Over the last few weeks I've been speaking about authority, God's order, and particularly we've been looking at this whole issue of authority as it relates to the home. I'm aware, of course, that there are some who are single, and there are some who are single parents, there are some who are divorced. There are people in a whole range of situations. What we need to understand, is that over the last 30 years, there has been a tremendous push into the community of teachings and philosophies that undermine confidence in the word of God.
Around about the '60s there came the emergence of the feminist movement, and they had a lot of cause to want to stand up and speak. Much of their cause was justified, in that there had been tremendous abuse and misuse of women. However, what they attempted to do, was to change an order that God has set in place. We have to understand that while God treats everyone as being equal before Him - the Bible tells us in Galatians 3, it says we are all one in Christ. It tells us that there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek. In other words, racial distinctions, or gender distinctions, do not count in the eyes of God. When it comes to receiving Christ as your saviour, when it comes to receiving God's favour and blessing, when it comes to receiving faith to operate in the gifts, we are all on the same basis in that area. However, God makes it very clear that people have different roles.
We understand that people can be equal, but have a different role and function. The movement that's taken place, as a result of humanist philosophies, through the Teachers College and our society, has been one to promote equality and rights; whereas the Bible does not promote equality. It says that people are equal before God, but they have different roles and responsibilities that must be recognised; so the Bible very much teaches concerning the roles we have, and the responsibilities that go with that. Over the last three decades, there has been an erosion of biblical standards, and ways of thinking, that has come into every part of society; and so as we teach in the areas of the word of God, you have to understand this, that what I'm teaching is directly contrary to the flow of what's happening in society; that as you embrace this teaching, it will upset and disturb people around you, who understand that you think and act this way.
I was talking to one young man, and he said that even now, two years after he got married, his people at work are still manifesting over his wife vowing that she would submit to his leadership in marriage. You understand that a spirit of rebellion and lawlessness, an anti-Christ spirit that opposes what is godly, is at work, and under the guise of: firstly men and women being equal; then it goes on, and it begins to start to promote this equality teaching all the way through to demanding rights, demanding equality; whereas the Bible's perspective is: responsibilities and roles. So we do not have the same roles, we do not have the same responsibilities. God causes us to be quite distinct in these areas; and so you have first of all the women's rights, then it comes to gay rights, then it comes to kid's rights, animal's rights, the rights of the trees, the land rights. It actually just goes beyond all sense, and underneath it, what you've got to understand, is a spiritual power working to erode our confidence in the word of God, so we doubt; like the devil came to Eve and said: hath God said this?
Now many of you will be the position: hath God really said this; and so as I share and speak, it will certainly up heave and upset some things. I can't deal with it all in one meeting, but one of the things that's interesting in our society is this. It's that people take the exception, and then they build a case for the whole thing on the exception; and so you find for example, there'll be large numbers of parents who will be correctly using corporal punishment in their homes. They use it sparingly, they use it in a right attitude and spirit; but there'll be some who are abusing their children, and so people take the situation of abuse, and then make it a rule that covers all; and it takes away even the rights of those who are actually walking in the way that God has told us to walk. So you find all over society, rules and laws are being bent, so that the exception then sets what the whole rule will be. In trying to put things right, you've got to go to how God set it in place the first time. As I talk, I can't address in one session all of the issues that will arise out of this. All I can say is, if God is speaking to you, listen to what He is saying, and let Him adjust your heart and your attitude. Ask Him for wisdom to know what to do.