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Bible Questions with Michael Pearl
Episode 057: Does God want women to wear headcoverings?

By Michael Pearl

Episode Transcription:

Michael Pearl:  Hi! I'm Michael Pearl. Here, I am again answering your Bible questions. I've been up here working on my house, and Jared just came up 10:15 in the morning on a nice, warm, sunny day here in Tennessee. So he's going to play one of your questions for me. I'm going to see if I can come up with an answer for it.

Martha:  Yeah, hello! This is Martha from Canada. How can you explain that it is within God's will for a Christian woman to not wear a headcovering after reading "The Significance of the Christian Woman's Veiling" by Merle Ruth? Thank you. Bye.

Michael:  OK, Martha. That's a good question. [laughs] I live in a community where a lot of the women wear headcoverings, so I've been around that doctrine for a long time. You may not know, but I'm Jewish and I've been to a lot of Jewish meetings. The women there wear headcoverings when they, as the scripture says, pray or prophesy. Now, I'm going to show you what a headcovering is when you pray or prophesy. A Jewish woman goes down to light the candles and pray, and she takes a cloth about as big as this. She puts it over her head like this, and then she prays. Is my head covered up? [laughs] Can anybody see my head? That's a headcovering. This is not a headcovering, you know? Certainly, this is not a headcovering or this with your hair all fixed up. A headcovering is covering the head.

Now, what the scripture says there, that it's a shame for a woman to pray or prophesy with her head uncovered. Now, when a woman wears a hat or a little doily all the time, then she doesn't have an expression before God and the community of covering her head when she prays or prophesies.

I had an Amish man one time. I asked him. He was challenging me about the headcovering. I said, "Well, why does your wife wear one all the time instead of when she prays or prophesies?" He said, "Well, because she might pray or prophesy at any time during the day, so she wears it all the time."

I said, "Well, how come you're wearing a hat on your head all day long?" I said, "Do you go all day long without praying?" Well, he quit wearing a hat. [laughs] I didn't mean for him to do that. I wasn't trying to get him to quit wearing a hat, but he wanted to be consistent. So he would work out in the hot sun without a hat, and he died a couple years later. I hope that didn't have anything to do with it.

But, it's kind of silly to wear a little headcovering on your head all the time like that, and then when you pray or prophesy think that's a covering. It's not a covering. Now, if you have short hair, you definitely ought to have some kind of a towel. A towel will do just fine or a tablecloth or a sheet or something. When you go to church, you can get yourself a little pretty scarf.

Then whenever the preacher says, "Let's pray," you take that and you place it over your head. Kids will look at you, and people will say, "What are you doing?" And you say, "Well, I'm obeying the scripture. I've got short hair. I don't have any headcovering, and so I'm covering my head with this cloth when I pray or prophesy." Otherwise, if you wear it all the time, they just think you've got a religious tradition that you're executing and it's meaningless.

So, it goes on there in I Corinthians, Chapter 11, to tell us that God gave the woman her hair for a covering. What does that mean? Well, when you have a woman with long hair, it covers her neck and covers everything but just her face like this. Her head is covered. God has covered it with long hair. He said for that reason a man shouldn't have long hair because that's covering his head.

So if a man's long hair is covering his head according to the scriptures, then a woman's long hair is covering her head. So it's just what he said it was. It was a covering. So if a woman has long hair when she prays or prophesies, she doesn't need to have an additional covering on her head.

Now, if it makes her comfortable to do so, if she thinks her hair is not long enough or doesn't cover her head sufficiently, then that's fine. But, I certainly wouldn't tie women to some legalistic tradition at this just because some other writers favor it.

Now, we have a lot of people come around our community here that have gotten into Judaism. They're Judaizers. They're involved in different legalistic forms, and many of them practice wearing the headcoverings. But, one thing I've noticed is that the women that are the most rebellious are the ones most likely to wear a headcovering.

The scriptures tell us there that a woman should have her head covered because she's got power in her heads because for the angels' sake ‑ the angels are looking on ‑ and that headcovering is a statement of her obedience or submission to her husband when she prays or prophesies.

So it's strange. Like there's a divorced woman here in the community, and she always wears her headcovering. She doesn't even have a head. She divorced her head, and yet she wants to go around with a headcovering. I see lots of times women that are really cantankerous in spirit, rebellious, angry, cold to their husbands, going around wearing their headcovering. [laughs]

So I wonder, what's the relationship between rebelling against God and wearing that covering? I seldom see sweet‑faced, gentle, kind and loving women, submissive to their husbands, who wear coverings. Now, I don't know why. I don't know what the relationship there is unless... really, I don't know.

So hey! I'm a Bible believer. I don't follow what other men say. You don't want to follow what I say. You get your Bible and read that I Corinthians, Chapter 11, and you'll see very clearly that the woman's hair is given to her for a covering. If you want to be religious and want to act like a Jew, get you a cloth about that big and really cover it up when you pray. All right?

Announcer:  If you would like to ask a Bible question, email us at [email protected] or call at 931‑805‑4820.

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