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Text:God's Word to Women:Lesson 96

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== ANOTHER ANOINTING OF WOMEN.==

789. The Jews observed three great festivals of Divine appointment, at which the presence of males was required, the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. We can readily see that these requirements could not be laid upon the sex which bore and nursed the children, without great hardship. But it was specially provided, Deuteronomy 16:11, that women attend the Pentecostal feasts,¾hence the Jews did not exclude them. This is very significant, in view of that Great Day of Pentecost, when women as well as men received power to bear witness to the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ Jesus (Acts 2:4).

790. We have shown that women were Christ’s most important witnesses, in the earliest days of the Church. They were also martyrs who suffered the greatest inhumanity (pars. 321-325). Their work was soon over, for it was too costly, unless absolutely necessary, when it meant to be immured in dens of infamy as a punishment. But when the church made compromise with paganism, under Constantine¾in fact, even further back, when it organized itself into The Catholic Church, in the very beginning of its pagan corruption (see par. 362), the Church recoiled from its former esteem for women, and later taught the pagan and rabbinical doctrines of contempt for woman as the source of evil (see Lesson 11). St. Paul has been interpreted to give countenance to this pagan view, though his Epistles bristle with the names of women who “laboured with him in the Gospel, an expression which, only by forced interpretation, can be made to imply that women laboured with Paul in other ways excepting in the Gospel.

791. But woman will emerge¾in fact, is now emerging¾from obscurity. It is amazing that certain men most insistent on the doctrine that Christ is coming soon, are blindly zealous in delaying that coming as much as possible, by hindering the emancipation of woman, and her ministry in the Gospel. They refuse to see that the express order of development in Christ’s kingdom on earth was given by Christ Himself in the two parables of the Kingdom; and by the Apostle Paul in the symbol, “Adam was first formed, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:13).

792. When Jesus Christ preached in the synagogue in Nazareth, he read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor,” and on through the passage past the words, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19), and there He paused, for His time had not yet come to fulfill the other portion of the passage, and proclaim “the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:1-2). Precisely parallel is the order laid down in Isaiah 40:9-10, for the “woman evangelist” (for that is the precise meaning of the word applied to those addressed here): “Oh thou woman that bringest good tidings to Zion . . . to Jerusalem . . . say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God” (par. 209). The women of the early church obeyed this, from Anna onward (Luke 2:38), as the good news came to them. They did not announce Christ’s first coming,¾John the Baptist did that¾but they announced His arrival,¾that He had come, and that He was God incarnate.

793. The remaining portion of this passage is now to be proclaimed by women: “Behold , the Lord God will come as a mighty One [R. V., not in the form of a humble, suffering servant now], and His arm shall rule for Him; behold His reward is with Him, and His recompense [R. V.] before Him.” This speaks of Christ as coming to judge this world; this is His second coming, which women are commanded to proclaim. It is to this present time that the prophecy applies, “God giveth the Word: the women that publish the tidings are a great host” (Psalm 68:11), and God has now seen to it that these verses should no longer lie in the obscurity of a perverted translation (as they do in the A. V.), but should be known by women.

794. On the days of Pentecost Peter said: “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel . . . I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your . . . daughters shall prophesy . . . and on My handmaidens I will pour out in those days of My Spirit,” Acts 2:17-20. That prophecy has, as yet, been only partially fulfilled. It is yet to be filled out to the full. The sun has not yet been turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, nor has the great and notable day of the Lord yet come. Only a handful of women, as compared with “all flesh,” has, as yet, prophesied. The prophecy must be filled out to the full before “that great and notable day,” and those who stupidly hinder that prophesying on the part of women are placing themselves, as it were, across the path of the fulfillment of God’s Word. Instead of “hasting the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:12, margin), they are hindering the preparation for that coming.

795. When Christ laid His hands upon the bowed back of the woman, that Sabbath (see Lesson 89), and ordained her to glorify God in the synagogue, it was not precisely to heal her of her bent back. Before that, He had told her, “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” but she could not grasp the full import of His words. She was bound in spirit, as well as in body. She had had “a spirit of infirmity eighteen years,” we are told. She could not dispel that spirit of infirmity without Divine aid. After His laying hands on her, however, then she could straighten up and glorify God.

796. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” Was ever anyone able to change his or her delusions short of aid from without? We doubt it. A cure of the spirit demands the aid of the Spirit. Who does not understand that the chief difficulty that God and Moses had in delivering the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt was not the Egyptians, but the spirit of slavery and the spirit of bondage to pagan gods, to which those Israelites were likewise enslaved? God easily disposed of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, but He could not, in the same easy fashion, drown the spirit of bondage in the Israelites which they had acquired under slavery. Just so with women of today. Except for a mere handful of mistaken men, who could easily be put aside, the men of Christian countries constitute no longer an obstacle to woman’s freedom and preaching of the Gospel.

797. The vast majority of men would welcome woman’s freedom in everything worth the name. In the past such was not the case, and, as a consequence woman has acquired that spirit of infirmity of which God prophesied when He pointed out to Eve that her “turning” would be to her husband,¾in other words, she would turn away from God to him, placing herself in dependent relations to him such as she ought to hold toward God alone. This tendency Eve bequeathed to womankind and it has been fostered throughout past ages, and only Christ can cure the spirit. Pagan and godless women, as such, with all their struggles and often offensive efforts towards emancipation, will never get free. There is no freedom for women excepting escape into Christ the Emancipator; because the bondage is not really of the male’s creation, but of Satan’s; and the reason of that bondage is because Satan knows that “the seed of the woman” will yet completely destroy his seed.

798. And when will the Church come out into the “glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21), which is its rightful inheritance? When the free Spirit of God descends upon it again as on the day of Pentecost. And when will that time come? If I read aright, when the women of the Church become free, or not at all,¾for the prophet Isaiah has said: “Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto be speech . . . Tremble, ye women that are at ease: be troubled, ye careless ones. . . Upon the land of my people shall come thorns and briars; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city. Because the palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be dens forever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks; Until the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high” (32:9-15). Thus does the prophet of old call upon women to leave their careless ease, and come and wait on God with all the rest, for the outpouring of His Spirit upon them, as well as upon men, that the way may be opened for the restoration of Jerusalem, and for “the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21). Let us women, then, hasten to our Lord, and beseech Him to lay His hand upon us, dispel this “spirit of infirmity” with which Satan has bound us, “lo these eighteen” centuries, and then lift our voices in the synagogues and churches, and glorify our God.

==See Also==
[[God's Word to Women]] |
[[God's Word to Women Table of Contents]] |
[[Foreword to the 1943 Edition]] |
[[Foreword to the 2005 Edition]] |
[[Author's Note]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 1 | Lesson 1]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 2 | Lesson 2]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 3 | Lesson 3]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 4 | Lesson 4]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 5 | Lesson 5]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 6 | Lesson 6]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 7 | Lesson 7]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 8 | Lesson 8]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 9 | Lesson 9]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 10 | Lesson 10]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 11 | Lesson 11]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 12 | Lesson 12]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 13 | Lesson 13]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 14 | Lesson 14]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 15 | Lesson 15]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 16 | Lesson 16]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 17 | Lesson 17]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 18 | Lesson 18]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 19 | Lesson 19]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 20 | Lesson 20]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 21 | Lesson 21]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 22 | Lesson 22]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 23 | Lesson 23]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 24 | Lesson 24]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 25 | Lesson 25]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 26 | Lesson 26]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 27 | Lesson 27]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 28 | Lesson 28]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 29 | Lesson 29]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 30 | Lesson 30]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 31 | Lesson 31]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 32 | Lesson 32]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 33 | Lesson 33]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 34 | Lesson 34]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 35 | Lesson 35]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 36 | Lesson 36]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 37 | Lesson 37]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 38 | Lesson 38]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 39 | Lesson 39]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 40 | Lesson 40]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 41 | Lesson 41]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 42 | Lesson 42]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 43 | Lesson 43]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 44 | Lesson 44]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 45 | Lesson 45]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 46 | Lesson 46]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 47 | Lesson 47]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 48 | Lesson 48]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 49 | Lesson 49]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 50 | Lesson 50]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 51 | Lesson 51]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 52 | Lesson 52]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 53 | Lesson 53]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 54 | Lesson 54]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 55 | Lesson 55]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 56 | Lesson 56]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 57 | Lesson 57]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 58 | Lesson 58]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 59 | Lesson 59]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 60 | Lesson 60]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 61 | Lesson 61]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 62 | Lesson 62]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 63 | Lesson 63]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 64 | Lesson 64]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 65 | Lesson 65]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 66 | Lesson 66]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 67 | Lesson 67]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 68 | Lesson 68]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 69 | Lesson 69]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 70 | Lesson 70]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 71 | Lesson 71]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 72 | Lesson 72]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 73 | Lesson 73]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 74 | Lesson 74]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 75 | Lesson 75]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 76 | Lesson 76]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 77 | Lesson 77]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 78 | Lesson 78]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 79 | Lesson 79]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 80 | Lesson 80]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 81 | Lesson 81]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 82 | Lesson 82]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 83 | Lesson 83]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 84 | Lesson 84]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 85 | Lesson 85]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 86 | Lesson 86]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 87 | Lesson 87]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 88 | Lesson 88]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 89 | Lesson 89]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 90 | Lesson 90]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 91 | Lesson 91]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 92 | Lesson 92]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 93 | Lesson 93]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 94 | Lesson 94]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 95 | Lesson 95]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 96 | Lesson 96]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 97 | Lesson 97]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 98 | Lesson 98]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 99 | Lesson 99]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 100 | Lesson 100]] |
[[Index of Scripture Texts]] |
[[Dictionary]]
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