Update on Betheder Modest Clothing (NZ)…

"…which becometh women professing godliness…"

http://www.freewebs.com/betheder/

I am excited about the resposes to my first web-poll.  It has been very helpful to get some feedback, and I hope to see more.  I have added some more web-polls on the ‘Dresses’ page, esp. for those who respond to the first poll to give further details on their response.  The more I know about what people are after, the more I can find ways to fill those needs!

Other changes and additions on the website include:

• Re-organization of various pages, a new homepage
• a couple more photos of dresses on the dresses page
• a ‘Blouses’ page – to be added to yet!
• A Guestbook – Please feel free to sign it and tell me how you find my website, and esp. if you have any problems!
• A link to the blog I have recently started.

Various additions are planned in the near future, and I will get to these as I am able!  I also have brochures available for passing on.  Meantime, as I have said previously, If you have a specific question or request, even if it is about an item not mentioned on the website or in the brochure, please ask me!  bethederjoy-modestclothing@yahoo.com.au

Monday, 4 December 2006

Dear Girls,

Issacharian Daughters

I think the sentiments encapsulated in this poem are lovely:

Beauty

A desire to be beautiful is not unwomanly. A woman who is not beautiful cannot properly fill her place. But, mark you, true beauty is not of the face, but of the soul. There is a beauty so deep and lasting that it will shine out of the homeliest face and make it pretty. This is the beauty to be first sought and admired.

Beauty and Purity

There is no more beautiful adornment to womanly character than purity, and a girl does well to see that everything that concerns her dress and behavior … is decent, clean, modest, and quiet.

Purity

Purity is a precious virtue. Christ has said, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." They perceive His nearness and this knowledge of His presence gently keeps them on the right path. Happy is the girl who walks along the way that abides with Him.

Mabel Hale – 1800s

(Author of Beautiful Girlhood)

This poem expresses the idea that purity is essential for true beauty. When I was in Virginia on one of Vision Forum’s 2006 Faith and Freedom Tours, I was shown a quote from an old piece of literature which expressed the idea that purity was essential for a man if he wanted to be masculine. My friends, Anna and Elizabeth Botkin, found a quote which expressed the same thing for women: that purity would aid femininity. They wrote about both of these quotes on the blog (www.visionarydaughters.com) associated with their book, So Much More:

In our recent studies of history, we found two interesting quotes, from two different sources, written in two different centuries. Both timeless.

“Chastity is so essential and natural to your sex, that every declination from it is a proportionable receding from womanhood. An immodest woman is a kind of monster, distorted from its proper form.”

A Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady
Wilkes, Wetenhall

“Chastitie is a vertue much commended in a souldier, when uncleannesse doth defile body and soule, and make a man stinke in the nostrils of God and man, and laieth him open to the malice and sword of his enemy, for commonly it makes a man effeminate, cowardly, lasie and full of diseases, and surely such who have unlawful women still trudging about with them, or in whom custome hath taken away the sence of offending in that kind, commonly come to dishounorable ends.”

Instructions of the Marshall for the better enabling of a privat soldier to the executing of his duty in this present Glorie — June 22, 1611

[Emphases my own]

In other words, we would draw from these two quotes that lack of chastity in a woman makes her less a woman, and lack of chastity in a man makes him less a man — that chastity is an integral part of womanliness in a woman, and of manliness in a man. This concept is interesting food for thought, especially when we consider that inchastity and androgyny are generally seen together throughout history, and very clearly in our own generation.

So to be truly beautiful, feminine, women of God, we need to be pure: pure in heart, in mind, in deed, in speech and in action.

For the Greater Glory of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,

Genevieve Smith

Issacharian Daughter

Notes:

I have sent this email to girls who have embraced a vision of victorious daughterhood as well as those who may be thinking about doing so (and even to some girls who may just like some encouragement regarding different areas of home life). Some of the girls are in the USA. Most are in New Zealand. You are welcome to forward this email on to others so long as you do so in its entirety. If you do not want to receive these emails please just send a return email to me stating that fact. If you know of other girls who would be encouraged by receiving these emails, feel free to forward the email to them or send me their email address.