Are you a Feminist? (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme of Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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My name's Mike Abendroth, and I feel like I have some allergies. When I was a kid,

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I would take Alarest every single morning when I would wake up. Probably sneeze, I don't know, 15 to 25 times.

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Take Alarest. I would take a Carnation instant breakfast drink, and combine the two.

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You had quite a feeling there. But now it's Claritin, because there's a lot of pollen out.

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The car, every car I own has one color. I don't own that many cars, but every one that I do own, they have one color, and it's green from all the,

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I don't know if it's technically pollen, or what it is. So here's what we like to do on the radio show.

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I like to just teach the Bible in a straight and simple fashion.

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Straightforwardly is how I like to teach. And if you've been listening for any length of time, you know the style, you know the strengths, you know the weaknesses.

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Here's the good news. It's 24 minutes. Excuse me. And so, it goes by fast.

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And if you don't like this topic, there'll be probably a topic tomorrow that you like, or another day. Tell your friends, they can access us on Worldview Weekend.

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There's the app for that. Both the NOCO TV show, 30 -minute TV show, and these radio shows.

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Or you can do the No Compromise YouTube video site, which has 110 videos, short little snippets that you can send to your friends and bother them.

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We are no longer on WVNE 760. We were replaced with James McDonald.

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I know. All right, today, I predict, I feel,

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I have a sense, I have a hunch, I have a spidey sense, that you, the listener, old or young, male or female, oh, let's try to make it more biblical, slave or free,

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Jew or Gentile, you are influenced by I, drum roll, feminism.

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I predict you are, E -R, influenced by feminism.

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I wonder if you could admit that. I wonder if you would admit that. I'm influenced by feminism.

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So today and the next few shows, I'm going to record, we'll just space them out a week or so. I have been asked before, if you're going to do a four -part series on hell, why don't you just do

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Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? But I never really liked that. I like to have the series of teachings play on like a

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Thursday or something like that or Friday. But I'm going to talk about feminism and the role of wives in a marriage.

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That's what we're after. So I've been preaching through Malachi and I got to chapter two, verse 10 to 16, and there's some unbiblical divorce going on there.

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And it made me think of the wife, the wife of your youth. Malachi calls her the covenant wife, your wife of covenant.

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It's a very endearing terms for your spouse. How could you divorce them for these pagan ladies?

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And so at Bethlehem Bible Church, then I did a week on husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and some other commands for the husbands in light of who they are in Christ.

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And then following that, there are the three exhortations in light of who they are in Christ to or toward their husbands.

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That is ladies towards their husbands, toward their husbands. I don't think towards,

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I said towards for a long time, but I don't think it's a word toward, et cetera.

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What's the other word that I always mispronounce? I often say our instead of our, our, our instead of our.

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So when I see the word O -U -R, I like to say our and really enunciate it.

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When I was in Branson, Missouri for the worldview weekend conference, by the way, I met many of you there. And it was great to know that you listened to No Compromise Radio.

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I mean, really hundreds, maybe more than hundreds, just very encouraged by you listening.

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And then I talked to a lot of people from the Midwest who speak just like I do. And so when I say the word different,

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I often use my Midwestern slang and say different. And people talk that way.

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So I felt right at home. And then I also, instead of hearing people say interesting, oh, that's interesting, or interesting, depending where you put the accent, they'd say interesting.

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That's interesting. I thought I'm back home. I feel at home. And I really did feel at home with a lot of the listeners at worldview weekend.

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What a great conference. I've been invited back. Brandon invited me back.

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And so I better start working on my messages now. So today we're talking about, are you a feminist and have you been influenced by feministic theology?

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And then we'll get into some of the interesting commands for the woman who's married.

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And so if you have not read the book, Mary Casean's Feminist Gospel, The Movement to Unite Feminism with the

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Church. It was crossway 1992 of all times. Quite old. I think she gives a good overview from the

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Christian perspective. And in her book, she'll talk about the turn of the century and you get into the 1800s.

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And there are many books written about equal rights, the rights of women.

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And she calls this the first wave of feminism around the 1800s.

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And then around 1848, it wasn't around, it was exactly, you had 100 instead of 100.

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You had 100. He's good people. Here's the bad news.

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Bad news is I'm by myself in this room, just laughing, but I'm picturing some of you listeners. There are those that I'm picturing.

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I'm picturing Ted, wherever Ted might be living now, Atlanta or something.

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I'm picturing John in Idaho. I'm picturing Jill in California. See, I'm just picturing some of the listeners.

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I'm picturing some of the Canadian listeners, eh? So anyway, 100 ladies get together in Seneca Falls, New York, and they wanted to put their stamp of approval on something called the

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Declaration of Sentiments. Now this was not sediments. That's not what they were talking about.

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Sentiments. And so there are certain inalienable God -given rights that women have, and they wanted to make a declaration to affirm that.

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And the lady that drafted most of it was named Ellen Cady Stanton. C -A -D -Y is her,

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I don't know if that's her last name or maiden name. My guess is maiden name. And she put together a list of 15 grievances.

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And included in those grievances were the fact that women didn't have the right to vote, they couldn't have profitable employment.

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They could have employment, but not profitable employment. Excluded from universities and the professions of theology, medicine, and law.

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And so they couldn't get into theological institutions, I guess to be pastors, pastorettes, elderinas.

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And according to Mary Cassian's own writing, she said, and were obligated to obey their husbands.

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End quote. So I am a pastor and I officiate weddings.

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Since I'm gone a lot of the summer, I miss out on some of those. I love weddings and I love marriage ceremonies.

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I don't know if I love to officiate them, because while I love to preach and tell people about free grace, and of course a wedding ceremony pictures that very thing, it's a lot of pressure, because I'm gonna mess up sooner or later.

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It's the couple's big day. You know, if it's a sermon, well, I can just take all the blame for that and the

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Lord gets all the credit. But here it's just different. It's just different when there's a wedding ceremony. And so lots of times

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I don't do those and I still enjoy going to them and it's always a privilege if I get asked, but when

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Pastor Steve gets asked, it's nice. So what

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I personally don't do is let the couple prepare their own vows. Or if you're in a different part of the world, wows.

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I didn't say Branson, different part of the world. And so the reason why I don't let them write their own vows is because they typically then have very sentimental vows.

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Sometimes unscriptural vows, or maybe just non -biblical. That's probably more fair.

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And the main issue is they don't have vows that are non -symmetrical.

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In other words, the wives are told to respect their husbands and we'll get into that in weeks to come.

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And the husbands are never told to respect their wives, they're told to be not bitter toward them or harsh with them.

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The Lord knows as He's made us and He's designed us to be men and women, no matter what the culture says, if you say you're a girl, you're a girl, that's not correct.

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If you're a woman, you're a woman. A girl, you're a girl, et cetera. So husbands have a hard time with being bitter toward their spouses and harsh with them.

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And so the Lord knows, oh, don't be, Colossians 3, don't be bitter toward your husband. And so the women,

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I mean, how would you like to submit to someone who is far from perfect? You're a husband. And so do you respect your husband?

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It's a struggle for ladies who are married to respect their husbands. So Paul, God through Paul commands women to respect their husbands,

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Ephesians chapter five. So oftentimes in the wedding ceremony, if people are left to write their own vows,

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I promise to love you, I promise to love you, I promise to honor you, I promise to honor you, I promise to cherish you, I promise to cherish you. And they're symmetrical, like men and women are the same.

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And so they're different, different. And that's the way it goes.

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So here we have obligated to obey their husbands. I mean, when

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I go through the vows with the couple in my study, in my office, and we talk about submission and obedience, love promise, but as Annie in Annie Get Your Gun would say,

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I promise to love honor, but not obey. Or when

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Fergie, when she married Andrew in England, she did say those words, but the

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Cheshire Cat grin, the look on her face when she said obey was quite pronounced.

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There was a French philosopher, according to Mary Cassian. And she began to write on women's issues and her name,

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I'm not a good French pronouncer. My English ain't too good either.

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Simone de Beauvoir. Now that doesn't, I don't think that's right, but it sounds okay.

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I'm not do fromage. S 'il vous plait, ce soir.

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I don't even know what any of these are, really. They're the only ones that I know from songs, probably. She wrote a book called

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The Second Sex, published in 1949. It hits the English translation, hits the streets with an

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English translation in 1953. She was trained by Sartre, Jean -Paul

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Sartre. I think you might wanna say that a different way sometimes. And there's the autonomy of the individual.

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The person is free. And basically, women have been pushed over to the kitchen, church, and children, they've been suppressed.

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And we've been pushed over to this corner of kitchen, church, and children, then you've lost your autonomy.

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And you need to realize you are autonomous and you've gotta take your own life into your hands and make something of it.

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Well, the question is then what must you do? And her response was rebel against male superiority and do not succumb to the traditional role of mother and wife.

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So, you know, here's this free trade agreement between husband and wife and there's no leader essentially autonomous.

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Of course, in America, Betty Friedan, she comes along and makes it Americanized. And she writes the book,

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The Feminine Mystique, 1963. And she could not stand the fact that there would be essentially a biblical role for a woman and a biblical role for a man.

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She couldn't stand it. Now ask yourself the question, why are people anti -Semitic?

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Well, there's lots of reasons. Maybe they've been burned by someone who has Jewish background. Maybe they love, you know, fascism or Nazism.

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I mean, there's probably lots of reasons, but I think at the core, I think the root of all this is a rebellion against the sovereignty of God.

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God doesn't have to choose any nation. And He certainly doesn't choose the most powerful, the most resourceful, the most creative, the richest, the largest.

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He chooses the Jews because it's sovereignly pleased Him to do so.

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Sovereignly pleased is redundant, but it's a blessed redundancy, I know. And so He chooses the

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Jews. Deuteronomy 7 states it clearly because He just loves them for no reason that they're lovable, no reason that they are worthy of God's affection because it's quite the opposite.

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But God loves people and He loves the Jewish nation and He chose them. So it is a satanic stiff arm to the sovereignty of God as Satan has stirred up people, and it's not hard to do because we all have sinful flesh to deal with, that people hate the

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Jews. So I think it goes against the sovereignty of God. The real fist in the air is not against the

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Jews, it's against God. How could you pick these Jews? And so the root cause, in my opinion, for anti -Semitic behavior is people hate

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God. And so they hate His sovereignty. They want a

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God who is like them and they manufacture a God of their own choosing.

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And so they hate the sovereignty of God. Now we, of course, as Christians, we love it, don't we? Don't you love the sovereignty of God?

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I mean, how do people put their head on their pillow at night in the middle of all the triumphs and tragedies of life without knowing that God's a

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God who cares and He watches over and He is transcendent? Yes, but He's close as well by will.

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I think He's transcendent by nature and eminent by will. Well, the same thing happens in a marriage.

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I think people who are feminist, who are pro -homosexual marriage, who are

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ARE, the same type of folks that are in the news these days against the biblical definition of marriage, the only definition of marriage that really makes any sense at all, they hate the sovereignty of God.

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God made a man and He made a woman and He made them differently. He made one first,

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He made one second, He made one from the other one, not the other way around. He designed different hormones.

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He designed different parts of the body. He designed strengths and weaknesses in each.

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And so you have a revolt against the sovereignty of God when it comes to this.

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Who are you to tell me I've got to do a certain thing in my marriage? And so feminism at its root, at its core, is against the sovereignty of God.

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Now, the feminine mystique author, Betty Friedan, writes this.

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The millions of women, quote, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their station wagons full of children at school and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor.

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They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children's clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day.

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They changed the sheets on the bed twice a week instead of once, took the rug -hooking class in adult education and pitied their poor frustrated mothers who had dreamed of having a career.

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Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers, their highest ambition, to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands.

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They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home. They wanted the men to make their major decisions, the major decisions.

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They gloried in their role as women and wrote proudly on the census blank that said occupation, housewife.

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And she calls this, does Betty, the trapped housewife syndrome.

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You wanna get out of that ladies? There's a way for freedom according to the feminist and that is education and work.

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In other words, you're gonna see the push. Women become like men. The freedom is to become like a man.

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Then you had Mary Daly who was a Roman Catholic and she was teaching at Boston College.

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Oh, that's a stone's throw away. Well, it's not a stone's throw away from No Compromise headquarters, but it is a bicycle ride away.

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She writes the book in 1968, The Church and the Second Sex. And she did not like the

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Roman Catholic Church. And she listed her differences with the

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Roman Catholic Church, legal oppression, deceiving women into forced passivity, teaching that they're inferior, harming women in their moral teaching, excluding women from the leadership roles.

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And we need to change the church. We need a radical revision.

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We need to get rid of doctrines that are male because the Catholic Church has portrayed

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God as a male. And so any masculine attributes like God is all powerful,

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God never changes. He's sovereign. You've got to get rid of those.

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You've got to get rid of those. And so there's this boiling of the cauldron of the soup, of the potage, porridge, not potage, potash, of the porridge of feminism, just ready to just kind of spill over into society and homes.

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It didn't take very long before it got radical. Sheila Cronin, since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution.

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She means marriage. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.

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And of course, people like to one -up others. And so Vivian Gornick comes along, an author from the

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University of Illinois, at least at the time. And she writes, being a housewife is an illegitimate profession.

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The choice to serve and be protected and plan toward being a family maker is a choice that shouldn't be.

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The heart of radical feminism is change that. Annalore Gaylor, let's forget about the mythical Jesus and look for encouragement, solace, and inspiration from real women.

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2 ,000 years of patriarchal rule under the shadow of the cross ought to be enough to turn women toward the feminist salvation of the world.

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That's the end game, friends. I know I didn't do a lot of exegetical arguments today on No Compromise Radio, but we're gonna get there.

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We're leading up. I mean, think about how the shows work. Think about how messages work, preaching works.

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Here's the problem, and what's the solution? What's the biblical way to think about it? And so what I'm trying to show you today is there's a problem.

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Mary Jo Bain was assistant professor of education at Wellesley College.

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Don't know if she's still there or not. In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.

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And what used to be very subtle is now just out in the open. They just tell it like it is. And so while I appreciate their blunt honesty,

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I don't appreciate what they're saying. Margaret Sanger, you know who she is.

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She founded Planned Parenthood. And she long time ago talked about women in the new race.

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And she said the most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.

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You wanna know where it all leads? You wanna know the last stop of the trolley of feminism?

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Sheila Cronin. She was writing in the National Organization of Women Times, the Now Times, but this is back in 88.

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The simple fact is every woman must be willing to be recognized as a lesbian to be fully feminine.

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Yow! And then it just spills into the church, doesn't it? It just finds its way into, at the beginning, liberal churches.

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First Congregational Church in California, it used to start off its Sunday service with, "'May the God who mothers us all "'bear us on the breath of dawn "'and make us to shine like the sun "'and hold us in the palm of her hand.'"

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Or you know the Lord's prayer that's modified? "'Our mother,

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God, who is everywhere, "'holy be your names. "'May your new age come.

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"'May your will be done "'in this and in every time and place. "'Meet our needs each day "'and forgive our failure to love "'as we forgive the same failure in others.

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"'Save us in hard times "'and lead us into the ways of love for yours "'in the wholeness and the power "'and the loving forever.

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"'Amen.'" Now, you say you're not affected by this kind of feminism.

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But when we get to the show next week and talk about wives, submit to your husbands.

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In light of who you are in Christ, Paul says, in light of your forgiveness, your justification, your union with Christ, he says, submit to your husband in everything.

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That's right, everything. And once you start bristling against that, you'll know, I've been affected by feminism.

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Well, my name is Mike Avendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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Write us with a story of what the Lord's doing in your life, how God saved you, how God has used NoCoRadio in your life.

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Write us with a question. If you want to ask a critique, go after me for something.

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Just do it nicely and in a godly fashion, I'd be happy to take my lumps. Mike Avendroth, NoCoRadio.

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Or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.