Junia - The First Woman Apostle Order Printed Copy

Author: Eldon Jay Epp
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Exceptional piece. Highly recommended!

- fred williams (2 months ago)

About the Book

"Junia - The First Woman Apostle" by Eldon Jay Epp explores the historical and theological evidence supporting the existence of a female apostle named Junia in the early Christian church. Epp argues that Junia's contributions have been downplayed or ignored due to gender biases and misunderstandings in biblical translation and interpretation. Epp sheds light on Junia's important role as a leader in the early church and advocates for a more inclusive and accurate understanding of women's roles in Christian history.

John A. Broadus

John Broadus, Southern’s second president, was born on January 24, 1827 in Culpeper County, Virginia. After undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Virginia, he joined the university’s faculty as an assistant professor of classics. There, he displayed unusual facility in his post. He served simultaneously as pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist Church. In this period, Broadus won the heart of Maria Harrison, daughter of renowned classics professor Gessner Harrison. Married on November 18, 1850, the Broaduses had three daughters (Eliza, Annie, and Maria) together before Maria passed away on October 21, 1857 at twenty-six years of age. On January 4, 1859, Broadus married Charlotte Eleanor Sinclair, who gave birth to several additional children. The 1858 Education Convention elected Broadus to the seminary’s first faculty. Broadus declined the position because he had close ties to school and family in Charlottesville. For months, Boyce and Manly doggedly urged him to reconsider. After much thought, and not a little anguish, Broadus accepted. From the time he began teaching, Broadus showed a lifelong affection for instructing and mentoring students. Prior to the seminary’s closing in the Civil War period, Broadus drew a single student to his homiletics class. Rather than canceling the class, Broadus lectured to his lone pupil week after week, honing the content that later became the book The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. The text’s durability was remarkable. Over half a century later, several seminaries used it in homiletics classes. When Southern suspended courses in 1862, Broadus served as a chaplain to Confederate soldiers. He returned to Southern at the war’s end and resumed his teaching post. His talents gained renown. Over Broadus’s career, the University of Chicago, Vassar University, Brown University, Georgetown College, and Crozer Theological Seminary each wooed the professor as a potential president. Large and wealthy churches invited him to be their pastor. Broadus declined these overtures. The greatest need and his greatest influence were at the seminary he loved. In 1889 trustees elected Broadus president of the seminary to succeed Boyce. He guided the school for six peaceful years. Broadus contributed much to the fields in which he taught. In addition to his landmark text on preaching, the scholar labored over his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for twenty years before publishing it. With such depth of thought, he excelled at preaching. University of Chicago professor W. C. Wilkinson once remarked of Broadus that he had “every natural endowment, every acquired accomplishment to have become, had he been only a preacher, a preacher hardly second to any in the world.” (1) By his plain exposition and conversational delivery, Broadus changed the character of SBC preaching, a shift seen in the current day. Broadus’s life is notable on a variety of fronts. While a pastor in Virginia, Broadus baptized Lottie Moon, who became Southern Baptist’s most famous overseas missionary. In the Civil War, Broadus preached before Confederate general Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals, earning a standing invitation from Lee to preach for him. J. D. Rockefeller went further than Lee—he offered Broadus a hefty salary to become his pastor in New York City, an offer Broadus turned down. In 1886, on the 250th anniversary of Harvard University, the school conferred an honorary degree on Broadus due to his national academic reputation. In 1889, Yale University invited the professor to New Haven to deliver the Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching. Broadus was the only Southern Baptist to address the Ivy League school in a series of talks. Together with Basil Manly, Jr., he founded the monthly Sunday School newspaper, Kind Words in 1866, a title that was eventually adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board. As a preacher, professor, and leader, Broadus looms large in Southern’s history and in the history of the SBC. He was an active churchman at Louisville’s Walnut Street Baptist Church. Broadus passed away on March 16, 1895. (1) William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 67. Sources: William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1959.

the deadly deceit in material desires

Bible study often exposes us. As I sat in a Bible study recently, the leader asked our group how we heard Jesus’s voice and how we follow, like he says in John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” One woman sitting next to me measured the voice of God in the many blessings of her life — a new house purchased without difficulty, an old house sold without stress. She was now enjoying life in her dream home in the warm, dry climate of her dreams. And all thanks to a painless move. She gave evidence for how smoothly her life was moving along, like dominoes falling perfectly in order. As I sat there listening, I couldn’t help but feel troubled. I knew that not a few women around us were following Christ through troubled marriages, battles with cancer, or the grief of lost babies. Some faced the drone of unceasing financial hardships — the exact opposite of how some of us define God’s blessing on our lives. And yet we who are struggling can listen for Jesus’s voice with desperation and longing. We can desire to follow him as much — perhaps more — than the materially blessed. Blessing’s Bluff A smile and an open Bible can press down so hard on raw hurt when we measure God’s blessing with material prosperity. The effect is something I’ve heard expressed by many and have seen dramatized in “Christian” movies. You can know you’re blessed by God when everything goes well for you. Just trust God while you do A + B and, as long as you have enough faith, you should get C every time: the life you’ve always wanted. It’s a simple formula for the “blessed” life, with Jesus on top! But owning a nice house with a spacious kitchen, or driving a shiny car with no dents, or basking in financial abundance and easygoing circumstances are not reliable evidences of God’s blessing in this age. The formula might look attractive in a movie, but it contradicts both the Bible and the real-life experience of many struggling saints who are faithful in the challenges, insecurities, and pains of everyday life. Deadly Equation As I thought about what that nice lady had said about how blessed she was, Jesus spoke to me though his word: “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45) What the lady next to me said is true in a sense — she is blessed by God. But so is the greedy miser who sits in his penthouse with wealth he earned through a harsh abuse of power. Both the good lady next to me and the oppressive evil tyrant are blessed with comforts and provisions, sun and rain, houses and air conditioning every single day. God is sovereign, and he radiates goodness and pours out unearned blessings of all kinds every day. He blesses all with his common kindness. The formula God’s blessing = life comfort is a deadly one. And it’s not an isolated issue either. Unfortunately, the equation seems to be ingrained into so much American Christianity, and it’s part and parcel of the prosperity gospel that false teachers in our nation export to the world. And when I’m not careful, the plank that is the prosperity gospel protrudes from my own eye . Bruised and Blessed God’s common kindness reaches us all, but it takes saving grace to turn to Jesus when marriage is hard, when a woman — my friend — loses three babies, or when a young missionary is told he has end-stage cancer. The Bible doesn’t offer a formula, but points us to a Savior—a battered, crushed, beaten, bruised, bloodied Savior. And the special blessing of God’s presence is with those who are walking in suffering, the same road Jesus himself walked. He is present in the path of pain and trial and heartache. God was present in Joseph’s pain: Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. (Genesis 39:20–21) God was present in David’s darkness: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. (Psalm 23:4–5) God is present with us in today’s suffering: Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:12–14) So with God’s help, I remove my self-centered, American-dream plank and its sinful impulse to want a god who makes me the center and not him. My plank must come out first. And with God’s help, I toss aside the lie that we find God’s blessing in easy circumstances, or in health, or in financial prosperity. And with God’s help, I’ll keep the path, holding firmly to the hand of my Good Shepherd.