Sep. 7, 2005

 

The Maddox family greets the Smith family with the love of our Lord and Savior,

 

We want to thank y'all for the wonderful hospitality that you showed us when we came to your home for the Lord's Day gathering this past Sunday.

 

Bret, your lesson that you presented from God's word that morning was so timely.  Robby, in particular, spent about an hour or so talking to us about some of his thoughts that were generated from your lesson as we were driving home.  The concept of Jurisdiction (juris - law and dict - word) is a fundamental aspect of Theonomy.  God's Law-word must be applied to every sphere of life.  These are the things that we are teaching Robby and Stephen.  I am so very thankful when I hear Robby and Stephen discussing these things with your son, Allan, and the rest of the men at the gatherings.  As the Holy Spirit works through His faithful servants like  R. C. Sproul, Jr. and William Einwechter and Doug Phillips and Rushdoony, VanTil, Bahnsen, and others who have written and spoken on this topic, the kingdom of our Lord takes her glorious march of triumphal victory.  As you spoke the truth that is vital to husbands and fathers discipling their wives and children and to the church discipling our nation (when God grants the gift of repentance) you joined in the procession of sounding forth the trumpet along with the men I just listed.  We were so glad to hear your message.

 

And I just want to speak a word of appreciation to you, Bret, for the way you conducted the worship service.  As a woman who appreciates the covering of my husband and the sweetest liberation that a woman enjoys who has put her trust in Christ, I am so refreshed to worship with a congregation of the body of Christ that orders its function according to the pattern found in God's word.  So when you declared the microphone open to any man who wanted to give a word of exhortation or to lead a song or a prayer I was delighted.  In the congregation where we meet, the floor is open to women to read scriptures and to speak a word and to pray.  I have also been grieved to watch as the elders and church have laid their hands on and commissioned maidens who have gone off on mission trips and to establish independent residences in cities across the country or to pursue their education and "callings" overseas.

 

The reason I have the word "callings" in quotation marks is that I cannot understand how men whom I have a good deal of respect for have not questioned these maidens about their "callings".  God does not call a married woman into a mission field away from her husband's covering.  Certainly God does not call a maiden woman into a mission field away from her father's covering, either.  What has been lost in the last hundred to two hundred years is the clear teaching of coverture which requires a survey of jurisdiction.

 

The church, which has become more and more effeminate, has been captured by the romantic images of missionary women who are off in distant primitive mission fields doing "many mighty works in the Name of the Lord."  Until someone can show me that it is all right for the church to operate out from under her covering, then I must assume that these "mighty works", even though they are claimed to be done in the Name of the Lord, are not authorized.  There is really no difference between the church praying over and sending out a woman onto the spiritual mission field and the church sending a woman out onto a physical battlefield.   So the sight of seeing one of our dear maidens getting on a plane to go off to live overseas should bring the same trained response as the sight of seeing one of our dear maidens putting on camouflage and combat boots and slinging a gun over her shoulder as she climbs on to a jeep to go off to war.  Fathers have learned how to send their daughters off this way over the last hundred years as they have sent their daughters off to go live in another state to go to college and to set up independent residences while they pursue lucrative job offers in distant towns.  The church has become quite comfortable with the idea of uncovered women.

 

There is a place for women in the mission fields.  The first mission field is here at home - wives helping their husbands and daughters helping their fathers until they are given away in marriage.  Then they will help their husbands.  This pattern is just as true for the foreign mission fields.  When a man is called to a distant field his wife and daughters will go and help him.  I would also hope that the elders would question a man's "calling" to a foreign mission field if the "calling" were to require him to leave his wife and children behind for extended periods of time.  I do not believe that God calls a man to leave his wife uncovered.

 

A man can no more leave his wife and children under the provisional oversight of the men of the congregation, who would send him off for long periods of time, than he could leave another man the duty of performing his conjugal duty for his wife while he is gone for long periods of time.  God has made the two one flesh and we are reminded at the covenanting ceremony of marriage that "What God has joined together, let no man separate."  God, most certainly, does not separate the wife from her head by "calling" her husband to a distant field.

 

Likewise, God does not separate the wife from her head by "calling" her to a distant mission field.  Nor does He pervert His order in the husband and wife relationship by having a man to accompany his wife and act as her wife by being her unsuitable helper to fulfill her "calling".  This, too, is happening as I am seeing a husband and wife who have gone overseas to China.  Just like we have two income households where both act as husbands during the day and then both come home to act as two wives, we have a husband and wife who each have their "callings" to go to China.  He has his mission that he conducts and she has her own separate mission and they both come home to report to their sponsoring churches and both make solicitations for their own individual missions work.

 

These are things that I am grieved about.  Yet, as I attempt to discuss these things it seems to cut off my frail lines of communication with the ones I love.  How would the father of a maiden daughter be able to handle it if she were to be violated while she is living out from under his protective covering?  Your lesson on jurisdiction would be needful in such a dreadful situation.  In this case, the father and the commissioning elders would be liable for what happens to her.  

 

I am also sending you a copy of another article that I have written for my "Maidens of Glory" column in the Tallahassee homeschooling T.E.A.C.H. newsletter.  Thank you, Bret and Jacqueline for your faithfulness in training your daughters to bear the glory of God's image in their lives.  Thank you, Bret, for demonstrating to the world how a father woos the hearts of his maiden daughters so that they want to enrich their father's kingdom and live in sweet contentment in their father's house until they are given away in marriage. 

 

Bill and I were also glad that you were showing the Jonathan Lindvall tape on "Scriptural Betrothal".  We have all three of his videos on courtship which includes, "Preparing for Romance" and "Shamefaced Romance".  These video tapes are about eight years old.  We went to hear Mr. Lindvall do his "Bold Parenting" lessons that many years ago.  It would be interesting to hear what he has to say now that he has more experience and acquired wisdom by reason of time spent counseling families as they have worked their way through proper courtships.  I am so very pleased and thankful that Robby and Stephen are committed to walking this path in seeking their wives in an honorable way.

 

Let us press onward and praise God together as we go,

 

Bill and Vivian

 

Maidens of Glory  

   

We spent a wonderful Lord's Day this past week at the Smith's Green Acres farm up in Griffin, Georgia.  Several families had gathered for a good old fashioned camp meeting.  There were a couple of families from different towns in Alabama and about four or five families from different towns in Georgia and the Maddox family from Florida who had come to spend the extended Labor Day weekend together. 

 

We had no sooner parked our car when several young ladies came out the door to greet us.  While Stephen gathered our Bibles to carry inside, I had plenty of help carrying the food that I had brought into the house.  What I had brought was my contribution for the Sunday dinner, but I hadn't given a single thought to preparing anything for breakfast.

 

We walked in the door to the wonderful aroma of coffee and bacon and eggs and hot biscuits and a buffet table full of fruit and juices and other breakfast items and the gracious hospitality of some beautiful maidens of glory:  Kressant, Rachel, and Bethany Smith and several other sweet maidens were very busy in the kitchen.  And after the morning worship service, while the matrons were gathered in a room listening to a sister who was burdened with a heavy heart and praying for her, and then praying for all their menfolk who had gone on a mission trip to deliver aid to the needy folks (Hurricane Katrina) and praying for Katie - while the matrons were busy praying, the maidens were busy feeding the few menfolk who had stayed behind at the Smith camp and the children.

 

May I capture the attention of my readers one moment and tell you that when I first went into that room there were two other ladies there.  We were looking at some blog sites and e-mail to get the latest update on how the mission trips were going with the different teams who had gone to deliver aid to the saints and to the others in the devastated areas.  Then another couple of ladies came in and the next thing I recall is that the room was full.  For the moment we had forgotten about eating and we only had one thing on our mind.  All of us wanted to pray.  Since I do not have any little ones to be concerned with tending and feeding I just sat there with undivided attention.  A couple of times one of the mothers slipped out of the room, but they were for the most part pre-occupied with what we were all praying about and not at all concerned that they were neglecting their little ones.  That is because they were quite comfortable and confident that their older daughters had everything under control in the other rooms and outside where everyone was eating and playing.  Their competent daughters were maidens between the ages of ten and seventeen and there was one twenty-two year old maiden.  There were probably ten of them who were feeding a large crowd of people and balancing the care of toddlers and babies at the same time.  They knew how to manage all of their multiple tasks very gracefully and, on top of that, they went even further by setting a lovely table for their mothers (eight of them, besides myself) to be able to come and dine together after we finished our impromptu prayer meeting in the other room.

 

Earlier in the morning, as we gathered in the barn before the worship service began, I got a hint as to why those Smith daughters are such radiant maidens of glory:  Before I took my seat I had already noticed the beautiful dresses that were worn by the ladies in the Lummus family and had complimented the daughter who was a very accomplished seamstress.  Mother and daughters all the way down to the youngest four year old daughter were wearing dresses made from the same bolt of fabric.  When Mr. Smith walked up and asked Mrs.Lummus who had made their dresses and found out that it was Ivis he went out of his way to compliment her on the industrious creation of her handiwork in front of the other young ladies who were gathered around.  How many men do you know who go out of their way to compliment a young lady this way?  He was seeking to edify someone else's daughter in the same way that he wants others to edify his own daughters, who know which end of the needle to thread.  I know because I have seen some of the Smith daughters' beautiful handiwork.

 

Then after the service I got another hint about why those Smith daughters are such radiant maidens of glory.  While everyone was still seated, after Mr. Smith had dismissed the congregation in prayer he gave Mrs. Smith an opportunity to give everyone some directions about how to go through the line in an orderly way and how to be helpful in the cleanup afterward.  While she had the attention of the congregation she spoke loving words of appreciation for her daughters' labors of homemaking which make it possible for the Smith house to be a center of hospitality for their ministry to the saints.  She told everyone present that without the help of her daughters that it would not be possible for them to have such large get-togethers.

 

Now, dear daughters of the king, I want to ask you if you have ever washed the feet of the saints?  Miss Kressant Smith (along with her sisters Miss Rachel and Miss Bethany) led a group of maidens in a foot washing service after the Lord's Day assembly a few weeks before the gathering that I have just described to you.  On that day, after we had put away the leftovers and cleaned up the kitchen from the fellowship meal, I sat in a living room with six other matrons with our feet soaking in seven tubs of a marvelous concoction of luxurious ingredients that softened our feet.  Standing behind each of the ladies who were comfortably soaking their feet, Miss Kressant gave cues to the other attending young ladies about massaging our necks and shoulders and our temples and up into our hairlines and behind our ears and our foreheads and on and on she went about how to pamper and indulge us with sheer delight.  All this pampering was being done with oils and sweet smelling stuff while the hot water in our tubs went from hot to warm and then to room temperature.  Then after the sweet attention to massaging our cares away, those beautiful young ladies all sat down on the floor in front of us and took our feet out of that lovely soaking solution and, with towels over their laps, they scrubbed our feet with pumice stones and brushes and massaged our feet with lotions.  We had a choice of which scented lotion we wanted - lavender, watermelon, jasmine, citrus, and a couple of others.  I took a whiff of the lavender and liked it.  It was not too heavy - just right - so that was my choice while Jeanine, who was sitting beside me, chose the watermelon scent.

 

While all this was going on, the children were playing contentedly in different rooms under the watchful oversight of their papas.  I know that Miss Amanda Davis was also very busy tending to her 17 month old little brother and her twin sisters who were two months old so that her mother could enjoy the pampering that she was receiving without having to be concerned about her three babies.

 

Also while all this was going on, a couple of times a husband would walk into the room and just stand there and watch the worship service that Miss Kressant was conducting with a look of appreciation.  I saw the sweet approval in the eyes of Mr. Morton that communicated that he was glad to see what was going on in his living room.  And, at one point, my own husband came and kissed me and whispered in my ear, "I am so glad to see you enjoying yourself so much."  Then he went back to join one of the conversations with the men who were gathered in clusters in a couple of rooms and a couple of them were out on the front porch talking.  At one point I know that my husband was in one room taking a nap for about an hour while my sons were engaged in a robust discussion with four other men upstairs.

 

A few hours later as my family was leaving the Morton's house and we were expressing our appreciation to Michael and Jeanine Morton for their hospitality and bidding good bye to everyone else, I picked up my shoes and stockings and put them in a bag to carry out the door with me.  I told Michael and Jeanine on the front porch that that was the first time in my adult life that I remember leaving someone's house bare-footed.  But I didn't want to bother with putting my stockings and shoes back on after sitting around with several other bare-footed ladies for a couple of hours that afternoon.  My feet were too happy.