“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days, I will pour out my Spirit.” – Joel 2:28

The outpouring of the spirit of God in the last days, as prophesied by Joel, is not limited to men. Two times in this very prophecy Joel tells us that both men and women will experience this. All flesh means all flesh. Does this in any way mean that until this prophecy women were not able to prophesy in scripture? Certainly not. The bible is replete with examples of women operating in the prophetic ministry from the Old Testament even to the new. In this particular write-up, I will talk a lot about women in both the Old and New Testaments who instructed men, prophesied and operated in any of the 5-fold ministries.

In the Old Testament, we see quite a number of prophetesses, amongst them are Prophetess Miriam, Huldah, Deborah and Isaiah’s wife. Deborah was not only a prophetess, she was also a Judge. In the Old Testament, before Israel had kings, judges were ordained by God himself to lead his people. Gideon and Sampson were judges too. Deborah was so influential during her time as a judge that Barak refused to go to war if Deborah wouldn’t go with the army. The story of Deborah is proof that God himself can raise a woman to lead his people. The reason why this point had to be made is that in Paul’s instruction to Timothy, he made reference to an Old Testament reality as the reason why he, under the inspiration of God, prohibits women from having authority and instructing men in the church. The reason he gave was that Eve sinned first, therefore women are to learn in humility and not allowed to exercise authority over men. How is it that Deborah who was in the Old Testament wasn’t affected by this (if we insist that the apostle’s instructions meant women should never exercise authority over men anywhere in the body of Christ)? If indeed Paul meant that because of events that took place in the garden a woman cannot exercise spiritual authority over a man in the church, how is this instruction only being enforced in the New Testament when there were women like Deborah in the Old Testament who had both political and spiritual authority over the whole of Israel?

All these prophetesses mentioned above were in the Old Testament, the question is were there any prophetesses in the New Testament as well? The answer is a resounding YES! Before Jesus’ birth, we read of the 84-year-old prophetess Anna who fasted and prayed for the birth of Christ. Concerning the prophetess Anna, it is written that at the time Jesus was brought to the temple to be presented to the Lord, she walked into the temple and ‘began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem’ (Luke 2:38). The prophetess entered the temple and began to speak about God to all who were gathered there. We were not told that anybody shut her up for being a woman. All we know is that a prophetess entered the temple, started thanking God and telling all who were there about him. That could have been a sermon, you know?

Also, we are reliably informed in Acts 21 that Philip the evangelist had 4 daughters who prophesied. We weren’t told whether they were prophetesses or not, all we know is that they could prophesy. So yes, women can prophesy and can operate in the prophetic office as prophetesses. The fact that women can prophesy has never been under contention anyway. However, the point had to be made for the benefit of people who think Paul meant women should keep their mouths completely shut in the church. If that was the case, how are women supposed to prophesy in the church? Looking at the instructions Paul gave concerning how prophecy must be spoken in the church, he expected the entire congregation to be quiet while the person with the prophecy spoke. Therefore if a woman had a prophetic word for the church, that alone afforded her the opportunity to have everyone’s rapt attention while she spoke.

Can women instruct men in the word of God?

Well indeed they can and there is one example of such a woman in the New Testament. Her name is Priscilla. Paul himself stated that he traveled with Priscilla and her husband Aquila. In Romans 16 Paul also salutes the church in their house, meaning the couple had a thriving church in their home. It is recorded in Acts 18 that the couple came across a man who taught diligently the things of the Lord. However, this man, Apollos, didn’t know much as he only knew the baptism of John. Aquila and Priscilla took him unto themselves and ‘expounded unto him the ways of God more perfectly’ (Acts 18:26). Apollos’ ministry grew and he became very influential in Alexandria and it is remarkable to know that at some point in his ministry a woman helped him better understand the things of God. Paul refers to Priscilla and her husband as his fellow workers in Christ Jesus. Indicating that Apollos definitely wasn’t their only student. If they had a church in their house, then they probably taught the word of God to a lot more people. We are admonished by the apostle in Colossians 3:16 to ‘let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom …’. Was this instruction gender-specific? Are men the only ones instructed to let the word dwell in them richly so they can admonish others?

Can a woman have genuine authority over a man in the church?

Again, from the writings of Paul, we can draw the conclusion that women can hold positions in the church. In Romans 16:1 Paul speaks about Phoebe who was a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae. She was a leader in the church and Paul was writing to the Romans to help her in any way they could especially if she asks for their assistance. Paul also made mention of Junia (or Junias in other translations) and stated that this person was highly respected amongst the apostles. Ken Bailey made the point that some scholars believe this person was a woman. According to him:

The word ‘Junia’ in this text was taken to be feminine by Origen of Alexandria, Jerome, Peter Abelard and others.  A Catholic scholar, Bernadette Brooten writes that she was unable to find any Latin commentary on the Book of Romans that has this name as masculine before the late 13^th century.

Some versions of the Bible spell the name as ‘Junias’ implying that this person was a man. Ken Bailey again says:

The difficulty with Stapulensis’s suggestion of ‘Junias’ is that the name Junias is unattested in any Latin or Greek text at any time in history.  The name Junia, however, has been found over 250 times.

Adoniram Judson also states in his essay ‘Women in Ministry’ that:

Yet Chrysostom, who, as a Greek Father, ought to be taken as a high authority, makes this frank and unequivocal comment on the passage; “How great the devotion of this woman is, that she should be counted worthy of the name of an apostle!”

From all that is stated above, it is possible that Junia was a woman and an apostle. This brings to mind another question, can women operate in any of the 5-fold ministries? Because it seems by stating that Junia was a woman then it implies that she was an apostle which is the first of the 5-fold ministries. Have we not already concluded that women can operate in the prophetic office? Are there specific instructions concerning the gender of people permitted to operate in each of the offices? .

It is clear that both men and women are instructed in the great commission to preach the word of God to all creation, the bone of contention, however, is whether women can operate in any of the ministerial offices. The reason is that, by operating in any of these offices, they would definitely exercise authority over men and instruct them in one way or the other hence some Christian denominations are against the ordination of women into any of these ministries. When Paul spoke about the 5-fold ministries he said nothing about the gender of the persons operating in them. Neither did Jesus say anything about the gender of the Christian who is supposed to go into the world and preach the gospel. Some people who believe that women cannot operate in any or some of the offices have no problem with women carrying out the great commission. They do this forgetting that as part of the great commission, we are expected to preach and MAKE DISCIPLES. Making disciples requires authority. One has to exert a certain level of spiritual authority over people he/she is leading. How can a woman make disciples of men without having authority over them?

In Romans 16 Paul makes mention of a number of women who have served the Lord in different capacities. Some I have mentioned above. Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis are also mentioned in the same chapter and saluted by the apostle because of their work in the Lord. Also in Philippians 4, we see the Apostle mention the names of two other women, Euodia and Syntyche. He claims they labored with him in the gospel. Had he just said they labored with him, then we could come to the conclusion that they probably labored in different capacities other than direct ministry work of sharing the gospel. But the apostle stated that they labored with him in the gospel together with other laborers whose names are in the book of life. This is a bold reference to direct ministry work. It is very interesting to know that women played a major role in the ministry of Paul as they did in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus had women amongst his disciples too. In Luke 8 we are told that these women who followed Jesus supported his ministry financially from their own purses.

We can also see how Jesus made messengers out of women in his ministry. Firstly, he turned the whole city of Samaria upside down with the woman at the well. This was somebody who was probably despised because of her lifestyle yet Jesus managed to use her to draw the whole city to himself. Does he still use women as evangelists, send them into cities and use them to draw men to himself? Secondly, at the resurrection, we would expect that Jesus would reveal himself to his disciples first. I don’t see it as a mere coincidence for him to appear to the women first. He was literally walking through walls when he resurrected, so he could have just walked into the room where his disciples were hiding. However, he permitted the women to be the first witnesses of his resurrected body. Thereby making them the first messengers of the gospel of the resurrected Christ. Ravi Zacharias said that ‘all of Easter hangs on the testimony of a woman’ and it is true. Jesus did this in a time when a woman’s testimony meant nothing in court. If indeed the created order and Eve sinning first is the reason why women are not allowed to teach men and exercise spiritual authority over them, why did Jesus literally bypass his disciples to reveal his resurrected body to women first?

Very few things about the Christian faith have been contested by skeptics and secular historians than the resurrection of Christ. The Christian faith hangs on the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. This is why Paul said ‘and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain’ (1^st Corinthians 15:14). Jesus went against the created order and the fact that Eve sinned first and revealed himself to women thereby placing the gospel of the resurrected savior in their mouths first. If women were the first to proclaim the message of the resurrected savior, is there any other message in the bible they are not allowed to preach to men?

References:

Ken Bailey – “Women in Ministry – Woodstock Q and A”

Adoniram Judson  – “Women in Ministry”

Hugenberger – “Women in ministry”

Kaiser – “Women in Ministry, commentary on the text”

Renowned Atheist, Richard Dawkins, describes the God of the Old Testament as ‘the most unpleasant character in all of fiction’. This is an interesting quote because it captures perfectly what most skeptics think about God and the bible. Firstly, they believe God is ruthless and secondly, that the bible is a work of fiction. The term ‘the God of the Old Testament’ in itself is erroneous: it suggests there is a different God in the New Testament. Dr. Ravi Zacharias refers to this as ‘a false dichotomy’.

Indeed there is a lot of bloodshed in the Old Testament. If you flip through the pages long enough, I won’t be shocked if you end up with bloody fingers. Most of the killings were done either directly by God or they were done at his command either by angels or humans. The most popular ones include the killing of all of humanity (save 8 people) in Noah’s time. The death toll of the flood should be in the millions. There are several other massacres scattered all over the pages of the Old Testament. Below, I have visualized a few of them in this interactive Bar Graph, do check it out.

How do we reconcile God’s almost instant judgment on people who sin against him and the fact that he told Jeremiah ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’? How does God call himself ‘LOVE’ yet kill people mercilessly? Let’s look at Uzzah for example. He had the best of intentions to save the Ark of the Covenant from falling, so why did God kill him at that very moment?

Uzzah was killed because he disobeyed the law concerning the ark. The problem is sin, not God.

According to the definition of love in 1st Corinthians 13, ‘Love doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing’. Imagine God in all his holiness, who has created man in his image, only to see man wandering off and chasing after ephemeral pleasures of this world that are in actual fact dung. It is sickening for God to see man wallow in sin and chase after other gods that are non-existent in the first place. God asked Jeremiah, ‘Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit’ Jer 2:11. He was talking about Israel here but indeed this applies to all humanity. For we were all created by God. Can you imagine the hurt he felt when his own people turned away from him to whore after foreign gods? In Noah’s time, sin so greatly abounded that God regretted creating man. Love cannot rejoice in wrongdoing – and God is love. That is why he punishes people who sin.

But isn’t God merciful? Well, of course, he is. Nevertheless, we must understand that as much as mercy is a function of love, so is intolerance for wrongdoing. Love without a deliberate attempt to wipe out evil is just empty talk. There is correction in love. There is purging in love. There is nurturing in love. Ultimately, there is punishment in love.  Therefore we shouldn’t be shocked at the fact that both mercy and intolerance for wrongdoing dwell in God. But, so are the other characteristics of love. Love is patient. Love suffers long. There is no personality in human history who has suffered long for the sake of love more than Jehovah. Usually, we lose sight of how long it took God to punish some people for the wrong they did. Throughout the Old Testament we see God delay punishments even for the most heinous of sins. He didn’t delay punishment for the sake of it, but while at it, he offered a hand of grace to the culprits so they would be pardoned. Let’s take for example the exodus of the Israelites. These people offended God every step of the way for 40 years. Some got their punishments immediately they sinned, but God was generally patient with the entire congregation for such a long time. Also, it took Noah 120 years to complete the ark. The bible refers to him as a preacher of righteousness: while constructing the ark he kept preaching to the people to repent. For 120 years God watched on as humans rolled in the mud of sin, yet he held back till the ark was completed before he punished them.

There are so many things that people do not consider when they say that God was wicked in the Old Testament. Let’s look at a few of such factors:

• The Law: It isn’t God who put sin in us thereby making us candidates of his punishment, it was the law. Where there is no law, there is no sin (Romans 4:15). Do you know Adam and Eve wouldn’t have been thrown out of Eden had they killed every single animal in the garden? Why? Because there was no law against that very act. The only law that existed in Eden was the one that prohibited them from eating the fruit, therefore, any other act wasn’t a sin. One act of sin changed the nature of man. So under the law even our righteous acts are like a filthy rag before him because sin is our nature. Literally, God was disgusted by man. Therefore the problem isn’t God being wicked, it is man going against the will of the almighty God when we are fully aware of the consequences. The punishment for sin is death. Also, people often call Jehovah evil because they are ignorant of how the other ‘gods’ dealt with their worshippers in times past. Some of the gods the Israelites chased after demanded human sacrifice – preferably the sacrifice of their children. God never asked anybody to do this … well apart from Abraham and even he was stopped from killing Isaac.
• God punishes the children for the wrongs of their fathers just us he blesses the children for the good deeds of their fathers: It seems rather unfair that sometimes innocent children have to die for the wrong deeds of generations that lived way before they were born.

In those days they shall no longer say:
“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31:29-30)

Countless times in the Old Testament we see God making reference to the good deeds of people like Abraham and David being the reason why generations after them were to be blessed. There are so many examples of this fact that I can’t begin to quote them all here. Another thing worth knowing about God is that he can change his mind about the evil he is about to visit on a person who has sinned against him but never does he change his mind about the good he intends to do (correct me if I’m wrong).

“It may be they will listen, and everyone turn from his evil way, that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because of their evil deeds” Jeremiah 26:3

• God is sovereign: I often hear atheists calling God a serial killer, a murderer … excuse me, by whose standards are you judging God? The whole world sat and watched Saddam Hussein executed. Notice how humans call it ‘an execution’? Ha! Semantics. He was executed for the wrongs he had done against humanity. Human beings set up courts of law that determine the fate of other human beings, whether they deserve a prison sentence or death. And we have a problem when the Supreme Being and Creator of the heavens and earth has a death sentence too? The truth is, God answers to nobody. One has to be under a law to break it. He isn’t under any of the laws that govern human affairs hence we can’t say he has broken them. That is sovereignty. So when he who is sovereign decides to overlook your sinful deeds and grant you your life because he is gracious and merciful, you better accept it. A friend of mine said “only God knows how to keep a balance between love and justice’. When I think about this statement, this expression comes to mind “to tamper justice with mercy”. Which means in a legal situation, mercy, which is a function of love has no place. Only God knows how to be Love and Just at the same time. The cross is where we see both Justice and Love fully represented in one ruling. The penalty of sin was fully paid at the cross and because of that humanity received undeserved grace and mercy.

God hasn’t changed at all, he is still merciful and intolerant of sin. It is just his Grace and Mercy that have been revealed unto us in such a tremendous way because of the death of his Son. It isn’t God who has changed, it is the Testaments that have changed. When your landlord changes the terms and conditions in your tenancy agreement for it to favor you more, it isn’t your landlord that has changed, it is the conditions under which you occupy his property that have. God is still intolerant of sin. However, there is mercy when we sin and there is Grace to keep us from sinning. Please note, Grace and Mercy will end pretty soon. One of these days, God will come not as a lamb but as a ravenous lion.

One other question people often ask is, why should the man who stole 1 cedi receive the same punishment (hell) as the serial killer? This is the same reason why the thief on the cross (who got saved a few hours before he died) ended up in heaven just as the global evangelist who won millions of souls. It isn’t by deeds that we go to either heaven or hell, it is by faith or unbelief. The thief on the cross is a typical example of what I’m saying. He didn’t have to observe the Sabbath or anything else, he just had to believe in Christ and jump to his defense when the other thief accused Jesus. So there it is faith: Belief + Actions. There are degrees of punishment in hell anyway, just as there are degrees of rewards (crowns) in heaven. In Luke 10:13-14, Jesus warns the people of Bethsaida and Chorazin to repent. He said that it would be MORE BEARABLE for the people of Tyre and Sidon on judgment day than it will be for them.

We really can’t judge a person’s character by scrutinizing aspects of their behavior or relations with other people. We need to assess them based on their general behavior. So if you think God is evil based on the killings in the Old Testament, how about the blessings and victories he lavished on his people and all who feared him? You certainly cannot ignore those. This article isn’t extensive enough to capture everything on this topic. If you noticed, I used verses in Jeremiah a lot because I studied that book not too long ago. Therefore if you have questions on this topic from other parts of the bible, do ask them in the comment session and let’s get talking.

Over the years, many skeptics and non-theists have discredited the Bible as being unreliable. Sometimes it appears they have staggering evidence to back their claims. One fact we must establish before moving on with this topic is: there is barely an ancient writing that hasn’t come under attack concerning its authenticity and accuracy. Nevertheless, there are some tests an ancient text must pass to be accorded some respect in academic circles. Some of these will be discussed as follows and it is my sincerest prayer that every reader weighs the evidence presented with unprejudiced views.

When I was young, I used to play this game popularly known by Americans as “telephone”. The rules were very simple: a friend whispered a phrase/sentence into the ears of another friend quickly and this circulated among us until the last person revealed what was said to him to the hearing of everyone. If you’ve ever played this game before, you can tell how easily the message – more often in an amusing manner- gets distorted during the retelling process. “Life must be lived as play” can easily turn into something else like “He bites snails” (This actually happened during a Global Gossip Game contest in 2012). Just like any other game, the goal is to have fun and as such does not require anyone to be strict with their speech and listening skills. As a matter of fact, it needs all the necessary elements to make it exciting—even if it means distorting the messages on purpose!

Could it also be that the Bible is a product of nothing but nonsense arising from this whisper-down-the-lane child’s play? Well, let’s find out, shall we?

Back in those days, the art of memorization (a common cultural practice in ancient times) was the means by which information was transmitted. There was nothing like photocopiers, printers or scanners. To be frank with you, I got uneasy the first time I learned that the Rabbis memorized the whole Old Testament text. How could they have possibly done that let alone be confident to reproduce them in their purest form? And even if they did so, wouldn’t they have made some errors such as misspellings, inclusions, omissions or repetition of words during the recounting of any of the stories? Now, don’t be too quick to draw conclusions. First of all, what we fail to realise is we make a big categorical error when we judge their art of memorization by our modern standards. Just like any other work that has come down to us from antiquity, there was much flexibility in terms of writing and storytelling back in those days. Nevertheless, certain ‘landmarks’ during storytelling were very crucial and couldn’t be altered in any way. If say a Rabbi erred along an untouchable point in the process of recounting an event, his listeners would prompt him of those mistakes and make sure they were corrected immediately. This was done to maintain the integrity of messages passed down to others. Take the Old Testament for example. The Masoretes—Jewish scribes who took great care in copying the Hebrew Bible—discarded an entire manuscript if they found any error after counting the number of letters, words and lines as well as determining the middle letters of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament.

Because of the strict measures Scribes put in place to ensure the preservation of these materials, the variations (or ‘variants’) found in the Old Testament are very few. The New Testament however has 400,000 variations as we speak. Four hundred thousand sounds scary but let’s find out what variations or ‘variants’ are and how they are counted briefly. Daniel Wallace, Senior Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, defines a variant as ‘the difference in wording found in a single manuscript or a group of manuscripts that disagrees with a base text.’ So that if for instance a Scribe omits the word ‘Lord’ while the standard text he’s copying from reads as ‘Lord Jesus’, that omission of the word ‘Lord’ is counted as one variant (check the ‘footnotes’ section of your Bible to learn more about these variants). With that said, many scholars have argued out so strongly that NONE of the Christian doctrines have been affected by any of these variants located in both the OT and NT. Let me quickly add that though no credible scholar confirms that the copies we have today are a 100% reflection of what the original says, they do attest to the fact that these copies are 99.5% pure. In addition to this figure, the New Testament alone has over 24,000 existing manuscripts. If you are interested in knowing the significance of this figure, allow me to match this value up against another popular ancient writing—Plato’s ‘Tetralogies’. There are currently only 7 surviving copies! Yet Plato is held in high esteem by so many people (especially in academia). If you can confidently declare a less preserved ancient material like Plato’s as historically trustworthy, how much more the New Testament with 24,000 existing copies?  Also the biographies of Alexander the great were also written 400 years after his death – but they are accepted as credible even in academia. Meanwhile the last gospel – the gospel of John – was written 70 years after Jesus’ death. You just have to admit that the Bible is unrivaled in its accuracy and number of existing copies when compared to other classical, historically trustworthy manuscripts.

Most of the arguments leveled against the bible concerning its accuracy probably stem from the problem of translating from one language to another. This is a huge Linguistic problem all over the world. There is no language on earth that can be translated into another one perfectly. It just doesn’t happen. While you are devising an argument against this fact, try translating ‘Photosynthesis’ directly into Twi or your local dialect. You will find that it is impossible to find a word that perfectly describes the reality of photosynthesis in Twi, so then you would have to resort to the use of a sentence or a phrase to achieve the purpose of translation. This happened in the translation of the bible and those who did it did a great job considering the herculean task it is. It is true that the translations do not match verbatim with the original text in its original language. Nevertheless, it does not affect the Bible’s  message in any way because authentic manuscripts are still in existence. Now let’s go back to the whisper-down-the-lane game; is it acceptable to question the credibility of the original message because it has been distorted by the method of transmission… especially when the original message is still in existence and people know it? Certainly not! Between 1946 and 1956 a bunch of scrolls were discovered in caves that overlooked the dead sea; thus they were called the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were 981 in all and some of them were of the apocryphal stock. The book of Isaiah was discovered amongst them too. NEWS FLASH, when the Isaiah Scroll was compared to the one we have in our bibles now, there wasn’t much of a difference. This is exactly the point I have been making all this while: there may be some petty errors here and there because of the the problem of translation, but this doesn’t discredit the bible in anyway.

Some of the errors are petty; some aren’t… too… petty. There are some seemingly major errors and obvious interpolations in the bible. For example, the story of Jesus Christ and the adulterous woman. Apparently, from the oldest and most revered manuscripts, the story was not found in John’s Gospel. It is believed to have been inserted in there at a later time by someone – probably a scribe. Also in 1John 5:7 there is an obvious interpolation there. Older manuscripts do not contain any reference to the reality of the trinity in that verse. It must have been added at a later time. So even in the Amplified Bible, that portion is in italics and the footnotes make it clear to the reader that it wasn’t part of earlier manuscripts. These are faith-shaking findings because they sort of question the credibility of the entire bible as the inspired Word of God. But is that the case? Certainly not! Concerning the story of the adulterous woman, scholars believe that the purpose for which it was inserted in that portion of the bible was to make some emphasis. People thought Jesus’ reaction was rather too mild because he asked the woman to go and sin no more. They didn’t know that The Messiah was introducing all of us to his mind-boggling Grace. So people didn’t like that story; they would rather Jesus had judged the woman harshly. Therefore it is believed that later manuscripts included the story just to reiterate the significance of the story to the new era of Grace. The presence or absence of these two interpolations (and another one at the ending of Mark) does not cause any damage to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, some are of the view that they should be relegated to the margins or omitted completely from the bible. This sounds reasonable enough.

The bottom line is, none of these interpolations are false; they are both true and consistent with Christian doctrine but have been inserted in those portions of scripture. So they don’t in anyway alter the original message of the bible. Inspiration doesn’t come with language, it comes with the message. It is the writer who chooses how to put it across. So far as the message is consistent with the full counsel of scripture, it is still God-inspired writing. However, the gospel isn’t bound by language barriers, because the inspiration came with the message and not a language.

Written By: Elvis Sampson and Elikplim Sabblah

References: Seeking Allah; Finding Jesus, Nabeel Qureshi.
Can We Still Believe The Bible?, Craig L. Blomberg.
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, F.F Bruce.