Lord Jesus Christ becomes more imminent, it is time for the
Church to repent and return quickly back to the pattern that the
Lord instituted for running the Church of Jesus Christ.
This is true for many aspects of church life where we have today
deviated from biblical patterns. Particularly is it true for the
phenomenon of female leadership in the Church. This practice, I
respectfully submit, is a complete aberration - if we genuinely
believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God. And, unless
we want to deceive ourselves, there is nothing confusing,
unclear, or ambiguous in the two plain verses of Scriptures
below:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over
a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:12 ESV)
“As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep
silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but
should be in submission, as the Law also says.” (1 Corinthians
14:34)
To circumvent these CLEAR divine commandments, a lot of
analysis, interpretation, and rationalization have been proffered
by Bible ‘scholars’ to confuse and convince us on why those
Bible verses do not mean what they say very, very CLEARLY.
At the time of darkness and ignorance in the Church, the
practice of female pastors/preachers may have been inevitable.
But in these end-time that the Lord is graciously giving the
Church enlightenment in His word, and is calling us back to
repentance, as well as a return to the ancient landmarks that we
have abandoned, it will be wrong, immoral, and sinful for any
TRUE CHILD OF GOD to continue to persist in the wave of
disobedience/ignorance that has weakened the Church
considerably, particularly in the last three decades or so.
In end-time Christianity, not only must we LEARN the truth of
God’s word, and PREACH the truth of God’s word, we must
ALSO be DOERS of the truth of God’s word.
Please, let us be clear on this – the Kingdom of God on earth
can NEVER be built on the principle of man’s expediency. Nor
yet on man’s attempt to demystify the mysterious ways of God.
If we are genuinely serious about building the Kingdom of God,
we MUST pay careful attention to the divine patterns that the
Lord prescribes for His Church.
In this four-part series, please permit me to outline 10 reasons
why women, from biblical precepts, should NOT pastor or teach
a church. As you read the series, please do not become fixated
on our common practice in the church today. Rather, please
open your mind completely to God’s Holy Spirit to illuminate
your heart according to the will of God on this subject – and
WHATEVER He says to you, please do. And do quickly.
For some women that are currently in leadership position in
churches, it may mean they’ll have to prayerfully seek other
roles/ministries in the church. For some women, it may mean
having to politely turn down preaching engagements if the
audience will be a mixture of men and women in the church
setting. For some women, it may mean politely turning down an
opportunity to be ordained as a pastor (as RCCG will soon do to
hundreds of Christian sisters during their convention in August).
For some people, it may mean re-considering their membership
of a church that is headed by a female pastor. I also realise that
for some men and women, the outcome will be nothing – they
will simply continue in their old ways. But we must be mindful
that for whatever we do, or we do not do, the day of
accountability is coming.
Here is the first of the 10 reasons:
REASON 1 – IT IS GOD’S COMMANDMENT, NOT PAUL’S IDEA
In undermining the importance of 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1
Corinthians 14:34, one of the cardinal strategies of the
proponents of female headship is to attack the human author of
the passages (if you can’t kill the message, discredit the
messenger). And so they came up with various blows on
Apostle Paul. He wrote these passages, they say, because he
had an innate bias against women, that’s probably why he never
married. Or this, he wrote those passages to conform to the
male-dominated culture of the Middle East in his days. Another
one, he wrote those passages because, in his days, women were
not learned/sophisticated enough to hold the lofty position of a
leader/teacher of God’s people. ALL THESE ARE LIES.
Among the writers of the New Testament, Paul was one of the
most radical. A lot of his writings were counter-cultural to the
values and norms of his days. In the Church, and against the
backdrop of women oppression in the society, Paul exalted the
values of womanhood to an extent that was uncommon in that
period. In Galatians 3:8, he wrote about the equality of women
(in essence) with men. In Ephesians 5:25, he called on husbands
to love their wives in a self-sacrificing way. (In an era when
wives were treated as their husband’s property). Women had a
voice in praying and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 11:5. In 1
Corinthians 7:3-4, women had equal conjugal rights with their
husbands. Specifically, he admonished churches to rise up to
the assistance of women that were helping him and his
companions in the ministry (Philippians 4:3, Romans 16:2, etc.)
All these concepts, in those days, were massively counter-
cultural. So in writing 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34,
Paul DID NOT subject the word of God to the cultural dictates of
his days.
So what was the springboard of those verses that he wrote?
First, let us take the witness of an independent person, then the
testimony of Paul Himself, and then look at the unassailable
justification for his proposition in those passages. Here is
Apostle Peter’s clarification on the source of Paul’s epistles, “…
our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you ACCORDING TO THE
WISDOM GIVEN HIM…. There are some things in them that are
hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to
their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Peter
3:15-16). Here, apart from drawing our attention to the divine
input in Paul’s writing, Peter makes it clear that those that twist
Paul’s words, do so at the peril of their souls! So, it is clear that
these are not the words or opinions of a man; these are the
words of God!
Paul boldly makes this direct assertion in the 1 Corinthians 14
passage quoted above. Please have a look at verse 37, “If
anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should
acknowledge that THE THINGS I AM WRITING TO YOU ARE A
COMMAND OF THE LORD.” In verse 34 of this chapter, he gives
the instruction; and in verse 37, he affirms that it is a
COMMANDMENT OF THE LORD. So what is unclear or
confusing about this? And if God COMMANDS that women
should NOT lead or teach a church, why do we have so many
women doing exactly that today? Why is the church, generally
speaking, very comfortable with this fundamental error?
The answer is simple - ‘scholars’ have rationalized away the
essence of God’s law. They tell us that what Paul wrote in those
passages was applicable to only the early Church, because
women were largely uneducated during that period. Thus, they
claim that it is a time-specific commandment, and not
applicable in our days of women sophistication. Again, THIS IS
A HUGE LIE! In 1 Timothy 2:13-14, Apostle Paul CLEARLY
alludes to the timelessness of the commandment by rooting it
firmly in God’s order of creation in the Garden of Eden. (This is
similar to the route that Jesus Himself took while teaching on
the subject of divorce in Matthew 19:8 – “… from the beginning
it was not so….”). Teachings that are linked to the Garden of
Eden like these two, seek to re-establish God’s original order of
creation before sin came in. They are a reflection of deep, divine
patterns that relate to God’s eternal purpose in creation – in this
case, God’s hierarchical order for male and female roles.
If we buy into the lie that the commandment was only applicable
for the 1st century women, we should ask ourselves this
question: how does a commandment that relate to God’s order
of creation affect the 1st century women, but is inapplicable to
the 21st century woman? Has God changed the hierarchical
order? Does the coming of Jesus Christ nullify the hierarchical
order of male leadership in God’s sphere? Of course, the answer
is a resounding NO!
The truth is that satan misled mankind in the Garden of Eden,
starting with the woman, and led us away from God’s original
intention in prescribing DIFFERENT hierarchy and roles for men
and women in His Kingdom. JESUS CHRIST CAME TO TAKE US
BACK TO GOD’S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR MANKIND. And that is
the battle that is still raging till today as Satan tries his best to
blur the gender roles and lines that God established
(homosexuality is a part of that wider satanic agenda in
manipulating gender issues).
In the divine agenda, God has a CLEAR role for women in His
Kingdom. This role is embedded in a larger divine pattern. Every
female child of God has the responsibility to understand her
God-ordained role in that divine pattern and to STICK TO WHAT
GOD SAID IN THE BIBLE through His holy Apostles. Not what
the devil says. Not what the ‘scholars’ say.
(For a further reading on this divine pattern, please click this link
to read an article on ‘WHY GOD WANTS WOMEN TO SUBMIT’ -
http://on.fb.me/1FK6HHw )
Indeed, God forbids women from pastoring and teaching a
church. This is number 1 reason (out of 10 reasons) on this
subject. Please look out for the remaining nine reasons as the
series continues. Whereas the Lord forbids women from leading
and teaching in the church, there are hundreds of roles in the
Church on which He did not place any restrictions. And down
through the ages, godly women have found joy and fulfilment in
faithfully serving God in those roles. The Church of today ought
to find our way back to this noble path of obedience, and
submission to God’s will.
Thanks for reading, God bless.
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