Why Women Cannot Be Leaders In The Church Of Jesus Christ [part Three]

Every spiritual work of God, in Israel, was done by only the male-line of Levi. The work of cleaning, arranging items of and for worship, offering of sacrifices on the altar, and any work relating to worship of God, were all done by a men-only Levitical priesthood.

If you are blessed to have the spirit of the Bible carry you along, as you meditatively read it, you will see that the house of Levi, and indeed the house of every man in Israel, did not have women being regarded as descending from those houses. Female children were never recorded at birth to have descended from their fathers.

Females were never counted in any population census. They were never eligible for inheriting their fathers. They did not have any portion in the land distribution of Israel.

Every part of the Law of Moses is clear in forbidding women-leadership in spiritual issues. When a woman brought forth a male-child as the first-fruit of her womb, that child was by the Law, to be given up for the service of God, in the company of the Levites.

By that birth, the male-child was ordained to be the priest of God, according to the Levitical order, forever. Therefore, when such children were weaned, they were handed over to the priests, to be taught, trained and groomed, for their God-ordained roles in the Aaronite priesthood, when they came of age for this service, at thirty.

This was how-come a first-born son of Elkanah by his wife Hannah, who was named Samuel, came to be enlisted into the priesthood of Israel, even though Elkanah was an Ephraimite and not a Levite (First Samuel 1: 1 – 2: 11).

When a female-child was similarly begotten, as the first to open the matrix of her mother, she was also by Law to be dedicated to the service of God. The father (and the mother?) did not own such a child, in the eyes of the Law of Moses, the Law of God. God owned such a child.

But unlike the first-born male-child, she could never join or be part of the Levitical priesthood, which God established for His worship. Therefore, any female-child who opened the matrix of every woman in Israel was to be redeemed. The fathers of such children were under obligation to buy-back or redeem them from God, as it were.

Such female-children were taken to the house of God, after being weaned of their mothers, to be given or handed-over to Him through the Levites. At these presentations, a price was placed on them at the discretion of the priests. This price was immediately paid by the fathers to the Levites and the female-child taken back home by the father, to live in submission and service to him forever.

I am sure, from all the foregoing, the choice of man by God to lead women is obvious. In my study of the Bible, the only service that I have come across to have been rendered by women in the company of men, in the worship of God, is singing of psalms and hymns.

It seems to me that, it was only the sons of Asaph who had in their ministration of worship before the Lord, women as singers. It was a rare concession given to the daughters of the house of Levi. It is only Ezra 2: 65 and Nehemiah 7: 67 which show evidence of women participation in singing, in the worship of God.

God has since the establishment of the state of Israel, used men only as prophets to communicate His Will to them. There is abundant evidence that there were never any female counterparts to men-prophets. Throughout Jewish history, God never called and sent a woman with His message to the nation of Israel or his king or any man for that matter.

How about the mention of the word prophetess in God's Word, one may ask? The word 'prophet' is one of the problematic words in Greek-English Bible translation and therefore does not easily or readily reveal itself to our understanding. This is because the word 'prophet' is a transliteration of the Greek word 'prophetes', since it seems to defy a proper translation.

This transliteration does not help the non-Greek readers of the Bible much. Many forms and variants of the Greek word 'prophetes' exist. They are also transliterated variously as 'prophet', 'prophetess', 'prophecy', 'prophesy', etc.

Many of today's users of the English Bible do not understand these words simply because they do not have their roots in English. They were borrowed whole-scale from Greek into English. This transliteration does the English-speaker very little or no good, at all. What is the good in being told for example that the meaning of the Greek word 'prophetes' in English is: prophet?

For me this is not helpful. And I wonder how many people are helped to understand this word by such transliteration. To understand the word 'prophet' is for one to either learn some Greek grammar and literature or gain its understanding from the spirit of the Bible.

For many people familiar with the Bible, a prophet to them is one who foretells future events. Even though that is true, it is not always the only function of the prophet. The prophet also at times carries the word of God to His people to deal immediately with current crises or any bad situation. Prophets who function in these two ways either hear with their spiritual ears, the Word of God from Him directly or through His angels, or they receive it through their spiritual eyes in dreams and visions.

Another kind of prophet is one who utters information, not foretelling of future events or bringing immediate solutions to current crises or bad situations. This prophet testifies to an event happening or just happened. An example of this kind of prophet was Simeon (Luke 2: 25-32), who was led into the Temple in Jerusalem to testify of the Baby Jesus as being the Messiah of God. Also, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, the prophetess of Luke 2: 36-38 fame was such a person who spoke not foretelling the future but testifying of a current event and thanking God for it.

There is yet another kind of a prophet that is hardly known by most bible students: the singing prophet. This is a man (and very rarely a woman), who sings under inspiration of the Holy Spirit when He (Holy Spirit) comes upon that person.

A person might function in this manner only once in his (or her) lifetime, and yet gain recognition as being considered a prophet, forever. It is in only this manner of functioning that women have been known to have participated in the work of God, and therefore called: prophetesses.

The most notable of such women was Miriam, the elder sister of both Moses and Aaron. She was the one, when yet in her girlish-years, who stood on the bank of the Nile, and watched the daughter of Pharaoh take the infant-Moses into her custody (Exodus 2: 4).

Later on, in her very advanced years, Miriam was called a prophetess; and yet was never known to have carried a message from God to His people. Of course, Miriam is recorded to have claimed that God spoke by and or through her. But was she right in her claim? There is no evidence to the veracity of her claim.

What need was there for God to have another prophet in a woman such as Miriam, when His super-prophet Moses was in-charge of His business? Maybe, because Miriam was older than both Moses and Aaron, she had come to assume a mother-figure (or was it rather a father-personality?) over these octogenarians, which gave her the courage to lay claim to any capacity to prophesy. [---this article is continued in Part Four].

Chris Bapuohyele is an evangelist to the Body of Christ, and the author of the book entitled: BEWARE OF THIS FALSE DOCTRINE of reciting the Sinners' Prayer for salvation. His email address is: [email protected].