Mrs. Pearl continues her discussion on reverence in Chapter 14, "Kings and Kingdoms."

Page 136:

God created Adam and commissioned him to take the position of leadership. Since then, every son of Adam has received the same mandate. Man was created to rule. It is his nature. But the only place most men will ever rule is their own little kingdom called home. At the least, every man's destiny is to be the leader of his household. To deny him this birthright is contrary to his nature and God's will. When a man is not in command of his little kingdom and is not shown the deference and reverence that goes with that position, his kingdom will not be ruled correctly, and the subjects of that kingdom will not experience the benevolence of a king who truly loves and cherishes them.

Mrs. Pearl compares a husband with the President of the United States. When he goes to speak somewhere, he gets treated with respect. (Usually LOL!) Not because of who he is as a man or what his policies are, but because of the office that he fills.

God made your husband the "president" of your family.

When I first read these statements, I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong with them. I knew they were "off," but I couldn't figure out just how. So I asked my hubby. :-) And he said, "Well, she is using the wrong analogy. The Bible doesn't compare a husband leading his family with the way a government is set up."

A ha!!!

Ephesians 5:21-33:

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord.
For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the church, Himself the Savior of [His] body.
As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word,
That He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless].
Even so husbands should love their wives as [being in a sense] their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.
For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church,
Because we are members (parts) of His body.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
This mystery is very great, but I speak concerning [the relation of] Christ and the church.
However, let each man of you [without exception] love his wife as [being in a sense] his very own self; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband [that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates, and esteems him; and that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly].

The Bible compares the relationship between a husband and wife to the relationship between Christ and His Church. And that is vastly different from the relationship between a President and his constituents. Mrs. Pearl's analogy is simply not Biblical.

Her statement that "Man was created to rule" is Biblical when taken just as that sentence. However, when we take it in context of her chapter, it is unbiblical. Mankind was created to rule over creation, but men were not created to rule over women.

Genesis 1:26-28:

God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the [tame] beasts, and over all of the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth.
So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.
And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth.

Genesis 3:16b:

Yet your desire and craving will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

Note that the husband ruling over the wife occurs AFTER the fall. Prior to the fall, God gave men and women the job of ruling (subduing, having dominion over, etc.) the rest of creation.

Mrs. Pearl shares an example of the "opposite of reverence." A man named "Charles" was sitting in a meeting with his wife.

Charles leaned back and draped his arm around his wife's shoulder. She immediately reacted with obvious irritation, shaking his hand off her shoulder, and leaning forward as if to get away from his embrace. Then she carefully fixed her hair where his arm had disturbed it.

What Mrs. Pearl says about it:

Her act was testimony to the state of her heart. She thought more of her hairdo than her husband's honor. She was rebelling against God in not reverencing her husband.

I seriously doubt that that was this woman's main problem. She sounds like she had selfishness issues PERIOD. If I were a betting woman, I'd bet she acted this way toward ANYONE, not just her husband. Though a lack of reverence toward her husband was involved, that was not how she was "rebelling against God." MAJOR stretch on Mrs. Pearl's part, I'm afraid.

I'm NOT saying that this wife's response was acceptable. It was just plain old RUDE. But Mrs. Pearl is using this as an example of a wife "not reverencing her husband," as though that were the only thing wrong with this picture, and that is where the stretch lies.

Page 139:

You cannot command your husband to love you, and you have no right to expect him to love you when you are unlovely. But God has provided a way for a woman to cause her husband to love and cherish her. God gave us ladies some keys to the avenues of a man's heart. God made it so that we can actually manipulate him into fulfilling his God-ordained duty.

::::eyes bugging out and jaw hitting the floor::::Yes, Mrs. Pearl is saying that if we just reverence our husbands enough, we can manipulate them into loving us. For one thing...MANIPULATE????????

For another thing...it is not a given, as she makes it out to be. I have known far too many women who have done exactly as Mrs. Pearl says to do, and their husband have either treated them harshly or they have just flat out left them.

Mrs. Pearl "proves" her points by sharing some examples of couples she has seen while people-watching. In couples in which the women were not touching their men, they weren't smiling either. But there were three women (THREE!!!) who were smiling and touching their men, and their men were just delighted in their women. Mrs. Pearl was quick to point out how ugly these women were as well, so obviously the men were not attracted to them for their beauty but for the way that they "reverenced" them.

A man will allow his woman many, many faults, as long as he knows that she thinks he is great. If she will just look into his face with adoration, if she is thankful to him for loving her, he will adore her. She can dress awful, be grossly overweight, have terrible hair, not cook so well, be a little lazy and dumb, and not be one bit pretty, but if she will just think and show that he is wonderful he will love her.

So not only is Mrs. Pearl basing her conclusions in part on these three couples, she is saying that if we just fawn over our men, they will love us.

She goes even further by saying

My husband tells young men looking for wives that there is really only one absolutely necessary trait that the girl they marry must possess - a grateful heart. He tells them that the girl they choose must be joyful and thankful that you love her. "The more she belives that she is fortunate that you chose her over others, the better the foundation for the true marriage of two souls. If she feels that YOU are lucky to get HER, then you had better run, because that woman is looking for her own help meet, and she thinks you are the one to fill the job. She will spend the rest of her life trying to change you."

*snip*

[To reverence a husband] is to believe that you are blessed for being loved by this wonderful man.

I honestly don't even know how to word my thoughts about that....

To be fair, this chapter did have some good in it. This sentence on page 137:

Reverence is not just how you act; it is how you feel and how you respond with words and with your body language.

But that's about it. :-(