THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL PERSON

By Dr. M. R. Dowler

Despite all the heated pre and post-presidential election rhetoric, would it surprise you to learn that Donald Trump is not the most powerful person in America or even the world? In fact, the most powerful person in the world (humanly speaking) is not even a man---it’s a woman named Janet Yellen, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington. It is Yellen and her board of governors that controls all the money in America, which in turn affects the economies around the world. But consider Yellen’s powerful position in contrast with the world’s first woman.

In 1967 Drs. Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson, research scientists at the University of California Berkeley discovered that genetically every human came from one mother. Their research led to them a genetic material in the human genome called Mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from one woman and never changes. Ironically, the evolutionary scientists named her Eve. A January 1988 Newsweek magazine article entitled The Search For Adam and Eve confirmed Sarich and Wilson’s remarkable breakthrough.

Eve, the first woman and mother is specifically mentioned four times in the Bible (only twice in Genesis); conversely, her husband is mentioned twenty-nine times by name in the scriptures. Eve’s name in the original Hebrew is Chavvah which means life-giver (Genesis 3:20). We do not know how many children Adam and Eve had (Genesis 5:4), however, Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian wrote that Eve bore 56 children (33 sons and 23 daughters).

God created Eve from the genetic material in Adam’s side (Genesis 2:21-22). His purpose for Eve as Adam’s “help meet” is often misunderstood. Theologically, the Hebrew words for help meet point to God’s original intent; the word help is neged means corresponding to or equal with; meet is ezer meaning powerful enabler. Women may not be as physically strong as men (1 Peter 3:7), but they can be (and sometimes are) smarter, more influential and more powerful than men. Seventy percent of Americans polled do not know who Janet Yellen is. Hopefully more Christians know who their ancient mother was. Think about it.