Haddad provides little in the way of evidence for her claim that complementarians rarely discuss abuse while egalitarians make it one of their main emphases. One might rather say that egalitarians often make the accusation that complementarianism fosters abuse. Unhappily, the questions for which our own age beg for answers engender little curiosity for egalitarians like Haddad.

“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future” (11). Thus, quoting George Orwell’s 1984, Mimi Haddad opens the inaugural chapter of the third edition of Discovering Biblical Equality. Women’s voices, she claims, have been silenced throughout Christian history by those “committed to male authority” (11). Their essential contributions for the advancement of the gospel have been “marginalized,” “omitted,” and “devalued,” particularly by modern-day complementarians, especially in theological institutions (11). Haddad leans on Beth Allison Barr’s analysis of courses and curricula offered by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to introduce her subject. “Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s biased curriculum,” she writes, “not only damages the credibility of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as a center of higher education, but it reinforces the Southern Baptist Convention’s sexism” (11–12). One of this sexism’s most iconic examples is Paige Patterson, who is reported to have expressed himself happy that an abused woman returned to her abusive husband and there endured yet more abuse (11).[1]
Rereading Church History
To redress this sexism, Haddad profiles prominent women in church history. Beginning with the early Church martyr, Perpetua, she sketches the biographies of Blandina, Crispina, Syncletica, Macrina the Younger, and St. Paula. She goes on to highlight the most prominent medieval mystics — Hildegard, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Sienna — and notes the remarkable stories of Reformation heroines Argula von Grumbach, Lady Jane Gray, and Margaret of Navarre. The real substance of the chapter, however, is Haddad’s turn to the stories of evangelical Conversionism, Evagelicalism’s Golden Era, and what she calls a period of Activism. The well-known names, to me, of Lottie Moon, Sarah Grimke, Amy Carmichael, and Sojourner Truth are joined by the less well-known Mary Prince, Phoebe Palmer, and Elizabeth Heyrick, among others. In all, Haddad discusses the lives and contributions of thirty-four women, if I have counted correctly.
Haddad’s list is an engaging journey through the well-rehearsed tumults of the modern era that finally settled into the entrenched “culture wars” still going on inside American Christianity. Women, of course, played critical roles in overturning the injustice of slavery, spreading the gospel abroad, and calling nominal believers to lives of holiness. Amanda Barry Smith, for example, “was the first African American woman to receive invitations to preach internationally” (22). Phoebe Palmer ignited the Third Great Awakening, and was, amongst all her other accomplishments, “certain that God had called her to preach” (21). Catherine Booth was instrumental in founding the Salvation Army. Amy Carmichael and Lottie Moon both died of ill health in the midst of their tireless work. Every single person Haddad names devoted her life to the work of the gospel. Each felt the call of the Holy Spirit to speak and write and many to preach.
How then, asks Haddad, did the church, corporately, not step into the fullness of egalitarianism? Why aren’t the pulpits of today full of women? “Women,” she writes, “opened new global centers of Christian faith in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but as their churches and organizations became institutionalized, women were pressed out of leadership” (27). This shift, she writes, resulted from the “fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the mid-twentieth century,” during which “mission organizations, Bible institutes, and denominations moved women into support roles to distinguish themselves from a growing secularization of feminism” (27). One might ask, at this point, what it was about secularization and feminism that caused such a shift.
Rather than delving into the explanations that these mission organizations, Bible institutes, and denominations provided, and still provide, for not placing women in leadership roles, Haddad asserts that “Early evangelical biblicism, which supported abolition, suffrage, and pressing humanitarian work worldwide, gave way to an anti-intellectualism that judged social activism and women’s leadership as liberal” (28). The withdrawal of “conservative” scholarship on this subject — which, one presumes Haddad means by the failure to accept women in pastoral and preaching roles in the church — meant that evangelicals “lost respected positions in the academy and culture.” “It would take,” Haddad appeals to Charles Malik’s 1980 speech opening the Billy Graham Center, “many decades to recover the intellectual and cultural leadership surrendered by fundamentalists and evangelicals after 1950” (28).
The fundamentalist-modernist debate regarding how the church should engage with encroaching modernity and secularism has been litigated effectively elsewhere.[2] What is most interesting to me is the variety of reasons the place of women in the church and the home was so contentiously debated during this time. Haddad unwittingly hints at one major factor without acknowledging the very great weight it held, and continues to hold, for so many Christians.
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But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand. Here is certainly a warning for we who do not yet live in a time of tribulation to make ourselves ready for if they should befall us. Now, by making ourselves ready, I do not mean doomsday prepping. I mean preparing as Daniel and his friends prepared for their moments of testing. We must practice and devote ourselves to God in faithfulness during times of peace so that we have built up those muscles to continue being faithful to God should He bring upon us times of tribulation. Indeed, Calvin gives us that very warning: “Let us therefore regard this period of quiet not as something which will last forever, but as a truce in which God gives us time to gain strength, so that, when called to confess our faith, we do not act as raw recruits because we failed to think ahead.”[13]

But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days. And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand.
Mark 13:14-23 ESV

It might be helpful as we get into the latter portions of this chapter to talk a little about the different views of eschatology. When it comes to interpreting passages like this one, there are two terms worth noting: preterism and futurism. As the latter’s name would suggest, those with a futurist lens of interpretation will tend to read apocalyptic prophecies such as these as speaking of a still future event. Preterists, however, take the opposite view of seeing almost everything as having occurred in the past. Full preterists argue that that even Christ’s second coming has already been fulfilled, which makes that view erroneous and to be avoided. Partial preterists, however, recognize many events, the return of Christ being a chief one, as still awaiting fulfillment yet still view many prophesies as having already been fulfilled. As you may have picked up from the previous two sermons, I fall under the partial-preterist category.
Beyond views of interpretation, we can only discuss the different views of when Christ’s return will occur. There are four of them: dispensational premillennialism, historic premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. They all involve the word millennium because they largely differ on when Christ will return in relation His thousand-year reign upon earth as described in Revelation 20. Both premillennialist views say that Christ will return before the millennium. They generally view the world as being in a gradual decline until Christ’s second coming. Postmillennialists believe that Christ will return after His millennial reign is established through the successful fulfillment of the Great Commission. They generally view the world as being on a gradual incline as the gospel goes into all the world. Amillennialists view the millennium as being symbolic of the present church age, meaning that Christ could return at any moment. They view the world with a more Ecclesiastes-ish lens, that there is nothing new under the sun. there is a constant rhythm of things getting better and things getting worse. If you have not already guessed, I belong to the amillennial category.
Yet we should also note that these differing views are not primary doctrines, such as the Trinity or the divinity of Christ, nor are they secondary doctrines, like credo- and paedo-baptism. Eschatological views are tertiary doctrines upon which we can happily disagree and argue about with joy within the same congregation. Indeed, I would argue that the ambiguity of Christ’s return is meant to foster these different views. When rightly used, the pessimistic view of the world by premillennialists keeps the church focused on our blessed hope. When rightly used, the optimistic view of the world by postmillennialists calls the church to engage in multi-generational culture building. And I like to think that amillennials help keep everyone balanced between the two.
As for our text, Jesus warns of the abomination of desolation, a time of tribulation like no other that must shortly come to pass. [1]
Such Tribulation as has Not Been
Our text begins with moving beyond the five non-signs that He gave in verses 5-13 (false messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, and persecution). Though each of those hardships are easily taken to be signs of the end, Jesus specifically warns us against doing so, saying rather that we should expect to face them as an ordinary part of living in our broken, sin-stained world. Now, however, Jesus does present us with a definitive sign.
But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.
The sign of the end that Jesus gives here is called the abomination of desolation or the abomination which makes desolate, which is a phrase that comes from the book of Daniel. The parenthetical statement, let the reader understand, could have been spoken by Jesus to His disciples or it might be another editorial comment by Mark. Either way, it is probably best taken as a call for us to consider again the prophesies within Daniel’s book.
We will not spend much time here doing so since we studied through the book of Daniel last year. There we find references to the abomination that makes desolate in chapters 9, 11, and 12. As I noted in that study, that event seems to refer to the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, who converted the temple into a temple to Zeus and forbid the Jews from such practices as circumcision and observing the Sabbath. It was a horrific period of tribulation that lasted for a about three and a half years and ended with Antiochus dying in excruciating pain from a sudden illness. Yet by Jesus’ day, that had happened long ago, so why is Jesus calling His disciples to recall those words. I think William Hendriksen answers that question quite well:
In accordance with that prophet’s prediction Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 BC), unaware that he was indeed fulfilling prophecy, and being thoroughly responsible for his own wicked deed, erected a pagan altar over the altar of burnt-offering, thus polluting the house of God and rendering it desolate and unusable. This had happened long ago. See I Macc. 1:54, 59. Nevertheless, Jesus says, “Now when you see ‘the desolating sacrilege.’” The implication is that a divine oracle may apply to more than one historical situation. The sacrilege that results in the desolation of city and temple takes place more than once in history… Just as in the past the holy places of the Lord had been desecrated, so it will happen again. And it did indeed take place when the Roman armies, with the image of the emperor on their standards, an image and an emperor worshiped by them laid siege to the city of Jerusalem (Luke 21:20).[2]
Thus, a new period of tribulation and desecration of the temple was coming, like what occurred in second century BC yet much worse. Here again I believe that we ought to keep the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70 squarely in our focus, for it certainly seems to have been the fulfillment of these predictions. Sam Storms does a particularly wonderful (if that word can be applied to such discussion…) work detailing the horrors of AD 70, citing frequently from the Jewish historian Josephus, yet the following descriptions will be drawn from multiple sources.
The Jewish-Roman War began in 66 with many skirmishes between particularly the Zealots and the Romans. As the Roman armies grew larger and a full siege of Jerusalem became evident, Jewish Christians obeyed Christ’s words in our passage and fled to the hills surrounding Jerusalem. These believers were considered traitors by the Jews that remained, and Nick Needham says, “the ultimate effect of the Jewish War was to cut Christianity off almost entirely from its Jewish origin.”[3] Yet we should very much take note from this, as well as many scenes within the book of Acts, that Christ does not expect His people to never flee from hardship and tribulation.
And that siege did come in April of 70. Titus, the newly crowned emperor’s son, encircled Jerusalem in the days following the Passover, leaving many of the yearly pilgrims caught within the city. Yet “the The zealots rejected, with sneering defiance, the repeated proposals of Titus and the prayers of Josephus, who accompanied him as interpreter and mediator; and they struck down every one who spoke of surrender.”[4] Indeed, Josephus was then able to observe firsthand the ensuing chaos within Jerusalem over the next several months looking down from the Mount of Olives.
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False teachers are, or once were, professing believers. Peter even speaks of them in a way that sounds like Christ had saved them, since outwardly they looked connected to the Savior. But inwardly, something very different was going on, and their outward connection to Christ made their indulgent behavior and false teaching all the more damnable. Of all people, they should have known better. Their fakeness made them that much more accountable.

A few years back, an evangelical organization where I lived put on a debate. It pitted a Christian professor at a well-known university, who was also an ordained minister, against an atheist professor. At one point, the Christian minister was asked an easy question meant to let him defend the evidence for Christ’s resurrection. I can still remember what he said instead: “Of course, when we Christians talk about the resurrection, we’re not saying that Jesus literally walked out of the grave in a bodily fashion. We’re just speaking about a spiritual resurrection of some kind.”
A few weeks later, the committee of Christians who had planned the debate invited me to meet with them. The meeting began with discussion about how the debate had gone, and the response was generally positive. When I raised a concern about the Christian minister denying the bodily resurrection of Christ, one person on the committee said, “Oh yes, I mean, apart from the heterodoxy, I think it was a great success. We all knew that minister was a bit heterodox, but the debate got the most downloads on the internet we’ve ever had!”
What struck me that day was not an inability to discern false doctrine. The gentleman on the committee admitted this minister was heterodox—out of line with right doctrine. No, what struck me was the indifference and apathy toward false doctrine. In the Bible, false teaching is never a matter of indifference or apathy. It is serious business. False prophets and false teachers get damned for it. (For example, see Deuteronomy 13:5; Jeremiah 23:14–15; Matthew 7:13–15; Galatians 1:8.)
That’s because false teaching is a deadly virus that attacks the organism of Christ’s body, the church. Peter repeatedly says these heresies lead to “destruction.” In the New Testament, the word he uses often means damnation to hell. The response of Christ’s body to such viruses should be to identify them and then eliminate them. The church must have a doctrinal immune system.
False teachers will always be with us. Peter points out how they have hidden among God’s people since Old Testament days. In fact, it all began in the garden of Eden with the first false teacher, the serpent—Satan himself—who twisted God’s words, leading to death.
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