The Promise

By Dan Lewis

This writing is a labor of love and a declaration of truths for womankind from Gods Word and the longstanding war against them, in hope of bringing healing to Gods precious daughters. This book has been applauded among his peers, including mothers, daughters, grandmothers, wives, ministry leaders, and pastors. Its time to appreciate the gift of womanhood and the strength her God-given identity brings to the table of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973619307

Dan Lewis

Dan Lewis is a father, husband, Mets fan, lawyer, and trivia buff. He writes a daily email called “Now I Know,” which began in 2010 with twenty subscribers and now boasts more than 125,000. He’s a proud graduate of Tufts University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. You can sign up for his newsletter at NowIKnow.com.

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Copyright © 2018 Dan Lewis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-1931-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1932-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1930-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018901619

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/21/2018

Contents

Part 1 The Problem

Part 2 The Paradox

Part 3 The Predicament

Part 4 The Perspective

Part 5 The Priesthood

Part 6 The Prophecy

Part 7 The Promise

Part 1

THE PROBLEM

Obedience is a woman’s duty on earth. Harsh suffering is her heavy fate.

—Friedrich von Schiller, German poet, playwright and historian. 1759-1805

Before explaining the reason for this terrible quote, I first thank our heavenly Father for His inspiration to write this labor of love. I also thank the Holy Spirit for revealing the wonderful truths concerning womankind. My hope and prayer is this declaration will bring healing to the hearts, minds, and souls of His precious daughters. It’s never been God’s desire for women to suffer and endure life as they have, and neither has their fate been somehow sealed simply because they were born of the female gender. Women everywhere are dealing with the hurtful pain of neglect, false love, gender prejudice, or being victimized with abuse of different types. Still others are victims to rape or are being forced into sex trafficking, with some girls as young as eight years old already losing their God-designed identity and importance—or never being taught they actually have one.

The unfortunate truth is that much too often, church doors haven’t served as a barrier to the wrongful treatment of women. Many churches have established double standards when it comes to womankind, although the Bible clearly declares God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34), and all are one in Christ. In my forty-seven-plus years in Christ, I’ve had many conversations with women who have endured disrespect, disregard, and even disgust in churches because of the falsehoods connected to their sexual gender.

A brief way to explain how this horrible reality came to be can be seen with understanding how anyone would make a delicious cake from scratch. The answer, of course, is to simply follow the directions provided, which includes putting the ingredients together before baking it. I can imagine the odd surprise you might be experiencing right about now. No doubt you’re thinking, what in the world does making a cake have to with finding out about the Father’s truths for womankind? The actual reality is that whether it’s a cake recipe from scratch or the Holy Bible, both contain ingredients that are meant to be joined together in order to achieve the desired results. With the cake recipe, it’s a delicious, moist dessert. With God’s Word, it’s meant to be a testimony of an incredible immeasurable love for His human creation, which went horribly wrong long ago. If anyone were to leave out, substitute, or put in anything other than the proper ingredients for the cake, the results would be anything but a delicious dessert. I checked with my dear Christian sister Veronica Duarte, who has a fantastic cupcake-baking business, to verify this fact.

In the same manner as one would make a cake, I will refer to more than just a couple of verses from God’s Word, along with historical and cultural evidence, in declaring the real heart of God toward womankind and the evil influence that has swayed mankind against them. It’s for those reasons the Holy Spirit also directed me to provide evidence of Satan’s universal influence on the world. This was my reason for beginning with the horrible quote written over four hundred years ago. Throughout this declaration, numerous quotes are included to provide historical evidence of the very longstanding and often accepted perverted mindset toward women. The obedience von Schiller referred to is one that views women as lower than men, and so their harsh suffering in life is simply their place in life.

For too long, women everywhere have had to deal with an identity crisis that knows no equal. Like a poisonous pollution of the soul and spirit, regardless of country or nationality, home or workplace, women have absorbed at least part of this pollution within themselves. Much too often because of this reality, women find themselves desperately needing to be affirmed by men and the world’s values. A clear evidence of this is with the great many young girls who have become pregnant and are alone because the boys they gave themselves over in order to receive their affection and affirmation have left them alone afterward to deal with the children growing within them. It doesn’t stop when girls become adults because they then subject themselves to worldly judgments and standards with crazy and dangerous diets, strict regimens, and even surgeries—all the while trying to fit into the carnal world’s mold of what makes a woman attractive rather than looking to their heavenly Father for His focus of them and upon them.

My hope is for those whom I lovingly refer to as my spiritual daughters or little sisters to see themselves in the pure truth of Gods mirror. Jesus told His disciples, You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (John 8:32). In unity with our Savior, I pray even now that this study will help set you free, my beloved spiritual little sister. Amen!

The first time I can recall being a witness to gender prejudice and mistreatment toward a woman in the workplace was in 1978, while being employed at a software company in the middle of an area that would eventually become known worldwide by the nickname Silicon Valley, California. It was the same software company my sister-in-law Kathy had been working at for as a lead person on an electrical assembly line. One day while I was in the break room having coffee, she walked in with her best friend Pat. As she came into view, I couldn’t help but notice the very upset look on her face. Out of concern, I asked her what had happened. She responded by telling me how, for the third time, a person (each time a man) she had trained was promoted to a supervisor’s position instead of her. This last time, the guy she’d trained had just become her supervisor! As you might imagine, my reaction was one of disbelief and joined hurt for her. I tried my best to console Kathy, and I saw her best friend Pat shrug her shoulders and state, "It’s a man’s world."

Although I remembered the old song by the same title, I’d never heard the term used in a workplace setting before, and I could hear the Holy Spirit telling me to remember this incident. I soon found afterward this unfair practice wasn’t limited to the company we worked for; it was quite common in workplaces all over Silicon Valley. I’ve since learned women being treated unfairly in the working world was far more common and accepted than I could’ve imagined, even learning about the glass ceiling that kept qualified women out of higher business and higher management positions. After hearing Pat’s comment, I thought about my awareness of that sad reality for women in the workplace, and I began to see it wasn’t just in the secular world but had infiltrated and become a doctrine of theology in many Christian churches. I became aware of certain Bible verses that have been used to keep women out of leadership roles or full-time positions in the ministry, which will be dealt with later on in this study, along with the true light that will expose the satanically polluted world’s influence with them. As the apostle James points out, what the world thinks or treasures isn’t what God holds as valuable, and to align oneself with the world is to be an enemy of God. This truth also gives us all a very important clue as to why the world’s attitude toward womankind is what it is. As previously stated, the included quotes will declare the long-standing world attitude toward womankind. The words of James as a contrasting and accurate measurement tool declare to us how God’s perspective is directly opposite of what the world thinks about women. Although everyone has been born a child of God, we all have grown up in a carnal world, being raised by people who likewise have been raised in it. In the light of this, I encourage any reader to discern how the world’s attitude toward womankind has possibly infected you.

Jesus told His disciples about a parable of a farmer who sowed good seed in his field, but while the men slept, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. When harvest time came, the farmer’s servants saw the tares and questioned him about what had happened. His reply was, An enemy has done this (Matt. 13:28a). I’m convinced this is what has happened with the understanding of God’s word concerning the roles and positions of women, providing another important clue as to why some verses have become so important to so many people over other biblical verses. Jesus stated it was while men slept that the farmer’s enemy sowed tares in among the wheat. In very much the same way, while men slept, the enemy of God’s people has sown theological tares among some of the good and true understandings of His word.

"Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." (James 4:4)

Part 2

THE PARADOX

There are two kinds of women—goddesses and doormats.

—attributed to Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor, 1881-1973 A.D.

Paradox: a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true. One (as a person, situation or action) having seemingly contradictory qualities or phases.

—Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

The created being that Adam first called Woman, and all that title and reference embodies, has brought forth a strange paradox. The bizarre realities Woman has experienced since her beginning on earth have earned her a uniqueness to which no other single part of creation can lay claim. Women everywhere, and at any time in history, have experienced this strange and often horrible uniqueness, regardless of whether her identity in this life was one of being a daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, or even great grandmother. When mankind’s history is reviewed, it reveals the bizarre paradox of how symbolic images of womankind have on one hand repeatedly been the focus and subject of being worshipped and using actual women to mediate worship (usually as temple prostitutes). Yet in the same cultures, women would find themselves victimized by not only accepted double standards but sadistic sexual cruelty by the same men and society.

History also shows us how in different cultures, great temples have been built by men to worship the persona of a woman like the Temple of Artemis/Diana, recognized as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, wherein women served as priestesses. Yet in the same Hellenistic culture, it was taught that a woman named Pandora was the very reason for all of mankind’s problems because in her curiosity of opening a box, she was forever held responsible for letting out all manner of evil upon the world. In this same culture where a goddess named Diana was sought out and worshipped, a woman’s standing in her society was just above that of a slave, and she was treated more like property with very few personal rights.

In our present-day American culture, we have a monument known as the Statue of Liberty, which has stood tall and proud in the New York harbor as a beacon to those huddled masses yearning to be free since 1886. Yet none of those who passed through Ellis Island brought with them the mindset that women were equal to men and were free to dream in aspiring to what God would have for them. This was because women weren’t supposed to think about anything else but staying pure until getting married, and then afterward, being obedient to their husbands and bearing children for them. In 1878, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the founders of the women’s equal rights movement, introduced a bill to congress that would allow the women of America the right to vote. Even though it was reintroduced every year afterward, it took forty-one years for it to finally pass, with the nineteenth amendment being added to the US constitution in 1920.

Within the framework of the human family, a universal and historically accepted reality, regardless of culture or social status, is that the family member known as mother, mommy, or simply mom was and is the one