Today we're going to go through this rapid fire. Don't expect it all to stick. It can be watched later. We went a little over time, and I want to make sure we get out at a good time. But I'll be answering 14 of the most common objections to the head covering, and I put them in seven groups. Some groups are grouped with many different objections, but the answers go together and the objections kind of go together, and some stand alone.
So I don't know if you call it a group if it stands alone, but I'm calling it a group. And so I'll be reiterating a lot of things, and some of the things that may seem like not strong answers to the head covering objection, it's probably because there's going to be more answers later on that go with it. And so if you have pay attention, write it down. If you have something that I missed that's a good answer to an objection, be ready to share it at the end.
Quick recap: last time I did a testimony, our testimony, on the head covering and also the history. And if you haven't watched that, you need to go back and watch that. But we didn't know that this the head covering was actually something practiced anywhere, and we had never really heard about it except in college, and it was dismissed quickly just because it was the long hair or prostitution.
And when you're reading these scriptures and then you're it seems like it's something, and then someone says, "No, it's just the long hair," you automatically accept it because nobody else is doing it. We've never seen it. And then come to find out, throughout all history, all time, all denominations, everywhere until about the 19 early 1900s, around 1930, practiced the head covering.
And it was just a shock to me that in such a short time, basically from 1920 to 1960, it's just completely lost and the next generations don't even know about it. And so that was last time. Next time, if there is a next time, I'll probably be going more verse by verse through this passage and all the passages that are lost with this passage. I don't know if I'm going to do that or not.
Also, we went from now, the current day, all the way to the beginning of the church and read quotes all the way through where people talked about the head covering. But the most recent ones were people who had experienced the change, and when they experienced the change, they mostly pointed to the feminist movement. And for the last month or so, I've been listening to history during that time, and I don't think it was just the feminist movement.
I'm not necessarily trying to be fair to the feminist movement, but to be fair to the feminist movement, it was also Hollywood, World War I, the women went to work in the men's places, men went overseas and did a lot of evil things, experienced a lot of evil things, witnessed a lot of evil things, including sexual, came back as different people. The feminist movement starts in the '20s with the flappers.
It was actually smaller than you think, and it was actually a lot of people didn't like it, but it was one of those things Satan did. He just chiseled away. He pushed the boundaries a little and pushed the boundaries a little further, and things just became normal that were completely disgusting before. And then the New York Mafia starts in the '20s, the Great Depression in '29, and the Great Depression is kind of what led to gambling in the US.
And Hollywood and music scene, the whole time, is pushing the moral boundaries. They're pushing it and pushing it further and further. This becomes normal. Moving the hips becomes normal. Everybody keeps pushing it, all the way till today. World War II happens, and man, it's just over at this point.
And then all the fabricated theology, some that happened we'll mention here in the late 1800s, but other fabricated theology, there's things that, okay, well, we don't want a God that actually is like this, so we'll just make our own God and call it God, and that's idolatry, and we'll go there a little bit. A little bit. So ultimately, the world was influenced by the church, and the church became indistinguishable between the world, not all the church, but I guess what we consider as the church as a whole.
So last time I shared a lot of pictures of the 200 years of head covering in the States, and then afterwards I saw this antique store, went in it, walked around, and I was amazed that there's all these pictures everywhere. These are the cheap ones that I ended up buying because I want my kids to remember this history, but there are so many more, and they're just everywhere. You can go see our history, American history.
There was a lot of people wearing the head covering, and it was not just with praying and prophesying. It was taking care of babies, fishing, whatever. But these last three were really intriguing to me. These ladies are on a beach, and they're very modestly dressed, very unlike today, like I mentioned last time. And you can see the buggies in the background and the modest dress. But this one, the right one is clothed; it might not look clothed.
It's just blurred out, was the beginning of Coca-Cola and the 50th year anniversary. So the beginning is 1886. That's the swim attire of 1886, and I would go to the beach if ladies were dressed like that. And just a little bit later, 1936, I wouldn't go to the beach unless it was wintertime. So I just thought that that was this proves kind of what I was talking about last time. But now we're going to go into the objections, and I'm going to start with the scriptures.
So all the objections come mainly from these scriptures. "Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, the head of Christ is God.
Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonors his head, but every woman who prays and prophesied with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved. For if a man is not covered, let her also be sorry, 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. Nor was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even man also comes through woman, but all things are from God. Judge among yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?
Does not even nature itself teach you if a man has long hair? It is a dishonor to him. But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering. But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God." Okay, here are the common objections. "Just a tradition of Paul, for Corinth only, not a command, not from Jesus and not from scripture." So some people say it's not a command of God, so we don't need to do it.
Jesus didn't say it, so we don't need to do it. "Paul, his words aren't scripture," some people say. Very little, very few people say that, but there are some, and it's only for Corinth. The second one is, "It was cultural and not for all time because of prostitution and other reasons," but we're going to be hitting the prostitution one.
"It has nothing to do with salvation." And some will say, in fact, "If you believe it has anything to do with salvation, or if you believe you can please God in any way, you're going to hell." But that's the only way you can go to hell, because once you're saved, you're always saved, except if you believe you can be saved through pleasing God in any way, or something like that. "Long hair is the covering," is one objection, and I can understand where people get that.
"It's only for congregational worship and not for all time." And the issue is settled, and I'll explain what that one is later. So we're going to start with, "Just a tradition of Paul, for Corinth only, is not a command, not from Jesus and not scripture." So this is lumping a lot together, and I'm going to be putting this together with it. "It was culture and not for all time because of prostitution." And the reason I want to start with the prostitution one is because when you study this, it comes up constantly.
I mean, it is so insane how much this comes up. And I was talking to our brother in China, and he said, "It would be really awesome if you can find where this began. If you can let us all know where it began." And I started to dig into it, and I just spent a few hours, and then I got a hold of David, and David was like, "I put that in one of my books. Will the theologians please sit down?" And so remember this name. His name is Adam Clarke. He did a very great disservice to Christianity.
And so when people bring up the prostitution thing, a British Methodist theologian. Adam Clarke's final claim, one often repeated today, and I would say millions of times a year, because people say this in China too; I mean, this is everywhere, is that only prostitutes went around public without a veil in Corinth. If you go throughout history before him, you can't find it anywhere. It's completely fabricated. And after him, it's everywhere, and I think it's just like what do you call it?
It just gets more and more all the time. So just remember this guy. It wasn't because of prostitution that they wore head coverings, and it wasn't just Corinth. And we're going to go more into the culture in a little bit, but we're going to go back to this one, "Just a tradition." "Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions as I have delivered them to you." And this tradition is really neat.
The word "tradition" here and the word "delivered," being back to back, to me is very significant. I don't know if you'll see it this way, but it was kind of eye-opening. So is this a tradition of Corinth? To answer these questions, we have to answer these other questions first. Who wrote the letter, which we know, Paul? Who was he writing to?
"So Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God," this is 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, "to the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." So this first line could be connected with the next two, but it doesn't matter because the very next line is, "With all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." So if you call on Jesus Christ, this book was written to you.
The next question we have to answer is. "What he wrote considered scripture?" And if you're one that thinks that Paul isn't scripture, we'll go to Peter.
"And was he making suggestions or commands?" So Peter, in 2 Peter 3:15 and 16, says, "As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, not his own wisdom, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do to the rest of scriptures." So he's saying that Paul's things are also scripture. They're hard to understand, but they're scripture.
And then Paul himself, this is super important in 1 Corinthians 14:37, "If anyone thinks of himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord." So this is just a few chapters after, "And the things that Paul is writing to us are the commandments of Jesus." When Paul is not speaking from the Lord but of himself, he prefaces it like in 1 Corinthians 7, "To the rest I say this, I, not the Lord." But he doesn't say that very many times, and
he's definitely not saying that in 1 Corinthians 11.
So the next thing that we have to answer is, "Are biblical traditions important and to be passed down for all time?" "Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions as I delivered them to you." So we're going to skip forward to 2 Thessalonians 2:15, where the same word "tradition" is used. "Therefore, brethren," the same Greek word, which would be the same word, "stand fast and hold to the traditions which were taught, whether by word or epistle." Again, this is Paul writing.
Then the very next chapter, he says, "But we command you, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly, not according to the tradition, which he has received from us." So that's really strong words, that if the traditions that the apostles gave to people, if other people aren't following them, we're to withdraw from them and not receive them necessarily. And so tradition isn't like our Thanksgiving meal with turkey.
When an apostle gives a tradition, it's unless he qualifies it with, "This is only for right now," and when he states that this book's for us, it's for all of us all the time. Okay, so we're going to look at a few Greek words just to show you, because I like to see in myself. But this one, you might be wondering why, but you'll see in a minute. "I delivered." I don't know how to pronounce things, but you could see that it was 3860, and the definition is to hand over, to give, or deliver, or to hand down.
Just remember that for a second. And then in that same verse, this is traditions. It says "teachings" there, but look at the number, 3862, and just pay attention to how it's written. And then the one we just read, it's the same word, and pay attention how it's written. I mean, just to prove to you that I'm not just saying whatever. But then check this out. If you read the definition of this, it's quite interesting.
"Handing down or over." I know that doesn't seem that interesting, but when you read it like this, "Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the handing down just as I handed them down to you." And so this is not to me, this is something that was handed down to Paul. And he says it in chapter 14 that he's writing from the Lord. This comes from the Lord. He's not just making up a tradition. And in the very last verse, in 16, it says this is that we don't argue about this.
All the churches of God, we don't argue about this. We're not contentious about this. And the other churches of God were all practicing this, and we see it through history that they were. And so it was obvious Paul didn't start all the churches, so that all the other churches that were doing it, they got it from somewhere, and Jesus was preaching for 40 days about the kingdom of God after his resurrection. I assume that's where he said it, but who knows when he said it. We're going to keep going.
And he starts off, "Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ." So he starts the whole thing. In the very next verse, he says, "Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the handing down that I handed down to you." So quick recap, it's not a tradition. I mean, it's not just a tradition. It is a tradition.
It's a tradition from the apostles that we keep, but a scriptural command to all Christians everywhere, handed down from Paul, probably from Jesus, because all the Christians followed this practice. Also, it's not cultural and not because of prostitutes. I'm going to go back into the cultural part real quick. So in this time, and we'll see in Chrysostom, he talked about the Grecian culture of that time. The women would actually pray and prophesy without their head covered, and men would have long hair.
These philosophers would have long hair and often cover their hair. The priests of the time of the different religions would cover their hair, and the Jews would cover the men, Jews would cover their hair, during priestly acts, and other times. And so this is actually very countercultural to the time. Chrysostom here is talking about the Corinthian women and how he first brought this to them by word. "Their women used to both pray and prophesy unveiled and with their head bare.
But the men went as far as to wear long hair and having spent their time in philosophy and covered their heads when praying and prophesying, each which was a Grecian custom." So it's the custom of Corinth. "Since then, he had already admonished them concerning these things when present, and some perhaps listened to him and others disobeyed." We're going to be revisiting this a little bit. Not that exact quote, but this idea. So moving on to number three.
"It has nothing to do with our salvation." When Christianity has been reduced to this centered around personal salvation thing, then every time you bring up anything to do with obedience, a whole lot of people will say, "Well, that doesn't have anything to do with my salvation, so I don't need to do it," kind of thing. First of all, I'm not sure it's not to do with your salvation.
I know that I don't judge who's going to heaven or hell, but at the very least, once you take these passages and make them however you want, and you're not okay with God in this because he's said these things, so you make him say something different, and then you get rid of all the other verses that come along with that, the Ephesians 5 and the 1 Peter, and you just start sweeping all these things under the rug, you're making a God of your own, which is idolatry, which is a salvation issue.
And any deliberate disobedience of the king, you're subject to be cut off the vine. You're not really loving God. If you're loving God, you'll obey God, and if you're deliberately disobeying him, you're not loving him. I don't know if you'll be cut off, but it's a scary thing to think about.
And our Chinese brother asked, "Would you like to stand in front of the king on Judgment Day, knowing you deliberately dishonored your head, which then dishonors the king himself?" And then he said a similar thing, saying like, "Would you like to stand there on Judgment Day, knowing that God called it shameful, and yet you deliberately were shameful your whole life and didn't cover your head?" And lastly, "The churches of God have no other custom." And so if he's telling people that they don't argue about this, but
yet you're arguing about it, trying to get out of it, are you part of the churches of God?
That's another thing our Chinese brother said. And if you completely knew, say this, your name's Sarah and you're a lady, and you fall asleep and you have a vision of Jesus, and he comes to you and he says, "I really want you to wear a head covering all the time, and it would mean a lot to me if you did this, but it has nothing to do with your salvation." And then you wake up. So you're not going to do it, right? Why? Why would you not do it just because it has nothing to do with your salvation?
Just in case it has nothing to do with your salvation, why would you just not do it? Why would everything that Jesus says in the Bible, if it doesn't have anything to do with salvation, why would you not do it anyway because you love your king? Four, "Long hair is the covering." So when I say four, it's not four or fourteen. We're quite through a lot of them, so if you're getting afraid about this.
"Long hair is the covering." And I see how people would see this, "But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering." I'll go through the it's two different Greek words, but before I do that, let's read it this way. Let's read when it says uncovered is like shave or shorn, and then covered is long hair. "But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Every man praying or prophesying having long hair dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head shaved dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head was shaved." Does that make sense? "For if a woman is shaved, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her grow her hair long." So this is why I don't quite understand it.
So it makes more sense that he's talking about two coverings, and that if you have your hair, your short hair, cut it shorter, or if you don't cover your head, cut off your hair. Seems a little to make more sense. But the two Greek words, I'll just point them out to show you that they're definitely two different Greek words. I don't know Greek, but I can tell that that long K word and this long K word is not the same as this word. And he used the long K word the whole top section.
So granted, we have a word "cap" and "hat," right? They're two different things, basically saying the same thing. The words actually seem to have a similar meaning, or if not the same meaning, but he chose deliberately to use the K word the whole time. And then the very last part, when he talks about the hair, he changes it. And I feel like it's probably to make a distinction between the two. It's just my thoughts, but this passage is talking about both the hair and fabric covering, ask John Chrysostom.
So Chrysostom, the reason I went to the Bible is because he starts off his quote with scripture. It was pointed out to me by David recently that his name, Chrysostom, actually means "golden tongue," and he was given that name because he was such a good writer. And I really encourage you or speaker, maybe. I'm not sure because it's his tongue, not his pen. How do you say "golden pen"? Never mind. So I encourage you to go read his stuff.
He is it's like he's very brilliant, and he just puts things in, it seems like, words that we can understand, even though at first, when you start listening to him, it's hard. "Chrysostom, but if a woman is not veiled, let her also be shorn. But if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be veiled. For he said, 'Not merely covered, but covered over'." And I looked at that Greek word, and it does seem to have this covered over idea, meaning that she be carefully wrapped up on every side.
Paul then reduces it to an absurdity. He appeals to their shame, saying, "By way of. Severe reprimand. But if she be not covered, let her also be shorn, as if he had said, 'If thou cast away the covering appointed by the law of God, cast away likewise appointed by nature.'" So it's very distinct, two things. If you'd cast away the one by God, then shave your head. "But if any say, 'No.
How can this be a shame to the woman if a woman mounts up to the glory of man?' We might make this answer, 'She does not mount up, but rather falls from her proper honor. Since not to abide within our own limits and the laws ordained of God, but to go beyond, is not an addition but a diminution. For if a man desires other men's goods and seizes what is not his own, he has not gained anything more, but is diminished, having lost even what he had.
So likewise, the woman does not acquire the man's dignity, but loses even the woman's decency, what she had." If there's this poor man who steals the Lamborghini, and all his friends know he's poor, and now they know he's a poor thief, they don't think, "Wow, he's got this honor because he has this Lamborghini." And then they call the cops, and then he gets arrested, and the Lamborghini goes somewhere, and he goes to jail for a long time. He's lost everything.
And if you go to Starbucks and you talk to the guy, he's handing you something, and he's got paint in the fingernails, and he's like, "Oh, that'll be fifteenths, whatever." And then you're like, "He's not like a woman at all, and he's not like a man. What is it?" This is not he's not become like the man or the lady like the woman. It's like this something else. So if you anyway, we're going to keep going. "Let her be covered." I cut a lot out of this that was really good, so I encourage you to read it.
"Let her be covered, ordaining both these to be one. And how is it one? If the woman having the covering of nature, he left it to nature to provide with her a covering, that even if she might learn this lesson to veil herself." So even with the nature covering to veil yourself. And there's more to that, but it's just going to take too long. Oopsie. So there's a lot of slides. There's about ten other slides that I had cut out, and I'm just going to go through a summary of it real quick.
Chrysostom says, "When talking about people who do not follow God's order, Chrysostom likens them to someone throwing away their crown, honor, and rank before the king." And he literally says like, "You're not just throwing away this thing. You're throwing away the diadem before the king." Number five of seven. "It's only for congregational worship." So first, I'm going to go to the logical. "Rejoice always.
Pray without ceasing." So we've read earlier that women are supposed to wear a veil when they're praying, and we're supposed to pray without ceasing. "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." So a reason I put 5:14 through 18 is because I believe he's talking about the will of God in all of those, and it's not just rejoice always and pray without ceasing and give thanks in all things. But the will of God is for us to pray without ceasing.
And so I'm going to go to a personal testimony. When she started wearing a head covering, she didn't wear it all the time, and every time we would pray, she would run away, grab something, and put it on her head. And we realized pretty quickly that we pray more than we think. Three meals a day, devotions, anytime we lose something or someone's in trouble or we get a prayer request, and when she prays, it seems like God answers.
And so anytime I need something, I'll, "Okay, pray for this, Keeley." And so she would be running somewhere. She'd put her head under the tablecloth, and she would go do this and do this, and it was just this constant, like, for probably a month, just like, we're waiting for Keeley to get back to the dinner table.
And I was like, "Well, what if you just wore it all the time?" And we were kind of hesitant because a lot of the younger girls don't at our church, but then she's like, "Are you okay with that?" And I was like, "Yeah, I just wear it all the time." And then so to me, it's even if you it was only for prayer, it would be very hard. For a man, it's pretty easy, like, take off a cap. But for a woman, it's like, do they keep it in their pocket and wrap it around or whatever during the time? So anyway, moving on.
"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. If not wearing a covering is the equivalent of one having one's head shaved and is shameful and disobedient, should a covering not be worn all the time?" Let's look at what Chrysostom says again.
"Paul does not compelleth the man to always be uncovered, but only when he prays. For every man, saith he, praying or prophesying having his head covered, dishonoreth his head. But the woman he commands to be at all times covered, wherefore also having said, 'Every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head unveiled dishonoreth her head,' dishonoreth her head. He stayed, not at this point only, but also proceeded to say, 'For it is one and the same thing as if she were shaven.
But if to be shaven is always dishonorable, it is plain to that being uncovered is always a reproach. And not even with this only was he content, but added again, saying, 'The woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head because of the angels.' He signifies that not at the time of prayer only, but also continually she ought to be covered. But regarding the man, it is no longer about covering but about wearing long hair, that he so forms his discourse.
To be covered, he then only forbids when a man is praying, but the wearing of long hair he discourages at all times." So women are supposed to have long hair, men are supposed to have short hair, men are supposed to not cover their head when they're praying and prophesying, and women should be covered continually. "For this reason, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels." Which angels?
So the early Christians, some of them said the good angels and referred to the bad angels and these angels. So the word "angel" is like "messenger of God," so people that are preachers. And he talks about it in the early Christians talk about it in a lustful way because of lust reasons. And if you had told me years ago that the head covering was about modesty, I would have been like, "You're crazy." But I was in a naked world. I was naked in a naked world and didn't know I was naked.
I was bent over in a bent world and didn't know I wasn't straight. I was watching TV, movies, going to the beach, seeing things that were very indecent, so hair didn't seem very sensual. But now being in this community and not putting choosing not to put any of those things in my brain, and then you see the lady moving her hair about and with a whatever going on, it's very sensual. It's not it is a thing of modesty. And who wants a demon or a bad angel lurking about lusting over you? And this is a terrifying thing.
And who wants to make a righteous man fall? Also a terrifying thing. So the people of the world will see this, what I'm saying right now, as absurd. And the people of the worldly churches will see that it's a they will think that it being something of modesty is absurd, that that's the women's glory, and they need to be showing their glory to everybody.
"Hippolytus." "Because of the angels," by the angels he means righteous and virtuous men, "let her be veiled then, that she may not lead them to stumble into fornication." I'm not going to go through many of these. There's a ton about modesty, but I'm just going to hit the angel ones. If just a few angel ones. "If it is because she was created for the man and taken out of the man according to the Creator's purpose," he adds, "because of the angels," what angels? In other words, whose angels?
If he means the fallen angels of the Creator, there is a great importance in his meaning. "It is right that the face which was a snare to them should wear some mark of a humble dress and cover their beauty." So there I don't know how much you know the story because it's mentioned really shortly, and I'm not going to go through other books that it mentions it, but in Genesis 6, it seems like angels came and laid with men, women.
And I'm not going to get into a lot of that, but then they were locked up for a long time. So it's kind of a scary thing to not be covered. So Isaiah 47, this is talking about Babylon. This is the one verse where it seems to portray that not having a veil would be considered nakedness. I don't know if it's a stretch, but "Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon. Sit in the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans. For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.
Take the millstone and gird meal, grind meal. Remove your veil. Take off the skirt. Uncover the thigh. Your nakedness shall be uncovered. Yes, your shame will be seen." Shame, so uncovering, unveiling, and the shame, you can see it here. "I will take vengeance, and I will not settle with a man." So moving on. "But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God." And the early Christians used this a few times, not in the passages of 1 Corinthians 11.
They would be talking about some other thing that was Jesus's teaching or an apostle's teaching, and they would even be saying, "We don't argue about this. It's just how it is. This is how we do it." That's at least what it seems to me. And so I'm going to play this short clip of where this argument comes from. "In ancient Corinth, one of the key identifiers of a prostitute was short hair and a lack of a head covering.
So it followed that any woman not wanting to appear as a prostitute would keep her hair long and wear a covering. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practices, nor do the churches of God." Now, that might sound sort of cryptic, so here's what Paul's basically saying. Head coverings are okay if you think it's proper, but if people are going to start arguing over it, then stop the practice. Head coverings aren't necessary for women to worship God.
But because the practice was so ingrained in Corinthian culture, Paul saw no need to rid of it unless it caused disunity in the church. He was fully capable of using his knowledge to tell the Corinthians that head coverings are silly and that they should just be like the rest of the Christians. So this guy, that's like a much longer clip, actually, and everything's just fabricated. And when you get used when you are used to one fabrication, it's just easy to make up whatever you want because you could do that.
And he literally thinks that the head covering is silly and that and I'm just arguing that it wasn't a Corinth custom, a custom in Corinth, and that he wasn't being nice and it isn't silly. And if anybody's silly, I can't call them silly because I don't feel right doing that, but it's not I can't say that either. "If any," he says, "is contentious, we have no such custom. We have not such a custom, nor has the church of God. So too did the Corinthians themselves understand him.
In fact, at this day, the Corinthians do veil their virgins. What the apostles taught, the disciples approve." And this was a few hundred years later or a hundred how much later is this, David? How much later is Tertullian's writings? So this would be about the year 200. Okay, so a hundred years a hundred or more years later, it's still happening. There's evidence.
A lot of people will say, "Well, we have liberties," and like Romans 14 and Colossians 2, where it says that you're free to celebrate these holy days and that holy days, and eat this food or that food, or drink alcohol or grape juice or whatever, wine or grape juice, I should say. But Paul doesn't give us those liberties when he's talking about these things. He says they're commands from the Lord that he's writing. Okay, so this is the bonus one, the holy kiss and the wedding ring. This is another clip.
It's quite short. We only have three slides left. I'll give you something else, Paul says, in the New Testament. "Greet one another with a holy kiss." That's what the Bible says. "But if you and I just walk into church and start kissing people, we're going to have a lot of lawsuits, and we're going to have a lot of grief." I don't know about you. If I walk into church and people start kissing my wife, I'm probably going to look for another church. That's just what I'm prophesying and predicting in advance.
And if they came up and said, "Oh, but Brother Mark, we're just being biblical," I'd say, "Well, in that culture, it meant something different than it does in our culture." There are still some cultures where when you meet somebody, they give you a kiss or kiss on the cheek, and that's their warm cultural way of greeting. So the question is, how do you maintain the biblical principle with various cultural methods?
It seems like in that culture, women that were prostitutes and/or behaving in unacceptable ways would take their head covering off. In the same way, in our culture, this would be like you're married, male or female, and you go out to the club or the bar with your friends, and you take your wedding ring off. You're communicating something. So he's equivocating the wedding ring and the head covering, in which the wedding ring is very anti-biblical.
I mean, it's not in the Bible, and it says not to wear gold or costly jewelry. And the holy kiss is something we do practice. I want to say for listeners that it's not with a man and woman. It's on the cheek one time, not very long, and it's not with everybody.
And it's also we don't want to hold this holy kiss thing up as more important or it would, in my opinion, be less important than the head covering because it wasn't like Paul went through this list, "Oh, we do the holy kiss because of creation and because of submission and because of this and because of this and because of this." It was it's not but we should still practice everything that's commanded in the New Testament.
We practice non-resistant, enemy love, baptism, communion, head covering, marriage, anointing with oil, foot washing, holy kiss, lifting up holy hands in prayer, along with other all the other New Testament things. We don't get rid of any New Testament practices. We might not do them as much. We don't maybe greet every single person with a holy kiss, but we use that practice. We don't sweep anything under the rug. And it's definitely not like a wedding ring.
And anyway, Paul teaches from these standpoints about the head covering. It's God's order, headship, from creation, because of nature, causing shame or honor based on rebellion or submission because of the angels, and we have no other practices nor do the churches of God. And if you want to be fooled, it's very easy to be fooled. If you want to be fooled, be fooled. You can find any explanation of this that you possibly would want, and you can even find contradictory ones.
You can say it's long hair and what's the other one? The prostitutions, which would be contradictory, which is actually what I believed. I believed both and didn't realize that they didn't make sense because I was saying that the Corinthian prostitutes would not wear something on their head so that they would put something on their head, and I also said it was long hair. Anyway, but if you want to be fooled, there's plenty of professionals to fool you.
But if you want to follow God and his truths without compromise, I say dig into it, figure it out, find the primary sources, go to the beginning, see where it was lost, why it was lost, and dig this truth out for yourself. And yeah, that's it. And if you have any comments or questions, or if there's any I'm sure that there was a lot of answers to these questions that I didn't answer because there was so much I had to get rid of. There were so many things.
But I wanted this in one condensed message so that someone could go, "I want to know about this because this is what my friends are saying." But if you have something right now that would be helpful, please share it or any comments. I'll ask you because my wife and I went for a walk, and that reminded her that we're going to be appreciating head covering. She said she's very happy about that.
She was saying just very recently, or the last I don't know, last year or so, it seems like this subject has come up more often than ever before in her previous life, women questioning this subject. Right now, we have like there's like three women in her life that are like at the very almost like at the very kilo end of things where it seems like this where they're either half discarded or it's all but being discarded out of their life.
So I feel like it's a very timely message, and I want to thank you for putting the apple into the cookie together. You're welcome. Too kind. Thank you so much for all the work you put into that. It's very, very informative. I wanted to mention Adam Clarke is usually a pretty good commentator. He's somebody he's one of the few that I will bother to look at. Unfortunately, he is the one who started that prostitution myth, but like I say, he normally does a pretty decent job.
The other thing, you know, when Deborah and I were looking at this the first time, when it totally new to us, it was that quote from Tertullian that absolutely convinced me. I mean, it was an argument you can't get around. Go and look at what Christians do in Corinth. How did they understand Paul? Because all of our friends saying it's just long hair, and he's saying you'll see that they veil, you know, both married women and unmarried. And it was like, wow.
The very people Paul wrote to, we assume they understood what he was talking about, and we can we have a testimony of how they practiced it. And to me, that ended it. There wasn't any further argument. Yeah, that's really powerful. And one thing I want to encourage you ladies, the world wants you to feel like the roles God has given you are not good. And I don't know if there's a temptation, but God has given you an honorable rank. He Chrysostom calls it, and a very honorable position that you need to keep.
And the world Satan wants you to lose that rank. Satan wants you to lose that honor and lose that role that he's given us, the order that he's given us. And he wants us men to not be manly and to so we have to fight against the world. We have to not let the world influence us. And as I understand, a lot of Anabaptists also took off the head covering for a while, right, and then put it back on. Is that true or not? I read that somewhere, that at one point some Mennonites are and maybe they left it off. I don't know.
But I'm just glad to be a part of a people who obey God without compromise. And then when we realize we're compromising or wrong, we quickly change. I really like the way the that interpretation or the understanding about the covering the head for the sake of the angels and the idea that that could be even preachers and people who are humans who are bringing the message of God.
And there's this the idea about it's just like the beauty of the beauty of a woman is so powerful, and the responsibility that comes along with the beauty that God gave you and the ability to cause men who are who are bringing the word of God to stumble, you know, that there's this thought of how do I say this? It's not a shameful thing that you're so beautiful that you need to cover yourself up. But it's I don't know. I'm at a loss for words, but I was very blessed by your message today. Well, it is 12:10.
Can I have prayer then singing, right? Zach, will you pray for us? And then will you lead us to Psalm? Great. Thank you for being a part of the Sound Faith Channel. As we expand the Kingdom of God, seizing territory from Satan with every broadcast, this channel is made possible because of all of your generous gifts and donations. If you would like to partner with the Sound Faith Channel in our battle to usher in the Kingdom of God, you can make a one-time donation or give monthly on our website.
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