On a lighter note, let me draw your attention, my dear reader, to one of God’s favorite words – thou. You may try counting the number of times this word has been used in the King James Version of the Bible, to agree with me that it is one of God’s favorite words; and more so, when He speaks English at His Conservative best. This word, from even the very few times that God has used it in the Ten Commandments, is strongly suggestive of it being a male-gendered word. It does not seem to have any feminine-gender connotation or trait. By simply confining ourselves to the use of this word – thou – in the Ten Commandments, we see that, any time God uses this word, He is seen to be addressing a man or men. And so we can safely go beyond the Ten Commandments to understand that both Judaism and the Christian Faith, as instituted by God for His worship, are male-led. In the Book of Numbers, the chapter thirty, we find a very inspiring revelation about the God-ordained leadership status of man over the woman. My dear reader, please, read this interesting and very revealing chapter, from the King James Version of the Bible, before continuing with the reading of this article. In this chapter of the Book of Numbers, God has established a statute rendering the man as the perpetual leader of the woman. In whatever relationship that exists between a man and a woman, the man is always the leader. That is how God has ordained things to be, and so they must remain in that manner, forever. In this chapter, we receive the revelation of God that the father is the leader of the daughter. The husband is also the leader of his woman (wife), when this woman now marries. The divorced wife is still under obligation to any vows she uttered with the consent of her man (husband) when she was yet married to him! And so is the widowed woman under obligation to make good any vows she made with the knowledge of her man (husband) before his demise. If you were a woman in Israel, you were to accept and obey this statute to your great gain or ignore it to your doom. And this is what God has taught His people to accept and obey –forever. Whether the man (father or husband) of the woman is alive or dead, the leadership of the man over her remains the Will of God. This reveals God-ordained men-leadership to be eternal, unchanging, undying, and therefore spiritual. If any woman violates this statute of God, she brings upon herself, iniquities, according to the fifteenth verse of the chapter. The man is established by God as the domestic priest of the woman, forever. May, I humbly advice women to read this chapter of Numbers carefully, so they may be blessed by it. Talking about priests, we see God ordained a men-only priesthood for the spiritual leadership and well-being of the woman. Everywhere in the Bible, this is what God has ordained. In both the Old and New Testaments, God always called men only to be His priests. He uses them to give instruction of His Will and direction in His worship, to people who were considered His own. The word ‘priestess’ has never been used by God to describe any woman with any role in His service. Priestesses have always been seen in heathen countries in description of their women’s roles as leaders in idol worship. The Old Testament Aaronite priesthood involved only the sons of Levi. No daughters of the house of Levi ever entered the priesthood of the Old Testament. No woman from the houses of Aaron, Gershom, Kohath and Merari (families that comprised the house of Levi), ever entered the service of God as Levites even though females were, of course, born to men from these houses. Every spiritual work of God, in Israel, was done by only the male-line of Levi. The work of cleaning, arranging items of and for worship, offering of sacrifices on the altar, and any work relating to worship of God, were all done by a men-only Levitical priesthood. If you are blessed to have the spirit of the Bible carry you along, as you meditatively read it, you will see that the house of Levi, and indeed the house of every man in Israel, did not have women being regarded as descending from those houses. Female children were never recorded at birth to have descended from their fathers. Females were never counted in any population census. They were never eligible for inheriting their fathers. They did not have any portion in the land distribution of Israel. Every part of the Law of Moses is clear in forbidding women-leadership in spiritual issues. In every tribe of Israel, when a woman brought forth a male-child as the first-fruit of her womb, that child was by the Law, to be given up for the service of God, in the company of the Levites. By that birth, the male-child was ordained to be the priest of God, according to the Levitical order, forever, irrespective of his non-Levitical tribal descent. Therefore, when such children were weaned, they were handed over to the priests, to be taught, trained and groomed, for their God-ordained roles in the Aaronite priesthood, when they came of age for this service, at thirty. This was how-come a first-born son of Elkanah by his wife Hannah, who was named Samuel, came to be enlisted into the priesthood of Israel, even though Elkanah was an Ephraimite and not a Levite (First Samuel 1: 1 – 2: 11). When a female-child was similarly begotten, as the first to open the matrix of her mother, she was also by Law to be dedicated to the service of God. The father (and the mother?) did not own such a child, in the eyes of the Law of Moses, the Law of God. God owned such a child. But unlike the first-born male-child, she could never join or be part of the Levitical priesthood, which God established for His worship. Therefore, any female-child who opened the matrix of every woman in Israel was to be redeemed. The fathers of such children were under obligation to buy-back or redeem them from God, as it were. Such female-children were taken to the house of God, after being weaned of their mothers, to be given or handed-over to Him through the Levites. At these presentations, a price was placed on them at the discretion of the priests. This price was immediately paid by the fathers to the Levites and the female-child taken back home by the father, to live in submission and service to him forever. I am sure, from all the foregoing, the choice of man by God to lead women is obvious. In my study of the Bible, the only service that I have come across to have been rendered by women in the company of men, in the worship of God, is singing of psalms and hymns. It seems to me that, it was only the sons of Asaph who had in their ministration of worship before the Lord, women as singers. It was a rare concession given to the daughters of the house of Levi. It is only Ezra 2: 65 and Nehemiah 7: 67 which show evidence of women participation in singing, in the worship of God. God has since the establishment of the state of Israel, used men only as prophets to communicate His Will to them. There is abundant evidence that there were never any female counterparts to men-prophets. Throughout Jewish history, God never called and sent a woman with His message to the nation of Israel or his king or any man for that matter. How about the mention of the word prophetess in God’s Word, one may ask? The word ‘prophet’ is one of the problematic words in Greek-English Bible translation and therefore does not easily or readily reveal itself to our understanding. This is because the word ‘prophet’ is a transliteration of the Greek word ‘prophetes’, since it seems to defy a proper translation. This transliteration does not help the non-Greek readers of the Bible much. Many forms and variants of the Greek word ‘prophetes’ exist. They are also transliterated variously as ‘prophet’, ‘prophetess’, ‘prophecy’, ‘prophesy’, etc. Many of today’s users of the English Bible do not understand these words simply because they do not have their roots in English. They were borrowed whole-scale from Greek into English. This transliteration does the English-speaker very little or no good, at all. What is the good in being told for example that the meaning of the Greek word ‘prophetes’ in English is, prophet? For me this is not helpful. And I wonder how many people are helped to understand this word by such transliteration. To understand the word ‘prophet’ is for one to either, learn some Greek grammar and literature, or better still, gain understanding of it from the spirit of the Bible. For many people familiar with the Bible, a prophet to them is one who foretells future events. Even though that is true, it is not always the only function of the prophet. The prophet also at times carries the Word of God to His people to deal immediately with a running crisis or bad situation. Prophets who function in these two ways either hear with their spiritual ears, the Word of God from Him directly or through His angels, or they receive it through their spiritual eyes in dreams and visions. Another kind of prophet is one who utters information, not foretelling of future events or bringing immediate solutions to current crises or bad situations. This prophet testifies to an event happening or just happened. An example of this kind of prophet was Simeon (Luke 2: 25-32), who was led into the Temple in Jerusalem to testify of the Baby Jesus as being the Messiah of God. Also, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, the prophetess of Luke 2: 36-38 fame was such a person who spoke not foretelling the future but testifying of a current event and thanking God for it. There is yet another kind of a prophet that is hardly known by most bible students: the singing prophet. This is a man (and very rarely a woman), who sings under inspiration of the Holy Spirit when He (Holy Spirit) comes upon that person. A person might function in this manner only once in his (or her) lifetime, and yet gain recognition as being considered a prophet, forever. It is in only this manner of functioning that women have been known to have participated in the work of God, and therefore called: prophetesses. The most notable of such women was Miriam, the elder sister of both Moses and Aaron. She was the one, when yet in her girlish-years, who stood on the bank of the Nile, and watched the daughter of Pharaoh take the infant-Moses into her custody (Exodus 2: 4). (---the continuing part to this article is in Part Three). The writer is a Bible-expositor and author of the book entitled: “BEWARE OF THIS FALSE DOCTRINE of reciting the Sinners’ Prayer for salvation”. His email address is: chrisbapuohyele@yahoo.com.