Okay, so I never imagined—well, at least years ago I never imagined I would be teaching on this—Headship Order the way God designed it. This is going to be three different messages. Today is going to be our head covering journey and the head covering and answer from history. For this series, we're going to go through Ephesians 5:22-33, 1 Peter 3, 1 Corinthians 11. Today's part of 1 Corinthians 11. But we're actually not going to go through the meat of the verses. We're not going to go through any of the objections.
Not today, but we are going to next time. Today's merely a testimony slash the history of the head covering. And it's so surprising to me. It still is shocking to me that the history that's there, what actually happened and when it all happened, is unbelievable to me, and to my brother and to my wife, and I'm guessing to some of you as well. But when we're looking through this, I'm going to reiterate this every time, and I'm going to add to this and expound on this idea.
The Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 11, the very next chapter, 12, also talks about the head and the body, but in a different way. It says—this isn't exactly what it says. This is my summary. We're going to go through it next time more—Christ is the head, and we are the body. He has gifted us all with different gifts and in different ways. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? And if the whole body were an ear, where would be the smelling?
And a good example of this is, let's take—I think all of you know David and Patrick. And if you don't know Patrick, he's been—he's left prison, found Christ, and has been a huge asset to this church and does an awesome ministry with the Harkin House. Well, let's take David and David Bercot, and he's a scholar, a historian. He's spent half of—more than half of his life, most of his life, studying the early Christians and dedicating his life to more of an academic approach to bringing about the gospel.
And so now we're going to take David, and he's no longer going to do any writing for our church. He's going to run the Harkin House. And Patrick, he's going to do all the writing for our church. And Bill—Bill, Kevin's going to—I'm going to run the Brett Bill trailers, and you're going to do Sound Faith. And all—we're just going to just mix it up because that's the way it should work, because if you can do it, I can do it.
And so this whole head idea, Christ is the head, and we're his body, and he wants us to do certain things, but we need to submit and do the gifts that he's given us, the roles he's given us. Even as men, these are different. And we submit to one another. We let the eye do the things the eye does, and we help the eye and the hands and whatever it is. And so this is not a Lord over something or someone or your wife, but it's an upward submission that happens.
And we submit to Christ, and whether we submit to Christ or not, our wives are supposed to submit to us if they're following Christ. And we're going to go through all that kind of stuff in the next little bit. But just remember that as we read it, we're going to first read 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, and then we're going to go through the history. "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, and 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, dishonors Christ. 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. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. For this reason, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, or as some translations say, a power 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 so 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 that 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, so our head covering journey.
My wife grew up in a Christian home, a very good Christian home. And when I became sixteen, I became completely devoted to Christ in every way that I knew how. And I carried my Bible everywhere. I went to every kind of church service I could go to until my Church of Christ Christian Church pastor said, "That's not a good idea." I read all kinds of Christian literature.
I didn't understand why there were all these conflicts between denominations, and I always wanted to figure out what was going on, how did this stuff work. And then my wife and I went to Johnson Bible College, that became Johnson University, and we had church history classes. We had all kinds of New Testament classes. And we never heard of the head covering. We never—nobody ever told us or said anything about the head covering. We got married, and this is me with long hair. Obviously, I dishonored Christ.
I did not know that. Nobody taught me that. I assumed Jesus had long hair, and I think he didn't, but—and so I could have long hair. And I purposefully grew it out for our wedding because I thought it'd be cool to have long hair wedding pictures, and it was miserable. And anyway, then I dishonored God twice because I dishonored my mother-in-law when she asked me to cut it, and I told her no.
I think I was polite about it, but—and this was the first time I saw my wife with a veil on, and the last time for the next nine years or so. And skipping forward to China, this is our second church plant. Actually, I'll go through a little bit before, just in case you don't know. We—I don't want to call it a crisis, but we were going on a journey. We had discovered that we were wrong about a lot of things in the Bible, and what we were taught didn't match up with history, didn't match up with the early church.
I was with a Baptist guy that was sending me to hell almost every other message. He had no idea that I believed half the things he was sending me to hell for. And it forced me to search and search and search the Scriptures and history to see what was truth. And during that time, I became very uncertain and didn't want to teach. And so we started this second church plant, and I was listening to a lot of David Pawson, and he is now dead.
But he said the best way to look at the Bible is to read whole books in one sitting and ignore chapters and verses and heading to, like, titles. Just ignore all that and just read it. And so that's what we did as a church. And after, we would just ask questions, like, "How do we live this out? What do we do with this?" And after we read 1 Corinthians 11, well, the whole chapter, one of the ladies came up—two ladies, actually—Leozimei and Shazimei. Zimei means sister. Sister Leoz, Sister Shea.
And Sister Shea had short hair, really short hair, and like mine right now. And Leozimei said, "Should we be wearing head coverings?" And I said, "Well, why don't you ask?" And she said, "Well, right here. We just read it. And I have a friend who wears head coverings, and their whole church does, and which I never met that church. I would love to have met them." And they would say that we must wear head coverings.
And she pointed it, and I said this to her, "But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her as a covering." And it was a little hard to say that because Shea was next to me with short hair, and I believed that it was long hair. And then when she said, "Well, that doesn't make sense," she said, "Read this verse, and 'For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn.'" And if the cover is long hair, and if they have long hair, why would they cut it off?
So what would she be cutting off? And anyway, she went through that, and this stuff didn't start to make much sense to me, especially in the Chinese. I was—then I said, "Well, in college I heard about the prostitutes. There's all these prostitutes in Corinth, and they all had long flowing hair.
And so Paul wanted the Corinthian women, Christian women, to be distinct and holy, set apart, and so they wore head coverings." And then I went home, and I wasn't satisfied with this, and because I just said two opposite things, like, "Okay, they did have long hair, and they put something on their hair, but just a minute ago I said they didn't put anything on their hair, and they had a covering." And so I was like, "And these things are presented to us at college, like, okay, and we just believe it.
We completely believe it. And the reason you believe it is because you never saw anybody practice it. It's like, obviously, all churches everywhere, nobody wears a head covering, so why in the world would we believe it? It must be something of the culture. It just makes sense." And then my wife, not long after, came out. She wasn't a part of that Bible study, and she said, "Should I be wearing..." I just read 1 Corinthians 11, "Should I be wearing a head covering?" And I was like, "I don't know.
We have to think about this and pray about this." So we started looking up stuff and looking up videos and reading the word over and over. And we got to this part. Well, I got to this part. It says, "Judge among yourselves." But then NIV says, "Judge for yourselves." But somehow I read that as "judge for yourself" then. And is it proper for a woman to pray with her head uncovered?
And I told her, "It seems like we had also been..." David Pawson said, "When you find something that's a command of God, you obey it, even if you don't understand. And maybe you'll understand it one day, but maybe you never will, and be okay with that." So we were like, "Well, we don't see here in these Scriptures..." We're like, "Would God be mad if we put a head... if you put a head covering on? No. But what if we didn't?" And it's actually what he is meaning. So I said, "You need to judge for yourself.
I honor you and support you in that." And I don't know exactly when it was, but it was very short after. It could have been the same day, but I always say the next day. She came out with a head covering on, and our decision of counting the cost started to happen right away. We started to go, like, "We're already kind of weird Christians in the city. All the missionaries see that we're a little radical.
And now my wife's going to be..." They're not going to know right away because it wasn't, like, specific, like a Mennonite head covering. But eventually they're going to realize. My wife always has something on her head, and they're going to ask questions. And actually, the Chinese experience with the Chinese ladies and the other missionaries wasn't bad, but it was more when it got closer to home that there were some harsh things said and things about me oppressing my wife and things like that.
So anyway, we decided we're going to do it, but we didn't bury our stake in it. We weren't... we didn't say, "Okay, we're going to do this, and we're never going to stop doing this." We planned on... we decided that we're going to do this unless we're convinced by Scripture or other history otherwise. So we're just going to do this, and if we get convinced, we're going to study it. We're going to figure it out. But right now, she's going to wear it until we're convinced otherwise.
And then one day I asked her, "Why did you decide to wear the head covering?" And she looked at me, and she said, "Because I want to honor my head." And she pointed at me, and I was like, "Wow." Like, she has honored me her whole life, followed me to China, did... we did everything together, and she's never been non-submitting, and she's always had an amazing character. And to even go this far, it was just, like, empowering.
And it went from, like, "This is a little strange, and I'm uncomfortable," to, like, "Yeah, this is cool." And I don't know what it was about it. And then we get kicked out of China, and where our churches in Georgia and Tennessee, and without throwing them under the bus too much, they taught a lot of really bad stuff. And we knew we needed to find another church. And I had been reading the early Christians. I read the Heretics book.
And one of the quotes that stood out to me was, "Be ye subject to the bishop as to the Lord, for he watches for your souls as one that shall give an account to God." And I've never... like, we started looking at all these pastors and all these bishops and elders and teaching things about divorce and about sexuality and about all kinds of stuff that was just way out there. We could not submit ourselves to these people.
So we started looking for Mennonite churches nearby and Anabaptist churches, and they were all just like the other churches we were at. We didn't know that Bragan Shrock's church was an hour from us. We had gone forty minutes away, but we didn't go further.
And then my wife and I said, "We either have to find a church, or because we have this missions fund, we can go back to the missions field, and if China's not okay, we can go to Haiti, because we've heard that the Christian women there wear a head covering, and when we come back, it'll just look like, 'Hey, we're part of their culture. We're just, you know, blending in. We're keeping, you know...'" And so that was the Haiti thing. And then that didn't work out. Went to Haiti, and it was just an awful experience.
They wanted the people that we were going to work for to condone homosexuality in the pulpit and everywhere, and their church is just a mess, and they didn't want me preaching anything or doing Bible studies. And then I called Matthew Miliani. I said, "We really want to come to the Kingdom Fellowship Week, and we also want to come see Followers of the Way." And then he explained to me how expensive it was at Followers of the Way, and we're in a camper driving around.
And I was like, "Okay, well, I guess we're not going to Followers of the Way. We'll go to Kingdom Fellowship first." And so when we were at Kingdom Fellowship, we first, when we were getting... when we were traveling there, it was so scary, especially for my wife. She's like, "Are they going to accept us?
Like, I don't wear anything like they wear." And she was so uncomfortable, and I was uncomfortable, and I was like, "But if they're anything like they're on their videos, that they're actually following Jesus." And but we didn't know if, like, y'all had poison Kool-Aid or what was going on. And so we got here. Roxbury is not very far where the Kingdom Fellowship Weekend was. And very quickly we realized this is heaven on earth. Like, this was amazing. And my wife didn't show that on her face right away.
And a few days later, I was just, like, loving everything. She was at the camper feeding the kids something, and it's a snack or something, and she called, and I was talking to someone, I don't remember who, and she said, "You need to get back here." And I was like, "She doesn't do that normally." And I'm like, "Is everything okay?" She's like, "I don't know. You need to come back to the camper." And I was, like, walking back thinking, "Something weird happened.
Maybe it wasn't all as good as I thought." And then I get there, and she looks at me, and she goes, "We have to move here." And I was like, "Yes! This is amazing." I had no idea that she felt, like... And then, and so, like, this... when Finny pointed this out, I wasn't going to go over this this time, but I'll say it.
"For a man indeed ought to not cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man." And Finny said that this glory, he pointed to the same glory in 1 Thessalonians 2:19, and he said, "For what is our hope, our joy, our crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you, who he's talking to, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For you are our glory and joy." And so my wife is my treasure. She's my crown of rejoicing. She's my joy. She's my glory. And it's...
and she's empowered. The power on the head makes me think of when ladies learn to be what God wants them to be in the head and body relationship, there's just power in that. Like, things... good things happen. And if you think about it, like, if you ever seen ALS or an extreme thing of Tourette's syndrome, ALS, like, the whole body doesn't listen to the head. It just, like, eventually becomes useless, and all they can do is think and move their eyes eventually.
Or Tourette's, like, they want to control themselves, but they have no control. Like, that's a really extreme example of the body not following the head, but when the head tries to be two heads, you just... it's... there's no body to make it roll. Like, when you try to take on the same parts in the church, if everybody tried to be David Bercot, it would be a mess. If everybody tried to be Patrick, it'd be a mess. And it's just a wonderful thing when it works the way God created it.
And so, you know the story, but then we became members of Chambers Brotherhood Christian Fellowship, and we've loved it ever since. And then back a little bit, before we even moved up here, we were preparing for opposition, and opposition by people saying what... me forcing my wife to wear these dresses, and which I wasn't doing, and the head covering, which I wasn't doing. Like, we needed to defend this if it was defendable, so we had to start searching.
And I heard this quote, and I don't know if it's from you or where it came from, but "Women have been veiled in all Christian denominations everywhere from the beginning of the early church until the mid-twentieth century." And I didn't believe that. I was like, "That's just not possible, because if it was not there many years ago, we'd have known about it, and I didn't believe it at all." If the veil was practiced, this brought up questions. When and where was it practiced? When and why did the practice stop?
And is a head covering for today? And one of the first things that I saw that was extremely convicting, even though we were already practicing it, was we went to this Church of Christ church, and they had pictures of, like, every generation on Easter Sunday on their wall of the church. And this one was 1924, and all the women had head coverings. The older women had longer dresses, and then just every picture, all the way up until 1969, they had some kind of head covering on, and the women had long dresses.
They got a little shorter. But then I didn't take pictures of all the other ones, because they look like most evangelical churches today, just jeans. And one of the things also was that men and women were separated in all the ones where the head covering was, and then it became where they were mixed or families after the head covering left. It was really interesting. And then I ran into this, um these two books. I found a quote online, and then I bought the books, and I'll read you the quote.
"One singular thing may be noted in history that with all the..." So let me preface this. This is written in 1903 about the 200 years of women's dress, so from 1620 to 1820, and then she's saying this in 1903. "One singular thing may be noted in this history that with all the vagaries of fashion, women has never violated the biblical law that bade her to cover her head. She has never gone to church services bareheaded.
The wife of the English naval officer was recently excommunicated because she had persisted in thrice attending church without a bonnet or hat." And so, 300 years of America almost, if written in 1903, they wore the head covering. I was like, "There's no way that..." I went to college, and that my whole life, my wife's whole life, my brother's whole life, we never heard of the head covering. I mean, you have to live in Pennsylvania around here to even see it, almost.
And so these are the pictures in that book of different head coverings and different fashions. And there was probably twenty or so more that I didn't put in there with head coverings on and dress. And some of them... there's a few little and modest in here. But... and if any of them look like a man, they're not a man. You can look below. It'll say "Lady" something. And some of the hats look kind of manly, but they're wearing long dresses.
Anyway, when I got these books, these are pictures from that book, I was just amazed. Like, 300 years of, like, headdress and head covering. And it'll be over here in just a second. Okay, so then the question was, when did American churches lose their veil? Because if they went all the way up to at least 1903, like, when did this happen? How did this happen? So I was searching for this. And this book is actually... the picture doesn't look so appealing, but the the book itself is amazing.
I mean, he goes from the early Christians to now, and he goes through all the quotes. And most of the quotes on here, there's some that aren't from him, but I just want to make sure that David Phillips... you go buy his book. It's really short, Kindle, and you can just scroll through the quotes, and it's just... you can see just from this book where it started, like, and kind of how it started, at least people's opinion in the book.
So we're going from now backwards, and we're going to kind of go backwards here, in 1862 to 1945, you can see Charles Andrew Coates. The very last part is what I'm getting to, but I'll read everything. "This principle of headship should always regulate us, but 1 Corinthians 11 teaches us that it is to do so in a formal manner, even as to our outward appearance, whenever we take our place places definitely, as in relation to God, either in speaking to him or speaking for him.
We have precise instruction as to the woman having her head covered when she prays or prophesies. This makes her place in the great economy of headship, and she does well to cherish it as her own peculiar glory. I do not think I have even seen any instance of sisters walking about uncovered." So somewhere in that time, he had never seen sisters walking about uncovered. R.C. Sproul. So pay attention. Born in 1939. During his high school years, so he's about fifteen, probably 1954-ish.
"When I went to church on Sunday morning, I never saw a woman in that church." This is the mainline Presbyterian church that was added. I don't know who added it. "Whose head wasn't covered with a hat or veil, a veil. That is one of those customs that has simply disappeared for the most part of Christian culture." His son, I assume. I didn't actually look it up, but it makes sense with the name.
"The church has rejected this practice in the last thirty or forty years, not because of new interpretive insights, but because of pressure from the world. Generally, until fifty years ago, every woman in every church covered their head. What has happened in this last fifty years? We have had a feminist movement." Loomis-Simms. "The practice of head covering continued even up to the early twentieth century, but the 1960s in the West, the biblical practice had become merely a tradition.
So when hats fell out of style, the practice was dropped from Christian churches." "It is only in the past three or four decades since the 1960s that its observance has slipped away, particularly in Western society." Sorry, I'm not going to read everybody's name. "In the 1930s, a Canadian pastor was highlighted in a major metropolitan newspaper simply because he began to allow women to come to church without anything on their heads.
At the same time, the pastor admitted that this was not the historical practice of the church. Ever since Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Christianity has taken his instructions about head covering as applicable to Christian women of all lands and through all ages." And this is still his thing. "Similarly, in 1964, a prominent bishop theologian noted that this practice has persisted to the present day." J. Robertson.
"Historically, evangelicals held that God communicated truth through men in such a way that it could be understood and serve as a divine guide for thought and life. But perhaps because of the influence of postmodernism, now we have a divided evangelical household. Some among us have become relative relativists, yielding more and more ground to the realm of uncertainty. For example, we give up head coverings.
Now we are challenged by fellow evangelicals to give up Adam and Eve, role distinctions in marriage, limitations on divorce, exclusively heterosexual unions, hell, faith, in Jesus Christ, as the only way to acceptance with God, and most pivotal an inerrant Bible." I should have put dates on all of these, but we're still in the early period. "This practice of bearing the outward sign of obedience to God is designed..." God, sorry.
"Obedience to God's design has slipped away so quietly that it hasn't even been an issue in most Western churches. And yet there are many of you here," say, "those over fifty or sixty who have seen this shift in practice take place in our own lifetime. When some of you were children, every woman wore a hat to church, and yet today it is extremely rare.
The practice of a woman without a head covering has mainly followed her wherever the feminist agenda has been pushed and has won out in the culture." So I looked up this really quickly this morning, and I was curious to see divorce rates from around the time of the sixties, forties... actually thirties. You could see thirties is kind of where it started. The pastors were letting the women be unveiled, and the percentage rates just kind of skyrocket. I mean, it goes from 7.8% to 50%. And imagine... imagine if...
I think it's possibly part of the cause. The headship order was lost. Women are doing their thing. If you're not supporting me, I'm out of here. And imagine if all churches everywhere... well, I'll talk about that in a little bit. I don't know. I'm sure there's other reasons behind it, but I think that there's definitely a correlation between this and the head covering being lost. "What churches veiled?
John Calvin, the founder of the Reformed churches, and John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterian church, both called for their women to veil... for their women to wear head coverings in public worship. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodism, held that women, especially in religious assemblies, should keep on their veil. The Church of England, no man shall cover his head in church or chapel." I don't know if we know this guy, but it's Martin Luther.
"The wife shall not rule over her husband, but be subject and obedient to him. For that reason, the wife wears a headdress, that is, the veil on her head. The wife should put on a veil just as a pious wife is duty bound to her husband." In reference to verse ten, Luther states that a woman should be covered with a veil for the sake of the angels. And I don't know if, you know, God can speak through anybody, but I don't know if he speaks through people like this as a prophet.
I know he spoke through a donkey, and he... so he could speak through me, and he could speak through John Calvin. So I'm not calling John Calvin a donkey. I'm just saying. So but this is amazing. "So if women are thus permitted to have their heads uncovered and to show their hair, they will eventually be allowed to expose their entire breast, and they will come to make their exhibitions as if they were a tavern show.
They will become so brazen that modesty and shame will be no more, in short, they will forget the duty of nature. So when it is permissible for a woman to uncover their heads, one will say, 'Well, what harm is uncovering the stomach also?' And then after that one, that will plead for something else. Now, if the women go barehead, why not also bare this and bare that? Then the man, for their part, will break loose too.
In short, there will be no decency left, unless people contain themselves and respect what is proper and fitting, so as not to go headlong overboard." So I thought that was amazing. And this is a short clip um of 1899 on the beach. And I didn't understand this, so my parents wouldn't let me watch MTV or Cartoon Network, but they would let me go to waterparks and beaches. And even from, like, eight years old to as long as I went to these waterparks and beaches, I was just so excited about lust.
I didn't know that's what it was called, but I was going to be wide open-eyed everywhere I went, and just hoping something would... that the little that was on would fall off. And this, like, it's just so weird that somehow within a really short time, that it went from this on beaches to, yeah, what we have now. So in most conservative...
if you go to most conservative churches that are packed out, what I would have considered conservative churches back in the day, not what you guys probably talk about, conservative churches, and they would all be wearing suits and modest clothes, but in the summertime, they go to the beach and they wear almost nothing. And it just doesn't make sense.
And then I believe there's a double sin problem, two sides to the sinful nature, and Satan knows it, that men like to look at what they shouldn't, and women like to be looked at. They like to... they're kind of fulfilled, or they build confidence of, 'Oh, a man's looking at me. I'm pretty.' And this sin feeds off each other. And once clothes started coming off, it was like, that's what clothes were being made in the shops. I don't know, but there's a huge... Satan is one. And imagine...
so this is the beaches of today. I had to blur it out. There's actually nothing behind this. I just looked up a picture of blur. So don't imagine what might be behind this, because there's... it's just a picture of blur. I just... there's supposedly 230 to 250 million Christians in America, and there's only 330 million people.
Imagine if all Christians everywhere, all men decided they are going to submit completely to their head, and they're going to do whatever Christ and all the apostles teach, and all women decide they're going to completely submit to their husbands, and they're going to veil, and they're going to wear modest dress, and they're never going to go to a place and show themselves again. Like, almost 78% of the United States would be... it would bring... it would do more than any voting could ever do.
I mean, you want to change America, all the churches out there, you should do... you should just do what the Bible says, and this mass of people would just make everybody feel naked. You don't feel naked when everybody's naked. Just like Brandon Byler said, in a world of crooked people, you don't know you're not straight. And if we had an abundance of everybody just wearing what God would have them wear and doing what God would have them do, we would be a disinfectant to this world.
And we can do it here, and we are, I think, but I just wish everybody would... like, we differ in so many theological things, but we didn't differ in those things back then. You know, like, the Anabaptists would have maybe looked a lot similar to the normal people. They just changed with the world and with culture, and we didn't. And I believe divorce rates would plummet, and I believe that sexual confusion would start to disappear.
When you have a man and woman, and they have all the equal roles, and everything's at disorder, and the... you know, it's like Tourette's and ALS, like, nothing's working, and the kids are like, 'What's going on? Like, who am I?' They don't even have a clue. And then you have transgender and homosexuality just ramping up. I mean, we could... I think that fighting in politics isn't the answer, but just doing what Jesus said would create a different world, even though we're not trying to change the world.
The world does what the world does, but we could affect it in a really good way. So what churches veiled back to this? Catholic Church, men in the church or outside the church, while they are assisting in at sacred rites, shall be bareheaded. Women, however, shall have a covered head and be modestly dressed, especially when they approach the table of the Lord. I'm not going to read this one, but basically it says that all the Northern European churches...
I'm going to say the eleventh century to the fifth century, because we're going backwards in time. They all covered their head. And then Augustine. "It is not becoming even in a married woman to uncover her head, since the apostle commands women to keep their heads covered." Chrysostom. This is actually a part of a huge thing on First Corinthians 11. So he doesn't actually say head coverings here, but he's talking about it.
"However, even if the Corinthians were then contentious, yet now the whole world hath both received and kept the law." He's talking about the head coverings. "So great is the power of the crucified. But I fear lest having assumed the dress, yet their deeds, some of our women, should be found immodest and in other ways uncovered." Oh, I didn't finish the quote. But anyway, he goes on saying that, like, it doesn't matter if you're covered with your head if you're not modest in other ways.
It's like, there's a thing... it goes together. "The Christian man is under no obligation to wear a covering, and the woman's head is bound to have a veil." This is important. "It is not strange, since it is not among strangers that we find it." So among strangers in his time, it wasn't the norm, the women wearing head coverings, that we find it. "But among those with whom we share the law of peace and the name of brotherhood. In fact, at this day, the Corinthians do veil their virgins.
What the apostles taught, their disciples approve." And this is the furthest I go back, except what we read with Paul. Irenaeus translates First Corinthians 11:10 as follows: "A woman ought to have a veil upon her head because of the angels." And this is significant in that Irenaeus apparently understood the power on a woman's head in First Corinthians 11:10 to be a veil of some kind, and not a woman's hair. And so that's it for today.
We didn't really get into the meat of the scriptures or all the objections of the scriptures. But in that book, it'll be in the description below on the YouTube video, is really does a good job. There's so many more quotes. I mean, that I just picked a few. We'd sit there all day reading quotes from that book. But the head covering was worn by all... this is something that would have really been helpful to me on our beginning of our journey. Like, nobody does this. I never saw it at all.
I know that it's different for you all, but it was just so... like, I didn't even think it was a thing. And looking up online, oh, people actually do this. And that brought us to you guys, to us, or whatever. So anyway, any thoughts or questions? Next time we'll actually get into more objections in the scriptures, more. But this time was just kind of history, because I thought it was important.
I think I'm glad you used those various quotes, even from people that we generally don't like, because this was not originally... it didn't have anything to do with the Anabaptist. I mean, everybody did it. In no way did the Anabaptist have a different teaching on the head covering. It's simply that because we kept following the scriptures when everyone else changed, suddenly we were the only ones left doing it, because we're committed to obeying everything the Bible says.
But originally, like I say, it was not in any way a distinctive of the Anabaptist. Yeah, we're not the weird ones. Everybody else is. One thing I think about after hearing your journey, I think that's really good, as we relate with people who don't practice this, in having that spirit of patience, graciousness, because, like you said, most of them have not been taught it and have not been shown it. And so along with that just comes this almost total ignorance of what it is and what it means.
I think it's a power of teaching. Like David said, I agree with David. And I think also it's the teaching. The teaching has to continue. Good, proper teaching on the subject. Yeah, that's what I wanted to bring up, and I actually put something in my notes, but I didn't read it, was in all those churches, I wouldn't... I never heard it taught about, and I wouldn't dare, like, read some of the verses. Like, the verse Ignatius talks about, like, finding elders you can submit to like you would to the Lord.
Well, he didn't say finding, but I mean, it says that the women are supposed to do that with their husbands. And I've never heard that ever. It's like, you would be afraid. It's like, oh, this is going to make people mad to say this. We can't say this. And there's all these, like, well, they have to be a perfect husband, you know? They have to be exactly like Christ. And but we'll go through those verses, and you'll see that's not the case. The thing that struck me is how quick something can change. I mean, R.C.
was at 1939, says he... I couldn't quite remember the quote, but he remembered most people that went to church had the women had coverings. And he and he died a few years back. You grow up in a culture, and you never heard of it. Like, that's within a 50-year period that the entire culture that you hear nothing of it, and he remembers the day that most people did at some level. You know, 50 years can really, really change the culture that Jews choose to change.
I think it's a warning to us of how quickly anything can be lost if something comes in and we're distracted or we choose a different, yeah, maybe just flat disobedience to God. It doesn't take long. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to send that. I really appreciate the work you put into it, putting that together.
Like David said, that's interesting that, like, back at the time of the Reformation and even since, at least that practice of having the head covered, whether or not the head chipboard was practiced fully, was still... it wasn't something that was distinctly Anabaptist. It was still pretty much all Christians believed in. But so it's shocking to us to hear you quoting from Martin Luther and John Calvin and all those guys in a positive way. But this is one of those ways where we see their ideas having consequences.
Yeah. That because they taught things that undermined it, a simple, straightforward obedience, look at what we have today as proof from that. Yeah. Whereas the Anabaptist approach of a simple, straightforward, loving obedience to what scripture taught, not without struggles, but has preserved not just the practice of covering heads, but families and healthiness in society. Something that...
one thing that really stood out to me was that quote from John Calvin when he said that if the head covered gets lost, then everything else will do it. And that's exactly what it was. Yeah. That's why I was like, prophet, but... big but there. But yeah. It's interesting how the... I don't know, I guess feminism or whatever it was that called the hard push to abandon it, how it just has such a condescending tone in the culture. The idea of it has like... it's condescending towards women.
I like the way that you described how it's like... it's really like the glory of a woman. And, you know, just to look at it and to see the power and the glory. Like, I was sitting back here listening to you speak. And I looked up at the back of Wendy's head, and I was thinking, oh, that's the glory of Wes. You know, it's just such an opposite idea than what the feminist movement has called it to be. Yeah, because they put it in opposition when we're, like, the same body.
Like, I don't want my body putting her hand in the wood chipper, I heard someone say. Or, like, we're... I want everything best for her, and she wants everything best for me. And the another analogy I heard was, like, trying to take a little baby chick and shove it under the water and trying to make it be a fish, and then taking a fish and throwing it and trying to make it fly. It's like, these things don't work. Like, men were made to be this way, and women were made to be this way, and God created this order.
And even if we're not good at the things, I think that when we obey the order, God gifts us in those things, makes us what we're supposed to be. I was always under the impression that my son and my daughters, I was going to have to teach them to be men and women, because I had seen all this stuff about, like, all this sexual confusion. But, like, it's absolutely not true at all. Like, my son is completely boy, never had to teach him anything, boy, and he is more boy than I ever was.
And my daughters are, like, dolls and hair and wonderful things and taking care of babies all the time and just want to do these things. And they love doing it. It's like, I thought I was going to have to force things, and it's like, they just love doing it. And they're just, women are women, and men are men. But when a man in his house is not a man and a woman in his house isn't a woman, the kids don't know what's what. I mean, they want to be like their mom, but their mom's, like, masculine and whatever.
I don't know, so. I enjoyed what you said about you and Kevin. Like, you work at Rentco Travelers, and Kevin would take your position. And I kind of going off what Jason said, it's really in both of your best interests to do what you're both meant to do, your roles that you're to play, and you could both prosper. So, again, I was thinking about your story. I really enjoyed you sharing your story about when you called Matthew Meliani. I'm glad that Boston was too expensive for me. I got to stay around, so.
I don't know how people move out there. They must be rich. I mean, okay, well. It got worse. Yeah. I'm not planning on going.