Women’s Rights in the Bible

Women's Rights in the Bible

A major issue of our day is the question of equal rights for all people. We have talked about racial issues in the past and considered the conversation Jesus had with a Samaritan woman who represented a despised population in that day. This brings us to the issue of women’s rights in the Bible.

John 4:5-42 describes this incredible story of the total freedom from any prejudice in the practice of Jesus Christ. The Jews hated the Samaritans. The hatred had historical roots, and most Jews would not even walk through Samaria. In addition to being in Samaria, Jesus was talking to a woman. In verse 9 the woman expresses amazement that a Jewish man would talk to her, a Samaritan woman. Verse 40 tells us that Jesus stayed with the Samaritans for two more days. That is something a typical Jew would never do.

Those who accuse the biblical record of promoting male chauvinism and racial bias are making an argument that cannot be well supported. There are many reasons why such charges against the Bible are incorrect, and here are a few:

Cherry picking examples without looking at the time, the culture, and the practices of the day is a dishonest approach to women’s rights in the Bible. In the early days of human existence, survival depended on the entire family being involved in providing food and shelter. This meant that women necessarily were confined to certain roles. Defending the family against animals and enemies didn’t fit the roles of most women, and the times and conditions dictated the functions of each member of the family.

Failing to see the God-given roles for women and ascribing abuse that was done in opposition to God’s commands is an invalid argument. In Genesis 24:54-58 the story of Rebekah shows that in God’s system a woman had the right to control whom she married. Numbers 30:3-16 shows God’s rules that protected women. Proverbs 31 describes the voluntary role of a woman who chose to manage her household. The entire book of Ruth shows women having rights even in the ancient world. Deborah in Judges 4 was a judge and political leader. Esther is a revered figure of the Old Testament.

Women in the New Testament could choose any role they wished. First Corinthians 7:32-40 makes it clear that women have the option of choosing a career instead of marriage. Luke 8:1-3 shows us that women supported Christ financially in His ministry. Acts 16 tells about a woman named Lydia who owned a business and played a vital role in the ministry of Paul.

The whole New Testament plan placed great value on all people, including women, above every other consideration. This is stated plainly in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In Acts 21:9 we read that Philip had four daughters who prophesied. In Romans 16 Paul lists a group of individuals who played critical roles in the work of the early Church. Most of them are women, and he especially tells the Church in Rome to assist a woman named Phoebe.


The Bible has contradicted the practices and teachings of society again and again as it places women in critical roles and includes women in places of respect and honor. Women’s rights in the Bible is a topic worth considering. Jesus Christ never promoted the abuse or denigration of women in any way.

–John N. Clayton © 2019

New Abortion Laws and Life

New Abortion Laws and Life

Recently we have seen a surge in new abortion laws. New York has passed an abortion law that allows the killing of the baby up to the time of birth. To celebrate this achievement Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the top of the Empire State Building to be illuminated with pink lights.

A bill has been introduced in Virginia duplicating New York’s law but also repealing safety standards for abortion facilities. Virginia governor Ralph Northam proposed that the Virginia law should be expanded to allow the killing of children who have been born alive but are undesirable.

The United States is now one of four nations in the world to allow abortion up to the point of birth. The others are China, North Korea, and Canada. There are now eight states plus Washington D.C. that allow abortions up to the time of delivery. The states are Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and New York.

There have been multiple studies, many of which we have reported on, showing that pre-born babies think, hear, feel pain, and react to things going on outside of the womb. The notion that a baby is “an extension of the mother’s body” is simply not supported by the evidence.

The godless world in which we live now promotes infanticide, the practice of culling babies who are considered for whatever reason to be undesirable. New abortion laws are reflecting a disregard for the value of a human life created in the image of God.

–John N. Clayton © 2019

For more on this see: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADFlegal.org)

Bible: Then and Now

Bible: Then and Now

Today’s post is different from our usual news reports or scientific explanations. A member of our congregation recently passed away, and his widow gave us some of his books. One of the books is like none I have never seen before. The book is titled Bible: Then and Now by Jenny Roberts.

In our quarterly printed journal, we have a section where we generally review current books relating to Christian apologetics. While this is not a recent book or a book on apologetics, it helps us understand the geographic world of Jesus’ day and what that same place looks like today.

The book has modern pictures of 14 ancient cities as they are today. Facing each picture on transparencies is an artistic work of what the city would have looked like during biblical times. You can lay the transparency on top of the modern picture to see what is left today and what was there when the biblical events took place. The book describes each city’s history with numerous photographs of the major archaeological discoveries.

I found this to be a fascinating book for learning Bible history. It gives you an understanding of how what you see now reflects what happened in the past and the setting in which it occurred.

Bible: Then and Now was published in 2001. It may be out of print, but used copies are available on Amazon. If you are interested, just go to Amazon.com, select the “books” category and enter this ISBN number 0-7858-1445-0.

–John N. Clayton © 2019

Words for Love

Words for Love

One of the most abused and misunderstood words in human terms is the word “love.” Both non-believers and Christians use the word carelessly. Many non-believers use the word love only in a sexual context. “Making love” to many is a synonym for sexual intercourse or at least some kind of sexual experience. The ancient Greeks had multiple words for love, while we have only one.

The Greek language in which the New Testament was written had different words to describe various aspects of love.Eros” refers to an erotic form of love while “phileo” refers to a friendship. “Philadelphos” deals specifically with loving one’s brethren as in 1 Peter 3:8, Hebrews 13:1 or Romans 12:10. “Thelo” refers to a wish and is seldom used in the scriptures. An example is Mark 12:38 where it refers to loving to go out in public wearing long clothing.

In the Christian belief system, the word “agape” (the noun) or “agapao” (the verb) is called “the characteristic word of Christianity.” It is used 114 times in the New Testament. “Phileo,” the next most common of the words for love, is used 18 times. “Phileo” is never used in a command for people to love God. (See the use of “agapao” in Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27, Romans 8:28, 1 Corinthians 8:3, 1 Peter 1:8, 1 John 4:21.)

The classic example of the use of the different Greek words for love comes in John 21:15-17. Vines Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words says, “The context itself indicates that agapao in the first two questions suggests the love that values and esteems. It is an unselfish love, ready to serve. The use of phileo in Peter’s answers and the Lord’s third question conveys the thought of cherishing the object above all else, of manifesting an affection characterized by constancy, from the motive of the highest veneration.”

Passages like 1 John 4:16 “God is Love,” use “agape.”We struggle with “agape” love because outside of Christianity we do not experience it or see it in the lives of others. When “phileo” is used in scriptures, the object of that love is always something material or emotional in nature. Consider these examples:
Matthew 6:5 “love to pray standing in the synagogue…”
Matthew 10:37 “he that loves father or mother more than…”
Matthew 10:37 “he that loves son or daughter more than…”
Matthew 23:6 “loves the uppermost rooms at feasts …”
Luke 20:46 “love greetings in the markets, and …”
John 11:3 “Lord, behold, he whom thou love…”

When “agapao” is used, the object to be loved is spiritual in nature – either a soul or God.
Matthew 5:44 “I say to you, Love your enemies…”
Matthew 22:37, 39 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all …”
Mark 10:21 “Then Jesus, beholding him loved him…”
John 3:16 “God so loved the world, that he gave…”
John 13:24 “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another…”
Hebrews 1:9 “You have loved righteousness and hated evil..”

The New Testament uses these various words for love. When a person has no concept of love except brotherly (“phileo”) or erotic (“eros”), much of the New Testament becomes too strange to believe. The reason Christianity can change people is that they can learn and be guided to act on “agape” love that allows them to live out the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7). This leads to the “new life” as described in passages like Romans 6. Seeing a person who was dead in sin changed into a loving, serving “new creation” is the strongest apologetic of all. We frequently quote Romans 1:20 in which Paul says, “We can know there is a God through the things He has made.” One of those things is a New Person in Christ.

–John N. Clayton © 2019

For more on love, see yesterday’s post.

Loving and Praying

Loving and Praying for Enemies

On Valentine’s Day, the word “love” gets overused. When people around the world are demonstrating hatred for one another, do we even understand what love is? I am reminded of two incidents that happened in 2015 that involved loving and praying.

In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris, many people posted that they are praying for the people of France. However, an international affairs columnist for a major Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail got media attention when he tweeted that praying for the French people was both “cruel” and “selfish.” He said that “modern European values were built on the ending of religion.” He blamed the mass murders on “religion” in general. He said that “cheering on the belief system that’s causing murder” by urging people to pray was “selfish and inappropriate.” He also wrote, “I am sure the guys in there attacking are praying. To the same God, too.”

Much could be said about the statements of that columnist, but were the attackers really praying to the same God? If the God who created the Earth and the people on it wanted to kill masses of innocent people why would He need terrorists to do it? Couldn’t He destroy anyone He didn’t like? I think the terrorists must be praying to a different god. The god of destruction must be different from the God who created us. I choose to be loving and praying to the God of peace for everyone to come to know His love.

A second incident occurred that same year. After the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, the New York Daily News ran a cover story with the headline “God Isn’t Fixing This.” The story was critical of Republican presidential candidates who expressed sympathy and prayers for the people affected by the tragedy. The newspaper was taking the view that God can’t fix the problem of hatred and violence that is destroying our civilization.

So what was the solution suggested by the editors of the New York Daily News? They suggested that the solution was more laws. But we have tried laws. We have laws against murder, and we have hate-crime laws. Laws don’t get to the real problem. The problem is in the hearts of men and women, and only God can fix that. (See Romans 8:3.)

Jesus gave us the solution, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Then He told the Parable of the Good Samaritan to show that our neighbor is anyone we can help and serve. In other words, the neighborhood has no limits! Then He showed us the true extent of God’s love through the ultimate sacrifice of Himself.

Those who serve a “god” of hatred and killing as they seek to destroy anyone they don’t like or don’t agree with, are really only serving themselves. The Creator gave us life, a beautiful Earth to live out that life, and the instructions for how to live. Let’s accept God’s solution to our destructive behavior. Start by allowing Christ to change your heart and then loving and praying for others—even for your enemies. Tomorrow we will look at the New Testament words for “love.”

–Roland Earnst © 2019

Wayne Leeper Obituary

If you are a long-time follower of this ministry, you may remember that one of our researchers over the years was Wayne Leeper. We still distribute two of his books through our ministry. Wayne’s first book was Prelude to Glory which answers the challenge of atheists that the biblical account of Jesus’ death and resurrection and the three days the bible talks about was not an error. His other book Star of Jacob examines the Bethlehem star.

Wayne passed away on February 9, and his obituary is below. If you want to send a note or card to his wife, please contact us for her address. We have lost a tireless worker and a strong supporter of our work.

WAYNE DAVIS LEEPER
October 24, 1940~february 9, 2019 (age 78)
Leeper, Wayne Davis- age 78 passed away Saturday, February 9, 2019. He is preceded in death by his parents, Woodson W. Leeper and Trudy M. Davis Leeper. Survived by his wife, Patrice Leeper; daughters, Cynthia (John) Shields and Stacey Leeper; son, Kevin Leeper; granddaughter, Sydney Shields.
Mr. Leeper was a member of Belinda Parkway Church of Christ in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, an accountant, and an author.
No services are planned in Lebanon, Tennessee, but there will be a graveside scattering in their Texas family plot at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Mr. Leeper’s memory to the Belinda Parkway Church of Christ India Fund, 436 Belinda Parkway, Mt. Juliet, TN 37122.
Partlow Funeral Chapel in Lebanon, Tennessee is in charge of local arrangements.
(615) 444-7007 obituary line (615) 444-7700.
www.partlowchapel.com

Exoplanets and TESS

Exoplanets and TESS
Data is coming in from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, known as TESS for short. It is the most powerful telescope ever deployed to look for planets orbiting other stars. Over two years, TESS can cover all 360 degrees of sky visible from Earth’s orbit. Our previous satellite called Kepler could only scan a small segment of the sky. Already Tess has identified over 300 probable exoplanets including one named HD 21749b which has the lowest known temperature for a planet orbiting a bright nearby star. (“Nearby” being 53 light-years away.)

The problem with this is that what astronomers consider “cool” is not cool from our standpoint. The surface temperature of HD 21749b is 150 degrees Celsius, which is way too hot for liquid water. (Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.) A year on that planet equals 36 Earth days as it makes a complete orbit around its star. Most of the other exoplanets found at this time are vastly hotter than HD 21749b.

Astronomers have found other planetary systems, but they again have properties that would preclude any kind of life. Some of them have a planetary density equal to that of pure water. Some have orbits that are highly eccentric. Pi Mensae b, for example, has an orbit that varies widely. Its closest distance to its star approximately equals the distance from Earth to our Sun. The longest distance is similar to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun.

All of this continues to tell us that Earth is a unique planet orbiting a unique star. It is possible that those stars with exoplanets are undergoing an evolutionary process that could result in Earth-like planets billions of years from now. As we study them, we are learning more and more about what God did to create the “heaven and the earth.” God’s power and design become more amazing to us as we learn more about the universe. The more we learn, the more we see what Frank C. Baxter, who hosted the old Bell System Science TV Series, called “the wonder-working hand that has gone before us.”
–John N. Clayton © 2019

If you would like the nostalgia of watching Frank Baxter in the Bell System Science Series click HERE or HERE.

Impact Craters and Uniformitarianism

Impact Craters and Uniformitarianism
One of the underlying assumptions of Darwinism is something called uniformitarianism which says that no process operated in the past that is not going on today. The snappy way of saying it is “the past is the key to understanding the present.” Impact craters disrupt the uniform history of Earth.

Evolution assumes that the conditions on Earth’s surface have been relatively stable as they are today. That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been earthquakes or forest fires or hurricanes or global warming in the past because obviously there have been. What it does mean is that there have not been global events that would affect all living things. Something like a global flood would not be uniformitarian. If water covered all of the land, vast numbers of animals would have drowned causing a profound effect on the history of life.

The December 22, 2018 – January 5, 2019 issue of Science News (page 40) carried a fascinating report on how many impact craters there are in the crust of the Earth. We have taken groups to see the Barringer Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona. It is a relatively small impact crater only 1.2 Km in diameter. The Chicxulub Crater in Mexico was 150 Km in diameter. Scientists believe it had global implications for life. We have reported on this crater before, and we have talked about other craters scientists have discovered. There are now 190 confirmed impact craters in the Earth Impact Database at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Scientists estimate that there are perhaps 350 impact craters that have yet to be discovered.

Most scientists accept the idea that astronomical catastrophes like Chicxulub caused major die-offs of life. As the planet warms and ice melts exposing more surface rocks, it is becoming more evident that impacts have been major causal agents of punctuations in Earth’s history. One of the differences between the biblical account and the Darwinian theory is the question of whether or not uniformitarianism is true. The Bible teaches us that Earth’s history is mostly uniformitarian, but rare catastrophes like the flood of Noah have punctuated the history of our planet. Once again it appears that the biblical record fits the evidence better than the theories of evolutionary scientists.
–John N. Clayton © 2019

Marijuana Use Has Consequences

Marijuana Use Has Consequences
Drug promoters, politicians, and even stockbrokers have flooded the media with claims about marijuana, and almost everything they have said about marijuana use is wrong. When you read the scientific studies about marijuana, they contradict what the promoters of the drug have said. Here are some factual data from scientific sources and from the National Academy of Medicine for you to consider:

“Cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.”

Marijuana use as a pain killer is too weak to work for people who truly need opiates such as terminal cancer patients.

Marijuana does not reduce opiate use. The United States which is the western country with the most cannabis use also has by far the worst problem with opioids. The January 2018 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry carried a report showing that people who used cannabis in 2001 were almost three times as likely to use opiates three years later.

Teenagers who smoke marijuana regularly are three times as likely to develop schizophrenia.

In 2014 there were 90,000 cases of “diagnosable cannabis use disorder,” which is triple the number in 2006.

A study published in June of 2018 in Frontiers of Forensic Psychiatry showed that over a three-year period men with psychosis who used cannabis had a 50% chance of becoming violent. That is four times higher than those with psychosis who didn’t use cannabis. A study of 1600 psychiatric patients in Italy showed a 10-fold increase in violence in those using cannabis.

A 2007 paper in the Medical Journal of Australia on 88 defendants who had committed homicide found that two-thirds were misusing cannabis — more than alcohol and amphetamines combined.

The Journal of Interpersonal Violence in 2012 reported a study of 9,000 adolescents which found that marijuana use doubled domestic violence, and a Chinese study found a fivefold increase.

States that have legalized marijuana have had a 37% increase in murders and a 25% increase in aggravated assaults.

We want to emphasize that studies on the medical uses of marijuana are ongoing. If marijuana use can be beneficial for medical purposes over the long haul, it certainly should be used. However, the legalization for recreational use is a recipe for disaster.
–John N. Clayton © 2019
For more on this, see the excellent article by Alex Berenson in the January issue of Imprimis Monthly available from Hillsdale College, 33 E. College St., Hillsdale MI 49242. It is available online HERE.
We have posted before about the consequences of marijuana use HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Gene Editing Controversy Continues

Gene Editing Controversy Continues
We recently reported on the gene editing controversy when a scientist used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to produce “superior” human babies. Jiankui He, a Chinese geneticist, announced that twin girls had been born with genes edited by his medical team to reduce the risk of contracting HIV.

For several years experts have predicted that it will be possible in the future to produce “designer babies” by the technique He has used. The twins’ father has HIV, but their mother does not. We pointed out previously that human knowledge is not good enough to know what collateral damage we may create in such a project. There are also issues about whether humans should ever genetically modify human life. Playing God has enormous responsibilities, and the gene editing controversy brings up concern about the old “Frankenstein Complex.”

Since He’s announcement there have been numerous articles and responses by experts in the field backing what we said in our article:

Researchers say there was virtually no chance the girls would have been infected with HIV since their mother doesn’t carry the virus.

No evidence can verify that the editing was successful and didn’t damage other genes.

Previous CRISPR/Cas9 research has shown that some cells in embryos may be incompletely edited or escape editing entirely creating what is called a “mosaic embryo.”

He was asked why the research was done in secret and why he chose to violate established rules of CRISPR/Cas9. He refused to answer those questions.

Julian Savulescu who is a bioethicist at the University of Oxford said, “I liken it to Russian roulette. You can pull the trigger and not kill, but it doesn’t mean that what you did was right.” We would suggest that this gene editing controversy is a classic of example of the fact that science cannot determine the way its discoveries will be used. In this case, it appears this was a desire to become famous, rather than trying to improve the well being of human life.

There are many Christians who are scientists working with CRISPR/Cas9 and who have stated their dismay and feeling that their greatest fears are being realized. The gene editing controversy continues, and we will hear more of this.
–John N. Clayton © 2019