Panel Q & A

Everybody, welcome to our Tuesday night panel discussion and thankful for everyone that's here. All of our guests that's here, God bless you. Thank you for being here.

I want to say that the material that much of the material that we will cover tonight, if you are not where we are, we are not upset anybody. We are just trying our best to do what we feel like has called us to do. And so I want to say from the outset that we do not adhere to standard of holiness. We don't dress a certain way or look a certain way because we're afraid of going to hell if we don't. That ain't the point. Everything that we do as apostolic is we are trying our best to be pleasing to God. And everything we do is born out of our relationship with him. And so and our relationship with his word. And there is there is the written word and then there is the spirit of the word. Bible says that the letter kills but the spirit gives life. Many things that that we do teach and believe, if you don't have the Holy Ghost, you won't ever take the Holy Ghost to give revelation. So we are we want to do our best to answer your questions tonight. I'm wild and crazy and disorganized and uh so I'm gonna I'm gonna give most of this to our panel. And if you don't know who these folks are, these are beautiful. Immediately to my right is my wife, Sister B, as she is affectionately called here at the Ocala Church. And she is one of the most godly women that I know. I thank God that he gave her to me. And I hate the rest of you had to settle for somebody. Ain't fair, but it sure is Tindale part of this church for 41. I know y'all didn't think she was 41 years old, but she's just barely 41 years old. And she's been a part of this church for a very long time and a great teacher of the word and just a wonderful, wonderful person. And we are thankful that she was willing to be a part of this panel tonight. And then our New Life Coordinator, Brother Markley is on the end and also a just a great great man of God, great teacher of the word, very very knowledgeable about apostolic doctrine. And so we're thankful that he is a part of this. And I am pastor of this church, Pastor Ryan. And and I have ADHD and a few other things. So, I'm gonna I'm gonna begin this way. I'm gonna begin with prayer. I want God to move into this place tonight. I want God to grant revelation in this place. And I again, I'm not we're not trying to make anybody mad or come after anybody or embarrass anybody or anything like that. We're just trying to seek truth to the best of our ability. So, let's pray together right now.

God, in the name of Jesus, we love you. We praise you. We magnify you. God, we ask that your spirit would fall in this place. God, we pray Lord Jesus that you would be pleased by our presentation tonight. I pray God in the name of Jesus that the answers that are being sought after with a pure heart are answered in the name of Jesus. God, I pray Lord that you would continue to give us end time revival. And I pray Lord that you would continue to help us build a strong Holy Ghost apostolic separated holiness church in the middle of a chaotic and perverse world in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus.

All right. Praise God. Um, so we have several questions and I will go ahead and read the first question and I will turn it over to sister. We're going to try to take a couple of minutes a piece. I'll throw this at the ladies on our panel and give them a couple minutes to give you explanation of the question and then also I'll do this with the question to him and then I'll jump in wherever I decide I want to jump in. Okay.

First question, as an apostolic woman, what does separation mean to you?

To me, separation and I can use I do big on visual learning. I'm an audible learner, so I try to offset anything that I don't say, you may see. I use this in our sober and class the other day and sorry if you were in my class, you have to hear this again. So we were slaves to sin. The Bible said we were captives of sin. Um, we were born into sin, shapen in iniquity. And we all know that sin has bondage. It has locks. It has different depths of dungeons that people can willingly go to. But being born into the world, I was born into sin. So at the moment that I was into sin, I was a sinner. Even though I had never done a a sin by commission, a lot of it I did by omission because I was not I had sins attached to me. So when I came to this church as 18-year-old, fixing my senior year of high school, I came here and I I got baptized in Jesus name and I got the Holy Ghost. I had those slaves of sin on me. Well, the Holy Ghost, the Lord, according to the Acts 2:38 message, he took his keys and unlocked the shackles from off of me. Well, he didn't at that moment turn around and say, "Okay, now you're your own master. I wasn't like a basketball player, a free agent." No, he turned at that same time and put his shackles of righteousness on me. I am no longer a slave to sin, but I am a slave. When when Paul talks about being servants of Christ. And I know Enimus ran away and I know Paul talks about servant hood, but in the original language it was dub, which means slave. Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day and slavery is a bad light on American history. And I wish we could delete backspace that, but we can't. But we can learn from it. But we were slaves of sin. And now, and if anybody's ever read the book Bonds of Love, it's what a difference makes. There's a lot of great. I am a servant. I am a slave of righteousness, which is nothing I earn. It's because I adhere myself to biblical standards. So to me, that's what it means to be an apostolic. So separation for me, you know, the New Testament tells us, "Come out from among them and be separate," says the Lord. Um, you know, and that's really the basis. You start studying that out. Okay. Well, God told us to come out and be separate. What does separate mean? Well, separate means not like everything else. You pull yourself away from worldly desires and and fleshly desires and our human nature and you dig into the word of God and you learn who is God, what are his characteristics, what are his attributes and you start putting away things of the flesh and your old ways and you separate yourself unto God. It's essentially a pulling away from everything that's natural to us as Yes.

Okay. So, the next question is, we're just jumping right in here. Why do apostolic ladies not cut their hair?

I have a very um unique take on on this course. Our basis for scripture is Corinthians where the Bible talks about don't cut short, it's better to be shaven. You know, we read through all that. There's a lot of interpretations of that. Um, for me, I'll just give a little brief brief snippet of of personal testimony here. Um, I got the Holy Ghost as a teenager and started church, you know, asking for God to reveal things to me. Um, I was very hardheaded, very obstinate, and I wasn't going to do things just because somebody got up and told me to do it. And I diligently sought God. I had a heart for God and for the things of God. And I told God, if there are things in my life that you are not pleased with, I want you to show me. I didn't that out of you know, trying to justify things that I had in my life. I genuinely wanted him to show me things that he was not pleased with so that I could remove it. And my mother was she had a barber shop and she it was time for me to get a trim. And so she sat me down in the chair and she started cutting my hair. As she started cutting, I got so convicted and nobody had said anything to me. Nobody, you know, had had condemned me for cutting my hair, anything like that. It was a a genuine pure conviction from heaven. And um, that was the last time I cut my hair. I was 13 years old. And you know, it was just a.

So first Corinthians 11:15 talks about this. So in Bible class, you learn that you don't go into the word of God to read something of God. You go and do an is Jesus, which means you pull it out of the original, look what it meant to them. You don't read what you want to say into scripture. Anesus, and that will get you an F in class. So will plagiarism. So first Corinthians 11:15, Paul was dealing with a gentile women group. They were out of order. They were large and in charge at that time. They were saved. They were former prostitutes. They did not know Hebrew scriptures. They did not know Hebrew history. So they were coming into church and he was, you know, speaking expressly, you know, to to make the church grow and strengthen the body, everything a pastor does. They would holler across, "Hey, what does that mean? I don't. Hey, what does that word mean?" And it was causing divisions and a lot of them were um, they had come from where Diana was worshiped, women were worshiped. And here they come in and they got all these little kids with them now and, you know, "Hey, be quiet, I'm going to spank." It was a big distraction. So much it was hindering the church. And Paul says, "Everything should be decently done and in order." So when these women come in, so that's the original context. It wasn't because, "Hey, we don't want you to look pretty," or, "Hey, we want you to save that $30, $40 you spend a month at the beautician." No, it wasn't nothing like that. He had to go in to rectify a problem. They had to learn the godly biblical model of um, family unit and the gender roles that that general played because every kingdom, every culture has norms. It has deviations. It has its history. It has words. You can use one word in Mexico and one word here and it can mean totally different things. You can embarrass the dog stew out of yourself. I learned that with tacos. Um, you don't use something I learned here. Over there, they have a different kind of Mexican speech. Um, and Paul was dealing with that. And when he told him, he said, "A woman's long hair is given her for a covering." He said, "It's her glory." Well, if I go over to the Oxford um dictionary online, there is two noun and one verb explanations of the word glory. One is a high renown. It's a noun, honor by notable achievements. Second one is magnificence or great beauty. The third is actually a verb and it's to take great pride or pleasure in. So when it says a woman's long hair, and it didn't leave anything up that I'll get me a bob cut and I'll put a veil on when I go in church or put a doily. He said, "A woman's long hair is given to her for covering." So that is the purpose of it. It's not to um, you know, save money on hairstyle. It's not that. It's for these women to understand that you were made a woman and he is made a man. And the curse in the garden of the fall was site specific. The punishment fit the crime. Adam was taken from the ground. So he had to the ground. A woman was taken from man. So she has to do she has to be he has to be her headship. She has to do kind of what he leads and where he leads. And then the children are going to come from her side. Um, so there's an order and God wanted everything to be in order so that people could be anointed. Anybody ever sit in the back of the church? You every child cries and they take them out. You notice everybody all of a sudden gets thirsty when they go to read the word. You notice a million things. But if you sit up front, you see the preacher and you see the scripture and you know where it's going next. And that's what Paul wanted to do. He wanted to restore order, not to just tell women this is your your code of conduct. No, it was for a reason. It was for a purpose.

Very good. Thank you. Okay. So the third question is, what about wedding bands and jewelry?

So when those going back to Corinthians again, so when those ladies come in, um, they were gentile, you know, majority of them. If not, then they probably weren't the ones that Paul was correcting unless they just went with a rowdy group. Um, so when they come in, they had to learn the new kingdom standard, like I said, everyone has. So in the Old Testament, um, there were people who were conquered. So you could be a slave in one of three ways. You could be um, you could be um, in debt. We have bankruptcy that settles all that. You know, it's a do over again, get out of jail kind of free thing. They didn't have that. They had to work it off or um, they could be taken captive. They could be prisoners of war and now you're my soldier or now you're my servant or now you're whatever I need because you're I bought you with winning the war or you could be born to slave parents. Well, here were women coming in who were slaves to. Now they're released. They got the master Jesus. They're doing good. So he had to tell them. So when they would get slaves, um, and let me read you the scripture so you know, I'm revealing my source. Deuteronomy 21:12 says there's a procedure for a Hebrew man who takes a captive for his wife. So he is to take her and shave her hair, shave all of her hair off, and then have her nails, which means trimmed. Because in their culture, they would really um, put themselves on display. They would dye their fingernails, not just paint them that will chip and they'll have to redo it and get fillers and lines fixed. They would take them off and they had to stay like out of the public for a little bit until their hair started growing back because it humbled them. Bible talks about that humbled them. That short hair, not having that humbled them. So when they come in, they had to be cleansed from their old identity to be brought into the Hebrew culture where they would then let their hair grow out, let their nails go back to the natural color. Um, that was their identification mark that they were now a Hebrew. They weren't born one, but they were born now. They were in a kingdom, in a household, in a lineage that was blessed by God. And because of the blessing, they had to have the identity to get that blessing. Jewelry is something that you study through scripture see. But if you follow records to jewelry became an object of affection and worship. God turned his stance toward jewelry and it would become very metaphorical and allegorical, a person's spirit or their attitude or making up my jewels, talking about us, the church together. So we are those jewels. We are those precious stones. But when when jewelry became something that people changed his attitude toward it, most clearly when the people of God have been brought out of Egypt, which is a type of the world, and s tremendous work. The Bible says he brings them through the Red Sea. That's a baptism. Their enemies are drowned in the Red Sea. That's a type of washing away. The pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire. They come to Mount Si and Moses to receive the Lord. The Bible says that the people that became grossly involved with one another and they took their jewelry that they had taken out of Egypt, in fact, from the Egyptians and they melted it down and they formed the golden. They began to worship around it. And God gave Moses first. He said to Moses, "I'm not going to take notes on the people's." But the jewelry ground into Moses, the man of God, took that down into powder and it were commanded to drink it. And so just by way of type, that jewelry, if you will, it's no longer meant to be on the outside of our bodies. But the Bible talks about the Holy Ghost, which is that treasure in an earthn vessel. And that's exactly where God put on the inside where it was intended to be. And so our stance on jewelry is that it is something that brings attention to us. When the Holy Ghost, the Bible says, is what brings attention to God. And he says that he beautifies. So if you're looking for beauty, here's how to get it. The Bible says that he beautifies the repentance. So when we repent before the Lord, we come before him humbly. And it's not what we've put on, but it's what he's put in. We become beautiful not just to him, but also to a world that's lost. And a humble spirit in the sight of God of great Christ. So, you know, shadow of the New Testament. God has God has asked us to allow that that shine to come from the inside, not what we put on the outside. And so people would say, "Well, what about things like wedding bands?" Our our stance on wedding bands has really been the same thing. Isaiah 3 talks about there would come a day where God would take from his people their boasting in their rings. He goes through several different types of jewelry. And he doesn't just say earrings. I mean, everywhere these days look like they got slapped in the face with a tackle. He said specifically, so that we have decided that we just don't wedding. There's a lot of earlier temple of Diana temple on their ring finger that identified them as a slave of the temple of Diana. They were a thousand temple prostitutes and soldiers in Greece would come by, take a prostitute, and the way that the temple guards knew who to round up was the girls with the band on their. This was adapted by Catholicism around the fourth or fifth century where uh in wedding ceremonies they would administer the wedding band in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. And we are not Trinitarian people. In the God. So the wedding band was associated with the Trinity. That's not something that we feel comfortable at all being associated with, especially something so sacred as our our marriage. Um, and I will I will just just go out on a limb here and say this, that um, it is an obvious thing from a pastor's point of view that wedding keeping people from adultery. In fact, in the club and the I'm just telling you what I deal with. In fact, when people are in the bar scenes and in the club scenes, people with a wedding band are a whole lot more likely to have a one night stand than somebody without it. They're not looking for somebody that wants a commitment and a relationship. Want to do something tonight and then we're gonna be good. All right. I don't want to hear from you again. Well, who's most likely to do that? Somebody that's married, not somebody that's at the club looking for a wife. Don't go to the club looking for a wife or a spouse or anything. But that's where people are going because they've been deceived. And so what I'm telling you is a wedding stopping nobody. Just sit in my office a couple of weeks and you'll find out the wedding band is not stopping anybody. I'm going to tell you what what proves to the world that you that you're married is how you carry yourself and how you conduct yourself. You know, if you look like You don't have a hard time with people trying to flirt with you and stuff like that, but you good-looking dudes, you can carry yourself in such a way that people know you're married without having to hang jewelry on your body. And the same goes for ladies. And I'm going to say one more thing about that. In Pentecost, you know, people are justifying the wearing of a wedding because functionality of showing to the world that I'm married or whatever. Well, then why are they getting soy? I mean, I've seen some folks walking around in Pentecost. They can't even hold their ring finger up because that rock so big because it started there, but it never ends there. And so I I think for us, we have just decided that best thing to do is we don't wear them and we just act married all the time when we're married.

Okay. So let's move on. Brother brotherly, I had this question for you. What does it mean to be submitted to spiritual authority? And is it a New Testament idea such as being submitted to church leadership?

Every person in this room right now wanted to have you wanted to have order in your marriage. You wanted to have order in the workplace. You wanted to have order with your children. You wanted to have when you went somewhere and placed your order. Everything rises and falls with leadership. If you're telling your kids what to do and you're expecting them to do it because it's what's good for them and what's best for them is because you want order. Did you know that when you got here, God placed you into the arms of somebody else completely depended upon them? You arrived unintelligible, unable to speak for yourself, unable to feed yourself, making a mess on yourself. And God placed you there and everybody saw the baby and said that's beautiful. You had no resume. You had nothing to prove anything that you could do. But what makes a baby so beautiful is that it's completely dependent on another life. God used our entire adolescence to train us in this way to teach us that we are this idea of independence is a farce. Just so you know, we never age out of being accountable. God used our entire adolescence to prove that to us. And then when we get to that age where I'm gonna do it my way there and it worked out well. The Bible says that God gave pastors after his own heart, just as God placed you into the capable hands of a guardian, a parent when you couldn't take care of yourself. And it was beautiful. And it was right. When you come to the age of being able to get married and raise children yourself, God still has leadership for you to be under. We need leadership. And this is very much a New Testament standard. The first time that heaven speaks in the New Testament, let me back up. The first time that Jesus speaks in the New Testament, that's when they found him. He said, "Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?" He was operating as a son. You know what makes a proud mama and a proud daddy? A son that's accountable. Jesus was accountable. He said, "Did you know I was going to be at my daddy's house? I was going to be about my father's business." That's the first words of Jesus Christ in your New Testament. The first time that heaven speaks in the New Testament is when Jesus is obedient unto baptism. He submitted himself to the ministry of John the Baptist. Jesus did not go around the ministry. When the lepers came to him and he healed them, he said, "Go show yourself to the." Jesus did not heal them to go around the ministry. He healed them and then said, "Go be accountable to the priest." When Jesus came up out of the water, having submitted to the ministry of John the Baptist, heaven spoke up and said, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." The first time that Satan is recorded as speaking in the New Testament is, "Thou be the son of God, turn these stones into bread." He was trying to get Jesus to go around sonship. And so sonship is very much a part of our daily lives is submission to authority. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews, it says that about chastisement. It says Hebrews Hebrews 12 verse 6, "For whom the Lord say loveth." God loves you. "For whom the Lord loveth, he chastens." That's your Bible. Proverbs 3:11, "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be." 12:11, "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous." Somebody said, "I'm grieving." I got you. I can speak on this topic because I'm rebellious. I'm hardheaded. I buck against the system and I did that long enough to find out it doesn't work. And I will tell you the most miserable people that you will come in contact with in the world and in the church are those that have all the answers, are submitted to nobody. They have they have an angle and a corner on knowledge. They have a corner on wisdom. They know better than the man of God. They know better than the leadership. And if they just did it my way, and you and I both know all of those people that are in rebellion end up miserable. If you want people to follow you, you have to be able to follow leadership. If you're a parent and you're struggling with why won't my kids listen to me, it might be because you're not listening to your leadership. It's it's a. I could talk about it all night, but I will tell you this. Men and women begin to hide from their leaders and it's the worst thing you could ever do. to just try to make it on your own. Try to figure it out on your own. If you believe God is real and you believe his word is real, then you have to believe with all your heart when he said, "I give pastors after my own heart." That the man that he places in your life as your pastor is somebody that you can trust your soul with because one day he's going to give an account for it. And if that's the case, no addiction, no fear, no struggle, no situ. Ever you should never feel like you can't bring it to the man of God. The safest place you can run to, the place you can run to the man of God. Hallelujah.

So, I'll just tag on to what he said by saying um, the bi the Bible tells us Paul said, "Obey them that have the rule over you, for they watch for your souls." Now authority, authority is a a tricky thing because there is a a test on both sides. There's the test for those who are giving themselves submitting themselves to the person in authority. Pastor, husband, children with mother, whatever it is, [snorts] uh citizen to police officer, whatever the authority structure is, there is a test. The test of the person giving the authority or giving submission is I'm called to submit to those that have the rule over me. The person in authority's test is what they do with the authority. And any any pastor that has any sense at all understands who's the apple of God's eye, and it ain't him. And pastors need to understand that relationship between God and his people. When it's on fire, God is going to take care of his children. And he's going to expect the person that he entrusted with authority to have enough sense to get out on their own. It's like a husband. A husband loves his wife more than he loves his children. But if the house is on fire, he's going to go for his children and expect his wife to have the knowledge to get out on her own because those children are the apple of his eye. They are his future. And so you'll you people will say, "Well, a pastor doesn't have the authority to tell me to to do anything unless it's give it's unless it's specifically written down in chapter and verse in the Bible." Well, tell that to Timothy because Paul just spent he spent several books of the Bible talking about how circumcision is done and we're not going to force the Gentiles to be circumcised. And then they're going in to minister to a group of Jews. And Paul says, "Hey, Timothy, I need I need I need you to come talk to Pastor Paul for a minute. Um, before we go in to talk to these Jews, I'm going to need you to do something first." But but, but, Pastor Paul, I thought you said that circumcision wasn't necessary for salvation. It's not, but it's necessary for us to win these people. And so because Timothy had a desire to win these people to God, he was willing to do something that was not required of him to be saved, but was also extremely painful. He said, "I will become all things to all men so I might have the opportunity to save some."

And then, you know, but we're we're living in a day these days where the word submit is a cuss word. But if you really understand what the word submission means, it will become the most powerful revelation of your life.

Just break the word down. It's sub. This is not a sandwich. Sub means under.

Like submarine. Sub means under. Marine means water.

Underwater. Submission means under the mission.

Coming under the mission. [applause]

And so God God types his people over and over and over and over again in the New Testament to an army and to soldiers.

There's got to be some commanders in the army in order for there to be order like brother Rizley was talking about earlier. And it doesn't mean, listen to me, there is no commander that's worth anything if he don't have any soldiers.

And a good commander will give himself for the sake of his soldiers. That's right.

But a soldier has got to have somebody that's in charge that knows what the commander of commanders is saying, giving the marching orders.

And so this is why Paul said, somebody told me one time, they said, "There is no such thing as pastoral authority in the New Testament." And and they said they said Paul talked about it in 1 Corinthians 11. He said, "It's God, husband, wife, and children." I said, "You forgot the first verse."

Paul, Pastor Paul said, "Follow me as I follow Christ."

And then he gave the order of divine anointing.

He he inserted himself into the equation. Because he understood that if God's people are going to be organized and if they're going to be effective, somebody's got to be in charge. A God-anointed man has got to be set over the people of God to lead the people of God into revival. [applause] But he gave the qualifier as I follow Christ. Yes.

If God has placed you under our our leadership and God has placed you under my ministry and I'm your pastor, you have the requirement to submit to my my pastorship and my leadership as long as I'm following Jesus.

The moment I quit following Jesus, you're released. And so the greatest thing I ever learned how to do was submit to my leadership, my spiritual leadership.

And sometimes, just as with Paul and Timothy, when my pastors told me to do things, I'm like, "Dear Lord, Bishop, there ain't no way in the world." But I was just dumb enough to obey anyway.

And it's worked out pretty good for me in my life. And it'll work out for you, too. And so,

Please, Sister B,

just a little note. Two stories that show what happens to us when we have a lack of submission in the Bible is the story of King Saul and the story of Samson. Those two men had a lack of submission to the will of God and the men of God in their life. And if you need some homework, go to the Old Testament, read those two stories and see how they their stories turned out.

Read Kora too. Kora rose up against Moses. He said, "Moses, you take too much on yourself." And God said, "Everybody bring a sensor. We'll see which one fills up with fire." And Moses prayed and he said, "God, so that they know, I want you to do something that's never been done to show that you've put me here." And when the fire did not fill their sensors and they were clearly in rebellion, Kora and all the princes, the earth opened its mouth, the Bible says, and swallowed them up. Pride will cause you to be swallowed up. Unsubmission will cause you to be swallowed up.

All right. Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw this at the ladies. This was not in your list, but I'm I'm going to throw this at you and you guys can uh answer this question. Why do apostolic Pentecostal ladies not wear pants?

I'm going back to the order thing um that Paul tried to establish when he was talking to the Corinthians. Anybody um that has seen old I don't know pictures of people in the desert, they all wore linen because it absorbed the sweat and it dried very easily because it got really hot during the day, really cold at night. And just history itself. So men wore what they call a girdle. Um, we have total different spandex girdles today and us ladies know all about that. Men, probably under armour too. But they had what they called a girdle around the middle. So that man would try to keep himself cool with the linen breaches and the linen clothes, but when he had to ride a camel or run, he would grab that bad boy up, pull it from the back, and cinch it in his belt. In fact, making what they call gauchos. Um, they're kind of bloomy pants. Women are never recorded as to have done that. Um, even in America, women didn't start wearing pants on television till Lucille Ball, black and black and white days. It was not a cultural norm, but they were functional because they could do things, but when they needed to, they would make breaches, they called it. So, in the New Testament, um, women are supposed to adorn themselves as women with modesty. Um, I I I know there's pants and especially leggings and stuff that leave nothing to the imagination. And like I talked about the slaves, the prostitute, former prostitutes, everything is on display. Um, there's no way that I've ever seen that a woman could put a pair of pants on just for the sake of modesty and chasteness. You know, there are some things hidden that are for my husband's eyes only. It's for a select audience, not to be put on display like the former prostitutes. They were come out from among them and [music] be ye separate. And that was one way that they separated themselves. Um, there's a lot that can be done in a skirt. You can mow. You can do all kinds of stuff. You can find excuses for just about everything. But for me to make myself chased and modest, it's to leave things to the imagination. I could be skinny under here. You would never know. [laughter] So, to me, men, they got to, you know, get up on horses. They got to do things. And we can ride horseback. We, you know, we have bloomy, you know, skirts with like tights or anything. We can make things happen. So, say it's a selective. Though it keeps me from doing everything. I have done just about everything in a skirt. Um, and put it online because I am distinct. Because if you look, you go, we went to Honduras. You go anywhere in the world and if you want to find an elbanos, a banos, a lobos, there's L and law. Um, you look for the lady in a dress on the door or a man in pants. I have never been confused by that. A lot of times there's a language barrier, but there's not a a sight barrier. Um, and to me, it's a line of distinction. When I used to wear pants and I got in church, it was really hard for me because I was very tomboy-ish. But like Sister Miller, um, asked Cheryl Miller after church one night, she's got a distinct story about how God gave her the deliverance from pants. She was going to wear them, be apostolic, and wear pants. But it's not so much I can't, it's I don't want to. I want to reserve. I want to be set apart, separated. So to me, that's the definition why women don't.

I think um for me, you know, the the biggest reason um why I wear skirts or dresses all the time is because, you know, God it's very clear in the word of God that he does not like mingling. And he is very um clear as well that he created male and female, separate and distinct from one another. And one of the best ways that I can show my femininity and my distinctness from a man is to wear a dress or a skirt. Now, you can still be immodest in a skirt and a dress. You know, it's it's a heart posture. Um, and so that's that's the the the most distinct thing for me.

Yeah. So, we have we have one verse of scripture in the entire Bible, and it's in the Old Testament about men and women not wearing each other's apparel. Deuteronomy 22:5. And it's the only scripture in the entire Bible that specifically talks about it being an abomination for men and women to wear um that which pertaineth unto a man or that which pertaineth unto a woman. And so um people would say, "Well, my my pants are made for women." Well, pants made for women did not exist until less than a hundred years ago. For the entirety of human history, uh there was no such thing as pants for women. I Is there somebody in the media booth? I I did some on-the-fly research. Would you I got some I want to show y'all some cheerleaders. I got some pictures of cheerleaders. This Okay, baby. I I usually don't show y'all pictures of cheerleaders in church, but I thought I'd show y'all these cheer No, not them. You got it.

Okay. Well, uh, so this is a a very very real thing. For all of human history until just under a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as pants on women. But in uh after the World War I and ladies began to go into the workforce, our world changed forever. Um, and it became acceptable for ladies. I'm not standing up because of anything, but I am hyper as I'll get out and I can't sit still. Um, but uh God set in his word a precedent that he wanted men to look like men and women to look like women. And so all throughout human history, men were allowed to breach their loins, which is where the term britches came from. And women wore long flowing garments. Y'all see these cheerleaders? These are cheerleaders in the 50s. And y'all say, "Well, it must have been cold outside." Well, have y'all um seen any pictures of cheerleaders today when it's cold outside? I got a couple of more pictures of cheerleaders I wanted to show y'all. This is NFL cheerleaders in the 40s and 50s. You got the other ones?

That's all right. It's worth waiting on.

And I think I think it's so important that we have these kind of discussions because erosion happens when we don't have discussion and we are we are we have arrived. We have arrived at a day in the United States of America where decency has completely went out the window. And people will uh go to the beach in bathing suits and then you if you walked on walked in on them in the restroom or in a dressing room dressed the exact same way, they'd go, "Ah," because they know it's not modest. 1923. These are these are not apostolic choir members, though they some could pass for them. These are young football cheerleaders. And so this is just to show you how far our nation has drifted towards complete perversion and insanity. And so, yes, we our ladies wear skirts below their knees. Even your workout skirts ought to be modest and below your knees. If they're not below your knees, they're not modest. Um, and so, you know, for for all of human history, this has been the way it has been. This has been the standard, not just for Christian people, but for everybody, except for tribal, weird, whacked out people on the backside of an African forest somewhere or jungle somewhere. And if you dressed immodestly, you were viewed as some kind of weird pagan tribal people that had no sense, no decency, and no connection to God. And so this this idea of even though most of us don't remember the change because it's been right at a hundred years now and I don't know if anybody in here's a hundred, we don't remember the change. But I do know that I'm 35 years old and I I remember a day where at least for the normal civilians, there was more of a sense of decency than there is today. I was sitting. We're g we're we're about to go. We're out of time. Bless you. Um, I was sitting my mother came to visit us and we're in Florida and I'm from South Mississippi, if you can't tell. Uh, my mother came to visit us and I took my mother right over here to the to the Publix, the the junction breakfast place. Anybody ate over there? I I went in there and I'm talking about at nine o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting with my mother, one of the most godly apostolic ladies that you'll ever meet in your life. And I'm sitting there and in through the door comes this elderly man and his mail order bride. And brothers and sisters, when I tell you I was embarrassed to no end, she was she walked into the junction basically wearing a band-aid. I said, "Where are we?" I mean, I saw places like this that's advertised out on the interstate, but I didn't think that's where we were. I thought we was just in a little breakfast nook. And I'm sitting there trying to have a conversation with my mother. Modesty has gone out the window. Decency has gone out the window. And the apostolic church from its inception in the United States of America has been called a restorationist group. Meaning that we are doing our best by the help of the Holy Ghost to restore Christianity back to what the Bible and the apostles meant for it to be in the beginning. [applause]

And I I'm just telling you, you should not have to come to church. Right.

If if your if your skirts and your dresses and all that kind of stuff get up above your knees and then you you try to stand up here and preach on this platform, it is not decent. I shouldn't have to preach like like I got Tourette's or something because I'm trying to look away from the Bible talks about in in context with modesty. The Bible talks about Paul instructs us that it we are modest for the sake of of our love for our brothers and sisters. That's right.

We don't want to cause our brothers and sisters to stumble.

We're not here trying to catch somebody else's spouse's attention.

And if you are, leave. [applause]

If you're here trying to catch another spouse's attention, I don't want you here.

Because that's not what we're here for. We're here to draw closer in our relationship with Jesus. We're here to worship him and we're here to build the kingdom. [applause]

This is not a dating site.

If you want to if you want to swing and do all that kind of stuff, go to the villages. This ain't the place for it.

Hallelujah. And I'm not trying to be funny.

We've got to bring decency and integrity and modesty back to the house of God. And I'm going to end like this because it's 8:10 and we're supposed to be out at 8 on Tuesday night. We had several more questions to get to. Maybe we'll maybe we'll do this again next [music] week and we'll get to more of your questions. But the other side of this is we we we've been picking on the ladies for the last several minutes. And I'm g I'm going to take a second and and talk to the men in this room because we tell our ladies that modesty, it's it's immodest to wear your dresses and skirts and all that above your knees. And it is. And then men say, "Well, if if if women can wear their dresses to their knees, why can't I wear short pants to my knees?" I'm going to tell you why. Because number one, styles change and shorts. I don't know if y'all have noticed, but if y'all remember when Michael Jordan started playing basketball, shorts, the style was to right here. And then MJ changed the style by wearing shorts, big baggy shorts down to here. Well, I don't know if y'all have noticed or not how everybody's running around in shorts now, but it ain't down here anymore. It's up here.

And if you study the scripture, Bible nakedness is uncovering the thigh. And if it's nakedness for a lady to uncover her thigh, it's nakedness for a man to uncover her his thigh. [applause]

Number two, our ladies carry the load of separation in a perverse and godless world where there is so much pressure to sexualize yourself and to look a certain way and you're not pretty if you don't paint yourself up and and have your clothes so skin tight. or revealing.

They have led the charge of separation by helping us men not have to stumble when we're in their presence because men are wired to be very, very visual.

And thank God for ladies that are willing to say, "You know what? Really walking around in a band-aid ain't beauty. [applause]

It's pulling on the basis desires of man. And if you want to wind up with a man that don't love you and don't respect you and don't honor you, just walk around in a band-aid. Just walk around showing everything you've got, pushing and tightening and tucking and then you going to find out that's what you're going to attract.

But there's godly men that honor and respect and appreciate ladies that are modest. Now listen, [applause] because of the weight and the load that they carry, cuz men can kind of, you know, we can be modest and, you know, halfway blend in with everybody else. But as apostolic men, the two things that we have decided to do as apostolic men is we wear pants to our ankles and we're clean shaven. That is why we've done it. Is it, you know, you saying that men that have a beard can't have a relationship with God? No. I think they can. But as an apostolic church in the United States of America, in order not only to stand in solidarity with our ladies, but in order to have the best chance of winning everybody, we have decided to be clean shaven and wear pants all the way to our ankles.

And so, man, it is a it is a small price to pay. Jesus Jesus's beard was forcibly plucked out of his face. A very, very painful thing. If anybody's ever grabbed a hold of your beard, you know what I'm talking about. But men in the apostolic movement decided among other reasons, but another reason is we stand in solidarity with our ladies with their carrying of the torch of separation from the world. But also standing in solidarity solidarity with Jesus if they will pull his beard out of his face in torture before his death. We shave our face to let people know he is our master and he is our lord. They pulled his their the hair out of his face. We'll shave the hair off of our face. And there I could go into a lot more with that. Um, and so but those are those are two things. Our our our ladies carry the load of apostolic separation from the world. And so we join with them in carrying the load in those two ways. And I'm just telling you, there ain't nothing like the beauty of holiness. [applause] I'm not ashamed to be apostolic. I'm not ashamed to be Pentecostal. I'm not ashamed to be separate from the world. I'm not ashamed for everybody to see my differences. Because I'm just telling you, if being modest and covering ourselves up and and looking holy and looking godly and looking like we're trying to serve Jesus, if if that's weird, I'll just be weird.

I'd rather be weird than be what I see in society today.

And so, God bless you tonight. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. Uh tithing and offering, uh we got the lights on tonight and they don't give it to us for free. And so, uh bring your tithing and your offering to the front of the building as you're dismissed tonight. Please shake hands with a guest. Let them know how thankful we are to have them in this Q&A session tonight. God bless you in Jesus.