Difference between revisions of "Text:God's Word to Women:Lesson 100"
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833. But if we banish from our belief and from our teaching, that God has laid a blighting hand upon the entire sex to which Eve belonged, because of Eve’s sin, then what will become of the teaching that the promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent’s head, belongs to all women? The difference is here: The sad prophecy of Genesis 3:16 has been abundantly fulfilled in the physically inherited sorrow and suffering of women. The glorious prophecy of Genesis 3:15 will be abundantly fulfilled also, not by a physical inheritance at all, but by a voluntary choice. | 833. But if we banish from our belief and from our teaching, that God has laid a blighting hand upon the entire sex to which Eve belonged, because of Eve’s sin, then what will become of the teaching that the promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent’s head, belongs to all women? The difference is here: The sad prophecy of Genesis 3:16 has been abundantly fulfilled in the physically inherited sorrow and suffering of women. The glorious prophecy of Genesis 3:15 will be abundantly fulfilled also, not by a physical inheritance at all, but by a voluntary choice. | ||
− | 834. Prophecy is not fate. No woman is fated for the glorious destiny of fulfilling this prophecy, that the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. This will not come to me, in spite of myself, | + | 834. Prophecy is not fate. No woman is fated for the glorious destiny of fulfilling this prophecy, that the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. This will not come to me, in spite of myself, so that I can glory in what is coming, whatever I do. We are merely told that some women will grasp this prize of a high calling in Christ Jesus; and if I do not take my place with such, my humiliation, and my eventual punishment will be the greater, because the prize was set before me, and I despised it. |
− | 835. As we have said before, in all the Bible no sin is held up to human contempt more than Esau’s. He had a birthright in prospect, and a father’s prophetical blessing to follow that birthright. But these were things for the future, and might be long delayed in coming, while there was on him the urgent necessity of physical appetite. He might have stood in the line of ancestry through which Christ came into the world: but Christ was not coming for a long time, | + | 835. As we have said before, in all the Bible no sin is held up to human contempt more than Esau’s. He had a birthright in prospect, and a father’s prophetical blessing to follow that birthright. But these were things for the future, and might be long delayed in coming, while there was on him the urgent necessity of physical appetite. He might have stood in the line of ancestry through which Christ came into the world: but Christ was not coming for a long time, did not, in fact, come for about seventeen hundred years. He sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. |
836. The New Testament pronounces him “a profane person . . . who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright,” and adds, “Ye know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected.” (Hebrews 12:16, 17). His father’s blessing on him as inheritor of the birthright, would have added much to his temporal advantage; but having sold that birthright, he could not inherit that blessing. The deed had been done long before. There was no place left for a change. He got a mess of pottage but he lost a double portion of his father’s estate, and the place of honor in the family. Isaac would not transfer the birthright-blessing he had uttered on Jacob back to Esau. He had perceived, as we think, that it was only the temporal advantages that Esau was after. | 836. The New Testament pronounces him “a profane person . . . who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright,” and adds, “Ye know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected.” (Hebrews 12:16, 17). His father’s blessing on him as inheritor of the birthright, would have added much to his temporal advantage; but having sold that birthright, he could not inherit that blessing. The deed had been done long before. There was no place left for a change. He got a mess of pottage but he lost a double portion of his father’s estate, and the place of honor in the family. Isaac would not transfer the birthright-blessing he had uttered on Jacob back to Esau. He had perceived, as we think, that it was only the temporal advantages that Esau was after. | ||
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838. And what will the women of our day do? Will they say: “The prospect is too remote to be attractive to me. If I could see that by much effort, and by practicing a great deal of self-denial, anything could be accomplished worthwhile, in my day, the case would be different. But the little that I can do to hasten the evangelization of the world, and the coming of Christ will make no difference. I do not care to teach, or preach, or pray in public. I do not wish to be among those who are all the time proclaiming that Christ is coming again, and He never comes. They are a laughing-stock. I cannot join them.” Such do not “esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” | 838. And what will the women of our day do? Will they say: “The prospect is too remote to be attractive to me. If I could see that by much effort, and by practicing a great deal of self-denial, anything could be accomplished worthwhile, in my day, the case would be different. But the little that I can do to hasten the evangelization of the world, and the coming of Christ will make no difference. I do not care to teach, or preach, or pray in public. I do not wish to be among those who are all the time proclaiming that Christ is coming again, and He never comes. They are a laughing-stock. I cannot join them.” Such do not “esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” | ||
− | 839. To which body will we belong? That is the question for each woman of us to answer to herself. This is not a matter concerning which indecision is of any avail. A great promise and | + | 839. To which body will we belong? That is the question for each woman of us to answer to herself. This is not a matter concerning which indecision is of any avail. A great promise and prophecy the very greatest in all the Bible lies before us women. We cannot escape; we must either choose the best that could be, from the highest standpoint, or by failing to choose prove ourselves Esaus. God has given the challenge to our faith. Shall we despise our birthright? God forbid! |
==See Also== | ==See Also== |
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A BIRTHRIGHT OR A MESS OF POTTAGE?
829. That false teaching derived from the Talmudic “Ten Curses of Eve,” (see par. 106), that God is punishing women, at certain times of anguish, for the sin of Eve, is a wicked and cruel superstition which has not support in Scripture and is unworthy of our intelligence. Genesis 3:16 furnishes a cloak for masculine selfish and hypocritical sensuality within the marriage relation, as perverted and read, “Thy desire shall be to thy husband.” The teaching is, moreover, a travesty on Divine Justice, for are not men as much the offspring of Eve as women? The punishment does not fall upon sin, but upon sex; and God Himself is alone responsible for the sex of an individual.
830. Furthermore, the teaching that woman must perpetually “keep silence” in the Church, be obedient to her husband, and never presume to teach or preach, because Eve sinned, blights the doctrine of the atonement, and robs Christ of glory, in that His death atoned for all sin, including Eve’s of course. It is entirely contrary to the spirit of Protestantism. Luther says: “It is a great error to seek ourselves to satisfy God’s justice for our sins, for God ever pardons them freely by an inestimable grace.”
831. And yet, amazing as it seems, Luther, as well as others, seems never to have grasped the idea of “free grace” for women. It is recorded of him that he said: “If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it.” Luther made much of “liberty of conscience,” yet as regards women he said: “She must neither begin nor complete anything without man: where he is, there she must be, and bend before him as before a master, whom she shall fear and to whom she shall be subject and obedient.” He left no place for “liberty of conscience” for women.
832. Luther is not an exception to the general run of Bible expositors. He may be a little more vivid in his utterances than some others. Fortunately for women, when they have heard “free grace” heralded by ministers, they have taken it to themselves. And contrary to the supposed teaching of St Paul, women have of late years been encouraged to take part in public meetings in the churches, since it was discovered that the meetings were dull without their participation. But what right has the Church to endorse a line of doctrine which by its own practices it sets at defiance? Is it not time for the Church to either change its practice or expunge these teachings from its commentaries, making them consistent one with the other? The duty is laid specially upon women to bring about this reconciliation between their own practice, in taking part in public meetings, and the popularly supposed teachings of the Bible.
833. But if we banish from our belief and from our teaching, that God has laid a blighting hand upon the entire sex to which Eve belonged, because of Eve’s sin, then what will become of the teaching that the promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent’s head, belongs to all women? The difference is here: The sad prophecy of Genesis 3:16 has been abundantly fulfilled in the physically inherited sorrow and suffering of women. The glorious prophecy of Genesis 3:15 will be abundantly fulfilled also, not by a physical inheritance at all, but by a voluntary choice.
834. Prophecy is not fate. No woman is fated for the glorious destiny of fulfilling this prophecy, that the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. This will not come to me, in spite of myself, so that I can glory in what is coming, whatever I do. We are merely told that some women will grasp this prize of a high calling in Christ Jesus; and if I do not take my place with such, my humiliation, and my eventual punishment will be the greater, because the prize was set before me, and I despised it.
835. As we have said before, in all the Bible no sin is held up to human contempt more than Esau’s. He had a birthright in prospect, and a father’s prophetical blessing to follow that birthright. But these were things for the future, and might be long delayed in coming, while there was on him the urgent necessity of physical appetite. He might have stood in the line of ancestry through which Christ came into the world: but Christ was not coming for a long time, did not, in fact, come for about seventeen hundred years. He sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
836. The New Testament pronounces him “a profane person . . . who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright,” and adds, “Ye know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected.” (Hebrews 12:16, 17). His father’s blessing on him as inheritor of the birthright, would have added much to his temporal advantage; but having sold that birthright, he could not inherit that blessing. The deed had been done long before. There was no place left for a change. He got a mess of pottage but he lost a double portion of his father’s estate, and the place of honor in the family. Isaac would not transfer the birthright-blessing he had uttered on Jacob back to Esau. He had perceived, as we think, that it was only the temporal advantages that Esau was after.
837. No greater contrast could be drawn than that between the case of Esau, and the case of Moses, of whom this same author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes: “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter . . . esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, which were all laid at his feet for self-indulgence (Hebrews 11:24-26). Think of it! This fine Moses, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; son of the daughter of the king! He turns away from it all, and joins himself to slaves of Egyptians! What a fanatic! Looking for a Christ, and sacrificing all the world for that Christ, fifteen hundred years before Christ ever came!
838. And what will the women of our day do? Will they say: “The prospect is too remote to be attractive to me. If I could see that by much effort, and by practicing a great deal of self-denial, anything could be accomplished worthwhile, in my day, the case would be different. But the little that I can do to hasten the evangelization of the world, and the coming of Christ will make no difference. I do not care to teach, or preach, or pray in public. I do not wish to be among those who are all the time proclaiming that Christ is coming again, and He never comes. They are a laughing-stock. I cannot join them.” Such do not “esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.”
839. To which body will we belong? That is the question for each woman of us to answer to herself. This is not a matter concerning which indecision is of any avail. A great promise and prophecy the very greatest in all the Bible lies before us women. We cannot escape; we must either choose the best that could be, from the highest standpoint, or by failing to choose prove ourselves Esaus. God has given the challenge to our faith. Shall we despise our birthright? God forbid!
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 | Lesson 1 | Lesson 2 | Lesson 3 | Lesson 4 | Lesson 5 | Lesson 6 | Lesson 7 | Lesson 8 | Lesson 9 | Lesson 10 | Lesson 11 | Lesson 12 | Lesson 13 | Lesson 14 | Lesson 15 | Lesson 16 | Lesson 17 | Lesson 18 | Lesson 19 | Lesson 20 | Lesson 21 | Lesson 22 | Lesson 23 | Lesson 24 | Lesson 25 | Lesson 26 | Lesson 27 | Lesson 28 | Lesson 29 | Lesson 30 | Lesson 31 | Lesson 32 | Lesson 33 | Lesson 34 | Lesson 35 | Lesson 36 | Lesson 37 | Lesson 38 | Lesson 39 | Lesson 40 | Lesson 41 | Lesson 42 | Lesson 43 | Lesson 44 | Lesson 45 | Lesson 46 | Lesson 47 | Lesson 48 | Lesson 49 | Lesson 50 | Lesson 51 | Lesson 52 | Lesson 53 | Lesson 54 | Lesson 55 | Lesson 56 | Lesson 57 | Lesson 58 | Lesson 59 | Lesson 60 | Lesson 61 | Lesson 62 | Lesson 63 | Lesson 64 | Lesson 65 | Lesson 66 | Lesson 67 | Lesson 68 | Lesson 69 | Lesson 70 | Lesson 71 | Lesson 72 | Lesson 73 | Lesson 74 | Lesson 75 | Lesson 76 | Lesson 77 | Lesson 78 | Lesson 79 | Lesson 80 | Lesson 81 | Lesson 82 | Lesson 83 | Lesson 84 | Lesson 85 | Lesson 86 | Lesson 87 | Lesson 88 | Lesson 89 | Lesson 90 | Lesson 91 | Lesson 92 | Lesson 93 | Lesson 94 | Lesson 95 | Lesson 96 | Lesson 97 | Lesson 98 | Lesson 99 | Lesson 100 | Index of Scripture Texts | Dictionary