Gribble, Florence L., Stranger Than Fiction (Winona Lake, IN: Brethren Missionary Herald Co., 1957)

I recently found the above old book in some boxes of books left behind by my mother when she died. Even though my mom was SBC, I did not find this book out of place because she was so involved in international missions.

This woman’s story is incredible and stranger than fiction! A doctor/missionary to unreached parts of Africa in the early 1900’s she spent most of her life living in tents and suffering from maleria and black fever.

She was raised by unbelievers and put herself through medical school. Yet, she did not shrink from witnessing/preaching to men in the United States and Africa. She went to Africa WITHOUT continual support soley trusting God for her needs. Even down to planning the trip without funds to buy the boat fare which came as a gift at the last minute. She never asked for money, she simply prayed for her needs. The entire story is like this and is such an inspiration. She married on the mission field and I must say, her marriage was more egalitarian than we can imagine. Many times her and her husband separted in duties so they could reach more people. Both teaching and preaching. He died very young in Africa and Florence simply carried on.

The entire book is filled with her sharing her experience of being called. She had many opportunities and offers to do other things but she knew she was called to Africa to minister to both physical and spiritual needs of the people there.

I feel as if I have found an old dusty treasure worth millions.

What if Florence had been told she could not teach or preach to men anywhere? What if she had been taught that she would be in sin?

(By the way, in one instance, in French controlled Africa during the war, Florence was told by the French Administrator she could not witness at all. She told him she could not help but witness and teach. She had to. She was confined to her ‘yard’ around her tent, so she witnessed on the edge of the yard to anyone coming by.)

Be sure and listen to a very wise man… Ryan. I think I will too when facing people or situations as you’ve described. What great, mature words of advise those are to us all.

Ah, great puns-worth of truth.

Hmmm… it seems the world was not “Worthy” of you! (Heb. 11:38)

One other thing that I just caught from listening again to the audio clip that I put up from Matt’s radio program. Matt left out part of one sentence and the full next sentence. Here is what I said and what he left out:

I had an active support group for Jehovah’s Witnesses where they came to my home to have their doctrine sorted out. I taught them the truth of God’s word and loved them with the love of Christ.

The bold part is the part that Matt left out. I wonder what the reason was that he left out the full impact of what I said.

I so look forward to hear the debate I’m sure that God is using you to set many people free learning the truth about Women in Ministry.

WIM, tithing, speaking in tongues, sabbath keeping can really keep people busy discussing.

Hugs from Denmark,
your brother in Christ,
Martin

Thanks son for the reminder that dealing with Christians is sometimes akin to skillfully dealing with the cults where you must win them to truth in a loving and non-combative way. I do have to be reminded of that fact because it is easy to assume that dealing with Christians should be different than dealing with the cults. (Sigh!) Note to self: if teaching isn’t allowed, then questions are the next best thing.

Dusman,

Yes, I too share a tremendous appreciation for the sovereignty of God as I understand that the scriptures are truth even though they sometimes appear to be teaching conflicting ideas. Sometimes I think God arranged it that way so that we have to sweat hard to understand God’s way instead of seeing a too-simple way of exegeting scripture. Yet I can have a grace-filled heart of love towards those who do not agree with me on the non-essentials. Pushing through hard concepts about God’s sovereignty and the existence of evil for example, cause us to stretch and grow. As we grow we should be able to see others through God’s eyes and not through our own insecurities. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Matt’s inability to be challenged on his black and white view of the non-essentials may stem from his own insecurities. He has suffered by being forced out of a church because of his belief in Calvinism and people have been very unkind to their brother in Christ. Yet I see him doing the same thing to those who see scripture as affirming women’s spiritual gifts. He wants to force them out of the church by attributing to them an attitude of sin. I would have thought that his own unfortunate experience with people who are intolerant of beliefs that do not conform exactly to their own would have made him more tolerant on the non-essentials and not less tolerant. Perhaps Matt needs to go around that bush one more time so that he can understand true compassion. A friend once told me that if we don’t learn our lesson the first time around, God sends us around the same bush again until we get it. I for one am not interesting in having to experience that kind of pain more than once. I have learned that caring for others in the body of Christ goes far past our own experiences and our own comfort zone.

I also appreciated your interaction with Don assuring him and others that a “manly-man” can be in favor of God’s use of women’s gifts in the body of Christ. I also loved it when you said:

“I dogmatically believe and defend the full, verbal, plenary, inspiration of the Scriptures and hold that the autographs were inerrant and that the copies we have today are sovereignly preserved copies that faithfully represent those autographs.”

Amen and amen! I tell people that those who do not hold to this strong view of scripture will do poorly with witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.

I have been so disappointed with people like Dr. Ben Witherington who by the way is an egalitarian, but who tells people that Matthew’s reference to prophecy in the OT was his own interpretation and not the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, and that the early Christians put Jesus into the OT by “noodling” with the Septuagint. For anyone interested in the discussion on Ben’s blog that my son Ryan and I have been trying hard to stick up for full biblical inspiration against a wishy-washy who-knows-what-is-inspired-and-what-isn’t attitude, have a look at Ben’s blog here and the comments after.

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/08/hermeneutics-guide-for-perplexed-bible.html

Teknomom,

Thanks for your wisdom! I think you are right in that if we expect persecution, we may be better able to respond instead of being side-swiped and surprised and tempted to respond back in anger. There is a hostile audience out there and if they are angry enough to cut you off, God will provide another way for us to be a messenger for our Lord.

As a side note, I got cut off of the Worthy Boards that I was witnessing on. Worthy Boards is a strong complimentarian discussion board. I got cut out because I was accused of “teaching” and not just being part of the “discussion”. I guess you just can’t let women teach after all or people might actually learn something

Don,

I feel bad that you have been painted with the same brush as we women. I was told a long time ago that men who stand up for women in ministry will be treated exactly as they treat the women. Your experience proves that this warning is true. But this should never be! Where is the love? This is the way I look at it…how would the opposer like to be treated if they were the one who is wrong? Would they like to be treated gently and with respect? Of course they would! When one is wrong and they are shown that they are wrong, there is a whole ego thing that happens. It hurts our egos to be found out to be foolish and someone who let’s us survive this experience with our ego intact is a gracious, godly person who is tender and compassionate. Why would anyone think that berating a person will help them to “get it”? It doesn’t help. It just hardens one’s heart. If they truly believe you to be in the wrong, then they should have a mature Christian love that will follow Paul’s admonish to a true servant of the Lord:

2Timothy 2:24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil
2Timothy 2:25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth…

Lord Jesus, may we all be patient, kind, compassionate especially to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ!

It’s sad to see that some Christians would launch an ad hominem your way by accusing you of falsely portraying a male . . or worse, knowing that you are a male, yet making fun of you instead and calling you a name instead of actually intelligently and courteously interacting with your position. Your testimony got me thinking. In my case as a pastor, some folks have been pretty surprised to learn my views re: women in the church because to them egalitarianism = liberal feminism &/or an effeminate disposition.

They get a little confused because they know that I like hard, sin-killing, convicting, preaching & teaching from the Scriptures, they know that I have a very high view of the sovereignty of God, they know that I believe in the absolute necessity of contending for the faith once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3), and they know that I dogmatically believe and defend the full, verbal, plenary, inspiration of the Scriptures and hold that the autographs were inerrant and that the copies we have today are sovereignly preserved copies that faithfully represent those autographs.

They also are aware that I am what could be called “a man’s man”. That means that I thoroughly enjoy shooting guns/target practicing for fun (like many Christian men), love hard workouts and the martial arts (like many Christian men), don’t mind having a fat beard and enjoying a good beer with my pizza (like many Christian men), and believe in the importance of hard work and mental or physical “sweat” for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31) over and against a soft, lazy, and sluggardly disposition (like many Christian men).

More importantly, they know that I believe in the absolute necessity of striving to love my wife like Jesus loved the church and gave Himself up for her. I strive to demonstrate this daily through being the head of my wife in our marriage relationship *through providing a consistent and faithful spiritual example* to her and exhorting her by my actions as well as my words as to what it means to be an incurable God-lover (Eph. 5:22ff). I also see the absolute necessity of a godly woman submitting to such a spiritual example.

To me, the view that the husband must provide spiritual headship in the marriage relationship is also conducive to promoting a correct understanding of women in church.

Nevertheless, most folks see these things as mutually exclusive to an egalitarian understanding of Scripture and I think that nothing could be further from the truth. They believe that “head” should = “authority over” and this is nothing but a blatant eisegesis of the text of Eph. 5 and a convenient ignoring of the husband/wife “authority” issues of 1 Cor. 7:4. Sadly, what most folks don’t understand is that I believe the way I do about women in the church *because* I believe in the verbal, plenary, inspiration of the infallible Scriptures and not in spite of it.

Yes, the truth of the Scriptures have been muddled and distorted by god-hating feminist, religious liberals. However, we need to be sure that we encourage those conservative complementarian brothers and sisters who unjustly call us names to be sure that when they reject our biblically faithful understanding of women in ministry, that to be consistent, if they are going to reject us because we are supposedly liberals, then they need to reject the other things that feminist liberals practice as well; things like Scripture reading in church, baptism, singing hymns, participating in communion, and pastors without wives and children. Isn’t consistency grand?

Here are some examples:
1. As my name is Don, I was accused on actually being a woman, Dawn.
2. I was accused of being a feminist, despite my repeated requests that I not be called that, as I am not that, I am an egalitarian.
3. I repeatedly asked that I not be misrepresented, to little avail.
4. I was repeatedly told that I was “changing the clear meaning of the Bible”.
5. One person in particular repeatedly try to bait me by making outrageous accusations and misquoting me. This person was essentially trying to bully me to be quiet.

At some point I realized that my challenges were slight compared to what many others have gone thru and that God was just allowing me to get a glimpse.

Those that are willing to publicly proclaim freedom in Christ have my deep respect.