A sermon presenting the burden of how a man versus a woman should be in their relationship with the Scripture and their God-appointed roles.
Quotes from the sermon:
“I won`t labor this, but I will say it, that women are not natured for wisdom. They are not natured for mightiness. They are natured for great sensitivities—in this context [Jeremiah 9], the ability to mourn, to wail, and be cunning in it, which means to know what you are weeping about....But the man is to be a man to glory in something, to glory in that he understandeth and knoweth God. I`m sorry to hurt anybody with this, but the men are for might and the women are for weeping. The men are to know and understand God mightily, and women are to be sensitive to the sins of the city and the home. We will not accomplish a great deal tonight except for some burning woman`s heart or some burning man`s heart who sees creation and redemption consorting together to do its respective works among women and men.”
“There have been many women interpretations of the Bible, and they go and get this verse and it just blossoms around them. They are the center of the flower. They will advise their husband, ‘This is the Scripture now I got.’ And they see themselves in the Bible. They think the Bible is turning around them in a general way because of their sensitivity to what they read. And men have sometimes wondered, ‘Well, how did you get that out of that. Well, I would have never thought of that.’ And a man will more and more lean on his wife if he likes it, and she will do the general interpreting for the two of them in the home, and gradually he will get rid of his headship and give it to her spiritually. It will shift to her, and she will be the Bible reader. She will do the family altar when he misses it. She will take it up. She will carry it on. She is the torchbearer. She`s a sensitive person. She feels the need of this. She gets right in there. The first thing you know, the home is centered around a woman`s interpretation of the Bible. Now that may not happen in every home you`ve met, but I believe it is generally true around the world. I believe the Bible is warning wives to not be too preachy—warning wives. I want to read this to you: ‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren. The elder women as mothers (not teachers, not preachers); the younger women as sisters.’ I think that I have particularly noticed in life because of my earlier years of watching things turn into the Charismatic movement—the Pentecostal spectrum. In the Pentecostal, Charismatic spectrum the woman is elevated.”
“There was a central push for the woman to be the center of the church, and she became the sensitive woman who interpreted the Scriptures. And the man, as I have already described, was one that reads the Bible and very seldom really sees himself in it. In his own constitutional nature, he is sufficient for life. He doesn`t see the need of it. He doesn`t have the sensitivities a woman does. He`s more prone to become an agnostic or atheist as she is drawing nearer and nearer to a very subjective Jesus, a very subjective God. I`ve seen churches split over women interpreters.”
“I know churches that were started only by women and went for years with no men. In every denomination there have been Bible women. Women had to go ahead and take the lead. In our time, it`s flourishing. Men stay in the background; women are in the front teaching and usurping authority, and carrying on the interpretation of the Bible.”
“There is a danger—I want to say this as gentle as I can but I believe it is the truth and I believe we must know this—that a woman goes to the Bible and makes herself the center of the Bible and walks away as the center of the crowd. I`ve seen men dominated in the home by the interpretation of Scripture by the wives, and those kind of wives get boatloads of Scripture, and they`re passing this advice, and it reaches out and takes the church. It`s suppose to get to the pastor and affect him. And how do you say I`m not going to pay a bit of attention to that and be a nice, gentle man—not going to pay a bit of attention to it; turn my back on it.”
“It is not good ever to go into Scripture with it centered around the reader. I must tell you very strongly. Do not go and read the Bible and center everything you read around yourself. Do not go into the Bible and center everything around the reading of yourself. You can come up with anything.”
“Man is not the center of this book. Christ is the center. God is the center of this book. This book is for people who are lost to come to know God, not even primarily themselves if you are going to try to study that without God.”
“We are living in the time in America where most of that which is preached, women gave it. You go into the bookstores and you see the Charismatic books. And there is as many women writing those books as there are men.”
“No matter how super we think we are, you can`t put yourself in the center of every verse. There are too many things in your life not working well. Maybe where you work, they cuss. That`s not working well for you. You cannot put yourself in the center of some special spirituality when you are living right in the world. What you have got to do is go to that job, having gone to the Bible for God. God is in the center. What is God doing down there where they cuss? What is God doing down there where sin is that I don`t like, that I`m too holy to live with. Subjective interpretations of the Scripture by women and the ignoring of the Word of God by men—it is only a special Christian when a man can step forward into that Book and see God.”
“It`s unbiblical for the woman to be the authority of the Word of God in a family. It`s unbiblical for a woman to be ordained to be a preacher in a pulpit. It`s unbiblical for a woman to write books that teach men. It`s unbiblical. I don`t care what kind of interpretation, and how nice it may seem, it is unbiblical.”
“I believe that one of the reasons why we are so deep in false teaching and heresy in the American church is because the men have quit reading and interpreting the Bible to their families, and to places where other men are—down at their job on their lunch hour. And it`s mainly the wife who gives the interpretation, and so often she is in the center of it. She knows she has more holiness. She is more spiritual. I`ve never known any Pentecostal women who didn`t know how to preach, quote quote. They got it because of the emphasis in a Pentecostal church. It teaches that. It cultivates it.”
“I believe we are living in a very peculiar day. ERA and effeminate men—the whole thing has changed. And the man is more like the woman, and the woman is more like the man, and they are our teachers in the churches.”
“Who is winning in America? the woman? or the man? Who is interpreting the Scripture aright? You say, ‘Cannot a woman ever interpret Scripture?’ Oh yes, please make a career out of it for your children. Make a career out of it, mother, for your children. Preach, just preach, just yell and preach for your children.”
