Spiritual Warfare: Image Manipulation and the Media

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How Satan uses the Media to corrupt the Image of God

Replacing God’s Image with Satan’s Image

To try and put into perspective just where we are in our current series of exercises in Spiritual Warfare, let’s take a moment to recap what we accomplished during our last three workout sessions.  In…

  • Getting the Lay of the Landwe began creating a spiritual map of Satan’s kingdom, with a survey of its Celestial, Terrestrial, and Subterranean Divisions—that is, the vertical dimensions of its territory;
  • Surveying the Earth’s Political and Financial Landscapes—we turned our attention from the kingdom’s vertical dimensions to mapping out its horizontal ones, with an exploration of the Physical Structures used in keeping the residents of planet Earth in material servitude; and,
  • Evolution and Educationwe looked at some of the ways the Educational System has been used to supplant the long-held Biblical Worldview with the godless Secular One needed for the brainwashing of generations of unsuspecting teachers, students, and parents.

Since our last session was the first of two dealing with the Structures making up Satan’s Cultural Landscape, this session, as the second of the two, will deal with the Structure of Media; for, it is through this Structure that our emotions are bombarded relentlessly in a devilish crusade to alter the way we feel about ourselves, our relationships, and the things that we value in life.  Remember, Satan’s goal in all of this is to get us to think, feel, and act in accordance with his purposes which, as we should know by now, are in direct opposition to those of God.  Here is what we have learned about God’s purposes over the course of these exercises…

  • God’s purpose in creating Man was to provide Himself with a Family to love, both now and throughout eternity.
  • Before Man could qualify as a member of God’s Family, though, he first had to be like his Father in every important respect. Therefore, when God created Man, He made him in His Image and Likeness, to be a visible reflection of Him and His Character in the World, as well as the Steward or Executor of His Will upon the earth.
  • Because God is Spirit, He created Man as a Spirit Being which He then placed in the two houses He called Male and Female.  As Spirit, Man could relate to God and, in the physical houses of Male and Female, he could (re)produce the Family that God has always desired to have.
  • Because he was created first, the Man was placed in the Position of Head over God’s Creation; with the Woman being created later, as his Companion and Helper in carrying out the Work of God in the world.
  • This arrangement, however, did not mean that the Male was superior to the Female–it was simply to provide a system of order and accountability for God’s Kingdom Work on the Earth.  For, from the beginning of their history together, Man and Woman were both…

Equal in their standing before God;
Equal in their call to the work of God; and,
Equal in their blessing by God.

  • In his Position as Head, the Man was to be an Image in the world of the Headship of God the Father; the Woman was to be an Image of the complementary Nature and Work of the Holy Spirit; while the Children produced from their union were to be living testimonies of their Love, as well as Images of the Obedience and Love of Jesus Christ to and for God His Father.
  • God’s purpose for the Human Family, then, was for it be an Image in the natural of the Family that God was creating for Himself in the supernatural—a Spiritual Family that He wanted every human being to be a part of.
  • When it came to their relationship to the physical world around them, as the Sons and Daughters of God, Man and Woman were to exercise dominion over their Father’s Creation, Imaging the Righteous Rule of God while administering His Holy Will on the earth, just as it is already being done in heaven.

To summarize, then, God’s Purposes for Man (as male and female) was to provide the world with an…

Image in the flesh of the Triune God;
Image in the flesh of God’s Spiritual Family; and,
Image in the flesh of God’s Kingdom Rule.

We Were All Created to Reflect the Image of God to the World

Getting Rid of One Image…

It should be obvious to us by now that God’s Purposes for Man have everything to do with Image; and, that in every aspect of his being—in his Spirit, Soul, and Body— Man has been imprinted with the likeness of his Creator.  Just as earthly kings and emperors have, throughout most of human history, placed their images on the coins and stamps that were circulated throughout their domains, the Sovereign King of the Universe placed His Image on every human being who has ever lived, so that as they circulated throughout His Earthly Domain…

 …the earth [would] be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).

In light of this, it should come as no surprise that the destruction of the Image of God in Man—and the replacement of it with his own perverted one—has been Satan’s primary objective from the beginning of time.  Since Man’s maintenance of the Image of God required that he maintain…

Righteousness in his Relationship with God;
Love in his Relationships with Others; and,
Authority in his Relationship to the Earth…

…Satan’s strategy for the destruction of that Image required that he find a way to…

Sever Man’s Relationship with God through Disobedience;
Replace Godly Love with Lust in Man’s Relationships; and,
Usurp Man’s Authority over the Earth.

This he accomplished in one fell swoop with his successful temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—the consequences of which were…

  1. With Man’s disobedience came death—an immediate spiritual death or separation from God, to be followed later by physical death. This spiritual death brought with it an end to Man’s communication with God; depriving him of his ability to receive instruction from the Spirit of God on what he was to do and how he was to live, and leaving him at the mercies of the world, the flesh, and the devil;
  2. Lust entered the world and into human relationships when Eve acted on her craving to have that which was forbidden; and, with this action, the drive to satisfy one’s own selfish desires became more important than doing what it right; and,
  3. When it came to Man’s Authority over the Earth, this priceless gift was forfeited by Adam when he, by succumbing to the Influence Power of his wife, abdicated his Headship and gave up the Position Power that went along with it. Consequently, Man’s Authority was given over to Satan, and God’s Order for Creation was overturned, all because…

A member of the Animal Kingdom had usurped the authority of the Woman;
The Woman had used her Powers of Persuasion to usurp the authority of the Man; and,
The Man had rejected the authority of God and His Word and given up his position of Headship in the process.

…And Replacing It with Another 

Knowing now that God’s Purposes for Man have always been about his projection of a Godly Image in and throughout the world; and, given that Satan, as the master counterfeiter, has a Corrupted Image of his own that he wants Man to bear, how can we know what this counterfeit image looks like?  Well, all we have to do is invert God’s Image for Man to reveal the one determined for him by Satan…

The Truth Versus the Lie

As for how to go about replacing the Godly Image with his counterfeit one, Satan has that all worked out; for, even now, he is in the process of…

  • Eliminating human sexual distinctions and making society Gender-Neutral;
  • Tearing down traditional Authority structures and reducing everyone (except those who are pulling the strings behind the scenes) to the same base level for the purposes of corporate servitude;
  • Destroying the nuclear Family and replacing it with a Universal Brotherhood of Man, where everyone and everything is tolerated—with the exception of those holding to Biblical values; and,
  • Demoting Man from his divinely-ordained status of Lord over Creation to that of a mere animal within the Creation (as we discovered in our previous session, this is something that has been achieved through the teaching of Evolution).

To anyone else, such undertaking would certainly have been written off as an impossible mission long ago, however, the Prince of the Power of the Air remains completely undaunted at the prospect of its achievement.  That’s because, he has found a way to use the airwaves over which he rules as a weapon—the powerful weapon known to us as the Media.

Media—The What, the Why, and the Who 

To be sure that we have the same understanding of the term and the strategic part it plays in Satan’s offensive, we now need to identify…

What Media is;
Why it is Satan’s weapon of choice; and,
Who is manipulating the messages it conveys.

  1. The What

For our purposes, Media is defined as…

  • a plural of medium;
  • (usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely.

As for its usage…

Media, like data, is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin.  The singular, medium, early developed the meaning an intervening agency, means, or instrument’ and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago.  In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias.  This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them…[1]

We can understand Media, then, to represent the collective agencies, means, or instruments that a sender uses to communicate a particular message to a specific receiver or group of receivers; with Communication itself being defined as…

…a process involving the sorting, selecting and sharing of symbols in such a way as to help a receiver elicit from his or her own mind a meaning similar to that contained in the mind of the communicator; and…

Mass Communication being defined as…

…a process whereby professional communicators use technological devices to share messages over some distance to influence large audiences.[2]

Since it is this Mass Communication aspect of Media that Satan has commandeered for his own evil purposes, it is essential that we learn why he has chosen it as his weapon of choice.

  1. The Why

There are at least three reasons to account for Media’s effectiveness when used as a weapon…

It’s Pervasive;
It’s Powerful; and,
It’s Personal.

It’s Pervasive

Gone Are the Days!

Throughout much of human history, if someone wanted to convey his thoughts or feelings to someone else, he had to do so in person—within shouting range of that person, at least.  Apart from the use of drum beats, smoke signals, homing pigeons, letters, or the use of runners or relays similar to the pony express, there was just no way for people to communicate with other people—especially large numbers of them—over long distances.[3]  However, this began to change after the German inventor, Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) invented the process of movable type…

Prior to that time, most books were handwritten and very time-consuming to produce.  Because of this, reading material was scarce and limited to those in the elite culture—the clergy and nobility…Gutenberg’s invention increased the number of books and made them available for a new emerging middle class.

The development of printing, which led to the spread of literacy for the middle classes, plus the development of trade and commerce caused major cultural changes. [4]

One of these major changes was the Protestant Reformation (c. 1517-1648)…

The Reformation, led by a German monk, Martin Luther, was the first mass movement made possible by mass communication.  Print was used to mobilize people of all social classes…

Luther and his followers used mass-produced pamphlets to distribute the new religious thoughts to the masses.  They communicated with the illiterate through pictorial prints, much like present day editorial cartoons, which carried propaganda messages against the Catholic Church and the pope.

After mass communication developed, more and more people learned to read and write, especially among the middle classes.[5]

As literacy increased and more information became available to the masses, more and better ways to disseminate it became necessary.  This need was eventually met through the development, over time, of books and novels, newspapers, letter-writing and new or improved postal services, the telephone, telegraph, phonograph, photography, radio, films, television, and the internet—and the communications web which is currently encircling the globe.  In fact, this web is now so pervasive that even people living in huts in some of the most remote parts of the world, without electricity or indoor plumbing, can somehow reach or be reached by some type of the Media!

The Reasons for the Media’s Effectiveness

It’s Powerful

As a weapon, Media is effective not only because it is pervasive but also because its powerful; In fact, it’s powerful enough to…

  • Expose people to people, places, ideas, and products that they would never come into contact with or considered otherwise;
  • Capture the attention and imagination of millions of people with one thirty-second commercial, making millions of dollars for its advertisers in the process;
  • Unite completely disparate groups of people around a cause by playing upon their fears or emotions;
  • Build up or tear down huge corporations, illustrious professional careers, and even governments;
  • Prompt people to re-examine what they believe and convince them to re-evaluate their value systems; and,
  • Change a society through the promotion of some practices and lifestyles, and the condemnation of others.

What gives Media the power to do all of these things is its ability to manipulate images.  As Elizabeth Thoman, in an article for the Center of Media Literacy, explains…

…the consumer culture as we know it could never have emerged without the invention of the camera and the eventual mass-production of media images it made possible.

In 1859 Oliver Wendell Holmes described photography as the most remarkable achievement of his time because it allowed human beings to separate an experience or a texture or an emotion or a likeness from a particular time and place—and still remain real, visible, and permanent.  He described it as a ‘conquest over matter’ and predicted it would alter the physics of perception, changing forever the way people would see and understand the world around them.  Holmes precisely observed that the emergence of this new technology marked the beginning of a time when the image would become more important than the object itself and would in fact make the object disposable.[6]

Today, we can attest to the accuracy of Holmes’ observation and prediction; for, anyone with a camera phone can quickly and easily record an image which they later, with the aid of computer software, can manipulate in any way that they choose.  With this newly created image—of something that never really existed—a photographer can dispose of the original and then replace what was real and true with a fantasy of his own making—which is something that those in the Media do every day.

It’s Personal

Its power, then, along with its pervasiveness, has made it possible for Media to become something that is also extremely personal.  Just think about it…

A television set is on for nearly eight hours in the average American home each day, with each occupant viewing something on television for nearly four hours daily.  The average American listens to radio over three hours each day.  Add video games, Internet browsing, DVD watching, occasional movie attendance, and roadside billboards to this equation, and it is clear that Americans are deluged with mediated messages in every waking moment.

By now, media use (and misuse) is just an accepted aspect of American culture, as people have become protoplasmic blobs being washing over by countless messages that seek to alter your political views, make you buy something, or change your values.  These narcotizing messages seek to keep you watching so that your eyeballs can be sold to advertisers.

Media usage has become more than a supplement to our American lifestyle; it has become perhaps the largest aspect of our lifestyle.  More productive pursuits like exercise, family interaction, community work, and household duties are over looked in order to keep up with American Idol or catch the big ball game on TV.  For most Americans, time spent with the media surpasses time spent at work or at sleep, and certainly surpasses interaction with friends and family.[7]

And, if you’re anything like me, the cell phone is one of the last things—along with the lights—that we turn off at night, as well as one of the first things that we check when we get up in the morning—so, it doesn’t get much more personal than that!

Today’s Media Landscape

  1. The Who

Now that we know a little about the what and the why of Media, it is time for us to learn something about the who behind it.  In other words, who are the people or groups whose pockets go deep enough to buy and control this very expensive and highly profitable global communications network, and how are they using this powerful tool to advance Satan’s agenda?

Who owns it?

Throughout much of the twentieth century, Media ownership was regulated by laws enforced by the Federal Communications Commission—laws including…

  • the 1941 National TV Ownership Rule, which prohibited broadcasters from owning television stations that could reach more 35 percent of the nation’s homes;
  • the 1970 Radio/TV Cross-Ownership Restriction, which prevented broadcasters from owning a radio and a TV station in the same market; and,
  • the 1975 Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Prohibition, which was designed to limit the ownership of a newspaper and a TV station in the same market.

However, during the Reagan administration, new laws were enacted which dramatically reduced government regulation of the Media and initiated what was soon to become an unprecedented period of consolidation for the large mass-media companies in the United States.  Whereas, in 1980, about fifty corporations were controlling nearly all of U.S. Media, today, that control has been consolidated in just a handful of Media Conglomerates[8]–with only recently, two of the largest media mergers ever to take place having been announced—these being, AT&T’s offer to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion, and the Walt Disney Company’s bid of more than $52 billion to buy out much of 21st Century Fox’s holdings.  After this, according to information gathered for National Public Radio, the major owners of digital media, with a sampling of their holdings, will be…

  • Walt Disney Company—including 21st Century Fox and its properties, ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel, Freeform, Walt Disney Studios, Pixar, Marvel, Touchstone Pictures, Lucasfilm, Disney Digital Network, Polaris, Disneyland, Walt Disney World and other parks and resorts;
  • 21st Century Fox—Fox News, Business, Sports, TV Network, National Geographic Partners, FX, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Blue Sky Studios;
  • Time Warner, Inc.—CNN, HBO, Warner Brothers, Cinemax, TBS, TNT, NBA.com, MCAA.com, TMZ.com, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, DC Comics, Bleacher Report;
  • AT&T—AT&T, DirecTV, Cricket Wireless, U-verse, YP.com (Yellowpages.com), Sky Brasil, Time Warner and its properties;
  • Comcast Corporation/NBC Universal—XFINITY, NBC News, Sports, TV Network, MSNBC, CBNC, NBC Entertainment, Telemundo, Bravo, Sprout, USA Network, Syfy, E!, Philadelphia Flyers, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Focus Features, Universal Studios and other parks and resorts, Golf Channel, Oxygen;
  • CBS Corporation—CBS News, TV, Radio, Entertainment, Sports, Showtime, Simon & Schuster, Smithsonian Channel, CNET, ZDNet, TV Guide, Last.fm, Metacritic, Chowhound, Gamespot, Watch! Magazine;
  • Viacom, Inc.—Paramount Pictures, BET, Comedy Central, MTV, VH!, Nickelodeon, Spike, CMT, Centric, Logo TV, TV Land, Tr3s;
  • Univision Communications, Inc.—Univision TV, Radio, Digital Networks, Fusion, The Onion, The Root, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Kotaku, Uforia;
  • Verizon Communications, Inc.—Verizon Wireless, Fios, AOL + Yahoo!, Flickr, Tumblr, HuffPost, Engadget, TechCrunch, MAKERS, BUILD Studios, Rivals.com, Ryot, go90, Terremark;
  • com, Inc.—Amazon Prime, Cloud Drive, Web Services, Marketplace, Whole Foods, Echo, Fire TV, Kindle, Audible, Twitch, IMDb, Goodreads, AbeBooks, ComiXology, DPReview, Zappos and other online retailers, The Washington Post;
  • Alphabet, Inc./Google—YouTube, Android, Chrome, Nexus, Pixel, Google Home, Blogger, Zagat, Nest, Waze, Verily, Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Hangouts and other apps, Project Fi; and,
  • Facebook, Inc.—Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus, Facebook Messenger, Internet.org.[9]

Some of the companies not included in NPR’s listings are the leaders in the Radio and Print Industries…

  • Clear Channel—which owns 866 radio stations and Premiere Radio Networks (a national radio network that produces, distributes or represents approximately 90 syndicated radio programs, serves nearly 5,800 radio station affiliates and has over 213 million weekly listeners, and with programs including the Rush Limbaugh ShowGlenn Beck and the Sean Hannity Show); Fox Sports Radio; Fox News Radio; Australian Radio Network;
  • Bertelsmann—one of the world’s largest media companies, it also owns Random House (with over 200 imprints in 15 countries, including the Ballantine Publishing Group, the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Broadway, the Crown Publishing Group, the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, Pantheon, Random House U.K.), the Knopf Publishing Group, and Waterbrook Press;
  • The Hearst Corporation–a media conglomerate that controls or has ownership stakes in newspaper, magazine, television, cable network and Internet properties—including Twenty U.S. magazines (like Car and DriverCosmopolitanCountry LivingELLEEsquireGood HousekeepingMarie ClaireOPopular MechanicsRedbook, Seventeen and Woman’s Day); King Features (syndicator of newspaper comic strips including BlondieBeetle BaileyHagar the HorribleFamily CircusDennis the MenacePopeye); Black Book; Hearst Business Media (Electronics Products MagazineFloor Covering Weekly); IDG/Hearst; Hearst Books; Hearst News Service; and,
  • The Tribune Company—which owns 23 TV stations, one radio station, 12 daily newspapers- including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sunand the Hartford Courant, and numerous magazines and other media properties.[10]

Why is this information so important for us to know?  Because these are the companies that are controlling what we read in print, what we hear on the radio, and what we see on television, at the movies, and on the internet every day.  These are the groups who, through the Image Culture they are helping to create, are replacing our reality with their fantasy, and reshaping our values and our views on life and of the world.  And, without a doubt, these are the organizations which, as they continue to consolidate, will provide the Coming World Ruler with the Communications Monopoly he will need to control the world and the mindset of its entire population.

Going back to our earlier definition of Mass Communication, then, we can now identify these Media Giants as…

…the professional communicators who are using [their] technological devices to share messages over some distance to influence large audiences.

This, of course, begs the following questions…

What kinds of messages are they choosing to share; and
How are they attempting to influence us through these messages?

What Messages are Really Being Communicated

Mediated Messages and Influence Peddling

Although there are millions—perhaps even billions—of messages conveyed through the Media each day, of particular interest to us are those which are designed to…

Separate Us from Our Money;
Steal Our Identity; and,
Secure Our Support or Sway Our Vote. 

  1. Separating Us from Our Money

There can be no question that the most plentiful and the most obvious messages are those whose purpose it is to sell us something.  Every day, no matter which way we turn, we are confronted by advertisements of one kind or another.  That’s because…

One of the basic ingredients of American popular culture is consumption, and it is the advertising industry that makes mass consumption possible.  Advertising sells us sexuality, beauty, youth, fashion, happiness, success, status and luxury.  When Calvin Klein, for example, advertises blue jeans, he is selling us sex appeal, not jeans.  Polo sells us fashion status and Miller beer offers us macho good times.

Advertising is an important element of our culture because it reflects and attempts to change our life styles.  New cultural trends and fashions are first transmitted to the mass culture through advertisements.

It is estimated that, by the time a person raised in the United States reaches the age of 21, he or she has been exposed to 1 million to 2 million advertisements.  The cumulative effects of this lifelong exposure plays a significant role in shaping our behavior, social beliefs and values.[11]

And one man who was extremely instrumental in the success of advertising as we know it today was noted psychologist and radical behaviorist, John B. Watson; for it was he who…

…recommended to advertisers that they could make a fortune by manipulating basic human motivations and emotions to their advantage, and often, of course, to the consumer’s disadvantage.  One of his basic ideas, used with gusto and impunity by advertisers today, was to convince people that their possessions were inferior and consequently that they needed new possessions.  In other words, he helped create the modern consumer mentality…[12]

As a result, day in and day out, consumers are bombarded with messages telling them that they need to buy bigger houses, newer cars, the latest fashions, and the best technological devices—and that, for their overall well-being, they need to take more vacations, eat out more often, and still somehow manage to lose weight.  Far from benefiting from this consumer mentality, more Americans than ever are finding themselves over their heads in debt, more overweight, and more stressed out and feeling inadequate than ever before.  What has really been sold and bought, then, is the lie that more will make us happy; an exchange that has most often taken place right under our noses, in our very own living rooms.  Or, as Kalle Lasn, a co-founder of the Canadian media criticism and environmentalist magazine Adbusters describes it…

…In the privacy of our living rooms we made a devil’s bargain with the advertising industry:  Give us an endless flow of free programs and we’ll let you spend 12 minutes of every hour promoting consumption.  For a long time, this seemed to work.  The ads grated on our nerves but it was a small price to pay for ‘free television.’  What we didn’t realize when we made our pact with the advertisers was that their agenda would eventually become the heart and soul of television.  We have allowed the most powerful communications tool ever invented to become the command center of a consumer society defining our lives and culture the way family, community and spiritual values once did.[13]

Sadly, with our eyeballs having been sold to the highest advertising bidder in this way, many of us are ill-equipped to recognize the dangers inherent in the next set of Messages when they come our way.

Eyeballs for Sale

  1. Stealing Our Identity

If advertisements are the most plentiful and most obvious of Media’s Messages, surely the subtlest are those that are designed to steal our identities.  Usually, when we hear the term Identity Theft, we think of a person whose financial information has been stolen by some unknown internet hacker, who has made off with his or her social security number, or bank and credit card account numbers.  As devastating as this kind of crime can be to an individual’s long-term financial situation and reputation, there is a crime that is far more subtle and insidious being perpetrated upon the numberless recipients of Mass Media’s Messages.  This crime is the slow, subconscious, yet systematic theft of each recipient’s God-given Image and Spiritual Identity—a loss of reputation which will have everlasting ramifications.

Through the Media’s programming of television, music and music videos, movies, the internet and social media, and video games, today’s airwaves have been saturated with Images promoting hedonistic and godless lifestyles.  By appealing to our flesh—that is, our baser human instincts—they have successfully convinced many of us that what is evil is really good, and what is good is really evil.  Routinely, their Images have been and are being used to promote…

Idolatry and a rejection of God;
Vulgarity, swearing, and cursing;
Disrespect for parents and of one another;
Disrespect for authority and for life;
Drunkenness and substance abuse;
Lying, cheating, stealing;
Violence and murder;
Greed, covetous, and corruption;
Sexual immorality—both heterosexual and homosexual; and,
Marital infidelity and divorce.

In case you hadn’t noticed, each of these is a violation of God’s Standard of Righteousness, better known as the Ten Commandments—and is something which God has repeatedly warned will be judged and punished.  Not only that but, each time a person buys into the lies embedded within Media’s Messages, that person trades the Image of God that he was designed to bear for the one that Satan has long been trying to imprint upon him.  And without the light and salt effects produced by that missing Godly Image, individuals have become devoid of purpose in life, families have fallen apart, and the moral fabric of society has, over time, been eroded.

What We Take in Helps Make Us What We Are–or Shouldn’t Be! Securing Our Support or Swaying Our Vote

  1. Securing Our Support or Swaying Our Vote

No where is this erosion more evident than in the Media Messages whose intent it is to secure our support or sway our vote—with the Media’s coverage of Politics and Public Affairs being a prime example.  In my lifetime alone, journalism—both print and television—has gone from being a respected and objective source of information to being a dog-and-pony show, with its blatant liberal bias on display for all to see.  Instead of just relaying the facts, today’s reporters have taken to giving their opinions instead, as they attempt to impress and gain a following with their editorialization of the stories they are covering.  Instead of real news reporting being the order of the day…

…studies have confirmed that the focus in journalism has shifted over the last two decades from an emphasis on policy, politics, ideas, and analysis to the current agenda of scandal; personality; human interest, entertainment, and spot-news cop-shop stories of crime, wrecks, and fires.  In most local television news markets, stories about crime outnumber stories about government and policy by a more than three-to-one margin.[14]

One must question whether the media help or hinder our collective ability to learn what is really happening in the world, and whether television news is trying to dazzle us or inform us.[15]

Further evidence of society’s erosion can be seen as a result of its embrace of all things “gay”the promotion of which has been one of Mass Media’s most cherished causes.  Once again, just over the course of my life, the major Media outlets have gone from producing television programs and films which wouldn’t even show married couples sharing the same bed to shows and movies promoting every kind of sexual deviation as normal and worth experiencing.

The Media Would Have Us Believe that Love Justifies all Behavior–and that It Should Be Accepted

To demonstrate just how successful the Media-promoted Gay/Lesbian movement has been, we need only look at society today and compare it with the proposals contained in the ‘Gay Bill of Rights’ legislation which was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 3, 1985.  In that bill, the LGBT agenda was clearly stated to include…

  • the legalization of homosexuality and lesbianism;
  • the criminal prosecution of all churches, schools and businesses for refusing to hire homosexuals;
  • the criminal prosecution of an individual who refuses housing accommodations to homosexual/lesbian couples;
  • the legitimization of marriage between homosexual/lesbian couples, as well as their adoption of children; and
  • the requirement that all public schools create sex education courses taught by homosexuals in order to show their lifestyle as a moral, healthy, and normal alternative to heterosexuality.[16]

With each item on this wish list now having been checked off, what we’re left with is a society in a state of confusion because its citizens have lost their sexual bearings.  Young children in school no longer know whether they should go into the boys’ or girls’ restrooms, while older ones are in a quandary as they try to decide which sex they should be.  Of course, this state of Androgyny, where people…

–are both male and female; hermaphroditic;
–have both masculine and feminine characteristics;
–have an ambiguous sexual identity; and,
–are neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance…[17]

… has been Satan’s goal all along.  That’s because, once people have lost their sexual identity, the last vestiges of God’s Image will have been removed, and they will be prepared to worship the hermaphroditic image of the Antichrist when he makes his appearance.

Satan’s Plan from the Beginning

Media’s Motive

The final question that we need to answer, then, is this:  why would the owners of these Mass Media Conglomerates use their messages to help create a society in which its citizens…

  • are in debt up to their eyeballs, relentlessly chasing unattainable images and lifestyles–like gerbils on a wheel;
  • have been narcotized by mindless “entertainment” while being left ill-informed about what is actually happening in the world; and,
  • are so confused about their sexual identity that they are willing to try anything, no matter how outrageous it is, in an attempt to figure out who they are?

It’s because the heads of these organizations are members of the groups we learned about when we surveyed the Earth’s Physical and Financial Landscapesgroups that are dedicated to the creation of a One World Government (which the Bible predicts will happen)—a government with…

  • One international identity, and one set of universal values;
  • Centralized control of the people in a society with no middle class, only rulers and servants;
  • A zero-growth policy designed to eliminate prosperity and facilitate the repression needed to keep society divided;
  • A state of perpetual imbalance that will keep people physically, mentally, and emotionally confused and exhausted;
  • Centralized control of education, enabling them to erase and rewrite the history that is taught to students;
  • Centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;
  • Empowerment of the United Nations as the world’s government;
  • An American Union, a trading bloc similar to the European Union;
  • Expansion of NATO—with NATO becoming the UN’s world army;
  • One legal system; and,
  • One socialist welfare state, where those who cooperate will be rewarded and those who don’t will be eliminated.[18]

As for the Media’s role in all of this, it has been their job to distract us from what is really going on, and to con us, confuse us, and condition us for the coming new regime.  In remarks made at the 1991 Bilderberger meeting, David Rockefeller praised the Media for their part in the advancement of the globalist agenda

We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications, whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years…

It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years.  But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government.  The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practice in past centuries.[19]

The elite in this case—those who anticipate being the head and not the tail in this coming world government—would be the Media, as well as the members of the other globalist groups, who are helping to usher in the earthly kingdom over which Satan will one day rule.  Of course, anyone who is familiar with the book of Revelation knows that for those who are responsible for the promotion of Satan’s Image on the earth, the story does not end well at all!

 

Phillips Craig & Dean remind of our responsibility to be the image of God to our children…

 

 

[1] media. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/media(accessed: February 9, 2018).

[2] Stan Le Roy Wilson, Mass Media/Mass Culture: An Introduction (New York: Random House, 1989), 14.

[3] Early Methods of Communication, Skwirk On-Line Education Website, at http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-11_u-26_t-70_c-247/nsw/science-technology/way-out-communication/delivering-messages/early-methods

[4] Wilson, Mass Media/Mass Culture, 24-25.

[5] Wilson, Mass Media/Mass Culture, 26-27.

[6] Elizabeth Thoman, Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, Center for Media Literacy at http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/rise-image-culture.

[7] Jeffrey McCall, Viewer Discretion Advised (Lanham, Maryland: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2007), 1.

[8] Mark Crispin Miller, “Media Monopolies are a Serious Problem,” in Mass Media; Opposing Viewpoints, ed. William Dudley (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2005), 77.

[9] Alina Selyukh, Maria Hollenhorst, and Katie Park, “Big Media Companies and Their Many Brands—In One Chart,” for National Public Radio at https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/28/499495517/big-media-companies-and-their-many-brands-in-one-chart, updated December 22, 2017.

[10] “Who Owns the Media?,” article on Free Press website at https://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart, accessed March 14, 2018.

[11] Wilson, Mass Media/Mass Culture, 263-264.

[12] Karen E. Dill, How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through the Media Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 144.

[13] Thoman, Rise of the Image Culture.

[14] McCall, Viewer Discretion Advised, 51.

[15] McCall, Viewer Discretion Advised, 69.

[16] John Daniel, Scarlet and the Beast, Vol.2 (Tyler, Texas: JKI Publishing, 1994), 68.

[17] androgyny. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/androgyny (accessed: March 29, 2018).

[18] Daniel Estulin, The True Story of the Bilderberger Group (Waterville, Oregon: TrineDay Publishers, 2007), 42-43.

[19] Estulin, The Bilderberger Group, 92-93.

Spiritual Warfare: A Question of Authority

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The Workout Room

Take the Challenge

So far, in our efforts to become more spiritually fit, we have successfully worked our way through three of the four levels of exercise in our Workout Program where at…

     Level 1, we covered the basics of our Faith; learning how, through Salvation, we are Redeemed from Sin and Death, and adopted as children into the Family of God.

     Level 2, we dealt with Sanctification; or, the life-long training process by which the Holy Spirit transforms us from the Sinners we once were into Holy Sons and Daughters of God.

     Level 3, we learned about Service; or, the Work of God that we, as His Children—the Church—have been commissioned to carry out. It was here that we were introduced to the concept that…

…as the Corporate Body of Christ, we are to reach out to those in the world around us, bringing them the good news of God’s Love and Salvation;
…as the Corporate Soul of Christ, we are to relate as Family to those who are already a part of God’s Family; and,
…as the Corporate Spirit of Christ, we are to serve as the Army of Spiritual Warriors charged with the task of liberating those still held in captivity by Satan, and taking his territory captive for the Kingdom of God.

Since this last matter deals with Spiritual Warfare, something which we have only recently touched upon, we will make its study the objective of this fourth and final Level of Exercise in our Program—a Program which, when completed, will have helped us…

Define our Position, as a Child of God;
Refine our Person, as a Child of God;
Outline our Purpose, as a Child of God; and,
Underline our Power, as a Child of God. 

It is through this progressive pattern of growth—from Position to Person to Purpose to Power—that we have advanced from our original state of spiritual infancy to God’s more highly desired state of spiritual maturity, becoming better equipped along the way for our eternal destiny with Jesus Christ.

Not How to Spend Eternity

It’s Certainly Not Biblical

What is this destiny for which we, as the Children of God, are presently being equipped?   Contrary to one of the more popular conceptions of what life will be like in the hereafter, we will not be floating around on a cloud, with a crown on our heads and nothing better to do than strum on our harps for all eternity.  Not only is this a perfectly wasteful—not to mention boring—way to spend one’s everlasting life, but it in no way compensates us for all of the hardships we suffered through during our earthly sojourns.  And, it certainly doesn’t call for any specialized equipping on our parts to prepare for it.

On the other hand, the destiny that God has planned for us is a gloriously challenging one.  In keeping with His divinely ordained principles of Sowing and Reaping, it is one that will provide us with levels of rewards commensurate with the levels of faithfulness we have demonstrated during our times of training on the earth, and elevate us to positions of authority in the coming Kingdom of God.  From these positions, we will exercise the Dominion originally gifted to us by God, lost to us as a result of the Fall, and restored to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

Destined for Dominion, Subjected to Slavery 

We first learned about this matter of Dominion during one of our visits to the story of Adam and Eve.  For, it was there that, upon his creation, Man—as both Male and Female—was commanded by God to fill the earth with people, and to rule over everything in it.  This Right to Rule, however, was lost when Adam, as a result of his disobedience to God, forfeited his Position of Power—a position which Satan immediately claimed as his own.

In his classic book, Destined for the Throne, the late Paul Billheimer explains some of the legal issues involved in this transfer of power…

The entire universe is governed by law…God’s grant of authority and dominion over the earth to man was a bona-fide gift.  This authority and dominion became legally his.  What he did with it was his own responsibility.  If, so to speak, he ‘fumbled the ball’ and lost it, God could not lawfully step in and repossess it for him.[1]

We know from Romans 6:16 that…

…if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

Therefore, when Adam chose to obey Satan instead of God, he became Satan’s slave.  And…

As a slave of Satan, Adam lost all of his legal rights, not only to his person but also to his domain.  This gave Satan legal authority to rule over man and the earth.  If Satan’s dominion was to be revoked, a way had to be found to redeem fallen man and recover his lost authority without violating universal principles of justice.

No angel could enter the contest because these legal rights were never his.  Thus a member of Adam’s race had to be found who could qualify to enter suit in universal court and wrest Adam’s lost heritage and dominion from Satan.  The government of the earth had been given to man.  It was lost by man.  It could be legally recovered only by a man.[2]

But where was such a man to be found?  To qualify for the task at hand, he would have to be a full-fledged human being; and yet, because Adam and all those who would eventually descend from him had become the slaves of Satan, he would have to be sinless in order to be free from Satan’s control…

To the human mind the situation was hopeless, but God found a way.  ‘When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons’ (Gal. 4:4).  God solved the problem by the Incarnation.

Since Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, the divine nature was present in Him.  Because he was sinless, Satan had no claim upon Him.  But because He was ‘made of a woman,’ He was an authentic human being and could therefore qualify as a bona-fide member of the human race to enter the legal fight to reclaim Adam’s lost estate.[3]

Through His Death and Resurrection, Christ restored our Lost Authority.

He Has Made Us More than Conquerors


The Spiritual Battle to the Cross
 

Although I can’t think of anyone who would willingly sign up for a task like this, the spiritual battle to win back our freedom that Jesus freely committed Himself to was one that was repeatedly characterized by humiliation, rejection, opposition, and affliction; which, when you put them all together, add up to a whole lot of suffering.

Just think of the humiliation involved when…

…Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2: 5-8).

Or, the rejection He must have experienced when…

  • His family…went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind (Mark 3:21).
  • The people in His hometown said, ‘Where did this man get these things?  What is the wisdom given to him?  How are such mighty works done by his hands?  Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?  And are not his sisters here with us?’  And they took offense at him (Mark 6: 2-3).
  • John the Baptist sent messengers to Jesus, asking, ‘Are you [sure] you are the one [the Messiah] who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ (Matt. 11:3)
  • Upon hearing some of Jesus’ hard sayings, ‘…many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.’  (John 6:66)

As for opposition, Jesus had that in abundance; for, even as a child, when He was perceived to be a contender for his throne, King Herod tried to have Him killed.  And later, during His earthly ministry, He found Himself constantly at odds with all factions of Jewish society…

  • With the Sadducees, because He threatened their economic and political power;
  • With the Pharisees, because they considered Jesus a law-breaker, and His teachings overturned their religious traditions;
  • With the Essenes, the ascetics of the day, who considered Jesus too worldly because He socialized with “sinners;”
  • With the Zealots, or the anarchists of the day, because Jesus preached a message of love instead of rebellion; and,
  • With the people who, in their apathy, did not want to be confronted with change.

And, when it came to affliction, no one has ever endured more.  Of Him, it was said that…

…he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.  By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?  (Is. 53: 2-8)

And, if all this wasn’t enough, from the time of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry until the moment when He drew His final breath, Satan, in an effort to take Him captive through sin just like the first Adam, was constantly working to trip Him up…

The fallen Lucifer, once the Light Bearer, the guardian of the throne of God, the highest of all pre-Adamic created beings, marshaled all of the available resources of the underworld in an effort to break down the allegiance of the God-man to His heavenly Father.  One weakness revealed, one thought of rebellion or self will entertained, and all of Jesus’ efforts to repossess the world and its enslaved race from the usurping god of the world would be lost.[4]

But, Praise God, in spite of all this pressure, Jesus didn’t give in; for…

When Jesus died without failing in the smallest detail, His death resulted not only in defeating Satan’s purpose to obtain a claim upon Him—it also canceled all of Satan’s legal claim upon the earth and the whole human race…

Therefore, since Calvary, Satan has absolutely no rights or claims upon anyone or anything.  Whatever authority he carried with him on his banishment from heaven passed into the hands of the new Man along with the lost heritage of Adam[5]

We can be victorious in Spiritual Warfare when we exercise our Spiritual Authority in Christ

So We Can Rule and Reign with Him Throughout Eternity


Our Authority Restored

It is this authority that Jesus restored to His disciples; the same authority…

…to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall injure you (Luke 10:19)…

…that Jesus delegated to the seventy-two He sent out to proclaim the Kingdom of God—and, it is the same authority that we possess today.  For…

As individuals we have authority over all the combined powers of the enemy.  This is an incredible, wonderful truth.  Everything at Satan’s disposal—every demon, every coven, every cult and religion, every work, and every influence—is subject to the authority given to us by Jesus.

When Jesus rose from the dead after ripping the usurped authority from Satan’s hands, He did not immediately go to heaven.  He stopped off to see the eleven remaining disciples…Jesus handed to them the authority He had taken from Satan.  The authority legally changed hands once more and belonged to man again.[6]

This truth is what we need to keep at the forefront of our thinking as we approach our upcoming exercises in Spiritual Warfare—because our success in any battle will be totally dependent upon our acknowledgement of the One who has already won the victory.  Satan and his demons certainly know who it is; for, it was Jesus who, after overcoming every form of Spiritual Warfare in His life–on the Cross and through His resurrection…

…disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them (Colossians 2:15).

Even so, Satan and his legions continue to fight on, using our ignorance of the authority in Christ as one of their chief means of success.  Let’s determine not to give them that critical edge over us; always bearing in mind that, in whatever situation we may find ourselves, the One who won the war for us has already been there on our behalf…

…For, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

Therefore…let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.  In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  (Hebrews 12:1-4)

The Victory of the Cross

The War Has Already Been Won for Us by Jesus

In our next exercise, we will learn more about the destiny for which we are being prepared.

 

 

The Gaither Vocal Band reminds us of who we are in “On the Authority”…

 

 

[1] Paul E. Billheimer, Destined for the Throne (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers, 1975), 73.

[2] Billheimer, Destined, 73-74.

[3] Billheimer, Destined, 74.

[4] Billheimer, Destined, 76.

[5] Billheimer, Destined, 79-80.

[6] Dean Sherman, Spiritual Warfare for Every Christian (Seattle, Washington: YWAM Publishing, 1990), 130-131.

Service:  Women and the Work of God, Part 2

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The Role of Women in the Service of God

It’s Way Past Time!

As promised at the end of our last workout session, we are back to finish what we started in our exercise on Service: Women and the Work of God.  There, in Part One, in pursuit of a better understanding of the role God intends for Women to play in the Service of His Kingdom, we once again went back to the story of Adam and Eve, looking at it to determine…

  1. God’s Purposes for the Sexes;
  2. God’s Punishment of the Sexes; and,
  3. God’s Promise to the Sexes.

As a result, we discovered that in His quest for a Family to love, God created Man as a Spirit Being, a Spirit which He then placed in the two houses He called Male and Female.  As a Spirit, Man could relate to God and in the physical houses of Male and Female, he could (re)produce the Family that God has always desired.  We also learned that because he was created first, the Man was placed in the Position of Head over God’s Creation, with the Woman being created later to be his Companion and Helper in carrying out the Work of God.  This arrangement, however, did not mean that the Male was superior to the Female, for from the beginning of their history together, they were both…

Equal in their standing before God;
Equal in their call to the work of God; and,
Equal in their blessing by God. 

Something else that we learned was that in his Position as Head, the Man was meant to reflect the Headship of God the Father, while the Woman was intended to be a picture of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit.  As such, the Man possessed what the late Dr. Myles Munroe referred to as Position Power, while the Woman possessed what he aptly described as Influence Power.  In the words of Dr. Munroe…

Power and influence are equal, but different…

First, position-power generally comes with a title, such as king, governor, doctor, or pastor.  Second, position-power is usually executed through commands, whether verbal or written.  It is the authority that goes with the position, and the commands, that is the nature of the man’s power.

Influence-power manifests itself in a very different way.

First, a woman may have a title, but she doesn’t need a title to lead.  She leads by influence…Second, a woman doesn’t need to talk in order to run things.  She leads just by her influence…the woman doesn’t need to say a word; she just looks, and people respond.  This is a very powerful influence.[1]

Position-power announces itself.  Influence-power just comes in and controls things.  By the time you realize its presence, it has already taken over.[2] 

We will learn more about these differing leadership functions as we progress in this exercise—especially when dealing with Man’s Testing in the Garden, and the consequences of his failure there.  Since that was where we left off in Part 1, that is where we will begin this time—as we continue our look into…

  1. God’s Punishment of the Sexes

No matter how well you package it, testing is one gift that I think few, if any, would look forward to receiving.  At its mere mention, most of us shrink back, no doubt put off by the mental images it evokes—images of the hard work and preparation it requires, the struggle involved in making the right choices, and the thoughts of failure and the consequences which that would bring.  Given the amount of angst involved in testing’s anticipation, it was probably a good thing Adam and Eve did not see it coming.

God, on the other hand, not only knew that it was coming but He purposely allowed it into their lives.  That’s because to Him, testing is essential to the proving of one’s righteousness and obedience to the Word and Will of God; so essential, in fact, that He required the same kind of testing of His Son, Jesus Christ.  For immediately following His baptism and just prior to the beginning of His public ministry…

…Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1).

The Apostle James explains some of the principles of testing in this way…

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:12-15).

While this sort of downward progression is something we see taking place in the testing of Adam and Eve, of more immediate interest to us is the cunning plan lurking behind Satan’s temptation, and the bearing it will have on God’s punishment of Man’s transgression.

The Cunning Behind the Con 

In Service:  Interrupted…By Devilish Design, we learned of Satan’s goal to subvert the Kingdom of God and supplant it with his own.  Since God’s Kingdom is a Spirit-Down one, ordered in the following way…

God first;
The Man next;
Then the Woman; and,
Lastly the Animals…

 …for Satan to achieve his goal, he would have to overturn God’s Spirit-Down order and replace it with a Flesh-Up one.  By Flesh-Up, I mean that Man would be living life no longer under the direction of the Spirit of God, but according to the fleshly dictates imposed on him by his body and soul.  In a Flesh-Up order, Man would be dead to the things of God, and the line of communication between him and his Maker would be severed.  In this condition, he could not become a Child of God, and any Service he might have rendered as such to the Kingdom of God would be eliminated.  This, of course, is exactly the type of situation that Satan was hoping to create when he approached Adam and Eve in the Garden. 

The Effects of the Fall

As for his method of achieving this end, instead of confronting Adam directly, the possessor of the Position Power and the direct Word of God, Satan made his sly and subtle appeal to Eve.

The devil is clever…he was after the man, because the man is the foundation, but he couldn’t get to the man because position-power can usually stand firm as long as its position is genuine.  You can’t destroy position-power directly; you have to destroy it through influence.[3]

So, appearing in the form of a Serpent, he beguiled Eve into eating of the Forbidden Fruit and then, through the manipulation of her Influence Power, he succeeded in enticing her husband to join her in her Sin.  As a result of this coup, Satan’s reversal of God’s order was complete, for…

  • A member of the Animal Kingdom had usurped the authority of the Woman;
  • The Woman had used her Powers of Persuasion to usurp the authority of the Man; and,
  • The Man had rejected the authority of God and His Word and abdicated his position of Headship in the process.

The Consequences of the Con

In Genesis 3: 14-19, we find the record of God’s judgment on this upheaval of His divine order, a judgment in which the punishment was meted out in the same order in which the crime was committed.  Addressing the Serpent first, God said…

Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

Next, He came to the Woman and said…

I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.  Your desire shall be contrary to your husband [for your husband, in some translations], but he shall rule over you.

Then finally, to the Man, He had this to say…

Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Looking closely at these judgments, we can see that in each case, the punishment was appropriate for the crime—something to be expected, given that everything in God’s Creation was designed to reproduce “…after its own kind.”  We know this to be true because God said so ten times in the Creation Story found in Genesis 1—a principle which was later affirmed by the Apostle Paul in this very familiar passage…

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Galatians 6: 7-8).

And… there is NO Way of Getting Around This

Here, then, is the way this Sowing and Reaping Principle played out in God’s Judgment on the perpetrators of this crime…

The Serpent—as an Animal 

  • Because it had presumed to raise itself above its divinely ordained station in life, it would be brought down, cursed as the lowliest of creatures, to spend its days slithering on the ground.
  • Because it had tempted Eve to eat what she shouldn’t have, it would have to eat what it didn’t want to—which was dust.
  • Instead of being looked upon as the beautiful creature that it once was, it would forever after be regarded as a loathsome beast.
  • Instead of the friendly relationship it had shared with the Woman in the Garden, from then on, their relationship would be one of mutual hostility.

The Serpent—as the Devil

  • As the one who had exalted himself in rebellion against God, leading others to do the same, he was given notice that eventually he would be “…brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit (Isaiah 14:15).”
  • Here, he was presented with a “Declaration of War” by God—the notice of perpetual warfare between his kingdom and the Kingdom of God, between his offspring, the Wicked, and the offspring of the Woman, the Righteous.
  • And, because it was the Woman whom he had beguiled, here he was notified that it would be through her childbearing of the Righteous Seed of God that he would ultimately suffer defeat and meet his doom.

The Woman

  • The blessing of childbearing, which prior to the Fall, was to have been a joy, would now be accompanied by pain and sorrow.
  • Submission to her husband, which before the Fall, would never have been an issue or a hardship, would now be a daily struggle.
  • Her Influence Power, which before the Fall would have remained unchecked, would—until the coming of the promised Deliverer and Restorer—have to be regulated by means of external restraints. For, apart from the internal control provided by the Holy Spirit, the Woman would continue to use her Influence Power to manipulate and control the Man, while he would use his Position Power to try and dominate her in an effort to keep her “in her place.”  For some examples of a Woman’s Influence Power gone horribly wrong, we need look no farther than the Old Testament…

— To Sarah who, through her Influence Power, convinced Abraham to have a child by her maid, Hagar, rather than wait for God to fulfill His promise;
— To Delilah who, through her Influence Power, succeeded in bringing down Israel’s most powerful judge, Samson; and,
— To Jezebel who, through her Influence Power, manipulated her weak-willed husband, Ahab, and corrupted Israel with her idolatry.

The Man

  • His habitation from then on would be among thorns and thistles, instead of the lush beauty he had experienced in the Garden.
  • His occupation would become a toil, instead of the pleasure that it had once been in the Garden.
  • His food would become difficult to obtain, instead of being readily available, as it had been in the Garden.
  • His life would be shortened, and he would be returned to the soil, instead of living forever in the Garden of God’s Fellowship.

At this point, it is important for us to note that God’s Punishment on the Sexes here was in no way a Curse.  That’s because, back in Genesis 1: 28, God had already blessed the Man and Woman.  And, from what we learn later in Numbers 23: 8,20, when the prophet Balaam was hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel, every time he tried, a blessing would come out instead of a curse.  Balaam’s explanation at the time was this…

How can I curse whom God has not cursed?  How can I denounce whom God has not denounced?   …he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it.

Since that which God has blessed cannot be cursed, the only things to be cursed here were the Serpent and the Soil.  For the Serpent, there is no hope that his curse will ever be removed; but, for the Soil, there is such a hope, and it will be realized when God’s Promise to the Sexes has been fulfilled…

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Romans 8: 19-22).

  1. God’s Promise to the Sexes.

The Promise that God made to the Sexes may be hard for us to spot at first, and that’s because it’s contained in the unlikeliest of places—it was not given to the Sexes directly but was first spoken of in the curse which God pronounced on the Serpent.  His Promise was that one day, a Holy Offspring would be born to the Woman—the One by whom Satan would finally be crushed, and all that the Sexes had lost in the Fall would be restored.  Of course, this Redeemer and Restorer was none other than Jesus Christ, who, through His obedience to the Father, not only secured our Salvation, but restored us to the Purposes of God.  Matthew Henry describes the work of Christ on our behalf in the following way…

How admirably the satisfaction our Lord Jesus made by his death and sufferings answered to the sentence here passed upon our first parents.

— Did travailing pains come in with sin? We read of the travail of Christ’s soul (Isaiah 53:11).
— Did subjection come in with sin? Christ was made under the law (Galatians 4:4).

— Did the curse come in with sin? Christ was made a curse for us, died a cursed death (Galatians 3:13).
— Did thorns come in with sin? He was crowned with thorns for us.
— Did sweat come in with sin? He for us did sweat as it were great drops of blood.
— Did sorrow come in with sin? He was a man of sorrows, his soul was, in his agony, exceedingly sorrowful.
— Did death come in with sin? He became obedient to death.[4]

Through His substitutionary death on the Cross—dying the death that should have been ours—Christ redeemed us from the power and the penalty of the Law, delivered us from bondage to sin and death, reconciled us to the Father, gifted us with eternal life, and empowered us with His Holy Spirit.  With the Spirit now living within us, writing God’s Laws on our hearts, the restraints previously imposed on us by the Old Testament Law are no longer needed.

Now, empowered from within by the Spirit of Christ, the Man can love his wife as Christ loves the Church, regard her as his equal in the work of the Lord, and not have to resort to his Position Power to dominate her into submission.  The Woman, empowered by the same Spirit, can respect her husband and submit to his leadership—for the sake of order—just as Christ has submitted to the leadership of the Father.  She can keep her Influence Power in check herself, making sure that it is used to glorify God and not to manipulate others—because…

Under the redemptive work of Christ, the woman is not only restored to fellowship with God but is restored to the position of partner with her male counterpart.  Therefore, she is no longer to be dominated or ruled by the male, because, if she were, it would mean that the redemptive work of Christ had not been successful.[5]

If the Spirit of God can raise Christ from the dead, He can certainly control a Woman’s Influence Power!

Scriptural Stumbling Blocks to a Woman’s Service

Now that we have established the fact that, in Christ, Male and Female are once again…

Equal in their standing before God;
Equal in their call to the work of God; and,
Equal in their blessing by God…

…why is it that Women are still being denied the freedom to exercise their God-given gifts of Leadership in His Service?  I think that, in most cases, it can be traced back to a misunderstanding of the two most troublesome Scripture passages that relate to Women.  Both of these were penned by Paul, with the first one being found in 1 Corinthians 14: 33-35…

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. 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.  If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church…

…and the second one being found in 1 Timothy 2: 11-15…

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.  For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.  Yet she will be saved through [the] childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

Doesn’t the Church have more important issues to deal with than this?

The reason these passages have created so many problems is that they have, more often than not, been taken out of their immediate context; and instead of being interpreted in light of the cultural conditions of the day, they have been isolated from the rest of the passage and elevated to the stature of a doctrine which, in its meaning, flies in the face of not only Paul’s but Jesus’ attitudes toward women.

For example, in his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul was dealing with a number of problems creating disorder in their church—problems such as spiritual pride, the misunderstanding and misuse of spiritual gifts, marital issues, confusion concerning the resurrection, and even incest.  Please note Paul’s emphasis on God not being a God of confusion, but of peace.  This is a good indication that there was confusion in the church, and it was being caused by some unruly women.

So what did Paul mean when he told the women to keep silent?  If he was indeed saying that women should not minister publicly, he was contradicting what he said earlier when he gave instructions for women’s dress code while prophesying!  There must be an explanation.  As we examine these verses, we will see that Paul was definitely not teaching against women ministering publicly.  Rather, he was correcting the way in which women were ministering in the Corinthian church.[6]

In his letter to Timothy, however, Paul was addressing a different set of problems; ones created as a result of false teaching infiltrating the church at Ephesus—the church where Timothy was ministering.  In all likelihood, this false teaching involved some “old wives’ tales” which were being passed down from the older women to the younger ones; tales promoting Eve, in her sin, as a benefactor to humanity, instead of as the transgressor that Paul later states she was.  To counter this heresy, Paul first addressed the women of the church in general, instructing them on how Godly women should dress and behave.  Then, he directed his attention to one woman in particular—the one most responsible for promoting the false doctrine—and commanded that she not be allowed to teach.  Instead…

Paul…commanded this woman to learn but not to teach.  Why?  Because she had been teaching false doctrine.  Therefore, Paul set aside the normal link between learning and teaching in her case.  For a season, she was being disciplined, corrected.  She couldn’t be allowed to continue spreading false doctrine.  It was time for her to abstain from teaching altogether and dedicate herself to study alone.

Paul silenced this woman not because she was a woman but because she was teaching false doctrine to others.[7]*

Now, concerning the question of women being saved through motherhood…

The phrase “the childbearing” is unique.  It isn’t found anywhere else in the New Testament…it’s a noun, dramatically preceded by the definite article (‘the childbearing’) to point to one particular childbearing…

‘The childbearing’ refers to the one mediator between God and persons, the person Christ Jesus, the promised seed of Eve, the Child born of a woman.  The issue at stake here was salvation, not motherhood. Women aren’t saved by getting pregnant and having babies.  They’re saved by the child who was born–Jesus!  Throughout this passage, Paul was talking about how men and women are redeemed, not about how they procreate.  The central truth of this entire passage is Jesus and God’s desire for all to be saved through the promised childbearing.[8]

As for Jesus’ attitude toward women, I think we can agree that He always treated them with respect.  We have no record of Him ever rebuking a woman and telling her to be quiet or forbidding her to minister in some fashion. Following His encounter with the woman at the well, she left Him and immediately went back to her town and started preaching about Jesus—something which He did not criticize or attempt to discourage.  It was to a group of women that He entrusted the good news of His resurrection, and it was to His Bride, the Church, that He entrusted the good news of His saving grace; charging her to use her Influence Power to convince the world of His Truth, and to…

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28: 19-20).

Now, for those who may still have issues with Women in Leadership, I would like to offer this suggestion from Dr. Munroe…

…if you as a male have problems with a female preacher, I encourage you to close your eyes and listen to the spirit-man speaking.  This approach has helped many men.  Listen to what’s being said.  If the female house is the problem, then ignore the house and listen to the resident, the spirit-man within, because God speaks through the spirit-man.  It is the Spirit that gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6) [8]

…and, to bring this session to a close with this thought from J. Lee Grady…

Jesus’ blood was shed for all women, and it is the only covering they will ever need.  Blood-bought women don’t need a man to bring them closer to God.  Blood-bought women don’t need a man to legitimize their ministries.  Blood-bought women don’t need a man to ‘cover’ their spiritual endeavors or to replace the leadership of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

The blood of Christ is a woman’s true covering.  For the church to require anything more is to renounce our faith.[9]

In the Spirit-Man there is No Male and Female

*Since space and time will not permit a further examination of the passages here, I would like to suggest these books as resources for those interested in a more in-depth study of the subject…

Understanding the Purpose and Power of Woman, by Dr. Myles Munroe;
Why Not Women? by Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton;
I Suffer Not a Woman, by Richard Clark Kroeger and Catherine Clark Kroeger;
10 Lies the Church Tells Women, by J. Lee Grady; and,
What Paul Really Said About Women, by John T. Bristow.

 

 

In keeping with the theme of this exercise, here is Shackles, by Mary Mary…

 

 

[1] Dr. Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Woman (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2001), 185-186.

[2] Munroe, 189.

[3] Munroe, 187.

[4] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), 11.

[5] Munroe, 191.

[6] Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton, Why Not Women? (Seattle, Washington: YWAM Publishing, 2000), 185.

[7] Cunningham and Hamilton, 219.

[8] Cunningham and Hamilton, 224.

[9] Munroe, 197.

[10] J. Lee Grady, 10 Lies the Church Tells Women (Lake May, Florida: Charisma House, 2000), 100.

Service: Women and the Work of God, Part 1

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At Least that’s What My Mother Always Told Me!

In our last exercise, Service: Interrupted…By Devilish Design, we learned how Satan, in his drive to establish his kingdom’s rule over the earth, has been at work trying to prevent the establishment of God’s Kingdom on the earth.  We discovered that from the beginning of human history to the present time he has…

  • Grown his kingdom by alienating people from God, taking and keeping them captive through sin;
  • Limited the growth of God’s Kingdom by keeping those under his dominion ignorant of God’s goodness, as well as the freedom they could be enjoying as members of His Kingdom; and,
  • Hindered the advancement of the Kingdom of God by means of an on-going war aimed at disrupting the Service of its citizens—namely, those liberated from Satan’s kingdom of darkness and death through the freedom of faith found only in Jesus Christ.

We also learned that Satan has enjoyed a considerable amount of success in this war simply by keeping those in God’s Kingdom…

  • In the dark as to their true mission in life and ignorant of the resources available to them for successful living, merely by limiting their knowledge and understanding of the Bible;
  • At odds with one another by stirring up misunderstandings, envies, and petty offenses among them; and,
  • Battle-fatigued, or frustrated, discouraged, and completely worn out from all the conflict.

These aren’t the only tactics he has used to good effect, though.  Through his exploitation of the conflict between the sexes, a by-product of man’s fall from grace, he has been able to sideline roughly one-half of the workforce in God’s Kingdom, thereby greatly reducing the amount of Kingdom Work being done in the world.  These workers, whose God-ordained right to serve has so often been denied, are none other than the female members of God’s Family—the very ones (as we learned in Service: The Church as the Family of God) who were meant to serve as pictures in the flesh of the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

For us to better understand how this situation came to be, we’ll need to revisit the story of Adam and Eve.  This time, instead of focusing our attention on the pattern of seduction used by the devil to ensnare our ancient forbearers, we will be approaching the story with an eye to understanding God’s purposes for the Man and Woman, as well as the ways in which sin has affected those purposes.

  1. God’s Purpose for the Sexes

As we have mentioned more than once during the course of these exercises, God’s purpose in creating Man was to provide Himself with a Family to love, both now and throughout eternity.  As a Family of Beings bearing the image and likeness of the One who was giving them life; and, since…

…God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth (John 4:24) …

…it was essential that the members of God’s Family also be Spirit Beings.  As the late Dr. Myles Munroe explains in his excellent book, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Woman

…when God made man, He essentially drew man out of Himself, so that the essence of man would be just like Him.  In this way, the receiver could be just like the Giver, and could reciprocate His love.  Since ‘God is spirit,’ He created man as spirit.

So man—the spirit-man—was created as a result of God’s love.  Note carefully that, at this point, we are still talking about man, the spirit.  We are not yet talking about male and female.  Whom did God create in His image?  Man.  Man is spirit, and spirits have no gender.  The Bible never talks about a male or female spirit.  God created the spirit-man without a gender.[1]

Thus, when the time was right for His Family to come into existence, the first thing God did was create a Spirit Being whom He called Man…

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

Once this Spirit had been created…

God took this spirit-man, and He placed him in two physical forms:  male and female.  The spirit-man is neither male nor female.  However, to fulfill His eternal purposes, God used two physical forms, called male and female, to express the one entity of man.  Therefore, the essence of both male and female is the resident spirit within them, called ‘man.’

Whom did God call man?  Both male and female.[2]

Different Houses for Different Purposes

With God’s “eternal purposes” being the creation of Family—and a family being the product of the sexual union between Male and Female—God took the Spirit-Man and placed him in separate physical “houses” or bodies; bodies differing from one another because of the unique roles or functions they were designed to perform.  In the role of the Male, Man was intended to demonstrate the love, leadership, strength, guidance, provision, and protection of God the Father, and to be the Giver of the Seed of Life; while, in the role of the Female, Man was intended to demonstrate the love, respect, wisdom, care-giving, gentleness, grace, empathy, and sensitivity of God the Holy Spirit, and to be the Receiver and Nurturer of the Seed provided by the Male.  Through the coming together of the Giver and Receiver, the life shared by them would then be reproduced over and over and the Family of God would grow.

In keeping with His divine order of creation, God built the house for the Male first, as He…

…formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7).

Once the Male had become a living being, God placed him in the garden home He had created for him and, after instructing him as to his responsibilities and the rules by which he was to live, God set about completing His final work of creation, with this pronouncement…

It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him (Genesis 2:18).

Turning His attention to the construction of the house for the Female, He…

…caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed its place with flesh.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man (Genesis 2:21-23).’

Here in this special construction of the Female’s house, we see how God, in the same way that He had taken Man out of Himself to be someone He could love, took the Woman out of the Man and gave her to him to love.[3]  Here, too, we have Man’s acknowledgment that the Woman, having been made of the same stuff as he was, was his equal and partner in the work of God.  With His creation then complete…

…God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’… And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:28, 31).

So, here at the beginning of things and in keeping with the purposes of God, in Man—that is, the Spirit-Man created by God for relationship with Himself—there was no Male or Female.  It was only in the human body that sexual distinctions were made—distinctions determined solely by the part each sex was to play in the creation of God’s Family.  Here…

  • Both Male and Female were equal in the eyes of God;
  • Both Male and Female were given the task of stewardship over God’s creation;
  • Both Male and Female were blessed by God…

…and, as far as God was concerned, it was all very good!

God's Creation is Good

It Was All Good

 

  1. God’s Punishment on the Sexes 

With so much good going on in the Garden, it seems a shame that Evil had to rear its ugly head and spoil it all.  And yet, for Man to truly be a son of God, it wasn’t enough for him to be…

An eternal spirit, like God;
A rational being, like God;
An emotional being, like God;
A willful being, like God; or,
A moral being, like God.

He would also have to be Holy, like God.  Before this could happen, though, he would have to do what was right in every situation, just like God.  But at this point in Man’s brief history, he was still living in his original state of innocence, for his righteousness had yet to be proven through testing. 

People have often wondered why a Holy God would allow Evil into the world without taking into consideration that for Man to truly be like God, he must want the same things God wants and love God enough to do what He says.  For Man to be free to choose God’s way, there would have to be an alternative from which he could choose—with Evil being the only other option to God.

Of course, Evil in this case did not look like Evil

…for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Instead, it came packaged as a rational self-interest and an appealing religion of works and was presented in such a way that it would overturn God’s established order of creation, inverting His authority structure in the process.  Like it or not, God’s order and authority structure for Creation was this…

God First,
Then Man,
Then Woman,
Then the Animal Kingdom.

We’ve already established that, up until this time, Man and Woman were…

Equal in their position before God;
Equal in their call to the work of God; and,
Equal in their blessing by God. 

But for the sake of order, God created Man first, placing him as Head over his wife (and eventual family); a position in which he would be held accountable for everything that happened in his family.  However, this position of Headship was never meant to be a mark or measure of his superiority over the Woman.  If it was, then we would have a serious problem with the following verse…

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God (1 Corinthians 11:3).

If being the Head indicated one’s superiority over another, this would mean that God the Father was and is superior to God the Son—and we know from the Scriptures that this just isn’t the case.  For…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3).

I [Christ] and the Father are one (John 10:30). 

This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:18).

He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God…for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell… (Colossians 1:15, 19). 

From these verses, it is easy to see that although God is the Head of Christ, Jesus is still equal to God. That being said, what are we to make of this statement by Jesus to His disciples on the eve of His crucifixion?

You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than II do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father (John 14:28, 31).

In this case, is God being “greater” than Jesus an indication that He is somehow superior to Jesus?  Or, in doing what the Father has commanded Him to do, has Jesus’ equality with the Father been diminished in any way?  No, not at all; for in His Person and in His Power, Jesus remains equal to God; it is only in His Position as Leader that God is greater than He—with this assumption of Leadership being solely for the sake of order.  In other words, for the sake of fulfilling the Father’s Kingdom Purposes, Christ Jesus…

…who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped…emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:6-11).

So, although He was equal to God, Christ willingly chose to submit Himself to God’s Leadership so that the Plan of Redemption needed for God’s Kingdom purposes and the creation of His Family could be realized.

Headship, then, was and is a good thing and remains an essential and powerful component in the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth.  However, it was not the only component that would be needed; if it had been, then God would never have created Woman.  For in His creation of a Helper for the Man, God provided the Man with a power to help get the job done which was lacking in himself—that being, the subtle yet dynamic power of the Woman’s suggestion, encouragement, and Influence.  Had the Man been left in charge by himself, his way of carrying out God’s Work would have primarily been through fiat–an effective though not necessarily a pleasant way to lead.  The Woman, on the other hand, as a picture or type of the Holy Spirit, could help him accomplish things that he couldn’t do by himself through her powerful leadership gifts of persuasion.

So, being fully aware of the limitations of Man’s “Position Power,” God fashioned a partner for him with the “Influence Power”[1] needed to complement or complete him, and to assist him in accomplishing God’s Kingdom Work.

…and, that the union of the Male and Female was considered to be the reunification of their one soul?

In order for us to more fully comprehend the Fall and its effects on the Male-Female relationship, it is vital that we first understand God’s Purposes for Man, along with the system of order and authority He instituted within His Creation.  To be sure, Satan was well aware of them for when he bypassed the Man in his Position Power in the Garden, and approached the Woman instead, he did so with the intention of using her Influence Power to achieve his Evil end of overturning God’s Kingdom, so that he could advance his own.

Because we have already covered a lot of important information in this exercise—information which no doubt will take some time to digest—and because there is still much more to come, I think it would be wise for us to divide this exercise into two parts and take a break for reflection at this point.  Having laid the groundwork for our discussion of the role of Women in the Work of God in the first part of this exercise, when we return for part two…

  • We will learn how Satan’s manipulation of the Woman’s Influence Power led to the forfeiture of Man’s Position Power, and the consequences of that debacle;
  • We will learn how Woman’s Influence Power was checked during Old Testament times, and compare that to what is intended for women in New Testament times; and,
  • We will briefly discuss two of the most troublesome Scripture passages dealing with the role of Women in the Work of God…

…so be sure to check back soon for the rest of this rather vigorous workout session.

 

Shane and Shane remind us in “Liberty” that it is for freedom that we have been set free…

 

[1] Dr. Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Woman (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2001), 54-55.

[2] Munroe, 55-56.

[3] Munroe, 61.

[1] Munroe, 185.