Women can change the world. Do you doubt that? Look at the impact feminism has had on the world, all the destruction and decay it has brought, simply because women decided they would change the world. Thanks to the feminists who broke on the scene in the 1840’s, the world has been spiraling out of control ever since.
Women have power in their hands and in their words and each can be used for ill or for good. Few women are grounded in Scripture and even fewer value a godly woman’s role. We’ve spent the last century and a half and then some defying God through explaining away a woman’s unique purpose. What was a radical idea at the beginning and overwhelmingly fought against by those who were godly is now mainstream in many of our hitherto conservative churches. A failure to execute proper understanding of the biblical text opened the floodgates to sin. Satan once again asked “Did God really say?” and we failed to understand that He had.
“Feminist culture can and has trickled down even to many Christian stay-at-home moms, who can be just as tempted by promises of self-fulfillment and living out their dreams. If they are staying at home with the kids as a means to that end, it’s still an idolatry of the self. As long as the ultimate goal is finding ourselves or feeling fulfilled, it doesn’t matter how we pursue it: we will always be disobeying God.” ~ Elise Crapuchettes, Popes and Feminists: How the Reformation Frees Women from Feminism
The point of feminism is supposedly multifold. The early and latter feminists argued for everything from prohibition to the right for women to vote, from equal rights of women to abortion (i.e. murder) rights. This was all a means to an end. What feminists really wanted was: 1) to feminize men, 2) to destroy marriage and family as societal norms, and 3) to destroy biblical influence in home and society.
“Who, but a few wild visionaries, and rash speculatists, and mistaken advocates of women’s rights, would take her from the home of her husband, of her children, and of her own heart, to wear out her strength, consume her time, and destroy her feminine excellence in committee-rooms, on platforms and in mechanics or philosophical institutions?” ~ John Angel James
Feminism has wrought its damage. Women are no longer feminine. They are crass, crude, and vulgar. They are eschewing marriage for independence and refusing to have babies, abandoning children to daycare, abusing them in record numbers, and outright murdering them in the womb. Their clothes, hair, and ways of walking, speaking, and communicating have become masculinized.
“Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy.” ~ John Angell James
Feminism’s influence didn’t stay in the secular realm. It infiltrated the church and wrecked havoc. Feminists lie about their goals whenever it is expedient for them to do so and within the church, it’s expedient, even necessary, for them to do so. While someone like Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan might easily be able to say what she means and act on it in broader society, someone like Beth Moore, Aimee Byrd, and others of their ilk can’t easily disclose the destruction that they intend to bring to the church in the name of equality.
Feminism crept into the church through the twisting of Scripture. Telling us that what God really meant in Galatians 3: 28 was that there are no role differences between men and women despite what those other pesky Scriptures might lead us to believe. Egalitarianism and complementarianism were the feminist’s tools of choice and through them feminists sought to redefine the Word of God itself.
It’s almost impossible to find a church where Titus 2 is properly understood and taught. Those who embrace such teaching are often attacked even by other believers as legalists.
“Try standing up in this culture and saying, “Women, you’re commanded to love your husband and to love your children and to work at home and to be subject to your husband.” You’ll get screamed down. I mean, you can be in deep trouble just reading that let alone commenting on it. In fact, feminism is a cruel hoax, telling women their natural biological instincts are ‘socially constructed’ to oppress them. Feminism is elite social engineering designed to neuter both sexes, making women less fit for marriage and motherhood, and men unable to sacrifice for family.”~ Henry Makow
Our only purpose is God Himself We will never bring Him glory if we are more concerned for our desires than we are for the esteem of our Lord. This is where feminism has so badly damaged God’s women. Almost every church, even those which are conservative and Reformed, instruct their young women to follow their hearts and their dreams rather than instructing them to the pursuit of God’s instruction to women found in Titus 2, Proverbs 31, 1 Corinthians 11, among a myriad of other Scriptures.
“Christianity has provided a place for woman for which she shines; but take her out of that place, and her lustre pales and sheds a feeble and sickly ray. Or to change the metaphor, woman is a plant, which in its own greenhouse seclusion will put forth all its brilliant colours and all the sweet perfume; but remove it from the protection of its own floral home into the common garden and open field, where hardier flowers will grow and thrive, its beauty fades and its colour diminished.” ~ John Angell James
Women will change the world in a way that brings glory to the Lord only when their lives reflect that of Christ’s. Most will tell women that we need to focus on ourselves, seeking to be happy, even if it means we never marry or have children. This is the essence of feminism. God says that He grants us a heart of flesh in exchange for our heart of stone. We will then love what He loves and hate what He hates; in other words, we will desire to do that which He has commanded us to do. For women, it means to fulfill Titus 2: 3-5.
Titus 2: 3-5, The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
There are many who will tell us that these verses instruct us to show care for our homes and families but they in no way mean we have to be homemakers. If we want, we can pursue careers to the glory of God while putting our children in daycare and be just as pleasing to the Lord as the woman who “wastes her life” devoting it to her husband, children, and home.
John MacArthur says Scripture teaches otherwise:
“One expression in Titus 2 deserves special notice. It is the word homemakers. The Greek word is oikourgous, which literally means “workers at home.” Oikos is the Greek word for “home,” and ergon means “work, employment.” It suggests that a married woman’s first duty is to her own family, in her own household. Managing her own home should be her primary employment, her first task, her most important job, and her true career.”
If we continue to do that which our mothers and grandmothers have done by turning from God’s Word and redefining it to please ourselves, we will continue to get the same results as they got: broken lives, broken families, and discontented hearts. The only difference being we are now on a mad downhill rush to insanity within our churches, institutions, homes, and nations. Where once we had time to put on the brakes, that luxury is long past. No brakes were ever put on; in fact, even those in the church found ways to justify their disobedience of blatantly ignoring God’s Word by explaining that it wasn’t disobedience but just a different way of looking at Scripture. They declared that they had uncovered the truth that, for 2,000 years, the church had been too foolish, ground in ignorance, or misogynistic to understand.
“Only one worldview ever offered true progress for women and for society, and that is the biblical Christianity preached by the Reformers. The only equality women will find is through Christ. Through the death of the Son and the redemption of the cosmos, Christianity says this world will be made right again. By grace alone, the faithful will continue living the gospel until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” – Elise Crapuchettes, Popes and Feminists: How the Reformation Frees Women from Feminism
The Lord meant what He said and said what He meant. Six day young earth creation is true no matter how much evolutionists or theistic evolutionists deny it. Did God say it? Yes, He did. And He also said that women were created not to pursue careers, fight battles, or lead countries, but to be a help-meet to her husband, a keeper of the home, and the mother of his children. This and this alone is her mission and all else that a woman might pursue is of secondary importance and flows out of this mission. The Lord created her to be home-centered and no amount of denying it will change it. Did God say it? He absolutely did.
“Neither reason nor Christianity invites woman to the professors chair, or conducts her to the bar, or makes her welcome to the pulpit, or admits her to the place of ordinary magistracy.” ~ John Angell James
A woman does her best work when she is doing it for the glory of God. One cannot do the right thing the wrong way and have it turn out right. It’s simply impossible. It’s also impossible to bring glory to God by denying that which He has commanded and have Him be glorified. Thus a woman cannot bring glory to God by seeking worldly success. Designed to be a helpmeet and raise up a family for God’s glory, she will never find true fulfillment elsewhere. Women in the church are no longer taught the glorious position the Lord created them for.
“If God is good, and if He wants us to subdue this planet, and if He wants us to obey the Great Commission and conquer this world for Christ, and if He tells half the human race that they’re in charge of tending the home, it follows from this that the home is actually one of the most strategic and important tools by which the world will be won.” ~ Rebekah Merkle
Feminism is destructive. Pastors, Elders, husbands, fathers, and yes, mothers, now tell women they can do whatever they want. Most say it because they sincerely believe it. Feminism has so obscured biblical truth that they don’t know that the church long supported a completely different view. The church once stood on the Word of God and taught that women were to be a wife and mother who lived her life in their service. Tell a woman this now and you’ll be attacked; however, encourage a man to be a stay-at-home-dad and you’ll be applauded for your open-mindedness while he is applauded for his courage.
“As one historian remarked, among the Reformers’ wives are “found many of the purest, most refined, and most useful women on earth,” and the reason this is true is because these women sacrificed themselves; they emptied themselves for others in their lives. They did not seek their own advancement; they did not grasp for legal or social “equality” with their husbands. They lived as though the spiritual equality their husbands preached meant they had just as much meaningful work to do as any man, and no time like the present for getting started.” -Elise Crapuchettes, Popes and Feminists: How the Reformation Frees Women from Feminism
Men are encouraged to pursue a non-existent feminine side while women are encouraged to follow their hearts. Tell me, where does Scripture exhort us towards either of these? It doesn’t. Instead it directs women to serve their families, the church, and their neighbors. But since teaching this would go against the grain of the feminist movement that has infiltrated the church almost unawares, few believe it. They believe instead that a woman can do everything a man can do. And not only can they, they ought to.
“It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we’ve been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single – which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.” ~ Elisabeth Elliot
Where do we go from here? First, we must regain the truth. When from our pulpits God’s men herald the pure unadulterated Word of God, then once again hearts will be changed. Change the hearts of God’s people and align them with God’s purpose and you change the world. Women can and will be part of this.
Women were not created to be men and men were not created to be women. It’s impossible to exchange positions, jobs, responsibilities, or purpose and still be pleasing to God. God requires obedience. Absolute, undiluted, undivided, for His glory, obedience. When we depart from that, we invite disaster. Just look at the past 180 years for proof.
There are men in Europe who, confusing the different attributes of the sexes, claim to make the man and the woman beings, not only equal, but similar. They give to the one as to the other the same functions, impose the same duties on them, and grant them the same rights; they mix them in everything, work, pleasures, public affairs. It can easily be imagined that by trying hard in this way to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded; and that from this crude mixture of the works of nature only weak men and dishonest women can ever emerge. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
Sisters, we can strive against the wind all we want, demand our rights, and pursue our dreams all we want but all we’ll get in return is failure. When we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind. May we repent and be part of building God’s Kingdom.
“[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
Soli Deo Gloria!
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