Rebekah Pearl's Young Adult Years

The first part of this series covered Rebekah Pearl’s childhood. This second part will cover her early adult hood until her marriage. To me, this is the saddest part of her life because it exposes the potential that the younger Rebekah possessed.

The young Rebekah Pearl attended a Bible College where she received a BA degree in linguistics and Bible translation.

At the age of 21, Rebekah Pearl was escorted by her 18 year old brother, Gabriel to Papua New Guinea. (No Greater Joy. September 12 1995 Wusaywusay-ai-yanday)

After twenty-five hours in the air, here I stood below the equator with my lanky, eighteen- year-old brother in a strange country thousands of miles from our little valley in Tennessee. As we picked up our back packs and wandered bewilderedly toward the buildings, I was wondering what we would do if our contact did not come to pick us up. God has called me to go to the primitive unreached tribes of Papua New Guinea, learn their language, translate the Scripture, and teach them how to read it. I have been told more than once that it is not the job for a young lady. I too have wondered how I would survive alone in a primitive tribe. I have prayed that God would send another woman to go with me.


It is interesting that as a young woman, Rebekah believed that she was capable of doing what men could not. Apparently, she also believed that God could call women to teach men.

About his daughter's role in Papua New Guinea, Michael writes:

Upon her final return to P.N.G., Rebekah will be learning an unknown language and reducing it to writing by creating an alphabet and a dictionary. She will have to discover and define the innate rules of their grammar. All definitions of words must be linked to an understanding of the culture. In order to make the translation and her communication understandable, she will be recording their history, folk tales, religious beliefs and social customs. She will have to teach them to read the literature she produces and cause them to understand the Scripture in its foreign cultural context


This is very impressive. I don’t know how successful she was at creating an alphabet and dictionary, teaching this tribe to read its own language or writing out scripture for them. That sounds like a monumental task that would take one person an entire lifetime to complete. If she did all this then Rebekah is a highly intelligent, disciplined person who deserves to be credited for her role in bringing literacy to this tribe.

From the same article, Michael writes about the people that his eldest daughter will serve

Their naked bodies reek with the stench of decaying flesh and putrid sores. Their faces are hardened by fear of the evil spirits ruling every facet of their lives. Their daily life is one of foraging the rotten logs for grub worms, which are eaten alive as they are found, or of digging in the ground with stone implements or sticks for the roots which comprise the main part of their scarce diet. Their existence is not as National Geographic or Public Television would portray. They are unhappy people with sins and evil habits ranging from the deliberate killing of young children to Sodomy and child molestation

and

It is a simple matter to obey our Lord’s last words and take the message that is medicine to the soul and health to the spirit. As all men, every tribal adult is individually, willfully rebellious. They do not deserve to hear, but it is at this very point that grace begins


She seems to have enjoyed her adventure but to keep from being lonely she wrote songs that she would later turn into a CD entitled From The Ends Of The Earth. All alone in a bamboo hut on the top of a mountain in New Guinea, the first white woman ever seen by the Kumboi village, Rebekah writes and sings songs about her God. She accompanies herself on a classical guitar. One CD. Also available on cassette.


I admit that the emphasis on her being white and female strikes me as odd.

She spent two years among the Kumboi villagers.(No Greater joy July 1, 2003 Beginning With Words)

I spent two years among the Kumboi people of Papua, New Guinea. Most of that time was spent on linguistics and translation. I squatted for hours in the smoke-filled cook-house in the center of our village, practicing the words I learned and trying to pick up new ones.

I do not know if Rebekah ever accomplished her mission of translating the bible for the Kumboi people before she returned home. After her time in the jungle, Rebekah seems to have enjoyed a rather adventuresome lifestyle.

I enjoyed exploring and scuba-diving in Thailand and Laos. From there, I headed to the Middle East. For a year and half, I traveled Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and had in-depth conversations with monks, Jews, Ethiopians, Germans, Palestinians, Europeans, and even some socially handicapped, public-schooled Americans.

Once she returned to the states, she did not date. Her father writes that dating is understood to be nearly synonymous with fornication. Not that we think everyone who dates will commit fornication, but recreational dating, at its best, is foreplay—psychologically and emotionally, if not physically

In the same article, Michael proudly comments:
Rebekah was twenty-six when she married, and she never had a “boy friend”—never shared any kind of emotional or physical relationship with anyone. Her husband need not be concerned that someday a man may walk up to him and say, “Your wife and I used to be very special to one another.” He is her first and only.

Michael does assure the readers that Rebekah had plenty of marriage offers. He claims to have turned away five or six young men who he didn't even allow near his daughter. There were also other men that he thought would make good husbands but his daughter turned down.

The Pearls do not believe in betrothal, although the family does exert a lot of control in who is allowed to get close to their adult children.

I have formed a fence around my daughters, and by their consent I guard them against unworthy suitors. I control the gate. I let young men that I trust gain social access to my daughters. In a sense, I allow only those that are tentatively approved to pass in review. Out of that small lot of potential suitors, with their parents’ guidance, they will seek God and determine their life’s partner. Every step will be under our oversight. Again, by their consent only, we hold veto rights. A young man must go through my wife and I to get close to our daughters, but we don’t make them sign on the dotted line before they get to know each other

After receiving Micheal's permission to court Rebekah, Gabriel Anast worked for a period in the family's business. Because Rebekah was overseas, it was several months before she and Gabe met.

Once they did meet, their relationship progressed fairly quickly. After a few weeks, Gabe had asked permission to court Rebekah. And a short time later Rebekah asked her parents for their permission to accept Gabe's offer of marriage. In four months they were married by their parents.

Due to a strong aversion to the possibility of same sex marriage, none of the Pearl children have gotten legally married. Instead of a license all of children, including Rebekah, were married via private contract.

So when the sodomites have come to share in the state marriage licenses, which will eventually be the law, James and Shoshanna(Rebekah's sister and brother-in-law) will not be in league with those perverts. And, while I am on the subject, there will come a time when faithful Christians will either revoke their state marriage licenses and establish an exclusively one man-one woman covenant of marriage, or, they will forfeit the sanctity of their covenant by being unequally yoked together with perverts.

Interestingly, Rebekah Pearl, who has visited several countries, brought literacy to a primitive tribe, wrote songs for a CD, published a book on her missionary work and translated scripture into a new language, is unable to choose who will answer her theological inquires. After her marriage, her father informed her that her husband, Gabe, was now the person who would answer her religious questions.

Although her young adulthood is not abusive as were her early years, it is probably the saddest portion to write especially as I am aware of Rebekah Pearl Anast's current situation.

The next and final article will cover her life after marriage and I will try to put it up in by the beginning of next week.