Beth Moore will answer to Jesus for normalizing women preaching/teaching to men
By Elizabeth Prata
I published this in 2018 and I updated and added to it today because of a confirmation of a tweet I saw Sharon Hodde Miller express on Twitter recently. Moore took hold of the goat and brought it into into church where it lurked in corners and tried to be inconspicuous. Now these women settle the goat onto a pew and treat the goat as a sheep. Jesus said in Revelation 2:20-23 that he is against false female preachers/teachers/prophets, especially ones who preach falsely!
But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. 21I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality. 22Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. 23And I will kill her children with plague, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
This passage SHOULD strike deadly fear into these women who boast of their sin.
It was a given that for more than 2000 years women are not to be teachers or preachers of men. We women can and do teach, we minister, and we evangelize. We discuss, we help, we clarify in a private setting, but we are not to have biblical authority over men in church expository situations.
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
How is a women preaching to men a sinister situation? It’s sin. As RC Sproul said, sin is cosmic treason!
Ask the metaphorical Jezebel of Revelation 2:20 who was teaching things God did not say. Jesus promised to kill her and her followers. Inserting words into God’s mouth is sin.
What God says to do or not do matters. We don’t need 50,000 verses. One is enough. Women are not allowed to teach the Bible to men.
But Beth Moore does.
She has been doing it for 35 years.
Woe to Beth Moore.
A generation is about 25 years. Therefore, it’s woe to the generation of women coming up in Christian circles who have for the entire time been seeing Moore’s preaching to men as normal, even with her former pastor’s overt blessing, or the tacit blessing of her former denomination the Southern Baptist Convention and its arm, Lifeway.
For years Moore taught Bible to a co-ed Sunday School class of 600-700 people as you read in that link above and later up to 900 people as stated in this link from her own former SBC church:
At that time, God began to do a new thing, stirring the heart of Beth to move to a new meeting place, meeting time, change the name of the class, and allow men to attend.
Is it God ‘stirring the heart’ of a woman to disobey scripture and to teach men? I think not. In Revelation 2:23 it’s noted that Jesus will strike Jezebel’s children dead. These are not Jezebel’s biological children, but the spiritual daughters she is raising up in her polluted, sinful likeness who preach and prophesy.
She describes her origins as a Bible teacher. Her Sunday School class began in 1985 and she was still teaching it in 2005. Her class almost from the beginning had a mixed audience.
Being a woman called to leadership within and simultaneously beyond those walls [of an SBC church] was complicated to say the least but I worked within the system. After all, I had no personal aspirations to preach nor was it my aim to teach men. If men showed up in my class, I did not throw them out. I taught. ~Beth Moore
Abuse of the word “called” here is especially egregious, because it intimates that God assigned her to preach, which is in effect, co-opting God into her own sin, and using Him as the excuse. God will address this abuse on the Day.
Secondly, it does not matter if you “had personal aspirations to preach” to men or not. Your opinion does not matter, only the Bible’s statutes. If you do preach, you’re sinning. If you fail to stop it, you’re sinning.
Other women elsewhere began copying Moore’s excuses and language. “I’m called to do this”. “I have no desire to preach but it happened anyway”, “I want to step into the gifts God has given me to teach [men].’and the like.
Moore eventually founded Living Proof Ministry in 1994. By 2003 her Living Proof Live conferences had gone beyond the confines of her church and beyond the Texas border. A national magazine took notice. Their opening sentence called her a minister.
“Once a victim of abuse, Beth Moore is one of America’s most popular ministers today.”
Charisma Magazine
The article went on to note that men attended her Sunday School class. It was popular, so crowded with both sexes that attendees were asked to car pool because the parking lot was so jammed.
An obedient teacher says “My love is for Christ and His word, and I asked the pastor to restrict the class to women only.” But as Beth Moore said above, “I didn’t throw them out. I taught.” She purposely sought bigger rooms to accommodate them all.
The leaders of her church allowed it, encouraged it. About this time, her pastor also asked Beth to preach the Sunday Night service, too. Woe!
She has been a usurper from the beginning. And she keeps on teaching. And the women were watching. Like hawks.
In 2010 when her fame was rising, Christianity Today did a 6-page cover story on her. The article cites the following:
Before she begins, she addresses the few men in the crowd. A Southern Baptist, Moore emphasizes that her ministry is intended for women. “The gentlemen who had such courage to come into this place tonight, into this estrogen fest if you will ever find one in your entire life: we are so blessed to have you,” Moore says. “I do not desire to have any kind of authority over you.”
It’s laughable to pronounce a blessing on the men in attendance, welcome them, preach the Bible to them, and then meekly deny any authority over them. Is her teaching from the Word authoritative over the women but not the men sitting next to them? Or do the women reject her authority to teach and they’re just coming, say, for the music? You see the illogic. If she teaches authoritatively, she teaches authoritatively to all in the hearing of it.
As far as Moore’s coyness that she does not desire to be authoritative over them, this is false. Genesis 3:16 tells us it is IN us to want to usurp male authority. It doesn’t matter if you desire to break God’s command or not, if you DO, you’re sinning. Try telling the traffic policeman that “I did not desire to speed on the highway” and see if he lets you go.
The Christianity Today story is behind a paywall now. However, the link is here if you want to see the source.
Moore’s occasional weak protest, that men attend her classes and conferences on their own volition so it isn’t really her fault, doesn’t hold water. She taught men in her SS class for 20 years. By 2012, she was personally asked to substitute for pastor Louie Giglio preaching the Sunday Service at Louie Giglio’s Passion City Church, and she accepted. It was Holy Week, and she preached John 19 to a very, VERY large crowd of congregants. Now the “secret” was out and widely public. ‘Women, even SBC women, can preach! No one will stop us!’
Screen grabs from videos like this in 2012 harm women when they see a female on stage preaching from the Bible shoulder to shoulder with men. It’s visual egalitarianism. Photos like this are damaging. L-R, Lecrae, Moore, Chan, Giglio, Piper preaching at Passion Conference in 2012:
How Beth Moore is helping to change the face of evangelical leadership
Now the POINT: (I know, I know, this blog is like a pastor giving a 30-minute sermon intro in a 40-minute sermon session,)
Moore is personally the transition linchpin for this new future of women preachers:
Moore is one of the evangelical leaders today who represent the future of the global church, in which people outside Europe and the United States will be dominant. … Moore represents this transition, which is shaping even the most conservative corners of evangelicalism.
Washington Post
ANd I refer you to this tweet again.
There is the danger. After so many decades of preaching and teaching, with little to no pushback from her leadership in the denomination, Moore has mirrored the metaphorical Jezebel Jesus threatened death with in Revelation 2:20-23. He threatened death to her and also the women the Jezebel had raised up by her sinful example.
Imagine, within one generation a woman whose former claim to fame was the latest aerobics moves climbed steadily up to being seriously considered for president of the world’s largest denomination, a conservative one, at that. One generation, after 2000 years of holding fast to scripture on this issue. Sin is amazing in its power.
Yet the LORD our God is still on His throne and He still maintains a hard line on the roles women and men are to operate within in His church. That is a given.
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1Corinthians 14: 33-35).
