PRIME RIB AND APPLE

By Jill Briscoe. Grand Rapids, Mi: Zondervan, 1976.

One of the main reasons why Eve yielded to the serpent’s temptation was because Adam wasn’t with her. He was off doing whatever and Eve was alone. One of the reasons she ate the fruit was because she didn’t have Adam there to back her up in resisting.

The Bible doesn’t say that Sarai was contentious. She laughed when she heard God was going to give her a son at 90 years old, but most people would find that impossible.

The Bible doesn’t say that Lot’s wife always had to keep up with the Joneses. She did look back at Sodom, though.

Job’s wife wanted Job to curse God, but she must have seen what happened in Job’s life (when God revealed Himself to Job and explained why Job was suffering) because they had ten more children together.

The Bible does indeed say that Hannah was bitter when she was weeping before the Lord at the temple. However, I don’t think her vow to give Samuel to the Lord was made out of rashness. Hannah was a very godly woman. She felt that if God gave her a son, then she would give him back to Him.

If there was ever a woman who could have ended up a bitter, mean, spiteful woman, it was Hannah. She had to live with a horrible woman, and a husband who does indeed sound insensitive. “Whatcha want a son for, babe? You got me.”

Hannah gave Samuel to the priest of God without complaint, and had five more children.

1 Samuel 25 37 says, “but it came to pass in the morning when the wine was gone out of Nabal and his wife had told him these things (that she had stopped David from coming to kill him) that his heart died within him and he became a stone”

“Oh man, this is really gonna make me look like a wuss in front of my buddies.”

I don’t know if Bathsheba was a godly woman or not. Was it normal for people to take baths on their roofs in those days?

I don’t think Elimelech and Naomi’s decision to leave Bethlehem was wrong. They were just moving to Moab temporarily until the famine was over. Likewise, I don’t think Orpah’s decision to leave Ruth and stay in Moab was wrong, either. She would have had trouble in Israel. She would have been austracised and looked down on. There also would have been a huge culture shock.

In Chapter 9, Jill Briscoe twists the whole issue of women preachers. She talks about prophetesses. Prophetesses saw into the future and told people about the vision the Lord had given them. They didn’t prophesy in the sense of teaching. Briscoe cites Mary Magdalen telling the disciples about the empty tomb as teaching. No, Mary Magdalen was just telling them what she had seen. She was relating an experience: not teaching.

Briscoe also talks about a woman giving advice. This is counselling one on one, not teaching in the usual sense of the word.

She mentions Phebe. Phebe had the gift of service. She wasn’t a preacher. She talks about Precilla “teaching” Apolos. Precilla didn’t stand in a pulpit and correct him on the doctrine he was wrong about. She talked to him: had a conversation with him. She didn’t “teach” Apolos or “preach” to him.

Briscoe also quotes a verse about letting women speak in the church which I can’t find and a verse about a teacher in Philipi which I also can’t find.

The chapter is supposed to centre around Miriam. Miriam did have courage, cleverness and a talent for persuasion. She also led singing. She was a prophetess, too, but this is defined as I defined it above: someone who received visions from the Lord about the future and told the people about them.

Briscoe quotes a verse about spiritual gifts and says this applies to both men and women, so therefore women are allowed to be teachers. Women can be teachers. In Titus they are commanded to teach the young women, but they aren’t to be preaching to the church body.

The verse in 1 Timothy says, “I suffer not a woman to teach or to usurp the authority of a man.” Briscoe twists this verse to mean that women aren’t allowed to teach only if it usurps a man in the church’s authority. It says, “to teach or to usurp the authority of a man.” “Or” implies Paul is talking about two different things.

Upon further study of this passage, it would seem there was a problem in Ephesus with certain women trying to didactically introduce false doctrines, including mother goddess worship, to the believers, thus usurping the authority of Paul and Timothy which they had received from Christ. Just as Eve was deceived  into thinking she knew better than Adam (who had received the truth about the fruit from God) even though Adam was formed first and had been on Earth longer, these women who had been brought to faith as a result of the ministry Paul and Timothy had done in Ephesus thought they knew better than Paul and Timothy about Christianity and its doctrines.

Thus, this passage does not prevent women from teaching as I had thought. Besides, church gatherings were more open in the early church. You didn't have either a woman or a man standing in a pulpit for 45 minutes, delivering a sermon, then dismissing the congregation. Different Christians who happened to be gathered together would bring sermonettes and other things as it says in 1 Corinthians 14, with other believers free to ask questions and make comments.

Also, deacon means basically what Phebe was doing as recorded in the first verses of Romans 16, distributing money for the work of the church. You didn't have Deacon Jones throwing his weight around like he does today: an office was a role of service, not a worldly position of privilege.

In Chapter 10, Jill Briscoe totally distorts the story of Elisha and the widow.

Chapter 11 is about Esther. Most people’s interpretation of Esther is totally different from the true interpretation.