Dr. Susan Hyatt’s latest book, the 2nd edition of her classic, In the Spirit We’re Equal, has the potential to ignite
a Reformation that will transform how the Church thinks about women and thereby
ignite a mass movement from Islam to Christianity.
This was made very clear to me about 12 years ago when the Lord visited me in an unusual manner and instructed
me to “identify” with Sue and her two-fold vision to articulate the Biblical
basis for the equality of women with men "in Christ" and to “write God’s women
back into history.”
It began early one morning around 3 a.m.
when I suddenly found myself wide awake. Desiring to pray, but not wanting to
disturb Sue, I quietly slipped out of bed and made my way to another room where
I sat on a couch. The only light in the room came from a streetlight just
outside the window. It was an incredibly quiet and tranquil setting.
As I quietly communed with the Lord, I had
a very unusual experience. My soul seemed to become supernaturally quiet, and I
heard the voice of the Lord in my heart, saying, “I want you to be more
identified with Sue and what she is doing.” There was a moment of silence and
then I heard words that astounded me. “This message has the power to begin a
mass movement from Islam to Christianity, beginning with the women.”
As I sat in the darkness contemplating
what I had just heard, an African woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, came to mind whom I had heard speak boldly about
the inherent dangers of Islam. She had grown up in a Muslim family in Africa and when
barely a teenager her father arranged for her to marry a Muslim man in Canada.
She escaped to the Netherlands where she received a college education, became an
atheist, and was then elected to the Dutch parliament where she was an
outspoken critic of Islam.
When I heard her story, I had wondered why
she did not become a Christian when she left Islam. As I sat quietly that
morning pondering what I had just heard, I suddenly knew the answer. Why would
she leave a hard form of patriarchal oppression in Islam for a softer form in
Christianity? If she had known the truths in this book, I believe she would
have become a Christian.
From that moment, I knew that the message
contained in this book is vital for world evangelism and for the Church to
truly be the Church—a fully functioning body where people function, not
according to their gender (man or woman) but according to their God-given gifts
and callings.
It is my prayer that God will use this
book to awaken his Church to the fact that the Holy Spirit empowers women as
well as men to leadership in His body and to any and every sort of ministry and
function.
I am convinced that this book, In the Spirit We’re Equal (2nd Edition), has the power to ignite a Reformation on
the scale of the Protestant Reformation that Luther ignited when he nailed his
95 theses to the Wittenberg Church door.
This article was derived from The Foreword, written by Dr. Eddie Hyatt, for the 503 page book, In the Spirit We're Equal (2nd Edition), by Dr. Susan Hyatt. The book is available from Amazon and their website bookstore at www.eddiehyatt.com/bookstore.html.
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