Romans 16:1 - God's Roles for Women in the Church, Pt. 2 (04/16/2023)

Park Meadows Church

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I told most of you guys know about my grandfather, Luther Waters, that came here for a while in his 90s.

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And sometimes we would meet with the men back there and pray before the service. And the men were used to that.

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Well, when Grandpa Luther came, he came in that room for the first time. You were there, right?

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Remember that? In fact, I think it was you, Luther prayed and he left. And he said, what was that?

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It's like God would come down in that room. And this preacher that prayed first was like that.

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It's amazing. And then the pastor that gave the sermon, today I've chosen to talk about something to keep your interest a little bit.

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Don't want you to fall asleep on me. So I'm going to talk about a trip, preparing to take a trip.

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And everybody immediately got what he was about to talk about. It was great, taking a trip to heaven. And I thought it was funny, your comment you made about the lady that said, well,

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I'm going to help God a little bit. So his doctrine was a little bit like that. And I've observed that in these churches, that their doctrine is from the human viewpoint, almost entirely.

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But nothing that he said was incorrect. It was just from the portion. It was just human viewpoint things.

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He would say, the Lord has finished work. Talk about the finished work of Jesus.

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And he said, and then he saved us. And we made the choice to prepare for that trip.

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And he said it. So then he said something like, and then we do the rest. And I'm thinking, not quite. I know what you mean.

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But it kind of reminded me of her saying, well, I just want to help God a little bit. Well, I think that's the attitude. They want to help

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God a little bit. And it's not all bad. We have to talk about the human viewpoint from time to time, don't we?

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And that's the responsibility side. It was a message about responsibility and serving

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God and working for the Lord, because Lester had done that. He was a great man. When he came to work out at our place, my dad had let go a man who he was never real highly pleased with, my dad.

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And so when Lester came, I was wondering, how is this going to work out? Because my dad was not real happy about how the previous one worked out.

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Well, Brother Lester had been in the military for, I don't know, maybe 30 years, and just a wonderful man.

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And he was, I didn't know at the time that he was a deacon in the church. He was in the word.

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He was a servant. He literally did what deacons do. He would visit the widows and help them with their kids.

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All of them got up and testified at this funeral. We didn't know it till we heard these people. All said he's like my dad.

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They all said that. So I know now with hindsight what he did was he managed my dad and helped my dad kind of become more, what's the word

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I'm looking for, not so critical. And my dad loved and respected

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Brother Lester, which he didn't really respect very many men. In fact, I didn't know he respected any men until he met

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Otis Fisher. But he did, as I look back at it, he respected

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Lester. They had a great relationship. Never anything negative there.

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It was just amazing. So Lester was a great guy. But anyway, the funeral was quite a really, truly,

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I would say, a life -changing event for anyone that would have been there. So it's great. So let's, and I'll tell you where I'd like you to turn.

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I'm gonna, we're gonna get back to Romans chapter 16 and Phoebe here in a minute.

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But let me get you to turn to 2 Timothy chapter four.

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Well, I, don't get me wrong. I love our church, our church for Germanic type people.

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We have a lot of feeling. We just keep it inside more than they do.

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That's the only difference. We still have it, right? But no doubt, no doubt.

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But you know, guess who it is that made us all different? The Lord. So we all have diversity and aspects that the

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Lord loves and he made us, it's funny, in the light of Ben's Sunday school lesson, he made us that way, which is true.

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And so here we are, right? All right, well, 2 Timothy chapter four.

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Let's look at verse one. I charge that you now remember though, remember. This is

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Paul teaching young Timothy, who is called to preach, a young preacher, how you run churches.

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This is what this is called pastoral epistle. It's a letter from Paul to the young preacher to teach him how to be a good preacher.

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A lot of it is. That's the general subject. So he says, I charge thee therefore, so he's talking to Timothy.

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I'm telling you, Timothy, before God and before Jesus, I'm telling you these things.

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The before God and Jesus who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.

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So when Jesus appears, don't you think that implies that he appears right before his kingdom.

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So you have the second coming and then you go right into the millennial kingdom. And at that point, when he appears, he will judge the quick, that means the living and the dead.

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And I believe that means spiritually living and spiritually dead. So there will be a judgment right when he comes and those who are living will be ushered into the kingdom alive to populate the kingdom and have kids and grow, reestablish human beings on the earth.

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And it'll be thousands of people from around the globe that are saved at that moment. In fact, every Jew that's still standing will be saved at that moment.

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They will 100 % receive Jesus as their Messiah on this day that he speaks of here.

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He will judge the living, the spiritually quick and the spiritually dead at his appearing and his kingdom.

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Preach the word. Now in the meantime, before the second coming, here's what I want you to do. Preach the word, be ready instant in season and out of season, reproof, rebuke, exhort and with all long suffering and doctrine.

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Boy, the modern church today hates doctrine, but Paul loved it. So did Timothy. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.

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Who had the itching ears, the teachers or the listeners? Well, the listeners have the ears. So you can't, you know,

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I spend a lot of time blaming the pulpit for the demise of America and I really believe I'm right about that, but all the blame doesn't come on the pulpit because it's the people that bring the man into the pulpit.

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They chose that man. America chose Joe Biden, sort of.

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Not real sure about that. I would say 48 % of America chose

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Joe Biden and the other 2 % got to vote twice, something like that.

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I don't know what happened. All right, these people at this time, there will come a time when people will not endure sound doctrine.

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That's prophecy. They'll heap unto themselves teachers that make them feel better and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned to fables.

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I've never seen more fables in my lifetime than in the charismatic slash Pentecostal movement.

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It's just full of fables. They would favor a made up thought over the

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Bible any day and I have to say that because I have close friends in those movements, but they just don't get it and they bring the kind of preacher they wanna hear.

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They wouldn't want me to be in their pulpit for an hour because I would show them in history and scripture, it might take three hours, that what they're saying is real is counterfeit, but they don't wanna hear that because they love the fables.

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But watch thou on all things, endure afflictions, do the work of the evangelist, that means when people to Christ, make full proof of your ministry.

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Now, I wanna drop down to verse nine. Do thy diligence to come shortly to me.

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So now Paul is chained to a dungeon wall, perhaps. He's in a dungeon. I don't know if he's chained to the wall this time or not.

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He's in a dungeon, he's been arrested just for preaching about Jesus Christ. And he says to Timothy, don't hesitate to come to me quickly because Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world.

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There is the cause for anybody that moves away from true doctrine is they love the world.

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They love the world system, they wanna be loved by the world. That's why they do it. Demas turned away from Paul because he loved the present world and he is departed unto

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Thessalonica. Now we know that there's a church in Thessalonica because we had the book of first Thessalonians and this man who went away from good doctrine went there and started preaching and I'm sure

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Paul was concerned about it. By the way, I don't think there's a church there now.

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And then Crescens or however you pronounce that person's name went to Galatia and Titus to Dalmatia.

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So we can see the word starting to spread and God providing pastors for these different local churches.

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And one of those mentioned was probably a false teacher, Demas. And he says, only

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Luke is with me where presently in the place where Paul presently was,

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Luke was the only one that stood with him. Now listen, this is amazing. Take Mark, he wants Timothy to take

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Mark and bring him to see Paul because Mark is profitable to me for the ministry.

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And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus to preach there who subvert, okay, let's see, what did

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I get? What did I miss here? Oh, I turned too many pages, sorry. And Tychicus have

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I sent to Ephesus, okay. Now here he's telling Timothy that he makes a special request here.

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He says the cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, bring that to me because he was cold in the dungeon, okay.

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Secondly, when you come bring with thee the books and I want you to make note of this, the books, but especially the parchments.

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Now, when you look at the Greek, the parchments are the scriptures, Old Testament scriptures, and the books are various books about history, science, philosophy and different books like that that Paul was reading and he requested those to be brought to him.

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You will find in your debate with people who don't want to see the truth, that if you want to bring up church history to point out that they're wrong and say, oh, no, no, we just stick strictly with the

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Bible, while we ever studies the Bible. That is a false belief and this is the verse you use.

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So please mark it. Second Timothy 4 .13 proves that you should be looking at more books than just the

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Bible. You need to look at history. Another verse that would prove it is the verse that says, we're not allowed to have a private interpretation of scripture.

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That means your own interpretation. What does that imply? It implies you need to look back as far for 2000 years as you can look to see what brothers and sisters in Christ have said that same scripture meant to them.

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So that you're not just saying, this is what I think it means, so this is what it is. We need to look and see what the church has always thought it meant, or we're disobeying scripture.

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Now, how can you do that without history books? Because the Bible doesn't tell all the history of what our brothers and sister believed about the

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Bible. You have to read history to see that. So we need to study church history, right?

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That's my point here. Alexander the coppersmith did much evil to me.

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The Lord reward him according to his works. So there's a good way for you to rebuke people that you think are persecuting you.

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Don't ask God to kill them. Just say, Lord, judge them by their works. Judge me by grace.

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Get it? That's what he just said. Judge him by works, because he's not a believer.

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He's trying to destroy me and my ministry. Judge him by his works and judge me by the finished work of Jesus.

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Of whom be thou aware also. Timothy, you need to watch out for this coppersmith guy. He's wealthy.

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He's very wealthy, influential man. And because it says he greatly withstood our words.

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Do you ever get tired of people arguing with you nonsense and you know it's nonsense, but they make it so hard to prove, don't they?

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They'll write one little paragraph and ask you a couple of questions. It takes you this much to answer it. Isn't it tiring?

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Paul was going through the same thing. He says, at my first answer, so he debated this man more than once.

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At my first answer, no man stood with me, Paul said. Now, can you imagine being the apostle

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Paul with all of the intellectual ability he has, the spiritual gifts he has and the power of the

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Holy Spirit that he has. And this man won the argument against him. He won this debate.

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Paul lost the debate. So does that mean we can lose debates? Yeah, but watch how

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Paul deals with this because you need this because you're gonna lose more debates than you win as far as trying to convince people to change their mind.

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They don't change their mind very often. They do sometimes because there's two sitting right there that did. But that is just abnormal for that to happen.

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The likelihood is they just think you're wrong and they just go on because they have itching ears, right?

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But look how he handles it. I love this. At my first answer, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.

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I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Can you imagine him saying,

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Lord, forgive them. They don't know what they do. Where'd he learn that from? Yes.

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Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me. How you like that? Okay, look at this.

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At my first answer, no man stood with me. Notwithstanding though, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me that by me, the preaching might be fully known and that all the

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Gentiles might hear. And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

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Satan wanted to kill him right there. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and will preserve me into his heavenly kingdom to whom be glory forever and ever.

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Amen. Good enough. We don't have to win the argument. Now, we go back to Romans 16.

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One, I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant of the church, which is in Synchreia, Synchreia.

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And when you look that word servant up, it means servant in the Greek, but sometimes it's translated into the word deacon.

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In fact, the word deacon is not really an English word. It's a transliteration of the Greek word.

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And so that's where we get the word deacon from, but it doesn't always mean deacon. Normally it means a servant.

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Only by the context can you tell when it actually means deacon because it's the same Greek word. But the

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Greek word sounds like deacon in English, so we transliterated that and just created an

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English word after it, but it doesn't always mean deacon in the sense of a officer of the church.

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Sometimes it just means a servant. There's only one word for both. So in several of the more modern translations, it translates this word deacon or deaconess and makes one think that Phoebe was a deaconess in the church, which she was not.

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But so a lot of people, liberals who want women to be able to teach and have leadership over the church, including over men in the church, they'll use this verse to try to prove it's okay.

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So they're twisting it like they do everything else. So anyway, that's something we talked about the

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Sunday before Easter. Now, we were in 1

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Timothy 2 last time and we talked about a couple of things that the Lord does not allow women to do, one of which is to teach doctrine to men in the church, at the church gatherings, and secondly, to never have authority over men.

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And then God gives the reason. So that's what we talked about last time. And so those particular passages, of course, are in 1

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Timothy chapter three, and the reasons for it are found in verses 13 and 14.

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Now, here's where I want to move into church history a little bit. Verses 13 and 14, for Adam was first formed and then

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Eve. Now, this is 1 Timothy 3, 13. Adam was first formed and then

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Eve. This gives the reason why a woman cannot usurp authority over the man. And then also

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Genesis 2, 18 says that the woman was created from Adam to be a helpmeet for him.

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So she was not created first. She was created as a helpmeet for Adam.

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And really, God saw the man and the woman as man, mankind. Man is not holy man without his spouse.

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It's like, because he pulled some of the attributes of Adam out of him when he made Eve, and she had some that he used to have that he no longer has.

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So with her, he now has them all. That's how marriage works, and that's why it's important. One of the reasons it's important.

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It's kind of like it pictures Jesus and the church, the church being the bride. Do you think that Jesus or the bride is complete without the other?

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Now, I'm not talking about the father, I'm talking about Jesus, the son. Is he complete without his bride?

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Is that a trick question? What do you think? He's not complete without his bride.

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And people say, God doesn't need us. Well, God the son needs us, okay?

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It's very important to say that. He ordained that his son would need us and want us as his bride.

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And desire us or we would not exist. The only reason a remnant was saved was for Jesus' sake.

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God the father saw that his son loved the earth and the humans, but the whole race was fallen.

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The whole race was lost. And the father and the son came up with this amazing plan of salvation to save a remnant for a bride for his son.

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And so we're certainly not complete without Christ, are we? And so this is how man and woman are supposed to be in their marriage as well.

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And so verse 14 says, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

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So this is the reason women cannot teach doctrine to men in the church, because they're more easily deceived and you could introduce false doctrine.

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So as we look at church history, we see some interesting things. There are many ungodly cult groups that call themselves

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Christian. Still today, maybe more today than ever, but many of those were started by women who took leadership role in the church.

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Though churches of all denominations throughout church history have forbidden women to teach and preach to men.

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I'm a big student of church history. This is just a fact. Throughout most of the 2000 years, women were never allowed to be pastors or preachers in the pulpit in the churches, in any denomination.

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Only in these end times has this become made to be okay by people who rationalize and don't look at scripture seriously.

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Cult groups have almost always allowed women to be in leadership in their group. They even promote the practice.

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Females who have started terrible cult groups are not a few. Going way back in church history, the

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Nacenes claim to have received their teachings from James, the brother of Jesus, mediated by a woman named

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Marianne. Now, remember, wasn't it James that was one of the first martyrs as far as the apostles?

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I know Stephen, but James was killed by Herod, correct? So this means that it was mediated by a woman named

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Marianne. She was calling up familiar spirits, calling

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James up from the dead as a fortune teller, is what we would call him. The Bible calls him a person, a sorceress, a person who calls up familiar spirits.

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And she mediated. And so James, through Marianne, taught the doctrine that the

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Nacenes believed. They were one of the first cult groups in church history. Epiphanius said that the

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Nicolaitans had a work that they ascribed to a woman that they thought was

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Noah's wife called Norea. Now, what's interesting is the

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Nicolaitans are mentioned in the book of Revelation as one of the early cult groups. The apocryphal literature names not only

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Thecla, but in the Acts of Paul and Thecla in one of the apocryphal books.

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But also Marianne, who was this woman who called up James from the dead, supposedly, to get their doctrine, alleged to have been the sister of Philip and a number of other women who were said to be prophetesses.

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The New Testament self had spoken scathingly of the woman

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Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess in Revelation 2 .20. So let me have you turn to Revelation 2 .20.

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Let's look at this for a moment. And ladies, you can feel like you're getting picked on with some of this stuff.

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And I would just say that when we look at scripture and what

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God's order is, we should none of us feel picked on because we are who we are as he created us to be.

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And we have to fill within his ordained order to be happy and joyful and fruitful.

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But I'll promise you, this is a little difficult to listen to from a woman's point of view in today's society.

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But before we finish, I'm gonna discuss some things with you from the book of Titus and from the book of Proverbs and show you the positive side of what

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God says the woman's role in the church is. And it's beautiful. It's not contradictory to this.

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It goes parallel with it and it's beautiful. So I'll end with that, but I do need to cover this because this is part of the biggest problem in the church today is the charismatic movement.

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And it has been during my lifetime in the ministry for 40 years, I have studied this in both church history and scripture.

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I've written pages and pages and pages on the subject and preached it and taught it through the years.

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There's very little, if anything new, someone could surprise me with on the other side of that argument.

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I've kind of heard the arguments at this point in my life. And anyone who will listen, you know,

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I can show them where it doesn't hold up. If they won't listen, I usually cut the conversation off pretty quickly and just say, let's go have lunch or something.

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Let's don't, we don't need to talk about it because if their mind isn't open, it doesn't do any good. But the scripture is very clear on these things.

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Look at Revelation 2 20. Not withstanding, I have a few things against thee because thou allows that woman

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Jezebel which called herself a prophetess. Now see, that's what they're doing today. They are calling themselves prophetesses and prophets and apostles.

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And men do it too. Anywhere where you see a man who calls himself an apostle, he's lying because there are no apostles.

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One of the requirements to be an apostle is you had to walk with Jesus physically. That's impossible now.

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He's in the third heaven, seated there. He is not here. Only is the Holy Spirit here and that is not the qualification.

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The qualification is you must walk with the physical Jesus on this earth in space and time physically.

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They can't do that, so they're lying. Now, if they call themselves a prophetess or a prophet in the sense that they can tell you things

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God said that's not in the scripture, they're lying because Paul said prophecy will cease and it did.

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Sometime shortly prior to really the canonization of the whole Bible, it ceased, did not exist in the early church except there were a few exceptions throughout history.

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Always, I won't say always, but everything I can find in church history, they were accompanied by usually false doctrine and always false doctrine, but usually also fornication and adultery follows these false teachers as well.

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So, you know, you look at this scripture, it says she called herself a prophetess to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication.

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Now, is that talking about spiritual fornication or actual or both?

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It's usually both. It starts with the spiritual and when they pull people in, little sheepies that will listen to them and will not compare them to the prophets of the

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Bible which would prove them wrong, if they still keep listening long enough, they're going to end up with physical uncleanness caused by the unclean spirits that are causing the whole thing in the first place.

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So they taught my servants. So I have to ask you the question, can true born again

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Christians be deceived into following these people, yes or no? They taught my servants.

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So yes, not very strong Christians though, they're not in the word is the problem, right?

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They're not in the word. And so she was seducing

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God's servants to commit fornication and to eat things, sacrifice to idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication,

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God did. God in his mercy and grace gave this woman preacher time to repent, but she repented not.

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Behold, I will cast her into a bed and then that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.

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Is that a foretelling of the tribulation period and how the church will be so bad by the time it goes into that time that God has to cleanse her by fire?

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I think that's half of the purpose of the tribulation period. The other half is for the Jew, for Israel, but half of it is for the

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Gentile church, the predominantly Gentile church that has become such a fornicator and adulterer to God that God takes them through seven years of tribulation.

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Three and a half years of the worst tribulation that the world's ever seen or would see if God didn't cut it short, no man or woman would be left alive, but he does cut it short.

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And that is going to be a cleansing period for the church that's pictured here by Jezebel led by a female preacher.

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And I will kill her children with death. So the people, see, you think about these groups that rise up, and I'm gonna show you where the

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Pentecostal whole movement came for here in a minute, in the United States anyway. They rise up and they have children and they bring those children into church and teach them to do things like speaking in gibberish, which is nowhere in the

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Bible or church history was that done by true Christians, only by wizards and things that go peep in the night.

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You think I'm being funny, that's in the scripture. It's actually says that by witches and warlocks.

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They're the people that talk in gibberish, ecstatic utterances, not Christian.

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Christian people have never done that until when this started. I'll show you when it started here in a minute in the United States, started in England a little bit before that.

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Well, they teach their children by bringing them into church and teaching them to do these things.

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And I've always found it fascinating that you have to teach someone a so -called spiritual gift, that you have to teach them to do it if it's a spiritual gift.

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It's just so many counterfeit, signs of counterfeit that it's innumerable, you can't count them all, and yet you have a hard time out arguing these people that have experienced.

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They said, well, I've experienced it, you can't convince me it's not real. And my comeback is, yes, I'm not trying to, it is real, but it's not the

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Holy Spirit doing it. It's either a learned psychological response or it's an unclean demon in your body.

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One of those two. And I look them right in the eye when I tell them that and they change the subject. And I'm happy that they do because their mind's not open.

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But this is the argument, it's ongoing. I've been doing it 40 years. If you need any ammunition, ask me,

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I got plenty of ammunition from Scripture and church history that just proves them dead wrong. It's a Jezebel complex and it's taught to the children.

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And so now it says, I will kill her children with death and all the churches shall know that I am he which searches the reins and the hearts.

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I know when a gift is real, God is saying. I know when someone is really serving me or really just wanting to look more spiritual than the next guy.

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God knows the difference. And I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

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That means they didn't even have grace salvation. They were faking it. It was works salvation.

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Am I right, Ron? Yes. Right. I think that is exactly that.

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It always is accompanied by false doctrine. Am I right, Jeannie? Yeah, I've seen a lot of it.

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You've seen it. It is accompanied by false doctrine of salvation by works.

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Now it'll be Jesus plus works, right? But it's not the same Jesus we serve, is it?

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If you think about it, it's not the same Jesus that we serve. They've created a different Jesus to worship.

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Kind of like in Ben's Sunday school lesson where the priests were just creating whatever kind of God they wanted to serve and God rejected them.

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Well, in the above passage, Jesus himself warns of the end times church near the beginning of the great tribulation period which allows women preachers and warns that her children will be killed.

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And I believe that's an allusion to the killing of the Christians in the great tribulation.

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Now you guys think about this. This is serious information. A lot of it is set up by women preachers today and these false doctrines preparing whole generations to be the ones who will follow the

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Antichrist. And even if they don't follow them, they're gonna be slaughtered by the Antichrist. And I'm not saying that some of them aren't saved.

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I'm not saying that. We don't know that. God judges that. He knows the reigns of the heart. As I said earlier, go back just 150 years and you do not see churches allowing women to preach or to teach men.

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Now it's everywhere. Perhaps we are closer to the end than we think. We are exhorted to repent.

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Revelation 2 .25 says, but that which you have already, the little bit of truth that you still have, hold fast to it till I come.

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That's us, he's talking to us. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end to him while I give power over the nations, you will be ushered into the millennial kingdom and be the kings.

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You see that? You will serve and reign with Christ over the nations of the world.

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It's sure gonna turn around the woke stuff, isn't it? It's going to like put them in prison, literally a rod of iron.

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And he shall rule them with a rod of iron as the vessels of a potter, shall they be broken into shivers even as I received of my father.

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So John said, the father told me this, not the son. John said that Jesus didn't tell me this, nor did the

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Holy Spirit. The father told me this. That's very interesting. Jesus promises he is coming back and that we who remain will rule with him over the nations.

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It is not uncommon for cults to be started by women. And I wanna give you a couple of examples.

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This is kind of fun. Take some notes here. Anyone ever heard of Annie Hamilton Byrne?

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Some of these go back a little bit in history. You'd have to study a little bit of church history to know these. Annie Hamilton Byrne, this happened outside of Millbourne, Australia in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

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It was a toxic blend of Christianity, Hinduism, and New Age mysticism.

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It all came together under the guidance of one woman, Annie Hamilton Byrne. Like most of her cult members, emotional abuse between her and children in the group was commonplace, sexual abuse, commonplace between her and the children, as was the ingestion of copious amounts of LSD, which was used both to awaken their minds and to break their spirits.

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You see, when you put your mind in the neutral, that's when the demons come in. Each child would be dressed in identical clothing.

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This would make a movie, wouldn't it? Couldn't let the kids watch it though. This would make an interesting movie.

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They dressed all the kids in identical clothing and they had their hair dyed platinum blonde to match

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Hamilton Byrne's, and emotional abuse was everywhere. Second one,

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Valentina DeAndre, you ever heard of her? Did they teach you any of this stuff at college,

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Bible college? She sounds good. Introduced the cult Superior Universal Alignment, UFO.

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I could have been drawn to this one because I like reading about UFOs.

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Okay, so it's, okay.

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It's not clear if DeAndre was actually the founder of this, but by 1981, she was, now this is amazing because I was teaching youth groups in 1981.

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This church started in 1980. So I was about Matt's age and Charlotte and I were teaching youth teenagers, like juniors and seniors in high school.

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And we talked about the end times a lot. And there's so much stuff

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I've seen since then that if I had known that then, I probably would have scared them to death.

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But by 1981, she was preaching that she'd been contacted by aliens that foretold the end of the world.

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According to her, God wasn't real. Jesus was an alien Messiah meant to prepare humanity for the end times and teach us about love and compassion.

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It's all about love and compassion. Doomsday could be avoided. DeAndre assured her terrified followers, but there would be a great and terrible cost.

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Convinced that all male children born after 1981 were evil and needed to be sacrificed to the alien overlords, the

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Superior Universal Alignment Cult went on one of the most notorious killing sprees in Brazilian history.

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The cult ultimately tortured, raped and mutilated 13 children. She escaped authorities and managed to find freedom in Argentina where she continued to preach her beliefs.

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And then there's one named Bonnie Nettles, Bonnie Nettles of Heaven's Gate. Now I've heard of that one. Have you guys heard of that?

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She's perhaps one of the most infamous ones of all. Scholars have viewed the death of Nettles as a key turning point in the history of Heaven's Gate as it caused the theology to shift from a belief that they would physically ascend to heaven while alive aboard a

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UFO. Isn't it interesting how UFOs have come into play with two of these cults so far.

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They would physically ascend to heaven while alive aboard a UFO to viewing the body as merely a vehicle for the soul which would be discarded upon entering heaven which would culminate in the group's mass suicide in 1997.

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So they all just died because the leader told them to. And then

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Clementine Barnabet, she sought solace in voodoo. As a teenager, she became the leader of a voodoo cult named the

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Church of the Sacrifice which quickly gained a following. Isn't it interesting how these people can gain huge numbers of followers almost anywhere they put their foot down.

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Her preaching became deadly when her followers began murdering people with axes as they slept, 40 in total.

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Now here's an important one. This one is changing the history of America. Amy Semple McPherson.

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You've heard of her because you've heard me preach for so long. Amy Semple McPherson is the founder of the

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Four Square Church in California and on the West Coast and they're still out there. And they are the group that started the modern tongues movement in America.

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She was glamorous. She would hold a microphone and move back and forth across the stage and wow people with her speaking skills and her looks and her charisma.

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She was the founder of the Four Square Church still operating in California and on the West Coast.

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She was one of the first celebrity preachers. Isn't that something in the history of America?

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She made the modern counterfeit tongue speaking movement popular in the United States. She rose to popularity in the 1920s because she was a beautiful preacher who looked as glamorous as a movie star.

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She also made her church services seem theatrical, kind of like what they're doing now.

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McPherson promoted herself at Four Square Church as a healer who spoke in tongues and could allegedly cure the blind.

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She was groundbreaking in her efforts to evangelize as many people as possible by having a popular radio broadcast and doing several on -camera sermons, which you can still find those online today.

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Her personality was charming, but she is often criticized for loving her celebrity status a little too much.

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All of that came to an end when she took a swim in 1926 and did not return. She feigned drowning, but was actually committing adultery with a man around the point on the beach.

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This found its way into the newspapers of the day. She was found a month later in Mexico claiming to have been kidnapped.

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It was a hoax, of course, and McPherson was brought back to the US on criminal charges.

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She continued preaching in Echo Park until her death in 1944. She is the founder of the modern tongue -speaking faith -healing movement in America.

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Church history, okay? Bring me the books and the parchments. Sometimes the parchments are not enough. You need some history to help enlighten what the parchments are saying to us and to show us that these things are actually true, right?

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I don't think we really need anything to show us the scripture's true, but we are supposed to look at church history.

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And then there is Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi. She is a spiritual leader who is the face of a growing modern meditation cult that is structured a bit like Scientology.

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The smiling guru seems harmless, but the sorry -clad founder of this movement has been criticized for brainwashing followers and disrupting families.

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I have a friend right now whose daughter just married a young man who brought her into a

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Christian group, so -called Christian group, and it's totally cult -oriented.

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The men lord it over the women. Like, all cult groups do that. They're all legalistic, and the woman has no say, and if the man does some treats wrong, the men will just get together and tell her to be quiet and that sort of thing, and so this is going on still today, these sorts of things.

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But anyway, it disrupts families.

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They're encouraged not to have anything to do with their parents, and so my friend is heartbroken because her daughter won't have anything to do with her because she's a pagan.

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She's not part of the cult group, you see. So her empire is growing, however, with an estimated 30 to 100 ,000 followers worldwide.

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Her followers meditate to a picture of her. Nice. Former followers claim that they were encouraged to break off ties with family members who disagreed with their newfound enlightenment.

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Furthermore, children born in the religion are considered soldiers of Sahaja Yogi. Parents are asked to send their kids to a

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Sahaja school in Rome at the tender age of four and then to school in India.

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All right, then there's one named Ching Hai. Ching Hai is a spiritual leader who is often depicted in portraits of glowing light.

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Her estimated 500 ,000 followers worldwide adore her for starting the

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Quan Yin Method, which is a meditation cult that promotes inner lightness and peace.

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None of these things are new. You can go farther back in history and see cult groups that talk about the inner light and things like that all the way back to the first century.

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The Quan Yin Method is often praised for its promotion of the self, advocating for women to be independent and seek light from within rather than guidance from a man.

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Women are also encouraged to seek guidance from Ching Hai herself. As with most meditation cults, it sounds perfectly harmless from outside, but Ching Hai has also found a way to monetize the

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Quan Yin Method's peaceful practices by creating a chain of vegan restaurants called the

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Loving Hut. So if you're out in California and you see the Loving Hut, don't eat there. And then there's one called

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Hak Jahan. Remember the Moonies? You gotta be my age almost to know about the

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Moonies. Well, they didn't go anywhere. Reverend Moon may be dead, but the

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Unification Church, the Moonies, was handed down to his wife, Hak Jahan, and she is making sure things run smoothly.

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She changed the name of God from Heavenly Father to Heavenly Parents, so God to them is called

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Heavenly Parents, and revised her own narrative to seem as important as her husband's.

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She claims that Satan tried to kill her when she was born and that God chose her specific lineage, the

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Han family, as the chosen people to fight against Satan. And then there's Brigitte Boisselier.

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She may be an unusual choice for the list as her leadership role in realianism is more cooperative than others, but she still holds the unusual distinction of being a director of the cloning division of realianism, the belief that humans are descendants of aliens.

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How often does that theme come into these things? She is a chemist who claims to have overseen the first project to clone a human with the realian project called

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Clonaid. You guys even believe this stuff? They have hundreds of thousands of followers.

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The current leader of realianism was so impressed by Boisselier that he declared her to be the next in line to lead the entire cult after he passes.

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As the group's spokesperson, she travels to do speaking engagements about the group's progressive realian beliefs as well as the coming doom of humanity and the salvation that only the aliens will bring.

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And then Silva Merez Moreno is perhaps the most notorious woman on this list because her crimes are so heinous.

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She was the co -leader of a very violent cult of La Santa Merit, which means

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Saint Death in Mexico, which made human sacrifices to appease the gods.

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But these were not willing sacrifices. Their first victim was her 55 -year -old friend and soon they started,

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I'm not gonna read the rest of this, police discovered the people they'd sacrificed while investigating an unrelated crime in 2012.

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So this is pretty recent. I've got two more and I'll be done with this. Yeah. Oh yeah, she was killing her friends and their kids because God told her to,

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Satan told her to. And then there's Ma 'anad Sheila. Ma 'anad

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Sheila still had a massive amount of power in Rajneeshees, in the

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Rajneeshees, Rajneeshees, the massive cult led by Wagwan Shree Rajneesh, headquartered in Oregon, all on the

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West Coast in the 1980s. There is a TV documentary about this cult.

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I think I saw this. And then there's Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science Religion.

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Isn't that John Cruz's, I mean, Tom Cruz, is it John? Tom Cruz's Religion, Christian Science. So that's

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Mary Baker Eddy. I've read pretty extensively about this cult group and what they believe. It's clear from history that women introduce a lot of false doctrine and false cult groups.

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God warned us this is the case. So I think we're out of time there and that's enough junk.

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Next time, I'm gonna talk a little bit though, focus in on Amy Sample McPherson's explosion in America as far as the tongues movement and some of that and give you a little bit of history on that.

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But these, as scripture says, when you put females in a place of leadership and doctrine teaching in a church, not a generation will go by before that church's doctrine goes offline.

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And God sees it as repulsive. So I'm gonna, like I said, probably time after next, we'll go into Proverbs and we'll go into Titus and talk about the biblical role of women in the church and you'll see it's magnificent, but it's not this.

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It's not teaching doctrine to men and not in the church environment. And we'll even talk about one area where women do sometimes teach doctrine and that's in the home along with the husband.

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Sometimes we'll see an example of that from scripture, but that's not the same as in the church. So it's the churches across the world that are falling because they're rationalizing, like Ben talked about all through Sunday school, they're rationalizing it's okay.

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And a lot of times the phrase is, well, when the men won't step up, the women will. That's the phrase that's used.

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And it's just, it's not logical. It's not biblical. It's totally irrelevant.

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Because if the men won't step up, it doesn't allow you to put a totally disqualified person in his place, which is a woman.

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She's totally disqualified to teach men in the church by God. So you can't put her in his place. You gotta find a man.

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If you can't find a man, disband the church and go find a good church, right? God does that sometimes.

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All right, so we will end it there. I know it was a bit, this is kind of why I didn't want to preach this on Easter, but Easter Sunday, but I have quite a few people send me emails since Sunday before last and thanked me for teaching on this subject because they said, we're not hearing that in the churches anymore.

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No one's talking about it. So it's important and it's important for our children to hear it too. And so that they don't get swated by these end times false prophets.

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Let's stand and have prayer together. Thank you again for the beautiful music we had today. Matt, you're doing a good job of leading my son and all of you guys together, just doing a great job.

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And I know it's a sacrifice because I know how much you have to practice. So thank you for that. Lord, thank you so much for our time together today.

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Thank you for your word, which guides us and keeps us safe in these end times. We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship and bless it and bless the food in Jesus name.