go back to the primary sources. When I say begin with a blank slate, I mean that you can't begin your research if you've reached your conclusion before you ever begin. However, that's the way most people do research. They've already decided what they want to believe. Now they're simply trying to find ammunition to back up their views. So their research is a farce. It's dishonest.

Going back to the primary sources means going back to the original writings that were written during the time period under consideration. If you want to research how men treated women during the days of Jesus, then read sources that were written in or near Christ's lifetime. Don't go to a book that was written in the 21st century and imagine that you've researched the issues. That doesn't mean you can't read a book that's not a primary source, but when you do so, you need to take things with a grain of salt.

And one thing you can do is to check if the author has done his or her research correctly. How do you do that? Well, you look for footnotes. Many times you will find that the author is making strong assertions without furnishing any footnotes. Without footnotes, the reader has no means to verify the author's claims. When authors make assertions about ancient history without footnotes, you can be fairly certain that what they're saying is bogus. Because if they had evidence to back it up, they would footnote it.

What they're doing is pretending that this is settled history. It's undeniable. You know, that's the way the unbelieving scientists treat evolution. Oh, it's settled science. That's, you know, no need to talk about it. All right, what if the author does have footnotes for what he says? Does that mean everything he says is true? Hardly. What you need to do is check and see if the footnotes are to primary sources.

If an author's footnotes are simply to some other person's book, it tells you that the author is not writing from personal knowledge. He's simply parroting what somebody else has said. It means that he or she doesn't know if what they're saying is even true or not. What if the author does have footnotes and they are to primary sources? Okay, very good. However, it still doesn't mean that the author did his research with a blank slate.

It doesn't prove that the author has given you the full story through unbiased eyes. In fact, we're going to see in a minute that an author may be misleading you, even though he or she is citing primary sources. I mean, think for a minute. Just because somebody quotes a passage from Scripture and furnishes you with a citation hardly means that he's using the Scriptures honestly.

I think we've all seen how easy it is to cherry-pick verses here and there in the Scriptures to" prove almost any point a person wants to." With that explanation of how to do research right, let's get back to our subject, the status of women in New Testament times and how feminists have fabricated history in order to support their agenda.

I started writing about early Christianity 25 years ago, and from the beginning I've defended all of the Bible's teachings on every subject, including God's order in the home and church. That's because I believe that God's Word is inerrant, and because the early Christians embraced all of the New Testament teachings on every subject.

However, no sooner did I start writing books, then I was bombarded with all kinds of arguments against the Bible's teachings on the roles of men and women and its teachings on headship. Very often, the letters would contain Xerox copies of pages from various books that readers would send me. These books made similar claims to the ones we're going to be looking at, and they often cited the Mishna as their source of authority. Interestingly, they rarely furnished any actual quotes from the Mishna.

Rather, they simply asserted that it said such and such. However, I did something these people didn't expect. I went out and bought a copy of the Mishna. Now I could personally check out these claims that were being made. So with that background in mind, let's look at the claims this author has made in his book. He has cited the Mishna as his source of authority. Claim number one is one of the six major divisions of the Mishna is devoted entirely to rules about women.

None of the divisions, of course, deal exclusively with men. End quote. Now if you pick up a copy of the Mishna and leaf through it, it would appear at first glance that this author's claims are true. You will find that there are six major divisions of the Mishna, and one of them is entitled" Women." However, all you have to do is to turn to that section and start reading it, and you immediately know that what this author has said is not true.

That's because the section that is entitled" Women" is not" devoted entirely to rules about women," end quote, as this author claims. In fact, most of the rabbinical opinions set forth in this section of the Mishna affect men as much as they affect women. The section would be more accurately entitled family law. In fact, rather than imposing a bunch of burdens on women, much of this section sets forth their legal rights and protections. It also sets forth the rights and responsibilities of husbands and of men.

Some of the subjects that this section covers are marriage and divorce, betrothal, remarriage, levirate marriage. That's when a husband dies and the wife is childless and so she marries a brother of the husband. It covers priestly marriages. It covers vows in general. It covers funerals and also Nazarites. Now, I believe this author to be an honest man. I don't think he would intentionally say something he knew was false. So what it tells me is that this author has never personally read the Mishna.

If he had, I don't think he would have made the claim he did. In short, he's parroting something he read in someone else's book. The author goes on to make a comment that is both unkind and unwarranted. He says," None of the divisions, of course, deal exclusively with men." In other words, he's saying if men are making the rules, they're naturally going to make things easy on themselves and hard on women. Well, you know, that doesn't reflect God's view of men, but rather the feminist, very hateful view of men.

I was in law school during the 1970s when women were vocally demanding equal rights. I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of it, for the truth was they already had more rights and protections than men did. For example, under Texas law at that time, a man was obligated to support his wife, whether or not she was able-bodied and capable of supporting herself. At the same time, a wife was obligated to support her husband only if he was disabled and unable to support himself.

The law did not require a wife to do housekeeping or anything else. So the law was very unequal in favor of women. Yet, these laws were written by men, not by women. I mean, can you picture female legislatures passing laws that purposefully put greater burdens on women than on men? I think if you're honest, you know that would never happen. But way back in the 1800s, Texas created its early constitutions. Now at that time, women could not even vote in Texas.

Yet the Constitution gave women very preferential treatment in many areas. I've already mentioned that men were required to support their wives, but wives were not required to do anything in return. That was very normal for the laws of that time. Yet in Texas, the money the husband earned was community property, meaning it was owned equally by husband and wife. In fact, not only was a man obligated to support both himself and his wife, a wife had no obligation to support herself, let alone her husband.

If she brought money or other property into the marriage, that money was hers alone. It was her separate property. The husband had no control over it. And if her husband wasn't providing adequate support for whatever reason, perhaps it was no work or he was sick, whatever, and she ended up using her own money. That is her separate money to provide food, medicine, clothing, or shelter for herself. Then the community that is the husband's earnings owed her reimbursement for whatever money she spent on herself.

So it is so false for feminists to claim that men naturally abuse their powers when they have headship over women. Now, until the 1960s and 1970s, the laws did preserve the headship authority of a man over his wife and family, but a lot of responsibilities came with that headship. Yet headship is not something that men usurped over women. After the fall, God told Eve," Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you." That's in Genesis.

Now in the Greek Septuagint, the Greek word used there for rule is curio, which in the New Testament is usually translated have dominion over. In the Septuagint, God uses a form of that word when He tells the first humans to have dominion over the animals and the earth. Now today, feminists claim that God wasn't giving men authority over their wives when He made that statement to Eve. They say rather He was only predicting that men would dominate their wives against God's wishes.

However, if that were the case, we would expect in the Old Testament to see God dealing with married couples as joint partners without any head. However, in all of His dealings with the patriarchs, God deals with the husbands as being the heads of their home. For example, He told Abram alone," Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you." That's Genesis 12:1.

He didn't give the command to Abram and Sarai jointly, he gave it only to Abram because Abram was Sarai's head. When giving the law, God incorporated many provisions that established husbands and fathers as the heads of their homes and the heads in the Israelite nation. For example, a husband had the authority to nullify a wife's vows. That's a power that God gave to husbands, not something they seize for themselves. And only men could serve as priests. That was from God, again, not made up by men.

So it's dishonest to claim that men seized headship on their own authority apart from God's will, as modern Christian feminists do. And contrary to what this author has indicated, in the Mishna, men did not pile extra burdens on women. In fact, instead of showing that men were misusing their headship to oppress and take advantage of women, the Mishna actually reveals that men gave women more legal rights and protections than God did in the Mosaic Law.

For example, the Mishna reveals that in most marriages, the parties entered into a marriage contract before marriage. In Hebrew, these contracts were referred to as ketubot, and an entire sub chapter of the Mishna is devoted to them. These contracts typically stipulated how much support the husband had to give his wife each year while they were married, and how much he would have to pay her if he divorced her.

Not only that, but it reveals that even if a bride had no such contract, the Jewish elders, who were all men, impose requirements on the husbands, nevertheless, to pay a sum of money to the wife he was divorcing. A person reading Leviticus would get the impression that a man could just dismiss his wife and send her away empty-handed. In fact, the law itself allowed that. But men imposed limitations on themselves and gave women more protection than the law itself gave them, as I mentioned.

In the law, we read that the sons inherited the lands and goods of the Father. Again, a person would get the impression that the daughters were left out. In fact, under the naked law, they could be. However, again, the Jewish elders imposed a law on the sons that they had to support their sisters for the rest of their lives out of their inheritances. None of this should be surprising. Every woman is some father's daughter, and fathers are normally very protective of their daughters, more so than even of their sons.

No father wanted to see his daughter mistreated or left desolate in case of divorce. But more than that, it demonstrates that God knows what he is doing. When he gave headship to men, he knew that most men had a protective heart toward their wives and daughters. He wasn't abandoning women to be oppressed in the manner that feminists fabricate. When feminists ridicule male headship, they're actually ridiculing God.

Now we know that some men have abused their headship, but that's hardly an argument against male headship. We know that governments have often abused the authority that God has given them. But nobody is claiming that we need to do away with government. Let's move on now to the author's second claim. He says," The Mishna section on uncleanness has 79 legal paragraphs on the ritual contamination caused by a woman's monthly period." End quote. It sounds like men were just piling regulations on women.

Now, except for one phrase, what the author states is actually true. There are 79 regulations concerning the uncleanness in a woman caused by the flow of blood. The 79 regulations actually apply to any flow of blood, including at childbirth. Yet the author's assertion is a classic example of how something can be technically true and yet be totally misleading. Anyone who has read the Mishna realizes that it has numerous regulations on all sorts of subjects. Women are in no way singled out.

For example, there are 32 paragraphs concerning the ritual uncleanness caused by a man's seminal emissions. Now in both cases of that and of a woman's flow of blood, it's not the Mishna that caused these things to be declared unclean. The mosaic law declared them to be unclean. The Mishna only goes into great detail in defining them, which it does with nearly every provision of the law. For example, there are 58 paragraphs in the Mishna that defines which pools of water are clean and which are unclean.

Now, I had mentioned that the author's second claim is true, except for one phrase. That phrase is legal paragraphs. Now, I suppose a person could define every paragraph in the Mishna as a legal paragraph since it interprets the law. However, in most people's minds, the term legal paragraph suggests a lengthy paragraph. But actually, the paragraphs in the Mishna are quite short. I mean, here's an example of a typical paragraph. I'll read it.

If a leper enters a house, all the utensils which are there are unclean, even up to the beams. But Rabbi Simeon says they're unclean up to four cubits. Utensils are immediately unclean, but Rabbi Judah says only if the leper remain long enough to light a candle." End quote. That's all, four sentences, which is very typical. It also illustrates another aspect of the Mishna. That is, the vast majority of passages in the Mishna record disputes between different respected rabbis.

So you shouldn't think of it as some law book. For most of the time, it doesn't tell the reader what to do. It simply records the conflicting opinions of different rabbis. Now let's move on to this author's third claim. He says, quote," Women were excluded from public life. They belonged at home. When walking outside the house, they covered themselves with two veils to conceal their identity." Now here the author doesn't give any references for his assertions, and for good reason.

There is no evidence to support them. They are simply fabricated history. We've talked about a lot of things during this message, so perhaps we should reiterate why feminists fabricate New Testament history. They are trying to say that men treated women so horribly in the days of Jesus that in contrast to them, Jesus' treatment of women was revolutionary, even though there's no record of His doing anything special whatsoever with regards to women.

So these fabrications are to create an artificial world and then contrast Jesus with that artificial world, a world that never existed. Now, earlier in our discussion, I talked about primary sources. What are our primary sources to learn about Jewish life and culture in the days of Jesus? Well, actually, there aren't very many. Ironically, our best source is the New Testament itself. I don't say that simply because it's inspired, although that's an added blessing.

Rather, the simple truth is that the New Testament goes into more detail about everyday Jewish life in Jesus' days than any other source we have. Well, what are some of the other sources? Well, we have the writings of Philo and Josephus, both of whom were Jewish writers who lived in the first century. We also have the historical writings of Tacitus, a Roman, and various other Roman and Greek writings of the first century, such as histories and plays.

Now they reveal a lot about everyday Roman and Greek life during this period, but not a lot about Jewish life. Now for the first century sources, that's about it. For the second century AD, we have numerous writings of the early Christians. We also have various Roman writings from that time period. They shed some, but not a lot of light on Jewish life in Jesus' day. Finally, we come to the Mishna, but it was written around the year 200, two centuries after Christ's birth.

You know, I find it ironic that writers will quote it as being authoritative as to Jewish life in Jesus' day, even though it was written nearly two centuries after his death. Yet if I quote an early Christian writing that dates just 10 years after the Apostle John's death, most Christians will say, well, that doesn't prove anything about what New Testament Christian practices were.

Somehow, Jewish life is supposed to have remained unchanging century after century, despite the destruction of the temple and two devastating wars that happened after the time of Christ and before the writing of the Mishna. Yet supposedly Christians couldn't hold on to their practices for even 10 years. Quite a double standard. All right, moving in the other direction time-wise, writings that shed light on Jewish life before Christ was born, we have the Old Testament.

Incidentally, none of these primary sources say anything about Jewish women wearing two veils when they went out of the house. That is a total fabrication. What about the claim that Jewish women were excluded from public life in Jesus Day? Well, as I said, our best primary source for life in Judea in the first century is the New Testament. Does it indicate that women were excluded from public life? Does it reveal that all women stayed at home and never went out in public unless covered by two veils?

No, it shows clearly that Jewish women mingled in public with men. For example, we read in Luke chapter 6 verse 17. It says," And Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and be healed of their diseases. Now here Luke uses the Greek word laos, which would indicate both men and women that were in the crowd.

Other passages in the New Testament are even more specific. For example, Matthew 14:21, it says," Now those who had eaten were about 5,000 men besides women and children." Again, Matthew 15:38 says," Now those who ate were 4,000 men besides women and children." So women weren't kept locked up in the home. They were out there part of these different crowds who came to hear Jesus.

Luke 11:27, we read," And it happened as Jesus spoke these things that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to him," Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts which nursed you." Okay, so a woman was there in the crowd. Moving on to Acts after the death of Jesus, we read in Acts 8:12," But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized.

So Philip was doing the preaching, but both men and women were in the crowd that heard him. Finally, Acts 16:13 says," And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made, and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there." So women met for prayer along the riverside, it says, on the Sabbath day.

In fact, all throughout the New Testament, we read of women being out in public places, Anna at the temple, Mary at the wedding feast at Cana, the Phoenician woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment, and many others. Now let's move to claim number four made by this author. He says, quote," It's difficult to grasp the dismal status of women in Hebrew culture. They were stashed at the bottom with slaves and children." End quote.

Now, once again, the author cites no source for his assertion, and again, that's because he has no source. I suppose it's difficult to grasp the dismal status of women in Hebrew culture because it is difficult to grasp what is nonexistent. Hebrew culture was shaped by the law of Moses. If Hebrew women held a dismal status, then the fault lies with the law, and ultimately with God. And that's a claim we should be very careful about making.

Again, our best primary source for the status of women in the first century is the New Testament. Let's look at what the Book of Acts reveals about this. First turn to Acts chapter 13:50. We read," But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their region." End quote. How interesting. The Jews wanted to expel Paul and Barnabas from the city. So whom do they stir up?

Why it was the devout and prominent women along with the chief men. Now, if women lived in a dismal status along with slaves, why would the Jews have stirred them up? How would that have held the situation? The Jews didn't stir up the slaves against Paul and Barnabas. Furthermore, if the status of all women was dismal, how could there be prominent women? This incident is particularly revealing in that Luke, the author of Acts, mentions the devout and prominent women before he mentions the chief men.

That says a lot about their status, and it certainly was not a dismal one. In Acts chapter 17:4, we read about leading women in Thessalonica. It says," And some of them were persuaded, and a great multitude of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women joined Paul and Silas. We read of a similar thing in Berea.

Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women, as well as men." So, obviously, women were not excluded from public life, and they weren't stuck down with the slaves. We keep reading about leading and prominent women as we go through the book of Acts. Later in Acts, we read about Bernice, who according to Josephus, was the sister of Herod Agrippa II.

We read," So the next day when Agrippa and Bernice had come with great pomp and had entered the auditorium with the commanders and the prominent men of the city, Festus' command, Paul was brought in. When he had said these things, the king stood up as well as the governor and Bernice and those who sat with them. Here we see that Bernice enjoyed a very high status and sat in on the judicial proceedings against Paul. In his antiquities of the Jews, Josephus reveals even more about the status of Jewish women.

He relates that in the year 76 BC, the Jewish king, Alexander Jannaeus, appointed his wife, Salome Alexandra, as his successor on the throne. Now, in all of the years of the Israelite kingdoms, God had never put a woman on the throne. Yet here, only about 75 years before Christ's birth, we see a Jewish man appointing his wife to succeed him. And this was despite the fact he had two sons. Not only that, but Salome reigned for 27 years, and she died a natural death while she was still on the throne.

Not only did she rule the kingdom, but she also appointed their eldest son, Hyrcanus II, to be high priest. Now, none of that could have happened if the status of Jewish women had been what this author and various feminists have tried to claim. Is it believable that if Jewish men held women in such a low status that they would have put up with a woman on the throne? Josephus relates another account that totally demolishes the feminist fabrication of ancient women having the status of slaves.

Writing about the days of Darius and Zerubbabel, he describes a conversation that took place during the days of Darius and Zerubbabel. The question had been raised, who or what is the mightiest thing on earth? Zerubbabel argues that women are the mightiest ones on earth. He says, wine is strong, as is also the king, whom all men obey. But women are superior to them in power, for it was a woman who brought the king into the world.

And for those who plant the vines and make the wine, it is women who bear them and bring them up. Nor indeed is there anything which we do not receive from them. For these women weave garments for us, and our household affairs are taken care of by them and preserved in safety, nor can we live apart from women.

And when we have gotten a great deal of gold and silver and any other thing that is of great value and of deserving esteem, and we see a beautiful woman and we see a beautiful woman, we leave all those things and with open mouth fix our eyes upon her countenance. And we are willing to forsake what we have that we may enjoy her beauty and have her for ourselves. We also leave father and mother and our own country and frequently forget our dearest friends for the sake of women.

Not only that, but we lay down our lives for them. But there is even more that should make you take notice of the strength of women. It is this: Do we men not take great pains and grow weary with toil both by land and sea? Yes, and when we have procured something as the fruit of our labors, do we not bring them to our women, as to our mistresses, and bestow them upon them? In fact, I once saw the king, who was the Lord of so many people, slapped on the face by Apame, his concubine.

She sat at the king's right hand, removed the crown from the king's head and put it on her own. All the time, he bore it patiently. And when she smiled, he smiled. And when she was angry, he was sad. And according to the change of her moods, he flattered her. And he drew her to reconciliation by the great humiliation of himself to her, if at any time he saw that she was displeased with him. Now, does that even remotely sound like the description of women that this author gave in his book? Not at all.

No, it calls to mind Jacob, who labored for 14 years, so as to take Rachel for his wife. Doesn't it call to mind Samson and Delilah? Samson was the strongest man who ever lived, but he fell to a woman. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. Yet his wives caused him to abandon God. Yet his wives caused him to abandon God and fall into utter folly. In Jesus' day, King Herod was afraid to harm John the Baptist. Who brought about John's death? Was it not Herodias and her daughter Salome?

Doesn't Josephus' description of women fit what we saw in Acts when the prominent women were able to run Paul and Barnabas out of town? You know, this account of the stature of women was written by Josephus in the first century. But it just as easily could have been written by a Christian biographer in the High Middle Ages. It could have been written in the Victorian age, or the 1950s, or in fact, the 21st century. This passage calls to mind the observation that Dr. Samuel Johnson made in the 1700s.

He said," Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little." However, beginning in the 1800s, the law gave women more, and more, and more power, such that today they have more legal rights and protections than men. Plus, they still have that natural power over men that God gave them, and of which Dr. Johnson spoke. But let's return to the subject of Jesus and women.

As I've said, the whole point of fabricating this history about the degraded status of women is to make the absurd claim that Jesus was the first feminist. Somehow Jesus was supposedly in touch with the 21st century. It's just that nobody knew it for 2,000 years. The reason I say the claim is absurd is that Jesus is our Creator. He and His Father are the ones who laid down the laws concerning men and women. He could have easily created man and woman simultaneously, but he didn't.

He created man first and then woman as a help mate to man. Now I don't know if it was the father or the son who spoke to Adam and Eve after they sinned. It doesn't matter since they are both always of one mind. Either way it was Christ or his father who told Eve that her husband would rule over her or have dominion over her. It was Christ who directly gave or had part in the giving of the law with its various provisions about husbands and wives. The law did not treat men and women the same.

It gave men certain privileges with regard to headship. It also placed heavy responsibilities on men from which women were exempt. Perhaps the heaviest of these was that if you were male, you had to serve in the military. When we read the history of Israel in both the Bible and in Josephus, we find that it's war, war, war from the time the Israelites came near to the Promised Land until the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. For such a small nation, the casualties in their battles were stupendous.

Tens of thousands of men died in many of these battles. I think we often become numb to the figures. Stalin once made the comment," When one person is killed, it's a tragedy. When a million people are killed, it's a statistic." I think that's often how we read the Old Testament figures of the men who died in Israel's wars. They become to us just statistics. One of the most telling verses is Deuteronomy 24:5, which says," When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business.

He shall be free at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken." So a man was given a one-year exemption after he got married, presumably so he can father a child before he runs the risk of being killed in battle. That's just how dangerous it was to be an Israelite man. Yes, God treated men and women differently, but he was not unjust. Each gender had its advantages and its disadvantages.

As I was saying, for 4,000 years or so before the incarnation, Jesus and His Father had watched things here on earth. They had witnessed the interaction of men and women, husbands and wives. At the end of that 4,000 years, our Creator then comes to Earth as a man. While he's here on Earth, he spends three and a half years teaching us his perfect ways. Many of his teachings reinforce the law that was already given. On the other hand, he introduces some revolutionary new teachings.

Among these were his teachings on non-resistance, non-swearing, and the non-accumulation of wealth here on earth. But he said not one word against the headship order of men and women that he had established. He issued many rebukes, but as I mentioned before, he never rebuked men as a class for the way they exercised their headship. Once you set aside the fake history of feminists, you find that Jesus neither did anything nor said anything the least bit unusual with regard to women.

He treated them as fellow humans the same way most men did. Jesus' enemies accused Him of many things, but not of upsetting God's order with regard to men and women.

They asked His disciples," Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" They didn't ask him," Why does your teacher talk to women," or" Why does he treat women differently than we do?" If women truly had had the low status the feminists claim, and if Jesus had truly treated them in a revolutionary new way, is it believable that neither his disciples nor his enemies would say anything about it? At the same time, there was one Old Testament law that Christ did change that affected men and women.

That was the law concerning divorce. In Matthew 19, we read," The Pharisees also came to him testing him and saying to him," Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?" And he answered and said to them," Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?" And said," For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." So then they are no longer two, but one flesh.

Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him," Well, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?" He said to them," Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. And whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.

That's in Matthew 19 verses three through nine. Now this teaching of Jesus is almost universally pointed to by feminists as proof that Jesus was changing the order of things as to men and women. They point out that the law only gave husbands the right to divorce, not wives, and many men interpreted the law to allow no fault divorce. However, Jesus changed that, they say. He allowed husbands to divorce their wives only for sexual immorality. Yes, all of that is correct.

However, the truth of the matter is that feminists totally reject Jesus' teachings on divorce. In fact, if they were honest about it, they would call it unfair, unjust, and sexist. You see, as everyone acknowledges in the law, God gave the right of divorce only to husbands. This is one way that God upheld the headship of men in the family. For example, I may be the vice president of a company, a position of high honor. However, the president of that company can still dismiss me. However, I can't dismiss him.

If I can fire the president, then he is no longer president, is he? It is the same way with divorce. Interestingly, Jesus doesn't say that the Pharisees were misinterpreting the law. Rather, He says that the provision in the Law was only given because of their hard-heartedness. He says that divorce was not God's design in the very beginning. He then goes on to say that a man may divorce his wife only for sexual immorality. He does not say that a woman can divorce her husband for sexual immorality.

He did not expand the laws on divorce. He narrowed them. He did not give wives headship over their husbands. So the truth of the matter is that modern women will not accept Jesus' teachings on divorce. In fact, when they realize what Jesus actually said, they are typically outraged. Imagine that being outraged at your Creator. What's more, almost all modern commentators ignore the other change that Jesus introduced with regards to divorce. That is, He took away the right of a divorced woman to remarry.

That was a huge change from what had always been. So Jesus was not giving us his new teachings on divorce because he wanted to undo the order he had established. He wasn't trying to make men and women, quote," more equal." He was upholding the sacredness and permanency of marriage. His teachings put huge limits and restrictions on both husbands and wives. He was not introducing a new feminist agenda, but rather he was upholding the truth that a husband and wife become one flesh in his eyes when they marry.

When we read the early Christian writings from the second century, we find that they did not allow divorce and remarriage for either men or women. However, they knew nothing about any change in God's order of headship. The pagans made a number of accusations against Christians, but that they were changing the order of men and women was not one of those accusations. Is it believable that our creator wanted to change the order he had originally established?

Yet he neither said anything about it nor did anything about it. He just left it up to mankind to figure it out that he had changed things. And somehow it took mankind 2,000 years to figure it out. And more unbelievable yet, the world figured it out before the church did. Again, is that believable? If Jesus had truly wanted to introduce something revolutionary, why didn't he select women among the twelve? Why did he keep the status quo the way it had always been?

The truthful answer is that he kept the status quo unchanged because he wasn't changing it. So we're back to the point where we were when I began this message. What the New Testament teaches about God's order in the home and church. And what it teaches is politically incorrect today, both in the world and in most churches. Modern women refuse to accept it, and modern men refuse to stand up for it. So everyone comes up with clever arguments or clever methods to get around it.

Depending on where you're at, this message may have come across as terribly offensive to you. You may be even thinking," David is certainly mean," or" David is a male chauvinist." You know, I would expect that kind of response from the world. However, today, if a man simply upholds the New Testament teachings, that is the response he will almost always receive from so-called Bible-believing Christians. Christian women find men appealing who ignore or explain away the New Testament teachings on headship.

About 30 years ago, my wife and I were managing a nonprofit Christian bookstore. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon and I was handling the cash register. A woman came up to the cash register ready to check out. I asked her if she had found everything she was looking for and she said that she had. I started ringing up her books and then she suddenly blurted out, you know, isn't it funny how Christians get hung up on such trivial things? What do you mean, I queried?

Well, like that passage in the Bible where it says that a woman shouldn't teach or have authority over a man. When the pastor asked me to teach the adult Sunday school class, some people said that a woman shouldn't be teaching a man. Well, the pastor told them that I was teaching under his authority. She paused and then concluded," You see how unimportant things like that are?" I remember wondering why she brought the matter up out of the blue to a total stranger like me.

I couldn't help but thinking that perhaps her own conscience was uneasy with it, and she was working hard to convince herself that it was all right to violate Scripture. Yes, men like this woman's pastor are typically very popular with today's women. But are such men really doing women a favor? Were the Israelite priests and kings who let the people ignore God's commandments? Were they doing them a favor? Was Aaron a true friend to the Israelites when he not only let them sin, but he even led them in it.

Was Moses the people's enemy because he stood up for obedience to God? Were Hezekiah and Josiah the people's enemies while the other kings the bad kings were their friends? Well, I think we all know the answers to those questions. God is concerned about salvation. The famous football coach Red Sanders once said," Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." That quote has also been attributed to another famous football coach, Vince Lombardi, who said it as well.

When it comes to life, salvation isn't the main thing. It's the only thing. Nothing else in this world even remotely matters in comparison to it. Whatever advantages anyone has in this world mean absolutely nothing in comparison to eternal life. In fact, they are worse than nothing because they are actually a hindrance to eternal life. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians," For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised, God has chosen and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are." End quote. The very limitations that modern women complain about are the actual factors that have given women an advantage and head start over men when it comes to the gospel.

The less involvement a person has in this world, the easier it is to enter the kingdom. That's why Christian men in the early church withdrew from governmental office and public affairs. It's why they limited their involvement in business. They weren't looking for empowerment in the world, but disempowerment.

The second century Christian writer Tertullian said," In us, all ardor in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead." So we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings, nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state? Another Christian writer from that same time period, Clement of Alexandria, said," If through the necessity of life, the spiritual man spends a small portion of time for his sustenance, he thinks himself defrauded, being diverted by business.

For every such one is thoroughly a stranger and sojourner in the whole of life. Although inhabiting the city of the world, he despises the things in the city that are admired by others. Even in the fourth century, when Christians were being sucked up into the world, Christian men still received the following advice: follow your trades as secondary, as something necessary for earning a livelihood. However, make the worship of God your main business. That's from the apostolic constitutions.

Doing things God's way produces a special fruit. None of God's commandments are arbitrary laws. As the 18th century spiritual writer William Law said," All his commands are for our benefit and founded in the necessities of our natures. There are only so many instructions to become more happy than we could be without them." End quote. That's because God knows our makeup better than we ourselves do. David wrote about the godly man," His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth fruit in its season." End quote. Those who have the kingdom of God within them are able to say," I delight in the law of God." That's because they love not only Christ, but His laws as well. And when we do things God's way, kingdom fruit will invariably follow as David said. What has been the fruit of throwing out God's commandments on headship and His commands addressed to women?

Well, in conventional, so-called Bible-believing churches, the divorce rate matches that of the world. Such congregations are filled with families where the mother is taking over the headship of the family. The father only gets to visit his children two weekends a month. If the mother remarries, then the children end up with a stepfather instead of their God-given dad. Broken homes are not a mark of happiness, either for the parents or for the children.

In conventional Bible-believing churches, women often outnumber men nearly two to one. Pastors complain about how hard it is to get men to be spiritual leaders. Most men don't like to pray, they often say. However, the root problem is that such churches have jettisoned God's teachings in favor of man's teachings. I belong to a church where we teach and practice all New Testament commandments. I'll refer to it as a Kingdom Church.

And the contrast between the fruit that conventional churches produce versus the fruit of kingdom churches couldn't be more obvious. We have no divorce in our church. This isn't only because the New Testament forbids divorce, but because none of the couples in our church want to get a divorce. I'm sure none of our marriages are perfect or conflict-free, but I can honestly say that our marriages are happy ones and our families are happy families.

Our children don't have to worry about whether mommy and daddy are going to split up at some point. They have the sense of peace that such stability brings. Our congregation is made up almost equally of men and women. We have no problem getting men to be spiritual leaders in the church and in their homes. Our men are eager to pray. Now, I don't say these things because there's something special or unique about our particular church. No, this is the normal fruit that doing things God's way brings.

One of my favorite passages on marriage is found in 1 Corinthians 7, verses 32 through 35. We read," I want you to be without care. He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But he who is married cares about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.

But she who is married cares about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper and that you may serve the Lord without distraction. Now here Paul isn't saying that this is how a marriage should be. Rather, he says that this is the way things are. He's not telling married people to do anything differently, but he bemoans the fact that when we get married, usually we're not able to do as much for the Lord.

Now that was the point Paul was trying to make, but in doing so, he sheds light on a very important factor concerning a marriage when we do it God's way. In other words, doing things God's way produces a wonderful equality of betterment and equality of blessing because each spouse wants to please and bless the other one. That's what God wanted marriage to be, and that's what marriage is when we do it God's way. I want to close by briefly talking about what I call the Adam Syndrome.

We all know what Adam did, and we blame him for it. Eve sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit. She then offered it to Adam. He had the choice of either accepting it or refusing it. What all was at stake here? Well, Paul tells us that Eve was thoroughly deceived. What does that mean? It means that Eve believed Satan when he implied that God did not give His commandment to Adam and Eve because He loved them. He implied that God did not have their best interests in mind when He gave them His commandment.

God was holding something very wonderful back from them. Eve believed Satan when he implied that God's way of doing things is not the best way, nor is it the just way. She believed that God lies, that Adam and Eve would not die if they ate of the fruit, just as Satan told her. So Eve decided that Satan was telling the truth and that God was a liar. She believed that God did not have Adam and Eve's best interest in mind. So Eve decided that Satan was telling the truth and that God was a liar.

That of course is shocking, wicked, and outrageous. But what about Adam? Scripture says that Adam was not deceived. He did not believe any of the things that Satan had told Eve. He knew God was telling the truth. He knew he would die if he ate of the fruit. So why on earth did he eat of it? The only possible answer is that he cared more about pleasing his wife, even though it would mean his own death than pleasing God. That too is shocking and hard to believe.

Today most pastors and teachers denounce Adam for not standing up for God when Eve tried to entice him to sin with her. Yet they do the exact same thing that Adam did. We're faced with the same basic issues that Adam faced in the Garden of Eden after Eve had sinned. Today, Satan has convinced women that God did not give His commandments on headship because He loves women, that God did not have their best interest in mind when He made His laws.

That God's way of doing things is not the best, that His way is unfair, it's unjust, and it's sexist. And so modern woman has totally rebelled against God's order. They've followed the path of Eve. But what about men? Will they stand up for God, or will they follow the course of Adam? Are they more concerned about pleasing their wives as Adam was or pleasing their Creator? What will they do in the face of this challenge? The answer is that most men do the same thing as Adam.

Instead of standing up for God, they join the rebellion against Him. To be sure, in Bible-believing churches, lip service is paid to God's order. But generally, that is all it is, lip service. As I said at the beginning of this message, pastors are afraid to uphold God's laws on headship, as taught in the New Testament.

A pastor could not possibly teach the four passages I read at the beginning of this message, all from the New Testament, in any conventional so-called Bible-believing church today, and still keep his position as pastor. He must either ignore those passages or water them down to make them meaningless. And the problem is not just with the pastors and is not just with the sisters in our churches.

Most of the men sitting in the pews today prefer the approval of their wives and the women in their church than they do the approval of God. In reality, they are ashamed of God's teachings. The power of women today is almost exactly like that described in the passage I read to you a short time ago from Josephus. Men may be the pastors and husbands may have the title of head of the household in most churches, that is Bible-believing churches. But in the end, it is the women who rule over them.

Women have made men feel guilty about their God-given headship. Men feel like they either have to apologize for it or else reject it altogether. And so pastors fervently preach about every responsibility that the Scriptures lay on men, and they are hard as nails when they preach to men. But they tiptoe around the New Testament teachings on women. Essentially, they have deleted from the New Testament every commandment and teaching that applies only or primarily to women. In short, they are modern-day Adams.

Of course, pastors and other men will never admit that to themselves, so they have deluded themselves into believing that by disobeying God, they are actually doing what God wants them to do. They eagerly embrace fabricated history, such as what we've discussed this evening, so they can pretend they are really in touch with the Spirit of Christ while they are actually trampling on His teachings. But what about you and I? Where do we stand?

If you're a sister, will you follow the example of Eve, or will you trust that God's way is not only the best, but it is the best for you? If you're a brother, will you follow the example of Adam and join the rebellion against God? Or will you trust God and believe that His way is the best way for both men and for women?