Dear Jeyaraj,

Greetings in Jesus' precious name. I am happy to know that you use our online Daily Devotional Guide.

And sorry for the delay in replying you which is due to the time difference. Between London and TAMILNADU, INDIA, there is a five and half hours time difference which means that by the time I get to the office at around 10 am, it is already 3.30pm over there. However, I hope my response is not too late.

Now to your question:
Yes, the statement 'For all people walk each in the name of his god,...' is referring to idol worshipers.

You see, during the millennial reign of Christ (to which Micah 4 largely refers), God is not going to force everyone to serve Him. Even though like we see in verses 1-2, many nations will turn to the Lord, it is not going to be everyone. There will still be those who will prefer to stick to their idols.

Righteousness will reign and prevail during this period just like sin and ungodliness is prevailing right now. It will be a lot easier to serve the Lord without distraction or persecutions or things like that but God will still allow people the freedom of their freewill to choose whether to serve Him or idols.

You will notice that in Rev.20:7-8, the Bible says
"Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, .... to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea"i>

Who are these people whom Satan will deceive? These are not believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are the inhabitants of the earth who experienced the millennial reign of Christ but nevertheless, did not make up their minds to serve the Almighty God. Indeed, there is a "mystery of iniquity"

I trust this has answered your question.

regards,
Pastor Vincent .

Dear Exornam,

Greetings from me and thanks for sending in your question.

Yes, the subject of covering of hair by women in church has generated heated debates over the years and in some cases has led to church splits. Even though such debates have died down in recent years, opinions are still very divided even among the Pentecostals as well as the orthodox.

Therefore, it may not be possible to say anything that will satisfy everybody; nevertheless, I have my position on the issue.

Before I proceed, let me ask: have you seen women ministers who preach to congregations without covering their heads and yet God is blessing their ministry and using them? I have seen several especially on the television. In fact, hardly does one see any woman minster these days that cover their heads and yet God is moving through them. Is God therefore contradicting His word? The answer is no.

I believe that the key message in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 is that of God's divine order in the church.
In God's order, the man is the head of the woman and the account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis 2 confirms that and in this passage of scripture, we learn that salvation in Christ does not erase that distinction.

When the scripture says in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ Jesus, "there is neither male nor female", it was referring to the value of our souls in the eyes of God. Being redeemed by the same blood of the Son of God, we are of the same value in God's presence but in terms of order, the man is still above the woman.

For instance, a father and a son are equal in terms of their humanity but terms of order, the father is higher than the son because it was the father that gave birth to the son and not the other way round. Then Christ is the head of every man. He being our creator is greater and higher than us and every man is subject to Him as head. Then we are told also that the head of Christ is God (the Father) and the foregoing explanations apply.

So where does the covering of hair come into all this? This had a lot to do with the custom in Corinth at that time. The way women demonstrated that they were under a man's authority was that they covered their heads especially in places of public worship.

For a married woman not to cover her head in such places was considered a sign of disrespect to her head (i.e. husband). It was the loose women (the temple prostitutes) who did not bother to cover.

The apostle Paul obviously saw something positive in that custom especially as it agrees with God's order as it encouraged the woman to recognize the man as her head. So he encouraged it in the Corinthian church. You will notice that he didn't mention the issue of covering of the hair in any other of his epistles to any of the other churches that he wrote to.

In verse 10he said: "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels."
What did he mean by that? His point was that God's angels who were present at every worship service would not be happy to operate in an environment where God's order was being blatantly disregarded because that was what not covering the hair by women was understood to mean among the people.

A woman who covers her hair in church but disrespects and disregards her husband at home is simply being hypocritical.

You will notice also that in verse 16, the Apostle Paul puts a disclaimer: He said "But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God."

In other words, instead of this to be the basis for contentions in the church, we should understand that the covering or non-covering of hair is not a custom given to the church. "We have no such custom."
It was a question of behaving like the Romans when you are in Rome in order to reach them with the gospel.

I still remember what we used to do when I was in the university. When going for village evangelism, we used to emphasize that the sisters should not wear trousers. Why? Because in most of those villages at that time, when they see a woman in trousers, they considered her a woman of easy virtues (something close to how they saw prostitutes) and with that, you can never get them to receive the gospel from you.

I hope this has answered your question.

Regards,

Pastor Vincent .

Dear Ayotec,

Thank you for sending in your question on Eph.1:22.
Sorry for the delay in replying you. I was very busy putting together the Daily Devotional Guide for the month of April (which is now ready).

When the Bible says that God has put all things under the feet of Jesus, it means He has been lifted up above all things and everything is under His authority. Therefore every power, dominion, government, kingdom principality etc must bow at the feet of Christ (that is, they are under Him and He is far above them).

However, in this present world, there is an on-going rebellion against God masterminded by the devil - and that is why you do not see them bowing to the authority of Christ but that will all change after the coming judgment which is nearer than ever.
The way to get them to bow to His authority right now is for the believer to enforce it through the use of spiritual weapons (like faith, prayer and fasting, etc).

Since Christ has been lifted up above all, everyone who is in Christ is lifted up in authority above everything that is under the feet of Christ.
For instance, if you board an aeroplane and it is flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet above the ground, that is how far above the ground you are too because you are in the aeroplane. This is why we say that the devil and his cohorts are under the feet (or authority) of the born again Christian.

The part that says that God "gave him to be the head over all things to the church" means that even though we are in Christ, He is our head. We are not equal with Him in authority; in fact, He is our Lord and Master.

So that is what that verse means.
I hope you find the explanation illuminating.

regards,

Pastor Vincent .