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Ladies of YHVH,
Regardless of what you have been
called to do (be it a soldier, wife, wife and mother, combat medical
support, intelligence gatherer, a homemaker, etc.) you are called to
fight spiritually. You will be held accountable to Almighty YAHWEH
for mustering to whatever ministry/ministries/battles you are
ordered to by Him, be they spiritual or physical or both. Remember
that you are under the authority of YAHWEH and, if married, the
authority of your husband.
"Yes, truth is
lacking*;
And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the
LORD [YAHVAH] saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that
there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was
astonished that there was no one to intercede; Then His own arm
brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. He
put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of
salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for
clothing and wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. According
to their deeds, so He will repay, wrath to His adversaries,
recompense to His enemies; To the coastlands He will make
recompense. So they will fear the name of the LORD from the
west and His glory from the rising of the sun, for He will come
like a rushing stream which the wind of the LORD drives. 'A
Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from
transgression in Jacob,' declares the LORD. 'As for Me, this is
My covenant with them,' says the LORD: 'My Spirit which is upon
you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not
depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring,
nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring,' says the
LORD, 'from now and forever.'" (Isaiah 59:15-21, HOLY BIBLE,
NASB)
[*Hebrew
word for "lacking" (or “faileth” in the KJV) is "adar", #5737,
which means "to arrange, as a battle, a vineyard (to hoe); hence
to muster, and so to miss (or find wanting)", Strong's
Exhaustive Concordance, 1985.]
"From henceforth,
my brethren, be strong in our Lord and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil. For your conflict is not only with flesh
and blood, but also with the angels, and with powers, with the
rulers of this world of darkness, and with the evil spirits under
the heavens. Therefore put on the whole armor of God, that you may
be able to meet the evil one, and being prepared you shall prevail.
Arise, therefore, gird your loins with truth and put on the
breastplate of righteousness; and have your feet shod with the
preparation of the gospel of peace; together with these, take for
yourselves the shield of faith, for with it you shall be able to
quench all the flaming darts of the wicked. Put on the helmet of
salvation and take the sword*
[short for close-up fighting] of Spirit, which is the Word of God;
and pray always, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit; and
in that prayer be watchful at all times, praying constantly and
supplicating for all the saints, . . ." (Ephesians 6:10-18, HOLY
BIBLE, Lamsa Translation)
[*The
Hebrew word for “sword is “machaira”, which means “probably feminine
of a presumed derivative of #3163; a knife, i.e. dirk; figuratively
war, judicial punishment.”
#3163 mache “(from #3164); a battle, i.e. (figuratively)
controversy.” #3164 machomai; “to war, i.e.
(figuratively) to quarrel, dispute." Strong's Exhaustive
Concordance, 1985.]
The Greek
soldier
Xenophon
(who lived c.
427-355
BC)
recommended the machaira for
cavalry.
His reasoning concurs with the general practice of arming
cavalry
with curved swords through the ages. Here
is a reproduction machaira with a blade that is 18" long and 2
1/4" wide. Its weight is 2 lbs. 4 oz. You can find out a little
more of the history of this short sword on the following weapons
reproduction company’s website. --
http://www.by-the-sword.com/acatalog/The_Greeks.html
The following article (“Women of Peace and War: The Roles of
European Women at the Siege of Acre” by Karen Larsdatter) brings out
the variety of ways that women served in the Third Crusade, fought
from
1189
to
1192.
This Crusade was an attempt by
European
leaders and their Christian armies to reconquer the
Holy Land
from
Saladin.
Saladin was the Muslim ruler of the
12th century, famous for having recaptured
Jerusalem
from the Crusaders in 1187. Later he fought
against the English King Richard Lion-Heart and his army in the
Third Crusade, which
is
sometimes referred to as the Kings' Crusade. You can find this
article at
http://moas.atlantia.sca.org/oak/13/acre.htm
“. . . We generally think
of the Crusades as being a time when the men would go off
and fight the infidel, and the women -- their wives,
daughters, sisters, and mothers -- waiting patiently for
them at home. …
In reality,
however, there were quite a number of women who went to the
Crusades -- despite the fact that the papal bull (issued by Pope
Urban II) that launched the Third Crusade forbade women to
participate.
There were
women who fought at siege of Acre. `Imad al-Din (Saladin’s
biographer) wrote of one Western noblewoman who
was a queen in her own land, and arrived accompanied by
five hundred knights with their horses and money, pages and
valets, she paying all their expenses and treating them
generously out of her wealth. They rode out when she rode
out, charged when she charged, flung themselves into the
fray at her side, their ranks unwavering as long as she
stood firm.13
The story
of the noblewoman Crusader is not new to the Third Crusade;
about ninety years before the siege of Acre, during the Second
Crusade, Ida of Austria fought in the company of Duke Welf of
Bavaria, and disappeared during the battle of Heraclea, when the
Western forces were annihilated.14
While `Imad
al-Din seems to speak admiringly of the unnamed queen, both he
and Ibn al-Athir are somewhat disparaging of many of the other
women who were among the Western fighting forces.
Among the Franks there were indeed women who rode into
battle with cuirasses and helmets, dressed in men's clothes;
who rode out into the thick of the fray and acted like brave
men although they were but tender women, maintaining that
all this was an act of piety, thinking to gain heavenly
rewards by it, and making it their way of life. Praise be to
him who led them into such error and out of the paths of
wisdom! On the day of battle more than one woman rode out
with them like a knight and showed (masculine) endurance in
spite of the weakness (of her sex); clothed only in a coat
of mail they were not recognized as women until they had
been stripped of their arms. Some of them were discovered
and sold as slaves.15
Gabrielli
notes, however, that a passage in the chronicles of Usama ibn
Munqidh, the Emir of Shaizar, demonstrates that Eastern women
were equally willing to take up arms when necessary.
Women
also helped by bringing water to the thirsty, or with the effort
to carry stones to fill in the moat that surrounded the walls of
Acre. Ambroise, thought to have been a soldier among the Western
troops who had arrived at the siege at about the same time
as King Richard, writes of a woman who is shot by a Saracen
archer; her dying wish is that her corpse be used to fill the
moat.16
`Imad al-Din
also complains that
Everywhere was full of old women. These were sometimes
a support and sometimes a source of weakness. They
exhorted and incited men to summon their pride, saying that
the Cross imposed on them the obligation to resist to the
bitter end, and that the combatants would win eternal life
only by sacrificing their lives, and that their God's sepulchre was in enemy hands. Observe how men and women led
them into error; the latter in their religious zeal tired of
feminine delicacy, and to save themselves from the terror of
dismay (on the day of Judgement) became the close companions
of perplexity, and having succumbed to the lust for
vengeance, became hardened, and stupid and foolish because
of the harm they had suffered.17
These
women could very well have been nuns. Noblewomen often included
a few nuns in their court or among their traveling companions.18
Several of the military orders, including the Hospitallers of
St. John, Santiago, and Calatrava, included convents of sisters,
generally more devoted to a contemplative life than to the care
of the sick.19
... Women
served in a variety of capacities among the army of the
Crusaders, offering the ladies who attend the Acre
(re-enacting) event this summer a wide array of choices in
what roles they would like to play, whether they simply
attend as a pilgrim, or 'bear the cross' as a combatant."
ENDNOTES:
13. Francesco
Gabrielli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. E.J.
Costello, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, pp.
206-207.
14. Régine
Pernoud, The Crusaders, trans. Enid Grant, London: Oliver
& Boyd, 1963, p. 87.
15. Francesco
Gabrielli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. E.J.
Costello, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, p.
207.
16. Ambroise,
The Crusade of Richard Lion-Heart, Trans. by Merton
Jerome Hubert, New York: Columbia University Press, 1941, pp.
162-163.
17.
Gabrielli, p. 207.
19. Alan
Forey, "The Military Orders 1120-1312," The Oxford
Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan
Riley-Smith, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp.
205-206.
Ladies of YHVH, what we are facing in the future is the armed
struggle for Western Christendom, and it is no re-enacting event.
We Christian women will be called to a variety of anointed, valid
ministries in the upcoming fight. It will be more horrific and
bloody than the many Crusade battles, in which Christian men and
women fought and supported so valiantly. The future combat will be
Civil War II and World War III, a storm of epic proportions, rolled
into one! Are you preparing for YAHWEH’s Gathering Storm?! Are you
obeying the Captain of hosts (armies),
Jesus Christ?!
83!
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