Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the book that Elizabeth Elliott frequently recommended on her radio show and in her newsletters. That makes it even more shocking when you realize that this book literally teaches people to sin. Just go ahead and disobey God because the only thing that matters is obeying your husband. Elizabeth Rice Hanford writes, “God expects a woman to obey her husband cheerfully, immediately and without reservation.” (p. 58) Where is that verse in the Bible? Oh wait—God actually commands women to “Keep yourself from idols.” (1John 5:21) Hanford is inventing her own Scriptures. In a moment, we’ll study how Hanford keeps trying to put her own words in God’s mouth. First, let’s take this book one step at a time. Hanford’s main point is: “You have freedom from having to take the consequences of making decisions.” (p. 67) Let that sink in for a moment. Sounds so much like the snake in the garden telling Eve that sin doesn’t have any consequences. Hanford is saying that you can magically suspend the law of sowing and reaping. That God’s law will just suddenly evaporate into thin air as long as you are obeying man. That’s exalting man’s whims above God’s authority. Hanford continues, “A wife obeys her husband, whether he is a Christian or not…..whether he earns her respect or not.” (p. 30) So what happens when someone tells you to sin? Do you still have to obey? Hanford says yes! “Unless there is obedience all the time there is no obedience any of the time. So if you choose when to obey your husband, you are not obeying him at all.” (p. 45) This book keeps repeating over and over that the only responsibility you have is to obey man—always—at all times. No exceptions. If you are told to sin—then you still have to obey. The logical fallacy here is that Hanford is saying the only way to obey God is by obeying man. To disobey man is to disobey God. That’s actually putting man in control of God. Throughout this book, Hanford disguises her own rebellion against God by accusing everyone else of being rebellious! She keeps saying things like, “Women are more often led into spiritual error than men.” (p. 18) How does she know that? She’s totally making that up—trying to discredit women. Trying to get us to doubt how the Bible describes that all the treasures of wisdom are hidden in Christ who lives in us. (Colossians 2:2-3) Ignoring 1Timothy 1:19 and all other Bible verses about the believer’s conscience, Hanford writes, “Her conscience is not a safe guide.” (p. 39) Says who? The devil who wants us to ignore Scripture, the leading of the Holy Spirit and our own conscience in order to disobey God. There’s that subtle snake in the garden again! Remember the original temptation was wanting to become God. Yet Hanford has no problem seating man on God’s throne when she writes, “She is to obey her husband as if he were God Himself. She can be as certain of God’s will when her husband speaks as if God had spoken audibly from Heaven.” (p. 34) That would be idolatry—violating the very first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Right there Hanford just put a mediator between you and God. She is telling the wife to trust in man’s flesh—exactly what the Bible warns against! (Psalm 146:3 & 118:8 & Jeremiah 17:5 & Proverbs 20:16). On page 48, Hanford admits, “A man always has the choice of saying yes or no to God.” The irony here is that Hanford actually won’t allow women to say YES to God. She actually tells women to disobey God when she writes, “Suppose a woman feels God is leading her definitely opposite to what her husband has commanded. Who should she obey? The Scriptures say a woman must ignore her feelings about the will of God and do what her husband says.” (p. 34) The Bible NEVER said that. Again Hanford is just inventing her own Scriptures since she can’t actually find real verses to prove her point. Who do you think is behind that wickedness? Who is actually speaking through her—telling us to disobey God? I never thought I’d actually say this—but this is one of the most wicked books I’ve ever read. On page 81, Hanford describes being approached by a lady who is married to an alcoholic. Jackie is worried about her husband’s heavy drinking. She says, “I’ve been trying to obey him, like you told me to. Is it right for me to give him the car keys and endanger people’s lives like that?” Hanford tells Jackie to obey whatever he says when he’s sober. “You are doing what he basically wants you to do. Perhaps when he’s been drinking, you could offer to drive him where he needs to go.” Again Hanford contradicts herself—making up double standards to prove her point. Let’s deal with the root of this book. Hanford says, “Does a single scripture mention any situation when a wife ought not to obey? (p. 29) About half the Bible does!!! In Genesis 21:12(CEV) God told Abraham, “Just do what Sarah tells you.” There’s Abigail who saved hundreds of lives by disobeying her current husband (Nabal) and going against the plans of her future husband (David). Yet Hanford totally ignores the whole context of the story when she writes, “There’s no evidence she disobeyed Nabal.” (p. 49) Then Hanford tries to shift the entire individual burden of responsibility to God by writing things like “What if a husband expressly, positively, beyond the shadow of a doubt, commanded his wife to do something explicitly wrong?.......Then God takes upon Himself the responsibility to see that a woman does not have to sin……. If God tells a woman to obey (her husband) then He performs whatever miracle is necessary to make her able to obey!” (p. 45-47) That doesn’t many any sense! Now Hanford is actually saying that God is obeying man by performing miracles upon command! That people can do whatever they want and God will automatically perform a miracle to clean up their mess! Again Hanford is inventing her own Scriptures. What about the story of Sapphira? This Bible story comes from the time of the early church. Ananias and Sapphira sold something of high value. Then they decided to give some of the money to the church but lie about how much money they had received so people would think that they had given the full amount. Ananias walks into where the early church is meeting. Peter asks him about what happened. Ananias lies. Peter responds, “While you had the land, it was your own. After it was sold, you could have done as you pleased with the money. So how could you do a thing like this? You didn’t lie to people but to God!” Acts 5:4 (GW). Judgment falls on Ananias. He suddenly drops dead. Some time later, Sappira shows up. Peter asks her about it. Wait a minute. Why didn’t Peter only ask her husband? Wasn’t her husband the only one responsible for what happened? According to Hanford, only the husband “shall bear her iniquity.” (p. 35) God wasn’t supposed to hold her accountable. According to the Bible, Sappira was given the chance to make her own decision. She could have told the truth. But she chose to follow her husband and God judged her for it. Hanford can’t handle the story of Sapphira. So she contradicts herself. After spending most of the book saying that women have no ability to make their own choices and no responsibility for those choices—Hanford suddenly changes her mind and decides that Sapphira did. Then she changes her mind again and goes back to saying things like, “God held the father not the mother accountable.” (p. 40) “God commands a wife to obey her husband…He made no exceptions for extenuating circumstances.” (p. 103) Where is that verse in the Bible? There’s a reason that when writing the New Testament, the Apostle Paul NEVER told wives to obey. He told CHILDREN to obey and BOTH husbands and wives to “Hupotasso.” Now Hanford is the daughter of famous preacher John Rice. In his book, The Home, he wrote, “The rebellion of a wife against her husband is exactly the same in spirit as the rebellion of a disobedient child against his father.” (The Home p. 109) There’s the real root of this theology—trying to turn adults into children when the Bible teaches us to put away childish things. The blog Recovering Grace uncovered some highly disturbing allegations about Rice’s ministry. According to “written accounts by the 1980 staff of Bill Gothard’s organization” there was a thief working for John Rice’s ministry. Allegedly, he was in charge of selling books at events, but was actually pocketing the money. Allegedly, he was discovered by his own wife who kept the accounting records for the ministry. When she brought this to the attention of the leadership, he screamed unsubmissive wife, left her and remarried. Then he was hired to a leadership position at Bill Gothard’s ministry. Those allegations sound like what you’d expect from this twisted theology. Sin is condoned while the real Scriptures are trampled underfoot. No wonder the Bible warns us, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows that will he also reap.” Galatians 6:7 (KJV) Yet Hanford ignores that verse and much of the Bible to continue emphasizing that you are not allowed to make your own personal choices. She writes, “When you give back to your husband the responsibility for.…the making of decisions, you also give him the responsibility for the consequences of his decisions.” (p. 67) NOOOO!!! Even refusing to make a choice—is still making a choice! Remember Jesus said, “I will repay each of you according to what you have done.” Rev 2:23(GNT) “Christ will judge each of us for the good or the bad that we do while living in these bodies.” 2Cor 5:10(CEV) Notice that according to the Bible, we are held accountable for what we actually did—NOT what someone else wanted us to do. That’s the main logical fallacy of this book.