Resurrection Ranch

Of Course, Women can teach and Preach! God is not a respecter of persons and will speak through any yielded vessel. In the Lord there is neither male nor female. This does not mean that biological sexes cease to exist in the body of christ. This means that for both men and women, we have died and Christ now lives in us. The Holy Spirit will speak truth through any yielded vessel. The culture and times that Jesus came into were very oppressive to women. He flowed upstream by first revealing himself publicly as the messiah to the woman at the well. She then went into her town and preached the gospel and told her town about Jesus. It is a good thing she was not silent among the congregation or church (eklesia) of people. When Jesus rose from the dead he first appeared to you guessed it, women. They then went and shared the good news with the men. Jesus’ ministry was also funded by women. Aquilla AND Priscilla taught Appolos. We can go on and on about the amazing women used by God as teachers, preachers and leaders in the Bible. We could go on about the amazing women throughout church history who have partnered with God to preach and teach the gospel. You see part of the curse the world came under when Adam and Eve fell is that women came under the domination of men. Jesus reversed this curse and takes us into the body of Christ. In the body of Christ, there is only one head and that is Jesus. There is one body, one lord, one Spirt, one Father and so on. The devil knows the Bible better than most of us and will twist it to oppress men and women to silence us and bring us under his domination. He has tricked many into ignoring all of the women teachers, preachers and leaders in the Bible and twisted a few verses and seduced men through their own weaknesses to oppress women in an attempt to silence half of the body of Christ. You cannot throw out the whole of scripture and Jesus' relationship with women to validate the misinterpretations and mistranslations of only a few verses and create a new law to bring believers under when Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. It is the devil who would want to silence the gospel yet many fall into his snare and are used by him when telling women to be silent. Can the eye say to the hand, “we don’t need you?” This is what many including big name preachers have done in the body of Christ by telling women to be silent, and by telling them they cannot lead and teach. They don’t know that they are speaking by the sprit of slavery and domination that tries to keep others in bondage. I pray that those under this doctrine of demons would have a revelation of the truth. I pray for any women watching or listening to this video to have boldness to preach and teach when led by the Holy Spirit! No doctrine, denomination, pastor, priest, self-proclaimed apostle or prophet can stop you from preaching and teaching about your beloved Jesus Christ! I break the glass ceiling that has been put over you in Jesus name and today the restraints that have been holding you back from preaching the gospel are destroyed! Run the race with boldness. Blessings!

The fear of the Lord is NOT the same as human fear. The fear of the Lord is awe, reverence and faith in God! The fear of the Lord is to trust in His faithfulness and steadfast love! For the Lord has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7) There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. (1John 4:18) Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:16-17) And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. (Isaiah 11:2-3) You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. (Psalm 91:5-6) “but my righteous one shall live by faith,and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. (Hebrews 10:38-39) His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior; the Lord delights in those who fear him,who put their hope in his unfailing love. (Psalm 147:10-11) To visit Resurrection Ranch go to the link below https://www.rezranch.com To give go to https://www.rezranch.com/give

Pre-existing Law v Positive Law Are we an Empire of Laws or merely an Empire of Men? I want to take complex topics from political philosophers and break them down into tiny bite-size pieces to give away. Too often we simply accept that we will be governed, but we fail to stop and think about what that looks like or ask the deeper questions. “What is the proper role and function of government?” “Where does the authority to enact laws that constrain our behavior come from?” The first question I want to address is from where does the authority to enact laws come? In terms of political philosophy, the question would be, “do we as a nation embrace as our ultimate foundation solely positive law or do we accept that there are pre-existing laws?” Those societies who believe in positive law embrace the supremacy of man-made law. Those who believe in pre-existing law believe there are certain rights and wrongs that inherently exist and it is our duty to ascertain those laws and implement them within civil society. It is important to note that believing in pre-existing laws, does not prohibit you from accepting that positive laws may be appropriate within certain areas. For example, there is such a legal delineator between what is malum in se and what is malum prohibitum. In short, there are some behaviors we accept must be legally constrained as inherently wrong, like murder. Such behavior is of the magnitude that mankind does not have the discretion to condone it. Meanwhile there are other laws that man may subjectively enact for the benefit of social order, like a 35 mph speed limit, but these laws do not constrain behavior that is otherwise inherently wrong. However, whether a society accepts the legitimacy of pre-existing law or not gives insight into its foundation of government. Societies driven by the supremacy of positive law tend to embrace more of a rex lex mentality, “the king is the law.” The king doesn’t have to mean a literal king. It can be exchanged by any man or group of men from a monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy or democracy. In short it is a governmental system where mankind himself ultimately determines what is right or wrong. Conversely, societies who embrace pre-existing law tend to adopt a lex rex mentality, “the law is the king.” Such societies accept that there are certain rights that pre-exist the creation of any governmental structure. Accordingly, they create governments that can be defined as an empire of laws NOT of men. Sound familiar? Now, based on the above information, can you discern what type of government our founding fathers established: one that embraced pre-existing law or merely positive law, and were we intended to be a lex rex or a rex lex?

Pre-Existing Laws give rise to God-given, inherent, and Unalienable Rights! So, in our last blog we talked about societies that believe there is such a thing as pre-existing laws. These types of societies embrace the belief that even sovereigns were accountable to the law, and that certain fundamental liberties existed that could not be trampled upon, not even by a King. These would be rights that all men inherently possessed. We as Americans need to look no further than the document that created us as a nation, our Declaration of Independence to see whether or not our Founding Fathers accepted pre-existing laws. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The signers then went on to explain that the purpose and function of government was inextricably tied to the protection of such fundamental rights. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,” making it clear that a belief that certain laws not only pre-exist government, but that adherence to those principles is in fact the proper role and function of government. While the Declaration did present some examples of unalienable rights that are to be at all times protected, including both the right to life as well as the right to liberty & the pursuit of happiness, it mentions them as being among certain unalienable Rights, meaning this list is not exhaustive. When we understand this and the thoughts of the founders that we had unalienable rights to free exercise, or to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience, the right to free speech without the fear of being found guilty of seditious libel, etc, then we see that they knew the Government did not provide us with the Bill of Rights, rather, these were rights we possessed over which the government could not impede. No question, our Founding Fathers believed that there were such things as pre-existing law and that it was not only our duty to ascertain them, but to make sure that they were secured. Accordingly, since they believed in the supremacy of law, then the next question to answer is would they have deemed us a Rex Lex society or a Lex Rex, or to put it another way, an empire of men, or an empire of laws?

Are we a Democracy or a Republic and is there a difference? So we talked about the distinction between a Rex Lex society and a Lex Rex society. A Rex Lex society is one where the sovereign or the will of man is the law, making man supreme. Conversely, a Lex Rex society is one where the law is the sovereign; therefore, the rule of law is supreme. Such a distinction is extremely substantive. Clearly, in a Rex Lex society you can have numerous types of governmental structures, from a Monarchy, an Aristocracy, an Oligarchy or even a Democracy. The number of sovereigns is not the relevant factor. What is relevant is that it is the sovereign that determines what is the law. Whereas in a Lex Rex society there is an acceptance in the supremacy of law as the ultimate authority. That is why a society that accepts that there is in fact such a thing as pre-existing law is by definition a Lex Rex society. This highlights the distinction between a republic and a democracy and such distinction is not merely one of semantics. A democracy is a society that is ultimately one of majority opinion or mob rule. Whereas a republic, at least a republic as adopted and intended by our founders, is one governed by the rule of law, and in the case of the United States, the supreme law of the land is our Constitution. This is why our government is described as an Empire of Laws not of Men. This is also why James Madison discussed at length not only his concern of a minority faction trampling on the rights of the majority, but expressed equal concern over a majority faction trampling on the rights of the minority. We were never to be a nation that was to be governed simply by majority opinion. The founders were very clear about their disrespect for such a governmental structure. John Adams warned that there never was a democracy that had not committed suicide. And more colorfully, Benjamin Franklin explained that democracy is nothing more than two wolves and lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Their lack of respect for a democracy is why they chose not to give us one. It is why they decided upon a Republic, if we can keep it. I would argue that the first step in being able to keep anything is to understand what you are trying to keep. If we live in a Constitutional Republic, and that Republic is grounded upon the rule of law, but some of those laws even pre-existed the founding of our nation and our government, then it is clearly important to understand which of those laws and attendant rights pre-existed our Constitution?