[OBW]

And you can probably quote Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical sources that have declared slavery to be an acceptable construct because God, the overall author of the Bible, did not deny it, but provided guidelines on how to treat your slaves.

It is the vey existence of these statements that makes any absolute declarations to be less than compelling. Especially when there are examples that are provided in which the rules you seek to create were set aside.

And you like to point out that Deborah was an OT example. But the problem with that kind of approach is that in the whole of the Bible, there is no example that I can come up with where what was acceptable in this kind of area was further limited rather than either held in place or made more general in the NT. You are admitting that God used more than one woman in the OT as the ultimate leader, then arguing that it is now made impossible in the NT.

And you want to argue that because you think that God would not put a woman to the level of a Paul, James, or John that a woman cannot be at any level of leadership. Given that the one specific forbidding of the woman to teach had a context and that the same person who wrote that one commended another for her teaching with respect to a man who was then seen as among the significant leaders, You appear to be using a simplistic definition of leadership for your purposes.

There are many who have determined that a woman can teach, preach in the church in general. But a number of those still have not concluded that a woman can be among the elders. But others have. Do you think that God is judging the assemblies who have allowed a woman to preach, or even to be an elder, when the church is otherwise a healthy assembly of believers?

In my life, going back to high school days, I have seen and heard women preach, both in person and in other ways. Do I think that everything they said was completely right and anointed? Surely not. But no more so than that of the men I have heard. Including men that I have reason to accept as being solid, well-studied and well-prayed men of God.

I have heard women preach who have never made the kinds of spiritual gaffs that Lee did. They did not go to great efforts to distort the meaning of scripture in the way he did.

And that is one of the most telling things. You and your group are so strong to oppose the leading of a woman because she "might" be more easily deceived when there is a large body of evidence that the one you hang your hopes on was either constantly deceived or was willfully deceitful.

Take your pick. (And I know you will pick neither because you have been deceived by a master deceiver.)