The Rightful Place of Women, Pt. 6

Ron Weinland

February 11, 2017

Today's sermon is a continuation of the current sermon series entitled, The Rightful Place of Women, with this being Part 6. Today will be the final part of that. We'll conclude this series here today. I never know exactly how many it's going to take to get through a subject.

But last Sabbath we only began to take a look at some of the writings of Paul that I've talked about in times past here, working up to that, and we did make a start in that. We're going to continue with that today because some of the things he has written, I believe it was Peter that referred to some of the things that he wrote, basically are hard to understand. So Paul had a different way of writing and communicating that even, I believe it was Peter that had some difficulty with some of that. But I find it fascinating as God begins to reveal different things to us and we're able to go back into scripture and He gives us more of a context of things, helping us to understand even the time that people lived.

This is why this subject here is rather difficult for people to grasp and understand, what the apostle Paul was talking about in that period of time. The world was so different. We've had conversations here recently now because of last Sabbath's sermon and talking about changes that have taken place just in this country alone, and just since the time that women began to work toward being able to vote in this country, and also in the United Kingdom, and when you think about some of those things and go back and look at some of the history it’s unbelievable. That's why I mentioned a couple of movies as well, because if you go back in time even just 30, 40, 50 years here in the United States things have changed drastically having to do with races, the difference in races and the feelings, the kinds of attitudes and so forth that have existed in this country for so long between people. Then when you look at the matter of women alone that have suffered on both sides even more so, except that people don't generally focus on that, but you go back another 500 years, the world was totally different. You go back 2,000 years, 4,000 years the world was so different and how people treated one another. It's hard for us to grasp some of those things unless you go back and look at some of the things that they understand about history or things that are written there; it's rather difficult to place yourself in that environment. Again, it's just a difficult thing to grasp and comprehend how people lived during that period of time and why God allowed something to exist as He did for 6,000 years. But He did for a specific purpose.

That's one of the first things we'll begin looking at here today in 1 Corinthians 14, especially for the Church and especially for those whom God has called through time, if you look at the first 4,000 years of history very, very few were ever called. God's purpose was that when Jesus Christ came and established the Church, after he was resurrected and established the Church on the day of Pentecost 31 in A.D., then things would begin to change on a very large scale, because no longer was God just working individually with different ones as He was leading, guiding, directing, teaching them, molding and fashioning them for specific purposes that will be revealed later on when Jesus Christ returns, the people of old, men and women, but now starting 2,000 years ago at that time on the day of Pentecost God began to work with the Church. The Church began to grow and now God has been working with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people over the past 2,000 years molding and fashioning individuals on a larger scale. It's hard for us to relate to some of those things and understand how God worked with people.

I think of how He's working with us at the end of this age, and even there, because of time that's past, he's working with us in a unique way. I don't know any other way to put it except to say an advanced way. It's like progressive revelation. It's like things that God has revealed over the past 6,000 years. They didn't have a whole lot through time in the first 4,000 years. That's why when you come to the time of Abraham there wasn't a lot there in the sense of what we have or what the Church was even given 2,000 years ago. When Jesus Christ began to reveal some of the things he did to the disciples about the spirit and how God thinks, how God works, the mind of God, the spirit of the law, they never grasped those things. They had never heard those things. So for 4,000 years the spirit of the law, in essence, wasn't really taught, spoken of.

I think of when God began to work with Moses and God told Moses that those who came before him, even Abraham, didn't know God as He was revealing Himself to Moses. He was revealing Himself then as Yahweh Elohim, the Eternal Existing, Self-Existing God, and basically He told Moses that Abraham didn't even know Him as such and that doesn't mean just by a name, it means more than that. It's by what He was showing him about Himself, about God Almighty revealing to Moses about Himself and things that we're able to see and learn from. You go back and read some of the scriptures though and during the time of Abraham and before it uses the words "Yahweh Elohim," but that's because of what was written later on. It wasn't a matter of what was revealed at that point in time. So when God comes along in Exodus 3 and begins to talk to Moses in those terms, that He's revealing something new to him, that was profound. And even then they looked for, for the first 4,000 years, they looked for a Messiah. They looked for someone who was going to come along that was going to free them, in that respect, make them a great nation, a powerful nation. Yet they didn't grasp those things. They didn't understand those things. It talks about how "they looked for a City whose builder and maker was God." They looked to God to reveal things to them. But again, there was progressive revelation through time.

So it is in how God has worked with mankind. How Moses was judged, how Abraham was judged, Sarah was judged, it all depends on what God has revealed to a person. You're judged by those things that He reveals to you and those are on a spiritual plane that God reveals and gives to individuals, as He did to them. But they didn't understand those things as the early Church did. So again, for us sometimes to go back in time and try to grasp what God was giving is difficult. That's why I made comment even how God is working with us is different than how He worked with Ephesus.

You know one of the greatest things that they were doing during that period of time, one of the biggest messages that was going out, the greatest message that was going out? What was it? It was about Jesus Christ. It was about the Messiah, that he did come, that he is the Son of God, that he did die for the sins of mankind. That was mighty! Now, today in today's world that doesn't have to be preached because even the Protestant world believes those things. They teach those things about him. There are things that the world has come to address and believe in a limited sort of way, in a distorted sort of way.

So that isn't the message that God has given to us. He didn't give that to Mr. Armstrong. He gave something totally different to him, in that respect. There was no need to give that because that had been established nearly 2,000 years before and so what God gave to him was a preparation for an end-time, a message going out of thing that were going to happen at the end of an age, knowledge, and insight, and understanding. I mean, I marvel at that, that in 1950—I believe it was 1950—when Mr. Armstrong sent over some of the writers of The Plain Truth magazine to be there when the European Common Market was established. That was so important to him because God had given to him understanding that something is going to happen at the end-time where Europe was going to come together in time with a common military, which is still just very slight, in that respect, compared to what it's going to be, but he said they would have a common currency. People mocked and made fun of it. It wasn't until about the year 2000, when finally they started working toward having a common currency then, the ability to get it out into different countries there, the Euro. Before that though Mr. Armstrong talking about those things going all the way back to 1950. You think, awesome! God gave him that understanding and that's why he sent reporters there because he knew that Europe was going to rise again. Even then talking about how there's going to be 10 countries. We're still waiting for that! 10 countries are going to end up being the final 10 when Europe finally does some of the things it's going to do toward the end-time here.

So different messages at different times and different ways that God worked with people and different ways that God even worked with Worldwide, a different way when it came along after Mr. Armstrong died and began to work with, in a unique way, Laodicea. He allowed Laodicea to come into being. He prophesied, gave through Jesus Christ to John that there would come a time at the end of the age when there would be a final era of the Church that would become lethargic, lukewarm; they'd become rich and increased with goods and think they were great, lifted up with pride because of all the knowledge because the Church had never had that much knowledge! They didn't have that back in Ephesus, some of the things that God gave through Mr. Armstrong, and after a time the Church grew larger and larger, to our knowledge the largest it ever was on the earth, and look what happened. Lessons to be learned. The things that God allowed for a great purpose, to teach one of the greatest lessons yet.

So I marvel how God has worked with us because we don't grasp it fully to its greatest depth yet, but when you look at 21 Truths that God established within the Church, and then you come to a point in time where you more than double that, as we went on, it is awesome what God has revealed to the Church. It's truly incredible. So we have been exceedingly blessed, and sometimes we don't grasp the depth of how God is working with us in a measure of faith that is unique to us. Faith that Abraham lived by was unique to Abraham, but it wasn't the same as Moses. What Moses lived by was unique in his time, because why? God kept revealing more. He revealed the 10 Commandments and had them codified and things that were written concerning the Levites and the Levitical system and what those things portrayed and pictured, though they didn't grasp all that. And then the time of Jesus Christ, and on and on it goes, God just gives more and more and more. We are exceedingly blessed.

I think of this period of time now, that after 6,000 years finally God is addressing this concerning women, the rightful place of women, because if this isn't established, if God didn't establish this we would continue on with what happened in the Garden of Eden during the Millennium. If that wasn't addressed how can families become what they need to become? How can the world become what it needs to become unless that is set right? And that's why God is setting it right and turning things right side up, beginning to, with the Church, as far as women is concerned, the woman is concerned, as far as the rightful place of women in the family and society and so forth.

Yet we only see this struggle. I hope it doesn't go unnoticed. I mentioned last Sabbath that if you go back to the time of the suffragists (they used a different term in Great Britain), but if you look at that process of what they were fighting for and what they were working for I think, what an awesome thing! Because the reality is that didn't happen any time in history before that; it's happened at the end-time. You think God didn't have a hand in that as a part of a process to begin to address some things that needed to be addressed? But what's the problem? Man can't solve his own problems. It still hasn't been resolved, but there's been progress made on a physical kind of plane as far as the world is concerned, and women are able to do things that they weren't able to do a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago – things about education, things about property, and everything else that has been set better in this world.

So again, it's hard for us to go back very far in time unless you actually lived it. So if it's a matter of history, sometimes people don't grasp it. So it is with what Paul wrote. Paul wrote what was necessary for that period of time, to live in a world that wasn't to be corrected in that particular area for another 2,000 years. Things could not be set right yet; it wasn't time. Things had to continue on and so he wrote this, inspired by God Almighty to write it.

1 Corinthians 14:33—For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. This has a great deal to do with the kind of instruction and guidance and direction that's given to the Church. It's about how the Church can function in a world that is not God's. It's why Paul says further, later on, talks about how that Satan is the god of this world. It's the way the world is. So how does God's Church work, function in such a world? God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. "But of peace." That's what His spirit produces. So there's a way that people are to live, and within the Church as well. This is the guideline that is being given to Paul at this time.

…as in all the churches of the saints. I dislike that word, "saints," because of the way, what the world has done to it, what the Catholic church has done to it and having "saints." They don't grasp what saints are. It simply is talking about individuals who have God's spirit living in them that are different from the world, who have the begettal of God's spirit, His life living within them. They are referred to in this manner. But look what the world has done. Anyway, tarnished words, misused words.

Verse 34—Peace in all the Churches? Let your women keep silence. It's about peace. It's about how you're going to be able to function in a world that is so upside down, that is so distorted and twisted, and to strive to live as peaceably as you can within such a society and within such a world. Sadly, that's just the way it was, and to live otherwise, and to be an example of something, or to set an example in something else that would begin to be revealed 2,000 years later would have so upset society around them. It was upset enough with the message that they had about Jesus Christ! They were trying to kill them for that. They were trying to put them in prison just for that, for the message. To live in a community they had to live a certain way, and also within the Church as people were being drawn into the Church.

Just like for us, family members come along, family members are invited who aren't convicted, who aren't yet called necessarily, and sometimes if they were to see something or be around a family where if this had been addressed back then, would have caused incredible problems. Far more than what was necessary. So as much as possible one was to dwell at peace. Let your women, therefore, as it should be; that's the proper translation of this, that's the result here of what he's working toward, keep silence in the churches. For it is not permitted unto them to speak. It's just the way it was.

…but to be under obedience, and the words "they are commanded" are not even in scripture. "But to be under obedience." That's what they are being instructed to do. That is a part of the message here. But again here, there's a certain order that God gave within families and within the Church throughout this period of time leading up to the very end here even within the period of time of Philadelphia and the Worldwide Church of God, and on into Laodicea.

…but to be under obedience as also says the law. Well, what law are you talking about? And sometimes people don't understand what these things are talking about, what's being mentioned here. "As also says the law." Is there some law written in Exodus or somewhere in the Old Testament that says, in essence, that a woman is not to speak in the Church? I can't find it. You try to find it. So what is it talking about, "as also says the law"? Well, it's kind of a loose term in how it's used. Even within the Church that's been used rather loosely. Sometimes referring to the books of the law, sometimes the first five books of the law. That's really about the only place you can come to to realize what it's talking about, to say something that happened at the very beginning of time in the Garden of Eden, something written in the law, something that's stated in the law of what it was going to be like because of what Adam and Eve did and their sins. So something resulted. It was a curse. It was referred to as a curse and because of what they did man began to treat woman in a way that God never intended, and the woman began to live differently than God ever intended, and those things now, after 6,000 years, are beginning to be set right side up within the Church. But it started back then.

So it's talking about what is in the law, what is written in the book of the law, what is written from the very beginning, candidly! Because the reality is it's not a matter of God's law. It's not a matter of the 10 Commandments. It's not a matter of the Levitical system it's discussing at all. It's talking about what happened with Adam and Eve and something that was established long, long ago, written indeed in the book.

And if they will learn anything… So what is the option to have peace? If a man is going to rule over the woman, which is what it said back there in Genesis, what does that mean? It means exactly what it says. It's written in the book of the law, the first book of the law. The first five books are referred to as the books of the law, in essence, and that's what it's referring back to, what happened from the very beginning with Adam and Eve. It's not difficult. It's simple. So they're being told here this is going to happen in life, women are going to be oppressed, they're going to be subjugated, in essence, by man. They're going to be brought into control in everything in life by man. Man's going to rule over them! It's the way it's been for 6,000 years. It wasn't ever meant to be that way, but it started back then. This is exactly what it's referring back to.

And if they will learn anything let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for a women to speak in the Church. Why? Why? Because of the world. Because of the way the world was, the society at that time. It would bring shame upon the family. That's just the way society was at that time. It's not referring to anything right or wrong here as far as God's way of life is concerned. It's referring to something that would happen as a matter of the family, what it would mean to the husband who worked as he did in society, known by the way that he was in society.

Anyway, let's go on and notice what it says in Ephesians 5. So there were certain things that were said simply for the sake of, it’s difficult enough, it's enough to ask for certain things to be done by people. That is enough, in essence, if we can understand. If God gives to somebody the understanding of the Sabbath day, if God gives to someone the understanding of the Holy Days, if God begins to open up someone's mind, even from the very beginning of the Church when the Church was established, that was enough. Going through the persecution that they were going to go through in society was enough, that they were doing and living the kinds of things they were before others within the gentile world, and how even the Roman government, they were down on Judaism, let alone people in the Church. And what do we do? We go a lot farther than what Judaism did.

When you talk about time, that period of time, the Romans, their beliefs, they hated the Jews. They hated the Jewish religion. They hated it! They tried to destroy it. They tried to get rid of it. They took, as I mentioned, I think, last Sabbath, a hundred thousand Jews captive to build the coliseum in Rome. So through time they've done different things; they built a lot of things too, as a matter of slavery, putting the Jews into slavery. They subjugated them. So they lived in a very precarious time during the time of Christ, before some of the things that happened later on with Nero and different ones there, some of the ones that followed. But can you imagine being in the Church at that time, 31 A.D. on? Why bring more persecution and suffering upon yourself for doing something that isn't wise? But to strive within the best and the most power that you have in life to live at peace and to have an order in life and in family in a world that is not God's. So it was established this way. I hope we understand that. I hope we grasp that. It's a matter of the time that people lived in. And it's enough. Even when circumcision came along, that was hard for those who were of the Jewish belief to make a change, to grasp something. Paul even talked about different ones, about not putting certain things upon them. It's enough! It's enough when you're called into God's Church to live what we have been given by itself. At that time there, things about Jesus Christ that went way beyond the Jews, that went way beyond the Jews! Can you imagine being in the Church of God back then and here you are going way beyond the Jews because now they talk about keeping a Passover and you talk about something different, that Jesus Christ was our Passover? You think that made the Romans love them more? Or the Jews? Now the Church had two groups that hated them, immensely so, the Jews and the Romans.

Ephesians 5:21—Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God. We're kind of jumping in the middle of something here, but just picking it up here. What does this mean when God is talking to the Church? Submit to what? What are they to submit to here? It's the instruction that God gives to both men and women. So even within Paul's writings God inspired certain things to be written that if people were to live as they should live that this matter of what was addressed back here in 1 Corinthians 14, of them not speaking in the Church, didn't mean a whole lot. It didn't have great meaning. It wasn't a matter of a punishment or anything of that nature. It was because of the world around them. God allowed them to have a certain way of life within the Church that was unique and different to them that they lived by and submitted to.

Notice, "Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God." In other words, this has to do with something that God says. God is giving something here about how you're to live in family, how husbands and wives are to live toward each other, men and women toward each other, and specifically here husbands and wives. It says, Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. In the same manner as you do toward Jesus Christ, toward God Almighty, submit yourself to the husband. This is a matter of peace in the Churches of God in that time because it wasn't time to set things right yet and there had to be a type of order.

For the husband is the head of the wife. So says the law. So it says in the law. Not that it was intended to be this way, but this is what started when Eve and then Adam sinned. It says God made very clear, "And now, from here on, because of your sin the man's going to rule over the woman." That's what it said. In other words, "This is what you're going to have to live by in your life because this is the way it's going to be from here on out. A wife is going to have a certain desire toward her husband, and he's not going to reciprocate in the same way. You're going to suffer because of this, because of your sins. This is the way your life is going to be in families. This is the way it's going to be in the world, and in part, for a period of time, because of that, in the Church of God until it's time to set things right."

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church: and he is the Saviour of the Body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. There is an order here that God established.

Husbands, love your wives. And if they can really grasp, which I imagine only a few have in the past 2,000 years, to the depth that they needed to or could because of what it's saying here, this is quite profound. This is what they were to submit to when it said in the beginning, "Submit yourselves to one another in the fear of God." This is something that the husband was to submit to, to yield to, to focus upon even more so. This is specific instruction that he is to focus upon in a very profound and unique way because this is his great need. The wife's need? To submit. To submit to something that's imperfect. To submit to a man who is imperfect. Human beings are imperfect. We're to submit and yield to a system in the world, whatever country we live in, to the laws of that nation, whatever they are – fair or unfair, right or wrong. It's immaterial. It's a matter of your yielding to that process to be a good citizen, even when things are not right. Even in some of the most oppressive governments that have existed in the world God has told His people, just like to the Roman government, the Roman world, they had to submit and yield to those things, not to sin, and not to live sin, but to submit to their authority over them, so even more so within the Church. So God established these things for the Church until things could be set right.

Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church. "Even as." So anyone looking at that, having God's spirit in the past 2,000 years, this is the focus God gave to husbands because of what the wife had to do, because she was to submit to a certain order that God said is right within the Church for the sake of peace, for the sake of order. He told the husband then, in essence, if he could get it through a block head, "Because she has to do this, you'd better be right toward her, to understand what she has to do. You are to love her as Jesus Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it." What does that mean? It's a sacrificing love. How many husbands in the past 2,000 years have lived by that in the deepest of ways? Not in the deepest of ways I can tell you, only in part. Love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it, a willingness to sacrifice even your life if need be, whatever it is. So it means a giving kind of love and it goes far deeper than that.

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, and I love the way he says this. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh. It's human nature. We love ourselves. We pamper ourselves. We take care of ourselves. If self doesn't feel good it takes it out on others. I do it. Do you do it? Do you sometimes get cranky and upset about things because things just aren't going well in your life, whatever it might be? The smallest of things sometimes? We're all guilty of those things, men and women, but the focus here that God is giving is on men. "Think about it." That's what He's saying. "Think about it. Look at yourself. Make sure that you're focused on the right thing, especially when it comes to a relationship toward, not just your wife, but learn from it, toward women, to understand how God has established things within the Church."

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church, he is the Savior of the Body. Therefore, the Church is subject under Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.

Verse 28—So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. Again, no one's ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the Church. Do you grasp what he's saying here? How should you love your wife? It's talking about Christ here and the Church. "Even as the Lord the Church." So it's a matter of a nourishing and caring for the wife, a desire toward the wife. Because what did it say about Adam and Eve? What were they told? "Your desire will be to him, but his will not be to you." That's human nature. That's what started because of sin and human nature and the selfishness of human beings, and especially with mankind, with men, because of physical strength and ability alone and the difference that God made there. It started there.

So God says, "Because you're like this, this is what your focus needs to be. You need to nurture and cherish your wife! Because your nature is not to do that because your heart and your desire is not to your wife, it's to yourself, you selfish old clod!" That's what they're being told! That's what man is being told. "Because of your nature and the way you think toward your wife, that needs to change and this needs to be your focus. And for order to be there, and for peace to be there she is to submit to you… to you, who is imperfect, to you whose normal and natural desire isn't to your wife!" And that's the way it's been for 6,000 years, men toward women! Their attitude is first toward self and with the kind of power that's there that attitude when God calls someone needs to change, because it isn't right. It was a result of sin. That's just the bottom line. It was a penalty. It was a process of human beings turning inward and turning selfish. So God's telling them, "This is your focus, men."

Going on, verse 30—For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh. And he goes on to say here, This is a great mystery, because it teaches something on a spiritual plane and you can't understand that until you're called by God and have His holy spirit in you. Then you can begin to grasp something on a spiritual plane that God has made within the marriage relationship as an example to learn from, to see. It was meant that a man and a woman through time become more and more at one, knowing each other, knowing thoughts, knowing thinking, and even in change that they make. Because human beings, we're made incomplete as it is, anyway, without God's spirit. We were made on a physical plane that's selfish. Yet there are things that God created within both a man and a woman that when they come together and begin to live like they're supposed to live, there are things they can learn from each other.

Men aren't like women, and women aren't like men. Many a problem in marriages and in life come as a result of people just not quite getting that: Women not understanding men in truth and in spirit and men not understanding women in truth and in spirit, about the differences that exist that are just normal and natural that God created within human beings. So people are to strive to get to know each other, to see how thinking is different and not to think that their way is best. Because what do people tend to do? "My thinking is right." When there's conflict between a man and a woman, each thinks they're right. That's just normal human nature. It is between men and men as well, and women and women, but it's just normal human nature. But it's made greater when it's between men and women, in that respect, because there are greater differences that exist in the thinking. We're to learn from that.

He says here you're to become one. What’s the great mystery? Something that God gives to us – that we can become at-one with God, of the mind of God, the thinking of God. How does that happen? Is it something that just, some kind of motion is there and all of a sudden you're at one? Or do you have to put work into it? Do you have to stop and think about God and the way God thinks and the way God tells us how to think? Because when He calls us He says to repent, which is the Greek word that means "to think differently." He calls us to think differently. So what do you? How do you do that? You've got to think about it. You've got to use this that God gave, the mind, and you've got to begin thinking about the things that God says and why does God say it this way? Why does He tell us to do this? Why does He tell us to exercise this? Then do we obey it and start to learn?

He says to "prove all things." I think of a long time ago in the Church where people thought that that meant that they could go in this book and prove what the minister was saying in front of them was right or wrong. That isn't what that's about at all! It's not about the fact that God gives everybody the ability to go in here and prove certain scriptures because they're so good with Strong's Concordance or the Bible. It's not about that at all. It's about God's way of life, that you're to prove all the things that God gives in instruction by putting it into practice in your life by living it. That's how you prove God! So you have to think about it. You have to think about when God says something, and do it a certain way that you're not accustomed to or you don't normally think that way, and so you have to start practicing something different. And then in time it can begin to become more a part of you.

Should husbands and wives be any less in life in marriage? Should they not strive to learn certain things about one another and become more at one and in unity in how they do things? Order and in peace?

That's why I mention and make comment about something very simple, because if you can magnify that many times over that's the way life is. My wife and I both enjoy things outside around the house and in the house as well, but working outside and the things we plant and so forth. I made this comment that we don't put anything out there unless we both like it and both agree upon it. Why would I want to plant something that she doesn't like? Why would I want to put something in a certain place that she doesn't enjoy? Is it about having my own way, that I'm going to get my own way by how I do it? Or inside the house? That's more the wife's territory anyway. They have better taste than us men.

It's like her clothes or my clothes. She doesn't want to wear anything, and I don't either, that the other doesn't like. Why would I do that? My desire is first to her in those things. I want her to like how, what I wear and if she doesn't like something I'm not going to wear it. I'll guarantee it the other way around; it's true there. That's the way life is. That's just a small area of life. That's to grow and grow and grow to where you strive to do that in other areas of life too. Do we do it perfectly? No. But you have to work at it. It doesn't just happen, neither in the Church of God. You've got to think about the things that God says. When you realize that you're thinking something or doing something that doesn't agree with God then you repent. You ask God for help to think differently, because it's your thinking wrong that's wrong, that causes wrong things to happen in life that you yield to and do. You're going to suffer if you go against what God says.

So those principles can begin to be learned first of all in a very powerful way in the Church of God in marriage. It is a great mystery. It's about how God's spirit works in our life on a spiritual plane with Jesus Christ and God Almighty. So God gives specific instruction here to the wife and to the man to help create, produce greater peace, the potential for peace which means greater happiness in life in the family, in the home, and things that affect children and how children grow up then and what they see, and then what they can live later on because they've seen a certain thing in their life and then they can begin to live certain things in their life and grow and become better and better as each generation comes along, if we live the right way before God.

That's why Mr. Armstrong talked about it's going to take three or four generations because it's a process. It's learned from a child on up; they see certain things in mom and dad. That's why I think about this world. Look at the confusion that exists in this world today in families, in multi-families, and people not knowing who their grandma is and they have five or six, seven, eight, nine, ten grandmas. Well, which one is your grandma?

So he said, This is a great mystery. …concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife as himself. Now, I can't help but think back into a long time ago, thirty years ago, forty years ago in the Church of God, and where we were at that particular time. I can tell you, as a whole, that within, even within sermons this wasn't stressed. But what I did hear stressed a lot was the wife being submissive to the husband. I heard that a lot. I do not remember sermons where husbands were told how they should live toward their wives. I really, truly don't. I'm sure there were some that were there, but I don't remember them because I remember the others being stressed.

And so again, what an incredible process of growth that God gives to us. I think of where we are. It's because of where we are that God is giving us the ability to understand and see things in a greater way than what we could even within the Church thirty, forty years ago and beyond because of where we are, because it's time to change those things. So God's giving us a focus to see what needs to be done and how it's supposed to be done and so forth. This is just the beginning because this is the way the world is going to be soon, the focus on the world within families and so forth, that the husband is not going to be the head of the wife in the same manner. People are going to learn to love each other, period, God's way. Wives with a sacrificing love toward their husband, and husbands with a sacrificing love toward their wives, and a desire to become at one within the Body of Christ, in unity and harmony and love and care and concern and nurture of life. Because that's where the fullness and enjoyment of life comes from, it's from living God's way and God's love toward one another.

So we're drawing closer and closer to the ability to accomplish that on a worldwide basis. To think about what that world can become is astounding just in that one area of life alone, the impact that can have on society. I don't know if there's going to be advertising in the future. Somehow people are going to have to learn what things are out here, what might be here. I don't know. But I can tell you what won't be there; it'll be that which minimizes women in the minds of men and women in their own minds toward themselves because it hurts the mind, the kind of things that are out here because women begin to think this is the way they're supposed to be or the way they're supposed to look or the way they're supposed to act and they yield to that process because of a certain desire they have in their thinking. Then men, totally different mind in that respect in how they think about some of those things, in a wrong way toward women. Their minds then aren't right toward another human being, toward a woman. Instead it's perverted and distorted and sick. That causes relationships to be distorted and hurtful and painful and sick. So God is helping us to learn to clean up the mind and how we think toward each other.

I so desire that in this world. I hope you do, too, that you see the evil that exists out there and why these things have to be changed in every facet of society, things about fashion that women think they have to be a certain way. You have to have at least two shops in a shopping mall that tell you what kind of bra and panties you have to wear, so that this is in your mind, that if you don't look like that it's going to affect your relationship with your husband. You nuts? Are you crazy? What's wrong? What are you planting in the mind? What's in the mind? What are you thinking? You think you have to be that way? You think you have to live like that? I don't even want to describe some of it. Some of it has to be so uncomfortable, just a bunch of cheeks and something drawn up through the back. You think, that's like giving somebody a wedgie. People think they've got to live the wedgie, you know, and that somehow this is sexy and attractive. You think, well, it doesn't feel good. But people get to the point where they don't even think about it. They think they're beautiful. They think they're good. They think this is pleasing to others. It's sick! Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick! It's in your minds! I know people out there who think they have to do this, that they have to go into some kind of a secret place. It goes back to Victorian age. Isn't that amazing, Victorian. Incredible, the names that people use of things. It's a sick world we live in. It really is. It's so hurt the minds of people, how they think.

The point is, is that if this crap is in your mind (which is what it is; it's worse than that), if that's in your mind, it's so polluted your mind you can't think and feel right about yourself as a woman and you can't think right toward women and because of that you can't have right relationships. I think even of fellowship within the Church! I'll tell you on the authority of God Almighty it hurts your fellowship toward others in the Church! Men toward women and women toward men. It hurts your relationship with them, the ability to have true fellowship. It truly does because it's polluted your mind and you can't act right and you can't think right, and you can't have the right kind of thinking and relationship with people then because your mind is screwed up!

That's what God is freeing us from, brethren. A world that is sick. Right now at the end of 6,000 years it's sicker. Right now it's sicker than it's ever been. We are as in the days of Noah when people became so expert in evil and sin and the way they thought because they lived for hundreds of years their minds were so demented and sick and twisted, as a whole. When God came along there was only one that He could call and work with in the world, to save the world so mankind could live on. One man that He could draw out and work with. Incredible. Noah. Not the rest of his family, because the rest of them turned against God. They were, and after the flood their attitude and spirit turned worse against God. Incredible, how human beings are.

So there are things that God has allowed to be for 6,000 years, certain order of things, certain peace that was to exist within the Church because it's enough that people begin to live the Sabbath, the Holy Days, and to believe in a Messiah, to believe He is the Passover, and to be hated by the Jews and the Romans at that particular time because they were. So many were put to death.

… and the wife see that she reverence/fear her husband, to not live as God said toward him in the sense of being submissive and yielded. I have given sermon after sermon after sermon ever since I've been a minister, and generally when I give sermons on husbands and wives I never got to the wives. I didn't need to. God made it very clear it's the husbands. If you understand how things have been established then you understand the greater responsibility and the greater need for change is on the husband, whom the wife is to be submissive to, that he live what he's supposed to live toward the wife. If he'll live what he's supposed to live you know what? There'll never be a conflict, as a whole, because of the love that will exist there, the love that will be there, the love of God that will be in the marriage, in the family. So the opportunity then, or not the opportunity, but the occasion for friction, for conflict will be less and less. When they do pop up, you'll be able to resolve them more quickly because of God's love and because of God's way of life to be lived toward one another. Yet the greater responsibility, because of the way it was established, has always been upon the man because of the structure, if the man can understand it.

So thankfully that's all being changed, because true government, true order comes only in one way – by the spirit of God. That's what God has established more and more and is establishing more and more within the Church. It's how the spirit of God flows. It does flow that way as a matter of order, as a matter of unity and so forth. There's a way that God has always worked within the Church. Apostles first, and then on through the structure of the ministry. And so it is. Everything else just works together and flows together in unity and harmony and husbands and wives are to be a team and work together as teams in order and unity and harmony to God Almighty, to the order and the unity of things as they are established within the Church. So we're at a point in time now where God's getting ready to establish that government over all the earth. It hasn't been that way before. Instead, it's been Satan's world by all kinds of governments and things out here that are in great conflict. So to live within that God says submit, yield to it because it's the way it has to be until we get where we're going. Then there will be a different order and harmony and unity within the world.

1 Corinthians 11. So again, we've covered the primary scriptures on this subject, but there is one more that reveals much more about the subject and much more than the Church has ever understood. 1 Corinthians 11:1—Be followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. So Paul just stating bluntly and plainly to the Corinthian Church, with which he had a lot of problems because the Corinthian Church was being called out of a horrible background and a horrible society, and because of that there were natural things there that came along into the Church that had to be addressed and worked with that they would resist in a very great way because of human nature and because of the way the society was there in the area of Corinth. So there were things there that had to be addressed over and over and over again. So he's telling them, "Be followers of me, as I also am of Christ." He is an apostle of God. He's giving instruction to them. He's saying, "Follow this, this way."

Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, which is a matter of a word that means traditions of the Church, in essence, the teachings that God has given to the Church of how we're to do things, of how we're to function. It has to do with the truth, really, the way of life that God has given to the Church to live and how we're to function. …that I delivered, or as the word means "handed over." "So this is how you have received it, Corinth, is because God has given it to me and this is the way that you're to live." He put it quite bluntly.

So, that I have delivered to you. Now, I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. So again, this is the order at that time and has been for nearly 2,000 years. It's not the way it is anymore because it's been changed in the Church of God because of what God has revealed, because of progressive revelation, because of the present truth, of things that God has revealed to us that are going to be different as soon as Jesus Christ returns and the whole world, and the way it's going to be established in the whole world, but He's starting in the Church first, appropriately so. I think it's awesome that it starts with us and we begin to live and change and grow in these things. And we have been. Slowly but surely God is giving more and more and more, more freedom, more peace, more harmony, more unity the way it should be, removing the curses that started 6,000 years ago.

You want to talk about suffering? I receive so many emails, different emails at different times and people talking to me in person about different things—women—about things they've gone through in their lives. Oppression. Oppression. Great oppression from men. Hardships. Heartache. Pain and suffering in life. Horrible. And who's caused it? Men. Men, as a whole.

So again, he's giving this order of governance, and it's partially physical and partially spiritual. The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. So we'll continue on. I want to talk about some of these things as we go along, but let's notice Verse 4—Every man praying or prophesying, and it's not a word like we sometimes have used the word prophecy. This is a word that has to do with inspired speaking, in the sense of God's spirit lives within us and we're able to talk about—men and women—are able to talk about and communicate with one another about maybe a sermon, something they've heard. So because of your understanding that God has given to you in your mind, this is the word, it's about inspired speaking.

In other words, you can't go out here and speak to someone in the world about something you hear in a sermon. Even if they heard the sermon, even if they listened to the same thing you did, you're not going to be able to have the same kind of conversation. There's no fellowship there because they don't get what you get. You just can't talk to them about it! So this is what it's talking about. There is a unique fellowship we have within the Church that is, this word is used, the Greek word here that is translated into English as "prophesying." It's inspired speaking, and it's inspired because of the truth that God has given to you in your mind. So we can talk about Holy Days, what they mean, the Sabbath, what it means, different things in life and what it means, what we're going through now in this sermon and what it means on a spiritual plane. There are things you "see" that others can't "see" so you can't talk to them about it.

I don't even have time for it, but this thing about speaking in tongues, different languages, and how that has been so messed up and so distorted by the world, because they don't understand at all what was going on in the Church at that time and how things were taking place at that time in order to speak and talk about God's way of life and people of so many different languages that were intermixed at different times. Just like on the day of Pentecost and all the people who were there in Jerusalem at that time. There are things that, again, that we've only touched on the surface of in times past, that there's a lot more there of what Paul was dealing with and what Paul was addressing about speaking in different languages and how it was to be used at that time.

Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonours his head, which he said was Christ, dishonors God, dishonors Jesus Christ. Now, he's getting ready to reveal something here that's incredibly profound.

He goes on, But every woman who prays or prophesy's with her head uncovered dishonours her head: for that is though she were shaved. So in other words here, there is something just in appearance alone that God has given to mankind, men and women, that's different. There is a difference there even in the covering over our head, which I don't have a lot of. Don't have to have it, but women have it for a great purpose, even a sign, which we have never grasped nor understood in God's Church. Powerful and profound what God gave, and it goes back to the creation.

So he's bringing out something here that's physical, in one respect, but it's spiritual as far as a relationship with God and what God's purpose was from the beginning and what's being shown here. For if a woman is not covered, let her also be sheared: but it's a shame for a woman to be sheared or shaved, if it is, in other words, let her be covered. But even in today's society people's minds are so distorted they don't even see that. There are people you see now days who, women, who just take it all off. Why? The mind is messed up. It's messed up. There are things that have happened in their life that brought them to that point of thinking that isn't good; it's not healthy. A lot of times it's because of a lot of suffering that they've gone through that have brought them to that point in their life and how they feel and how they think, sadly so.

So it's going here and talking about something as simple as hair… hair. "But if it is a shame for a woman to be shaved or sheared, let her be covered." In other words, there are certain things we ought to be able to look at and realize this isn't the way it should be. This isn't normal. This doesn't look right, but it shows how far the mind can go sometimes, and it can't see properly; it can't think properly.

Verse 7—For a man indeed should not cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image, "the form" or "likeness," if you will, and glory of God. What does that mean? Is man better than the woman? Is that what its saying? Hardly. It's talking about something that began in the very beginning when God took dust and created the first human being for a great purpose…for a great purpose that was to be revealed through time later on. The first that it would be revealed to in a profound way was Jesus Christ. To understand that mankind has a life that is beyond the physical— a potential—to be a part of the Family of God, to be a part of Elohim, the God Family. The world doesn't understand that, nor believe it, obviously. Only those whom God calls can come to grasp and comprehend such a thing, that that's the purpose of human beings. It's not this physical life. This is just a temporary thing. We're in a temporary dwelling. We dwell in a temporary dwelling. We dwell in, an expression in the Old Testament there in Feast of Tabernacles, we dwell in booths. We dwell in a temporary place. It wasn't meant to be that long. This leads us into another level of life that's far, far beyond the human life. It's only meant to be temporary to learn what we need to learn and to be able to make choices so that when it comes time, "in the day of visitation," whenever it comes to us, that God calls us, that we can make a choice and say, "I don't want this life. I don't want what this physical life. I don't want the selfishness of it. I see what selfishness did with Satan. I see what selfishness did with Adam and Eve. I see what selfishness did with Israel. I see what selfishness did with the Laodicean Church. I see what that attitude of selfishness does and I loathe it. I hate it when I see my own selfishness." That's what we have to come to. You have to come to loathe your selfishness, to realize that's not God's way.

And so from the very beginning God's had a purpose. Man, the first made was made in the image and the glory, it says here, of God. The glory is not there yet. The kind of glory that God intends for man to have isn't there yet. That's coming later. Now, there is, in part, especially once we're impregnated with God's spirit, because that comes from God Almighty. So we're just made physical with a certain appearance and a look and we have a mind, but not the mind that we have to have in order to become a part of God's Family. That will come later with the impregnation of God's spirit and begin to grow and begin to be transformed.

It says, but the woman is the glory of the man. What on earth does that mean? Because she was created second, created from a rib. I don't understand all that, but that's what it says. God did it, teaching something. He could have done it out of dirt. It was dirt. We're made of the elements of the earth, physical, but He took the rib out of the man to make the woman to teach things, to show things. We have the same calling. We have the same potential in life. We have the same purpose in life. We have the same purpose to the glory of God Almighty to become a part of Elohim where there is no male and female. That is not God's purpose in His family, to have male and female, only in physical life. What's the primary purpose? To reproduce. To multiply on the face of the earth so there'd be hundreds and thousands and millions and billions who have the potential to become a part of the Family of God, Elohim, to eventually be born into that family. That's the purpose of it all. Awesome, what God has given.

"But the woman is the glory of the man." What does that mean? It means to receive the same glory! That's what it's talking about. "But the woman is the glory of a man." There is something unique in the fact that God created men and women, and if He hadn't we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be here. God would have had to just keep creating human beings out of dirt or out of somebody's rib. Somebody's going to have to give something.

Anyway, going on, For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for… Now, that's not a proper translation, okay? It's like secondary. That's how people take it. It's like being secondary. It's like an afterthought. It's not what it means, but it should be the word "through" or "because of." That's what it is in the Greek language. So "for" gives a wrong message, a wrong thought to the mind of normal carnal human beings, and sadly has within the Church as well. So it doesn't give the purpose and the indication of what it's supposed to give at all.

Neither was the man created through or because of the woman. So there are two words that could be used for such a word, if, in essence, it meant what this implies. So again here, I think of how words are translated sometimes. It's because of what's in the mind of people, and the people who translated the Bible; they had certain thinking in their mind. Men who did it had certain thinking in their mind about women. They did!

I thought about going into some of that movie that we talked about. But anyway, things that people have about race and so forth, they think goes back to Genesis that gave them right to have slavery and stuff, and how certain scriptures and so forth are quoted in the south, used to be quoted in the south in churches and the like. People believed those things, that they had certain authority. Crazy world! People twist and distort things, and here is another example.

But anyway, Neither was the man created through or because of the woman, but the woman… What is it about? It's about the creation. It's about what was created through or because of, but the woman through/because of the man. So this is simply making it clear that more was needed in the beginning of creation in order to fulfill God's purpose through physical human life, and that man of and by himself is simply incomplete and could not fulfill God's purpose without the creation of the woman. This is what it's talking about here in essence.

I think about this one here and what came out by Sojourner Truth. The comments that she made there and basically hit a home run, very powerfully so, making it very clear man had nothing to do with the birth of the Messiah. The woman did because the seed came through the woman in a very profound way from God Almighty, not man. Awesome! Awesome! That ought to teach everything right then and there about what's being discussed here. Anyway, God's purpose is to be fulfilled in a very awesome way through men and women. But the Messiah was going to come fully apart from man, not a part of at all, to fulfill what God said even there in Genesis.

1 Corinthians 11:10, going on, For this cause the woman should have—what does that mean—power? Maybe some of you have a proper translation. It's "authority." It's about authority. So that's what the word means; it's authority. Well, what do you mean authority, power? What are you talking about here? For this cause… What "cause?" Everything that was just discussed here about this likeness and this glory and what it's saying about men and women. For this cause the woman should have authority. Now, the context is as it's talking about a sign of authority. That's what it's getting down to. It's literally talking about something that is a matter of a sign of authority, and it's talking about her hair. It's a sign of authority that God has given to women, different from men, but it's something to a glory, a purpose that God has in why He created women because if He hadn't, again, no one would be here. It's to work together in God's creation to in time bring about Elohim. It was a process that God gave for human beings to live by and to learn from. For this cause should woman have power (authority) on (upon) over her head… because of the angels? What on earth is that talking about? Awesome what it is talking about, it truly is. That this is something unique that God has given to a woman that is, in essence, a mark or a sign of an authority that she has over herself in her own life, over her head, that's an honor and a glory that God gave to her in a very special way that means something profound.

For this cause the woman should have authority (power) on (upon), as the word is, over her head because of, it's the same word as before that was translated "for." Now they translate it right. You think, why do they play games like this sometimes? You know, the King James, because of these ideas and thoughts they had, so things have been covered and hidden because of (even in the Church), because man has so distorted and mistranslated things because of this vision and idea they have about God and about themselves and about whatever. The same exact word "because of" and now they finally translate it properly. This is done so often in the Bible it just boggles the mind sometimes how many things are hidden. …over her head because of, now, not "for," not "for the angels." See, before they translated it, "neither was the man created for the woman." You have to read the whole thing in context. Now they translate it properly "because of" because they knew, they knew, in essence here, "for this cause the woman should have power upon her head, over her head because of," not "'for' the angels." So they still didn't understand it, but they translated it the way it should be translated from the Greek language into English. ...because of the angels. What does it mean? It's about authority through or over, authority over, power for the man and also for the woman to become greater than the angels. That's what it's talking about. It's about a power and authority that God has given to a man, yes, a glory, yes, but also to women, making it very clear, and that even something that God gave in the sense of a distinction and how their appearance is, hair, something simple as hair. That that is her power and her authority that she shares with the man the same thing. Not better. The man is not better than, but it's her authority that she's called to have the potential to enter into Elohim just as much as man. That's exactly what is being given here. That's what the whole context is about. Awesome, what he's showing here. Incredible! Something so simple on a physical plane.

Just like in a marriage, a husband and a wife, the things we're to learn from in those things and how God uses so many different things. Unleavened bread, what does that mean? On and on it goes of different kinds of examples that we can learn from. How much more in something like this even though it's physical, what it means. So for someone to come along and just shave it shorter to be more like a man, to be masculine, to compete with? Why do you want to compete with that? You're made different! You're to look different for a purpose! It's a beautiful thing, but the mind can become so distorted it can't think right and they don't realize what God gave to them, a power and an authority in something that is something as basic as hair. Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! You may have to go back and think about that for a while in what God is saying and what God is revealing and what God is showing, something to stand tall about and in, and the purpose of God Almighty from the very beginning in both men and women, not something to turn from. I've always hated that in the Church when I see men who want to have long hair or women who want to cut it off, or cut it down to be, to look masculine. It doesn't look masculine; it looks sick and it takes away from something if we just can grasp. The more you grow the more you learn the more you have the mind of God the more you can see this doesn't look right. As much as anything on here on billboards out here and so forth, that you realize this is demeaning to people, demeaning to men and women in the mind and how we're to think.

So it is with something as basic and simple and small, in one respect, as the hair. You think, no, this is awesome what God has given and what it teaches and what people are to see from it and to understand from it that goes back to the very day of creation when the man and the woman were put on the earth for a great purpose, to one day have the potential to become Elohim, in the image and the glory of God Almighty, to be made in the God Family, to be spirit. Awesome! Without male or female because that's not what it's all about. This is only a temporary thing in life to learn from, to grow from, to make choices from. So, to me, awesome and inspiring scriptures.

I think it'd be good to go over to Hebrews 2. It’d be good at this point to consider the broader context of what is meant by the use of the word "glory," how it's used in different places as well. But reading it right here and what it discusses when Paul spoke of a woman's hair, that it's a sign of authority, in essence. That's what it is. That's what he's saying; it is given to her by God and His plan for that which is far greater than mere human life. That's what it's all about.

Hebrews 2:6. When it talks about this glory it means what it says. When it talks about a glory up here, and it starts talking, first of all, about the man and then it speaks of something about the woman in a different kind of context, but still speaks of this glory, we need to know how God uses it and what it all means. That's why I love these verse here in Hebrews 2:6—But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You visit him? So it's Psalm 8 and David, a prophet of God, inspired to write something like this, of this magnitude, of talking about how that when he looks into the heavens and sees the stars, and you think about what he could see back then. Not that many. He didn't grasp what we grasp today, the things we can grasp and comprehend because of the Hubble Telescope, because of science that God has given mankind in a very powerful way at the end of 6,000 years and the things we grasp about the universe. Yet David was moved by God's spirit to see something on a very limited plane that moved him powerfully, that means so much. A little orb in space, a little orb with all the stars that are out there. He had no comprehension that there were planets out there and other stars and galaxies and so forth. He had no comprehension of those things. How much more do we have? How blessed are we to grasp and understand the Great God who created it all and sustains it all?

What is man that You visit him? You made him a little lower than the angels. "Because of the angels," when it talks about women? It's the same. It's talking about the same sorts of things, for a greater purpose – power, authority revealed in a part of how you were made to look different than a man. Hair. Isn't that amazing? Something that is to set a woman apart in a very unique and beautiful way apart from man. Incredible! You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honour. Oh, yeah? When does that happen? How does that happen? Well, crowned with glory and honor because you're made in the image of God, in the likeness of God. There is an honor in that, to be in such a creation, that something God has given to people on a physical plane, but the glory, well, that comes with time, in time. It first starts when you're impregnated with God's holy spirit, but that isn't the end of it because there are those who have been impregnated with God's spirit who will not be in God's Kingdom.

You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honour and did set him over the works of Your hands, not everything, but it's talking about God's purpose; it's talking about time and God's purpose in it all. You have put all things in subjection under his feet. Not yet, but as a part of God's purpose these things are to come in time, just as the glory that's going to grow and become greater and greater and greater, the glory of God.

You have put all things into subjection under his feet. For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. Powerful! You know what? If we really can grasp that, what it's saying, that's God. Elohim. The God Family. Awesome! But now… In essence what it's saying, a better translation would be, "As of now," because that's what it's saying. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. It hasn't happened yet, neither has the glory, the kind of glory that God intends. But we see Jesus, in other words, this is what we do see at this point in time, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour—Elohim, finally—that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man, to be our Passover. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by/through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory. It is a word that is not just about men. It is an expression about something that is used for both men and women because once born into that family God uses physical things to help us to begin to grasp something on a greater plane, a family. We're all going to be in that family, just like the word "Israel" that's used. It's not about a physical people; it's about a spiritual Israel that is to come, God's purpose, but all to be able to be born into God's family. No male and female at all. …by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, because that glory hasn't happened yet. We see one that has received that glory, and that's Jesus Christ, but God's greater purpose is for others to come along through time, many. To make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. In other words, how he became our High Priest.

So if we understand how the word "glory" is used in these words like this and expressions like this and God's purpose and God's timing and about the glory that God has that He shares with mankind, and it starts with something very physical in a likeness, but that isn't God's full intent yet. That's just a beginning. So it has been for men and women. Then God inspired Paul to write something that expounds upon some of that and what it means then in what we just went through in Corinthians there about a certain kind of glory that God has given as a sign, in essence. This is a kind of glory that God has given to you, of something far greater over the angels, a purpose that God has for men and women to become a part of Elohim, to become greater than the angels: "Made a little while lower than the angels," as it talks about Jesus Christ, "for the suffering of death." All mankind has to live that way for a time, lower than, on a physical plane, weaker than, smaller than.

Colossians 1:12—Giving thanks unto the Father, who has made us able to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. So again, he's talking about a process here of how we're called; we're able to have a process take place within us, to partake of, to share in a purpose that God has when He gives us His holy spirit, the impregnation of His spirit.

Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, in other words, begins to be removed from the captivity that we're in as human beings in Egypt. God begins to lead us out of spiritual Egypt. Slowly, but surely, we go through a process of being freed. Now God is giving something in a very powerful way, of removing something that happened 6,000 years ago of a freedom. How do you describe that one? Awesome! Incredible! A freedom that people have longed for and desired, and God revealing that even though it started to be addressed in the last 200 years man can't find it. They can't find it. It's not in man to know how to do it. They know something's wrong. God let them see something's wrong and they begin to fight against it, begin to get organized with and work toward something different the same time that technology was coming along, and yet man can't find what he wants, what he desires to have, because of selfishness. Look at our own country, party's that can't get along. Even within party's they can't get along. They can't agree because man doesn't have it. And women, though they have known things have been wrong, can't have what they want. They don't know fully, but they know it's not right! So a little progress along the way that God gives, and then finally He gives the truth and says, "This is why. Because this is what it's all about. You can't have it until Jesus Christ comes to set up a righteous government on the earth and a righteous way of life upon the earth."

Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. So it begins in the Church of God, as in the last couple thousand years before that it was an individual calling that God gave different ones, gave them the impregnation of His spirit. In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. See, when it's there it's there, the Family, the God Family, then it's complete, it's fulfilled the things that God speaks of even on a physical plane that leads to that point in time.

If you continue in the faith, grounded and settled… If. When I read that I hurt because I think of so many who didn't continue in the faith believing what they were given. It's like 2005. You come to a point in time that God reveals to you that Jesus Christ had a beginning, he hasn't eternally existed, that only one, the Great Almighty God, the Eternal Self-Existing God has eternally existed, and how people can turn their back on that and go back to something else in the world blows my mind, even on a physical plane to do that, but they chose to do it because of becoming upset, becoming jealous, whatever it is in life, lusting after something else they shouldn't have and they leave God's Church because they want something else. They want something else that's only going to last for a few years, someone else to be a sex partner with for a few years, that probably after a few months they realize, "Well, hey, this isn't working out the way I thought it would," and they begin to lust and desire something different because they sin.

That's the way it is! You think, "You cheated on your mate to have another person in life and you expect that to be a faithful and a prosperous, happy marriage?" You know what so often happens? They repeat the same thing again because they're not faithful people. Not even in marriage. You think they're going to be faithful? That blows my mind out here in the world. You think you're going to get attached to someone who has cheated? Two people come together, they have both cheated in life, they've both been married to somebody else and they come together, they cheat, they commit fornication, adultery, whatever it is, and then somehow you're going to have a happy marriage with this person. You're going to be happy. Oh, brother! You think, "How stupid can you be? You both cheated in life. You think you're going to be faithful now?" Give me a break! You're going to cheat again. Think it doesn't happen? It happens all the time. Cheating. Lying.

If you continue in the faith, grounded and settled… What people will give up in order to have something temporary is mindboggling. People made fun of, talk about, talked down about a bowl of porridge, "Can't understand how somebody could do something like that." Well, you've done worse. As it says here, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard, and which was preached (proclaimed) to all creation that is under heaven. In other words, it doesn't mean that all heard it yet, but it's been proclaimed by God at different times. …proclaimed so that all creation could hear it, that's the expression that's being used, whereof I Paul am made a minister.

He went on to say, I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the Church. All of your life is not ours. When you're baptized you give it to God and you learn it's about sacrifice. It's about giving, and whatever God calls upon you in your life that you're to do, whoever you are that are listening today, it's about sacrifice. It's about giving. Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God.

Verse 26—Even the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to His saints, so talking about here things that God has given to the Church, God has given to us. The farther along we've gone in time the more God has revealed.

Going on, verse 27—To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. "Hope of glory?" Do we grasp what is being spoken of in scripture when it talks about things, about a "hope of glory," "for glory," that God has given to us, what He's called us to receive? Always talking about, always having this vision of, this desire for God's Kingdom, to be in God's Kingdom, to be a part of Elohim, to be a part of the God Family? That's what it's talking about.

2 Corinthians 3. These are beautiful verses here. 2 Corinthians 3:15, it says, But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. So breaking into the context here, but again, those not called by God, those who may be, if you want to speak of even those of Jewish background or whatever, they can hear the words of what is true, but they don't get it. They don't grasp it. Only those who have God's spirit can grasp what is true from God.

Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, speaking of the heart, when a person is called, when you actually begin to turn toward God, the veil shall be taken away. That's what happens to all of us. If you grew up in the Church, that's one thing. You have an opportunity, an advantage, but if you're called out of the world you have this inability to see anything that's true and then all of a sudden at some point in time God communicates something to you that you begin to "see" the Sabbath, the Holy Days, things of truth that you never could grasp before. Then that veil, that blindness, begins to be removed and God helps you to see more and more of what is true.

Nevertheless, when it shall turn, speaking of the heart, when God calls us and draws us and we can see, that veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that spirit: and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, freedom that comes from God, But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord… In other words, there are things that God teaches and helps us to understand about Christ, about God Almighty, and a glory there that is magnified in our minds and our thinking toward God. I think of what's been given to us over time, that the more we grow, the more we come to see God, and how awesome that is.

So there is this, like a glass that is cloudy and you can't see through it very well. As time goes along it gets clearer and clearer. It's talking even here about a change that takes place in an individual. So that's what it's talking about in essence here.

But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord. So again here, speaking of human beings and what we can see. There is that which is an image of something that God has called to change. It goes on to say that, are changed into the same image. So we see a form, but we don't see it clearly yet, what God intends for us to be in in time, and we can't, because we can't see spirit. But it goes on to say, "are changed." You know what that word is? It's the word "transformed." The same one that's used in Romans which talks about a transformation (metamorphoo) of the mind, of how when God's spirit begins to work with us there is a change in thinking, a transformation of the mind.

So again here, we are changed (transformed). It's talking about this process of what takes place in the mind, into the same image from glory to glory. In other words, God is saying here that when you are drawn and you are baptized and you have hands layed upon you, you receive something in the mind that begins to transform your thinking. You begin to change your thinking, and as you grow, God grows within you. The mind, the transformation that takes place, you reflect more of God. We read scriptures like that here just recently here. I don't know if it was last Sabbath or the Sabbath before and talking about some of these things, that the more you live God's way of life, the more of God's spirit that works within you and through you, it's this process of transformation and we grow. You are changed (transformed) into the same image from glory to glory even by the spirit of the Lord. In other words, we receive of God's holy spirit, and the more we grow the more transformation that takes place within us. It's about God. It's about a glory that is in our minds, in our thinking toward others and how we can think.

1 Corinthians 11.oing back to it. I think it's good that you just go back, exercise it yourself, to go back and look at some of those things, this glory it talks about there because that's really the thrust of the entire sermon series, it has been to bring us through a process of being able to address and see certain things about why Paul wrote what he did, and for women to be moved, to be lifted up, to be strengthened, to be encouraged by what God is giving to the Church. That this is an awesome thing that God has given to us, far beyond what we can grasp at this point in time, and we've been doing this now for almost seven years in God's Church, talking about this process of change and how God is addressing that in our lives. Then we have to yield our self to the process and become at-one with God in how we yield to something that's awesomely exciting. At least it's exciting to me to realize what the world can be like, what families can be like, what marriages can be like in the future.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1