All faiths and religions have identifying characteristics that distinguish them and the one they worship from all others. These features are instantly recognizable.

For instance, you hear the word “Hindu” and you think of a man in shorts, sitting cross-legged with hands resting on his knees, palms up, meditating on his trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. His deities, with their unique names, embody a well-defined worship, faith, and set of practices unique to Hinduism.

Similarly, when you hear the word “Islam” visions of ornate mosques come to mind and turban-headed men on their knees bowing toward Mecca with foreheads touching the ground as they worship Allah and practice the dictates they claim are demanded.

These and nearly all other religions have a worship that is consistent with the name of the one they worship. They would be quick to tell you that worshiping any other way in any other name is not worshiping Brahma…or Allah. The deity’s name invokes a unique regimen of worship. This fact should be self-evident.

Closer to home, what comes to mind by the term Roman Catholicism? The pope is prominent here. But unlike other faiths, he and his followers worship a mighty one by the generic term G-o-d.  They believe this unnamed mighty one requires a specific kind of worship as well, including the rosary, veneration of Mary and saints, Sunday worship, mass, sacraments and popular holidays.

An offshoot of the Roman Church is the Protestant movement.  Protestants worship the same nameless mighty one using the same nonexclusive title “G-o-d.” Nevertheless, they believe that their eternal one that goes by the same common title the Roman Church uses demands a whole different practice of faith. Although they worship the same   “G-o-d,” more than 500 Protestant divisions don’t agree on that worship even among themselves, as they hold clashing beliefs and much different doctrines. Amazingly, few people ever give this profound oddity a second’s worth of thought.

Worshiping under the specific name of an identifiable Mighty One limits one’s faith to a particular belief and practice. But attempting to aim an exclusive faith at a nonspecific mighty one, as churchianity has done, leads to today’s hodgepodge.

Identify the One You Worship

In light of these facts it is critical that we ask, is the revealed, personal Name of the Heavenly Father important? Does it matter to Yahweh what you call Him? Does He need to have a name for proper worship, as the rest of the world’s faiths demand?

Some say He knows who you mean no matter what you call Him. How many Bible believers would fall on their knees in times of desperation and call out to Vishnu? Or Baal? Or Zeus? How can one expect the one true Father Yahweh to respond to a plea to a false god? What about your name in the Book of Life? Does it matter if it is correct or not? You bet it does! You see, names do matter. Names do mean something, as any honest worshiper will admit.

Names are definitive. In worship they identify and specify the one being worshiped. For all other faiths on earth the name called on points to a particular one who is worshiped in a specific manner and who (supposedly) responds in well-defined ways to a particular worship. But in a strange contradiction to this norm, Bible believers accept a common, generalized title for the true Heavenly Father they claim to invoke. And because only a nonspecific title is called on, widely divergent beliefs and practices can and do result. Does this make any sense in light of dozens and dozens of Scriptures commanding us to honor and call on His personal Name and follow only one true way of faith connected with that Name (Ephesians 4:5)?

More importantly, how close is He to those who refuse His personal Name? Does He eagerly embrace those who have decided that a generic title is more acceptable than His revealed, personal Name – the same title found at the center of contradictory doctrines, beliefs and practices?

Notice what the Apostle Paul said about this title: “As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other Elohim but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one Yahweh, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Master Yahshua the Messiah, by whom are all things, and we by him” (1Cor. 8:4-6).

Names Have Meaning, Even Today

We in our Western culture have nearly lost the significance of names. Today “Johnny” is as good as “Tommy.” Even still we may be prompted to name our child after some beloved and admired individual with the same name. The good attributes of that person come through when we hear his or her name. Similarly we may reject a name for the reverse reason. All this from what the name brings to mind.

Names are much more than mere labels when it comes to the Bible. All Hebrew names mean something. For instance, Joshua (Yahshua) means “Yahweh’s Salvation”; Nehemiah (Nehemyah) signifies “Comforter of Yahweh”; and Daniel means “El My Judge,” which accords with the character and contents of his book.

The Name of the true Father we worship is particularly important because He tells us it is. Philippians 2:9 says His Name Yahweh is above every name. His Name reveals His special identity as the one true Mighty One of the universe. No other one worshiped has His Name. His Name brings us close.

You don’t mind when a stranger calls you “friend,” or “sir,” or “ma’am.” In fact you expect an unfamiliar person to use such terms. But once you are introduced and you develop camaraderie with that individual, you would feel put off if he or she continued to call you the generic “sir” or “ma’am.” Your supposed friend would be rejecting the bond that using your personal name engenders.

Yahweh feels the same way if once we know His Name we insist on calling on Him by common titles, especially the titles of other deities (Isa.42:8). His Name is the seal of a relationship that bonds us with Him. He said in Isaiah 52:6, “Therefore my people shall know my name.”

When making His all-important covenant with Israel one of the first things Yahweh did was to introduce His people to His personal Name, Exodus 3:13-15. He wanted and expected the intimacy that using His personal name would create. He called it His “memorial for all generations,” Exodus 3:15.

He thundered to the prophet, “I am Yahweh that is my name!” Isaiah 42:8. Notice He didn’t say, “I am Yahweh, that is one of my names,” or “You can just call me whatever you wish, Isaiah, I’ll know who you mean.” He said specifically, “That is my Name!” Period. (“…whose Name alone is Yahweh…” Ps. 83:18).

In the Scriptures when a person gave his name to another it signified the joining of the two in closest unity. When Yahweh gave His Name to Israel He was calling them to a marriage covenant, the closest union two can have. It is no different when a bride takes on her husband’s name. When she shares his name she becomes at one with him, both in aspiration, goal and commitment to a single cause – building a family.

Yahweh is creating his own heavenly family with His people now, one day to be resurrected as a kingdom of priests, Revelation 5:10. We read in Acts 15:14 that Yahweh is taking out from the world a special people “for His Name.”  He is making a family of Yahweh. “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Master Yahshua the Messiah, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,” Ephesians 3:14-15.

Esteemed by Name

Biblically, the person and his name are virtually equivalent and inseparable. The word “name” in Hebrew is shem. Shem means a mark or a memorial – a person’s individuality. His name implies his honor (or dishonor), his authority, his character. In fact, scripturally a name describes and defines a person in all aspects of his or her persona.

The Name Yahweh has great importance because of what it signifies. Intrinsic to Yahweh’s Name is the very verb of existence. InExodus 3:14 He tells Moses: “I am that I am,” or “haYah asher haYah” in the Hebrew. It means I am existence itself. I cause everything to come into being. His Name Yahweh describes Him, defines Him, and expresses His attributes as the one who causes us to exist in this life and the one who can give us everlasting existence, too.

Joel 2:32 prophesies that the day will come when whoever shall call on His Name will be delivered. That meaning is central to the definition of His Name: “I am” or “I will be.” “Yahweh” also has the connotation, “I will be there (for you),” especially to be your deliverance.

His Name is a family Name. His people, His very Chosen, are a family called by His Name: “O Yahweh, hear, O Yahweh, forgive; O Yahweh, hearken and do; defer not, for your own sake, O my Elohim: for your city and your people are called by your name” (Dan. 9:19). His people take on this wonderful Name because they are in covenant union with Him – obeying Him and pleasing Him in all that they do. His Name Yahweh is found an astonishing 6,823 times in ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible. It simply cannot be ignored or dismissed.

Is ‘G-o-d’ an English Form of His Name?

A typical argument is, “I don’t call on Him by His Hebrew Name because I speak English.” Does a person change his name when traveling to foreign lands in which a different language is spoken? Or is his name the same everywhere he goes? Does he get a new passport with the corresponding name change at each new port of entry? Or is John Doe called John Doe everywhere he goes? Clearly, the name is the same everywhere. If names do in fact change then what would be the English equivalent of Vladimir Putin? It’s none other than Vladimir Putin. What is the English form of the Japanese Prime Minister’s name, Junichiro Koizumi?  Why it’s Junichiro Koizumi, of course. No English equivalent exists because it’s not needed! Names don’t change in going from one country to another or one language to another.

If the argument is, I speak English therefore I use an English name for the one I worship, then please provide the English name for Satan – because that name is Hebrew and it never changed in our English Bibles. Can you supply the English form of Abraham? This is another Hebrew name right out of the Hebrew Scriptures and carried over virtually unaltered into our English translation.

What’s the English equivalent for the Hebrew name Daniel? How about Sarah and Martha? These are all Hebrew names that are unchanged in the English text because names are not translated. We have no trouble using these Hebrew names without an English equivalent because there is no English equivalent. Why should Yahweh’s Name be any different? Besides, “G-o-d” is not a name anyway but only a generic title. Calling on Him by this title is like calling out to your neighbor, “Hello human being!”

One of the most popular words of praise is halleluyah. One hears it shouted out in churches all the time by those who have no clue as to its meaning. Halleluyah is one of the most ancient words of exultation in existence and it is pure Hebrew. “Hallel” means “praise” in Hebrew, and “Yah” is the first part of the sacred Name Yahweh. Therefore        halleluyah means “Praise Yah”! The most common word of praise has our Heavenly Father’s very Name embedded within it – “Halle1uYah.”  We usually see this word in the form hallelujah, but there was no “j” in Hebrew, Greek or English until about the 15th century. The “j” is merely an “i” with a tail and given a “juh” sound relatively recently. The “j” and “i” were used interchangeably in alphabets until the 17th century.

Scripture records many well-known names that incorporate the name of the Heavenly Father. “Elijah” was not pronounced that way in the Scriptures. It was “Eliyah,” a name that means,” my El is Yah.” Isaiah (YeshaYah) is a Hebrew name that means “salvation of Yah.” Jeremiah (YirmeYah) is “whom Yah raises up,” Zephaniah (ZephanYah) means “hidden of Yah.” The names of many other writers and prophets contain the shortened “Yah” Name of Yahweh, showing the close bond they had to Him.

Inconsistencies Abound

If one sticks to the position that because we speak English we should not use Hebrew name forms, then we shouldn’t use any of the aforementioned, Biblical names, either, because they are all Hebrew names and we don’t speak Hebrew. It would not be right to apply that argument just to Yahweh’s Name and not to all the other Hebrew names and words in the Bible – like Sabbath, a Hebrew term, and Messiah, another Hebrew word.

What about all the Biblical cities like Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and the names of rivers, seas, deserts, and mountains? These would all need to be changed to some English form to be consistent with the argument for the exclusive use of English. The problem is, there are no equivalent English forms for these Hebrew names! Neither is there a proper equivalent or substitute name for Yahweh’s great Name. Let’s pursue this point even further.

‘Dear (Nameless) President’

For argument’s sake, let’s say that there is an English equivalent for the sacred Name Yahweh and that equivalent is “god,” with a capital G..

First, we must note again that “god” is not a name but a title. As we already read, Paul said there are gods many and lords many. There are also many presidents in our country – presidents of corporations, colleges, board presidents, bank presidents…but there is only one president of General Motors, only one president of Harvard, only one president of Citibank – and each has a specific, identifiable name that he answers to. If I wrote a letter addressed “Dear President,” it could apply to any one of these presidents. Only when I include the name with that title do I reveal the one I am actually addressing.

If I pray to a god then according to Paul in 2Corinthians 4:4 I may be praying to Satan because Satan is called the “god of this world.” Myriads of other god deities have been worshiped by man throughout history.

Is “G-o-d” an English form for “Yahweh”? Does He expect His people to change His Name to something else according to the language spoken? And is that even possible? The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says “god” stems from the Old High German,got, deriving from the Gothic guthand going back to the Teutonic gudo, which stems from two Aryan roots – one meaning to invoke, the other to pour in the sense of a molten image. Call on god and you call on an idol, according to the origin of this word. Capitalizing it doesn’t change anything.

G-o-d is far from being an English term. Its common English usage belies ancient foreign origins. Relatively few of the words we use in English are purely English. The word “English” itself isn’t even English. England is from Englaland, land of the Angles. Who were the Angles? None other than Germans from the lowlands of Germany who settled in eastern England in the 5th century. “English” is from Englisc, meaning of the Angles – Germans! (see “English,” OED)

Our Impure ‘English’ Language

English is a melting pot language borrowing extensively from many languages. The statement, “I speak English so I do not use the Hebrew Name” is self-contradictory. Here’s why:

Let’s break down the words etymologically: “I speak English so I do not use the Hebrew Name.” Discovering the origin of each of the words in that sentence proves enlightening indeed:

I = the letter I is the ninth letter of the alphabet, coming through the Latin from the Greek and ultimately from the Semitic or Hebrewyod – the first letter in Yahweh’s Name.

speak = from the German sprechen.

English = a proper noun based in German

so = akin to the Gothic swa

do = traces to Sanskrit which was spoken in India.

not = Old English nought, cognate to several old Saxon and French formations

use = from Latin usus

the = from Teutonic and Indo-European forms

Hebrew = Hebrew Eber, one who “crosses over”

Name = Greek onoma

In the statement, “I speak English so I do not use the Hebrew Name,” only one of those 11 words is in fact English. English is not by any stretch a pure language. Much of it is from the Romance languages and vast numbers of its words derive from the Greek and Latin (and ultimately Hebrew). Most of the words we use in English come from some other language!

The point in all of this is that language has little to do with calling on Yahweh’s Name. He was Yahweh before He put man on earth. Before He created all these languages from Babel, He was Yahweh. “Yahweh” is existence personified. Psalm 135:13 says, “Thy Name endures forever, your memorial throughout all generations.” His Name is His memorial that endures for all time.

The First Commandment Is Foundational

The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:2 begin, “I am Yahweh your Elohim which brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other mighty ones before me.” In the very first of the 10 Commandments Yahweh established right off the bat that, above everything else, He has an identity. If you don’t get that part right, everything else about your worship will fall like dominoes. We must above all else worship the right Mighty One.  As we witness the general decay of Bible-professing religion and the perversion of all that is right and moral on this planet, we can go back to the very first of the Ten Commandments and see why Yahweh established Himself as supreme.

If man would have just kept  Commandment One he would have kept all the rest. All false worship can ultimately be traced to a violation of this first of the Ten Commandments. Every sin we commit results from an unwillingness to put Yahweh and His laws first in our lives. Before He says anything Yahweh establishes at the start that HE is Yahweh our Mighty One. Ecclesiastes 12:13 bears out this important truth: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear Yahweh and keep His commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man.”

We continue in Exodus 20:4: “You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Understand that heathens didn’t worship a stone image as the stone that it was, but as a representation of some deity.

Yahweh says don’t make these things because they will remove you from worship of Me, and I am the only one you are to worship. When we employ substitute titles for His Name we are in idolatry not unlike the pagan’s wood and stone. In the same way that an idol removes us from Him, substituting His Name veers us away from Him and the specific worship expressed by His Name and puts us in a generalized worship that is practiced by diverse and conflicting denominations.

Moving on to 20:6 we are told to keep the commandments if we love Him and He in turn will show mercy to us. Now notice verse 7: “Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh your Elohim in vain.” Taking His Name in vain does not mean to curse when you smash your thumb with a hammer. “Take” is the Hebrew nasa, meaning to lift or bring to. “Vain” comes from shoaw, to rush over, bring to devastation, uselessness, waste – basically it means neglect.

When we trade His name for some title, we are breaking the Third Commandment. “You shall not bring His Name to desolation or ignore it through neglect,” the Hebrew behind the commandment says. When we use a common title in worship we are missing the most important aspect of who Yahweh is and what He stands for; what He is all about and what He will do for us if we would just follow and obey Him. His Name describes the very essence of who He is – Yahweh: He is existence personified.

No title can begin to denote all that His Name stands for. A title defeats the purpose of a name. It just sits there like a pasted-on label, with no unique meaning and no particular identity attached. Calling Him G-o-d is like greeting your neighbor, “Hello human being.”

When you call on the Name Yahweh you are invoking the only true, active, all-powerful, majestic Being in the universe. Most people would prefer a nameless mighty one who, like a kindly old grandfather, is there to bail them out when needed but who otherwise is absent while they live out their lives any way they choose without hindrance. Much better for them to keep Him nameless and in the shadows and not make Him too real through the calling on a personal name. Perhaps this is the underlying reason His Name is so often avoided today.

Do we have such little respect and regard for our Heavenly Father that we would deny Him His own Name and call Him whatever we please?

Our prayer is that you will grasp the critical importance of the truth presented here and come to know your Creator through His personal, covenant Name Yahweh, the only Name given to us for salvation, Acts 4:12; Joel 2:32.

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Do you want a personal relationship with the one you worship?” the evangelist bellowed to the crowd. “Do you want to know Him intimately and receive His blessings?” The crowd goes wild. “Then ask God to come into your heart.”

Hold on a minute. What’s wrong with this scene? How can you have a personal relationship with a generic label? Doesn’t closeness begin with a personal name? The Apostle Paul wrote, “For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’,” 1Corinthians 8:5 (ESV). Even Satan is referred to by the common term “god”! Paul wrote, “…in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving…” 2Corinthians 4:4.

Using the same designation for our Creator that is used for the evil one, as well for false deities of the pagans, presents serious issues. Replacing His Name with a common title is identity theft.

The Third Commandment is explicit about the necessity of His true Name in our worship. “Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh your Elohim in vain; for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” The word vain is the Hebrew shoaw and means emptiness, worthlessness, waste, ruin. Removal of His name brings it to a state of ruin and desolation.

To distinguish the Heavenly Father from other so-called deities, those who refuse to call on His Name are forced to add qualifying descriptions like “the great god,” and “the one and only true god.” By its very nature a title must be buttressed with many adjectives in order to nail down exactly who you mean. But a personal name easily solves this identity problem, and of course is entirely appropriate as well. He commands His people to call on His revealed, personal Name.

It should be obvious that the title “god” is a broad-spectrum, general term and is not capable of individual identification. Capitalizing it doesn’t change that.

We would have the same problem if every man in the world had his name replaced with the title “Mr.” Imagine this conversation: “Give this to Mr. for me, would you?”

“Uh, which Mr. do you mean? There are millions of them.”

“You know, the one true Mr., the only genuine Mr.”

Does this make sense?

The obvious purpose of a name is to distinguish one individual from another. That should go without saying, yet how many think about that simple fact when it comes to their Heavenly Father? They have been taught to call Him by a generic label, which He Himself says is unacceptable.

It is amazing that all religions are known by the name of the one worshiped … except Christianity. Anciently the god of the Akkadians was Marduk; the god of the Ammonites was Moloch; the god of the Greeks was Zeus; the god of the Romans was Jupiter; the god of the Moabites was Baal-peor; The god of the Muslims is Allah, and the god of the Christians is…God? Using a nondescript, indefinite, impersonal, nonidentifying title does not identify the One you worship! Capitalizing that title doesn’t turn it into a name, no more than capitalizing the title “mister” does.

By removing His Name from our Bibles and our worship we denigrate Him and bring Him down to the lowest common denominator. The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary explains: “[His] name reveals his character and salvation in which people may take refuge (Ps. 20:1; cf. Isa. 25:1, 56:6); to treat [His] name as empty is to despise his person (Ex. 20:7),” p. 747.

His One and Only Name

What then is the revealed, personal Name of the Creator of the universe as established in the Bible?

We’ll let Him tell us. In Isaiah 42:8 He said, “I am Yahweh: that is my name: and my honor will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.” He makes it crystal clear that He expects us to call on His personal Name Yahweh, which separates Him from the world of idols. He says that when you hear my Name that you will know it is I. When using His personal Name you don’t need to define who you mean. It is His personal identity. His Name tells it all. It also distinguishes His people when they call on Him in His Name.

In Isaiah 52:6 Yahweh thunders, “Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.”

The prophet said in Micah 4:5, “For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of Yahweh our Elohim for ever and ever.” In other words, all the other religions have a name for the one they worship, and so does the true one.

How important is His Name? Extremely. It is the ONLY name in the Bible that is called “holy” (see Lev. 20:3; Ps. 33:21; 103:1;105:3; 106:47; 145:21; Luke 11:2). Salvation comes only through His Name.

The Name “Yahweh” is becoming more widely known and acknowledged as His genuine Name. Theologians along with the general public are starting to catch up with Bible scholarship, textual proof, and historical fact, all of which reveal the truth of the Name Yahweh.

In this booklet we will show why His Name is Yahweh and His Son’s Name is Yahshua by using source manuscripts, scholarship, linguistics, etymology, and archaeology.

Coming to know His revealed, personal name is one of those gratifying “Ah-ha” moments that make you say, “Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense. Why wasn’t I told this before?” When He refers to His Name, He means His literal Name, not a common title or generic stamp. To those who say He has many names, Yahweh inspired this response, “That men may know that thou, whose name alone is YAHWEH, are the most high over all the earth,” Psalm 83:18.

Those other “names” that some may cite are just adjectives added to His Name to describe some aspect of Him, like Yahweh-Yireh (Yahweh will provide), Yahweh-Nissi (Yahweh my banner), Yahweh-Sabaoth (Yahweh of hosts), and Yahweh Zidkenu (Yahweh our righteousness). Other so-called “names” are just titles, like “Elohim,” “Lord,” and “Adonai.”

The Name Yahweh is from the Hebrew verb of existence hayah, meaning “I am.” Some scholars say it also means I will be whatever I want to be or need to be. He explained His Name and its significance in Exodus 3. In verse 15 He told Moses that His Name was a memorial to all generations. Memorial in Hebrew (zakar) means to mark, remember, mention.

Yahweh causes all things to exist, including us human beings, He is the self-existent One. He causes everything in the universe to be and He controls all of it. We exist because He exists. That is who “Yahweh” is.

Jehovah and the Letter J

His true Name Yahweh was cloaked through the centuries by the erroneous “Jehovah.” The name Jehovah is an impossibility because there was never a letter “J” or sound of a J in the Hebrew or Greek languages from which our Bible translations are derived. Not even the early 1611 King James English Bible used the letter J, but employed the letter “I” instead. In Psalm 68:4 it reads, “…extol him that rideth upon the heavens, by his Name IAH…” The letter J came into widespread use only 500 years ago, becoming the newest letter to join the English alphabet. Before its debut, the J had a Y sound and grew out of the vowel “i,” which is why the lower case “j” is dotted like the “i” and was given a hooked tail to distinguish it from the “i.”

The Encyclopedia Americana says, “The form of J was unknown in any alphabet until the 14th century.”

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, agrees that the J is only a modification of the Latin I and dates back with a separate value only to the 15th century.

Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia (1979 edition), volume 14, page 94 under “J,” states: “J, the tenth letter and seventh consonant in the English alphabet. It is the latest addition to the English script and has been inserted in the alphabet after I, from which it was developed…”

The Jewish Encyclopedia calls the word Jehovah “a philological impossibility.”

The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology says that Jehovah is an erroneous transliteration of the Hebrew name YHWH, “often represented as Yahweh” (1995).

In the preface to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible is the following statement: “The form Jehovah is of late medieval origin; it is a combination of the consonants of the Divine Name [YHWH] and the vowels attached to it by the Masoretes but belonging to an entirely different word. The sound of Y is represented by J and the sound of W by V, as in Latin. The word ‘Jehovah’ does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew,” pp. 6-7.

The Moffatt Bible says in the preface about the Jehovah:

“Strictly speaking, this ought to be rendered ‘Yahweh,’ which is familiar to modern readers in the erroneous form of ‘Jehovah.’ Were this a version intended for students of the original, there would be no hesitation whatever in printing ‘Yahweh.’”

The name Jehovah is a synthetic blend. It even has a shocking aspect. The suffix hovah is No. 1943 in Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary and has the meaning of “ruin: mischief.” It is another form of No. 1942, havvah, which is translated “calamity, iniquity, mischief, mischievous (thing), naughtiness, naughty, noisome, perverse thing, substance, very wickedness.” Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius says of No. 1943, hovah: “ruin, disaster.” No wonder the Rotherham Bible refers to the name Jehovah as a monstrous hybrid!

Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses acknowledge that the name Jehovah falls short. Their book, “Let Your Name Be Sanctified” freely admits on pages 16 and 18 that Yahweh is the superior translation of the Tetragrammaton.

Read One Way But Spoken Another

In an effort to protect the sacred Name from being pronounced and even profaned, ancient scribes added vowel points (code letters) from the title Adonai (“Lord” in English) to the four letters of His Name, YHWH, thereby prompting the reader to use the substitute term “Adonai” instead of “Yahweh.” Kohlenberger in his introduction to Hebrew-English explains this device as kethib-qere, meaning the name is written one way but is read or pronounced another way.

The Encyclopedia Judaica explains which vowels were used wrongly to transform Yahweh into Jehovah: “In the early Middle Ages, when the consonantal text of the Bible was supplied with vowel points to facilitate its correct traditional reading, the vowel points for Adonai with one variation—a sheva (short ‘e’) with the first yod [Y] of YHWH instead of the hataf-patah (short ‘a’) under the aleph of Adonai—was used for YHWH, thus producing the form YeHoWaH. When Christian scholars of Europe first began to study Hebrew they did not understand what this really meant, and they introduced the hybrid name ‘Jehovah’” (vol. 7, p. 680).
As the Judaica notes, by deliberately inserting the vowel sign for “e” into the first part of the Tetragrammaton, the short form of the Name “Yah” was rendered “Yeh.” Thus, the Jewish Masoretes effectively hid even the short form Yah of the sacred Name. It is this erroneous form “Yeh” that has survived to this day in “Jeh”ovah and most likely enters into the development of the erroneous form of the Son’s name, Je-sus, which we will see later.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica (Micropedia, vol. 10) corroborates. Under “Yahweh” we read, “The personal name of the [El] of the Israelites …The Masoretes, Jewish biblical scholars of the Middle Ages, replaced the vowel signs that had appeared above or beneath the consonants of YHWH with the vowel signs of Adonai or of Elohim. Thus the artificial name Jehovah (YeHoWaH) came into being.”

Another authority says this: “The pronunciation Jehovah was unknown until 1520 when it was introduced by [Petrus] Galatinus [Pope Leo X’s confessor] but was contested by Le Mercier, J. Drusius, and L. Capellus as against grammatical and historical propriety,”Emphasized Bible, Rotherham, p. 24.

(To learn more about the Hebrew alphabet and the practice of vowel pointing see “Hebrew Articulation” preceding Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary.)

The Reason for Hiding the Sacred Name

Why was His Name Yahweh avoided and hidden for millennia? Jewish religious leaders had an ultra-pious interpretation of Leviticus 24:16, which commanded that anyone who blasphemed Yahweh’s Name (did violence to it) should be stoned to death. They took that injunction and ramped it up, so that just pronouncing the Name constituted a serious offense. Ultimately, the Jews would not use the Name even in normal religious worship or exercises.

Another passage the Jews cite is Jeremiah 44:26, where Yahweh tells Judah not to use His Name in Egypt or foreign lands. Why did He say that? It was because they had worshiped the queen of heaven! It was a punishment for their sins. We have statements from Philo and Josephus around the time of Yahshua that this avoidance in uttering the name carried over into the New Testament as well.

What exactly happened in the New Testament and why aren’t most churches using the sacred Name today

Hiding the Name in the New Testament — Nomina Sacra

The Jewish belief that the name was not to be pronounced was picked up in the 2nd century C.E. by Greek translators and various Christian church leaders who continued the Jewish practice of Name substitution. They also adopted the notion that Adonai, translated Lord (kyrios in Greek), gave the Heavenly Father a universal character. Finally, the Jewish practice of avoiding the Name further evolved among Christians into the belief that the Name was no longer important and to use it was Judaizing.

The New Testament translators even mimicked the Hebrew scribal custom of adding vowel pointing to the Name to render it “Adonai” instead of Yahweh. This scribal practice carried over in the New Testament Greek and was known as nomina sacra (meaning “sacred names”). Specifically, the Greek letters kappa epsilon with a line above them were inserted for the sacred Name. Consequently, the reader would read “kurios” (Greek term for Lord) instead of the Name. All of the earliest Christian papyri exhibit the nomina sacra.

Bruce Metzger’s book, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, lists 15 examples of these abbreviations from Greek papyri that were used for: God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Son, Spirit, David, cross, Mother, Father, Israel, Savior, Man, Jerusalem, and Heaven (examples appear as found in KJV). Except for “mother,” which is not found until the 4th century CE, all other nomina sacra in Greek manuscripts from the first through third centuries CE. While scholars are still debating the purpose, some propose that this shortening of key words may have been used to replace the Tetragrammaton (see Ex. 3:15) with the common title Kurios (typically abreviated “KS” with a line above) in Greek Christian manuscripts.

This offers a likely explanation as to why Yahweh’s Name is missing from the Greek New Testament. In fact, in those places where the Tetragrammaton should appear, the definite article is missing in front of the nomina sacra. This conclusion is supported also by German scholar David Trobisch’s work, The First Edition of The New Testament. In the instance of a Hebrew or Aramaic NT original, this may also explain why the Greek title theos, typically (abbreviated “THS” with a line above), appears in place of the Hebrew [Elohim] (see Gen. 1:1).

Let’s now look at the oldest Bible manuscripts available to confirm that ‘the Heavenly Father’s Name was truly Yahweh.

‘Yahweh’ in the Original Text

In the Hebrew, which is the oldest text of your Bible, Yahweh’s Name is found in the form of the four letters (known as the Tetragrammaton) no fewer than 6,823 times. Those four letters are: yod, hay, waw, hay or YHWH in our alphabet. This four-lettered name is seen abundantly throughout the ancient Hebrew manuscripts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest of the Bible manuscripts in existence.

Some believe that the correct pronunciation of Yahweh’s Name has been lost through the centuries. The Judaica says otherwise: “The true pronunciation of the name YHWH was never lost. Several early Greek writers of the Christian Church testify that the name was pronounced ‘Yahweh’” (Vol. 7, p. 680).

One of those was Clement of Alexandria, a Greek-speaking teacher in the early New Testament period (150-211 CE). He said, “The mystic name which is called the tetragrammaton … is pronounced Iaoue, which means, ‘who is, and who shall be’” (“How to pronounce ‘YHWH,’” Biblical Archaeology Review magazine, September/October 1994).

Already in the sixteenth century Mercerus suggested that the original pronunciation of the name was Yahwe (Anchor Bible note on Job).

The Schaff-Herzog 20th Century Encyclopedia says, “The pronunciation Yahweh of the Hebrew tetragrammaton need no longer be based on traditions preserved in late patristic sources. Both the vocalization yahwe and yahu (a shortened form used chiefly in personal names) are now confirmed by a variety of ancient Near Eastern inscriptional materials from the first and second millennia B.C,” pp. 1194-1195.

Others who confirm the correct rendition of the Tetragrammaton include Origen in his Hexapla (Greek revision of the Septuagint) and Jerome, who translated the Old Testament into Latin.

Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible says, “The true pronunciation seems to have been Yahwe (or Iahway, the initial I = y, as in Iachimo).” It notes that the e should be pronounced as the e in there, and the first h sounded as an aspirate (breathed letter).

For those who claim the Name should be Yahveh, the book, How the Hebrew Language Grew by Edward Horowitz, says, “The Yemenite Jews of Arabia who retain an ancient, correct and pure pronunciation of Hebrew still pronounce the (waw) as ‘w’ – as does Arabic, the close sister language of Hebrew.” The “v” developed much later through the Germanic, Yiddish influence in Europe.

The Missing Vowels Argument

Some misinformed individuals have claimed that the exact pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is unknown because Hebrew lacks vowels. This is incorrect for several reasons. Hebrew indeed has vowels, but the vowels were just not written into the Hebrew text. If Hebrew had no vowels then the entire Old Testament could not be read out loud or spoken. The Hebrew speaker understood the correct pronunciation of each word because he knew the language and the sounds of the letters and their combinations.

Consider, we can decipher many English words through repeated usage, even with no vowels. For example, if we saw the letters “txt” we would read it “text” even without the vowel “e.” When it came to names, “Wllm” would be “William” and “Jhn” would signify “John.” As with Hebrew, we see the consonants and restore the proper vowels.

Later in the seventh century C.E. scribes called Masoretes added diacritical marks or vowel points to Hebrew words so that the correct pronunciation would be preserved. These scribes obviously knew how to pronounce Hebrew words! We have also seen how the wrong vowel points were purposely used to try to hide the name Yahweh.

No language can be spoken without vowels. Vowels are vocalized with the open mouth. It would be virtually impossible to pronounce words without vowels; all you could do with just consonants alone is make incomprehensible sounds (try pronouncing those last two words with their vowels removed: ncmprhnsbl snds). Acting as a built-in safeguard to preserve the correct pronunciation, the three letters of the Tetragrammaton (the H is repeated) are also used as vowel-consonants in Hebrew, much as our letter “Y” can be used as either a vowel or a consonant. The writings of Qumran show that in the first century that “Y” used as a vowel made the sounds I and E. In Hebrew the consonants Y, W, H, can serve as vowels, being called ‘mothers of reading’ (matres lectionis). When these consonants do double-duty as vowels they help in the pronunciation of many Hebrew words.

But there is yet more confirmation that Yahweh is the correct Name.

The Jewish priest and historian Josephus, who lived in the first century of the New Testament era, attests that the Tetragrammaton is made up of vowels. In writing of the Temple, he said about the high priest, “A mitre also of fine linen encompassed his head, which was tied by a blue ribbon, about which there was another golden crown, in which was engraven the sacred name [of Yahweh]; it consists of four vowels,” Wars of the Jews, Book 5, Chapter 5, section 7.

Being vowels, the letters of the Tetragrammaton spoken together are pronounced: EE-AH-OO-EH. Say them rapidly and you get “Yahweh.”

The personal, revealed Name Yahweh is attested in the prefaces of some Bibles. For example, the New Revised Standard Version says, “While it is almost, if not quite certain that the Name was originally pronounced ‘Yahweh’…’ Greek versions corroborate “Yahweh.”

Importance of His Name

In an effort to explain why a particular Bible version doesn’t use the Name Yahweh, some editors will waffle with a statement like, we use the substitute names and titles that readers are more familiar with—as if it didn’t matter to Yahweh Himself what we call Him.

Yahweh has a much different attitude about His personal Name, however. He told Moses to tell Israel in Exodus 3:15, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Yahweh Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, and the Elohim of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.”

Repeatedly He emphasizes the necessity of His Name. He said His Name alone is Yahweh forever, and it is not subject to alterations. He gives the command to “call on my name” in Psalm 99:6; we are told to declare His Name in Romans 9:17 andHebrews 2:2; to exalt His Name in Psalm 34:3 and Isaiah 2:4; to honor his name in Psalm 66:2, 4; to praise his Name in2Samuel 22:50; to remember His Name in Exodus 3:15; to sing to His Name in Psalm 9:1-2; to think on His Name in Malachi 3:16.; and in Deuteronomy 32:3 to publish His Name. In a critical passage He declares that there is salvation in no other name. Acts 4:12reads: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Yahshua the Savior carries His father’s Name in His own, and therefore has the only Name that offers salvation. After reading what He Himself says, who can argue that substitute names and titles are just as acceptable to Him?

You can find the name Yahweh verified in nearly any common encyclopedia, in most dictionaries and in a host of Bible study references (look under “Yahweh,” “Lord” or “God”). It is restored in the modern text of some Bible versions, including the Jerusalem and New Jerusalem Bibles, The Anchor Bible, Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible, World English Bible, Holman Christian Standard Bible (50 times) and eight times in the New Living Translation and the Bible in Basic English. It is completely restored in our own Restoration Study Bible.

The Scriptures Confirm His Name Yahweh

Abundant evidence of the true Name exists within the Bible itself. Nicknames, which are often just shortened versions of the longer name, were used anciently as well as today. Abram was a shortened version of Abraham.

Yahweh also has a short form of His name, which is spelled by the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton, YH. The name “Yah” is found abundantly in the Hebrew manuscript sources of our Bible translations. It is even found in the King James Version inPsalm 68:4: “Sing unto Elohim, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.” The “J” was originally a “Y,” as corrected in Psalm 68:4 by the New King James Version.

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew dictionary No. 3050 has the entry Yahh, a contraction for 3068 [the Tetragrammaton, the Sacred Name].

The short form of Yahweh’s Name exists in many names of key Bible personalities. For example, it is found at the end of such names as Isaiah (IsaYah), Jeremiah (YeremYah), Hosea (HoseYah), Nehemiah (NehemiYah) and Hezekiah (HezekYah). The Anglicized “i-a-h” in these names is Y-a-h in the Hebrew. You can hear the “Yah” clearly when the name is spoken. But Yah also appears at the beginning of many names, as in Joel (Yah-el); Joash (Yah-awsh); Jonadab (Yah-nadab), Jochebed (Yah-chebed, mother of Moses), and Joanna (Yah-anna). This “Yah” or shortened form of Yahweh’s Name is also found in the common word of praise, halleluYah, a purely Hebrew term that
means “praise Yah.” Spelled hallelujah, it is still pronounced with the original Y sound—halleluyah—thus preserving the short form of His Name in a very well-established word.

Having His Name encoded in the names of notable Bible personalities is known as theophany. And there is one individual’s name in which assimilating the Father’s Name is absolutely critical — it is the Name of His Son the Messiah, the Savior of men

Our Savior’s True Name

In Exodus 23:21 we see a prophecy that the one sent to rescue Israel, and all of mankind as well, carries the Father’s Name within his own name. “Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name [is] in him.” This is a reference to the Savior Yahshua because only He is given the authority to pardon transgressions.

The last six words plainly state that the Father’s Name exists in the Son’s – “for my name [is] in him.” The Son affirmed that He literally bore His Father’s Name. “I am come in my Father’s name, and you receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive,” John 5:43.

Some contend that this just means that He came in the authority of the Father. That is true, too. Yet, as we have seen with many noteworthy patriarchs and prophets, the short form of Yahweh’s Name, Yah, is literally found in their names. This is common in the Hebrew Scriptures. Should it not be even more essential that the Son would carry his Father’s name in His own, especially since He Himself said so and because they are Father and Son? Every son today inherits his father’s surname. If the father’s last name is Smith, so is the son’s. The Heavenly Father and Son also share the family Name, Yah, in their own names.

Virtually every name in Hebrew has a meaning. Our Savior’s earthly father Joseph was told by the angel to give His Son a name that signified salvation.

Notice, “But while he (Joseph) thought on these things, behold, the angel of Yahweh appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Yahshua: for he shall save his people from their sins,” Matthew 1:20-21.

The angel Gabriel also spoke to Mary regarding the name of her unborn son. Since Mary, or more correctly Miriam, was a Hebrew of the tribe of Judah (see Luke 1:27), Gabriel had to communicate to her in the Hebrew tongue, her native language. Had he spoken to her in Latin or Greek she would not have understood him. Whenever angels spoke to mankind in Scripture it was always in the Hebrew tongue.

“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with Elohim. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Yahshua” (Luke 1:30-31).

The Messiah’s purpose was to save His people from the death penalty resulting from their sinful behavior IF they would turn to Him in repentance. The angel tied the son’s Name directly to salvation. You shall call Him this Name because He shall save His people. It can’t get any clearer! In Hebrew the word for salvation is hoshua. Because the Father’s Name is in the Savior’s Name, and knowing that His purpose was to bring salvation, we combine these two essential facts and the result is a name that means “Yahweh (Yah) is salvation” or “Yahshua.”

Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary shows how erroneous vowel pointing changes YAH to give YEH. You can see this by scanning through the entire column starting with “Yehovah.” In every name in this column, a shewa (:) appears under the Hebrew letter yod (y), and thereby the pronunciation in the prefix of all those names is changed to “YEH.” The proper vowel point should have been the hataf-patah (short ‘a’) to yield “YAH,” as the Judaica has explained.

Using the “e” instead of the proper “a” changes the critical family Name YAH, the first syllable of both Yahweh’s and Yahshua’s Names. This also explains how the “e” likely came about in the transformed name that became Jesus. The next letter in Jesus, “s,” results from the fact that Greek has no letter “h” and therefore no “sh” sound, only the hard “s” sound of the sigma. This was incorporated into the Latin text.

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology explains, “Iesous is the Greek form of the Old Testament Jewish name Yesua [Yahshua], arrived at by transcribing the Hebrew and adding an “s” to the nominative to facilitate declension.”

The final “us” in “Jesus” is the Greek nominative masculine singular ending. Matthew 1:8-11 contains the genealogy of Joseph’s line, where we can find similar examples of “s” added to produce Greek-inflected Hebrew names: Uzziah becomes Ozias; Hezekiah becomes Ezekias; Jonah becomes Jonas, etc. Ending a name with an “a” in Greek makes it feminine, so the Greek translators gave it a masculine “us” ending. Such errors among names in most versions can be traced to translators who failed to transliterate those names properly to bring the name sound for sound into the next language. Jesus is the English rendering of the Latin transliteration of the Greek word “Iesous” (pronounced ee-ay-sooce’). As we look into the origin and meaning of the Savior’s name we learn that the Latinized Greek name Jesus has no connection to His true Hebrew name.

Yahweh has bestowed on His Son the family Name, as we see in Philippians 2:9, “Wherefore Yahweh also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Yahshua every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Yahshua Messiah is Master, to the glory of Yahweh the Father.”

Our Savior’s Family Was Not Greek

A fundamental question about the Messiah’s Name is, why would His Hebrew parents Mary and Joseph call their child a Latinized Greek name, which also lacks any connotation of salvation? To do so would also violate what the angel told them to call their Son. Would an American couple living in Iowa give their child a Chinese name? Of course not. Chinese is not their race or culture. Neither would a Hebrew couple living in the heart of Israel name their child a Greek name like “Jesus.”

The Greek culture and language were foreign to the Jews in Israel. The invading Greeks were gentiles and were despised by most Hebrews living in the environs of Jerusalem at the time. There was no love between Jews and the pagan, Zeus-worshiping Helenists. The Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes had grotesquely defiled the Hebrew’s temple by having a hog slaughtered on its altar and then dedicating the Temple to Zeus. This madman’s monstrous act was so egregious that it would parallel what the man of sin will one day do to devastate true worship prior to Yahshua’s return, Matthew 24:15.

The acts of Antiochus in forcing the worship of the Greek god Zeus on the Jews and killing tens of thousands of Hebrews incited the Maccabbean revolt. In Acts 21:26-29 Paul had upset the Jews by bringing Greeks into the temple, proving that Jews had no love for the heathen Greeks. It was for the Greek-speaking Jews outside of Israel in Gentile nations, mostly in Egypt, that the Septuagint Greek Scriptures were translated.

Was the New Testament Originally Greek?

Many believe that the apostles originally wrote the New Testament in Greek simply because Greek manuscripts are the oldest available. Internal and external testimony explodes the common myth of a Greek original. Consider that the Savior’s earthly parents were Jews, Semitic people in the Hebrew nation of Israel. The Savior’s avowed purpose was to take the truth of the Word to the house of Israel. He chose Hebrew apostles to help in His ministry. He taught and worked almost exclusively in the central region of Israel, mostly around Galilee. He spoke Hebrew or the close sister tongue Aramaic as did everyone else in Galilee. Everything about Him exhibited the Semitic tongue Hebrew, including His Name.

The reason so much of worship — even today— reflects a Grecianized, Romanized flavor is that these cultures transformed the early New Testament faith when they absorbed the Hebrews into their western society. Because of this, many key New Testament teachings today do not reflect what they were in the year 30 CE. (Request the booklet, Astonishing Bible Truths That Your Church Never Taught.)

Joshua and Yahshua Share Virtually the Same Name

Another eye-opening link to the actual name of our Savior is the Old Testament name Joshua. If you replace the more recent letter “J” in Joshua’s name with the original “Y,” you have the pronunciation “Yahshua” (try it—say Joshua out loud, now say it again using the proper Y instead of J). There is an equivalency between the Savior’s name and the Old Testament name Joshua, as indicated in several Scriptures.

The first of these is Jeremiah 23:5, which prophesies, “Behold, the days come, saith Yahweh, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.”

This “Branch” with a capital “B” in the KJV is a clear reference to Yahshua the Messiah, who came from King David’s line. Note that this Branch is called righteous, that He shall reign as king, and that he will judge the earth. That can only point directly to the returning Messiah.

But now let’s see how truly illuminating this Branch metaphor is. Who else is associated with this designation “Branch”?

The prophet Zechariah in 6:11-12 wrote: “Then take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set [them] upon the head of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest; And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh Yahweh of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name [is] The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of Yahweh.” It is the name Joshua that is associated with “the Branch.” Through this Branch epithet we see that both the high priest Joshua and the Messiah share the same Name.

But there is still more confirmation connecting the name Joshua to the Savior’s name.

When Bible translators brought the New Testament Greek translation over into the English, they substituted the sacred Names rather than transliterated them as they should have done. Two examples are Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8.

Acts 7:45 reads, “Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom Elohim drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David.”

Hebrews 4:8 reads, “For if Jesus had given them rest then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.”

Both verses refer to Joshua, the leader of Israel in the Old Testament who succeeded Moses and led Israel into the promised land. Yet, here He is called “Jesus”! Clearly this was a mistake by translators, and a very revealing error at that.

It demonstrates that when translators came across the name Yahshua in the New Testament, that they automatically changed it to the Latinized Greek substitute, Jesus. The Bible itself warns against adding to or taking from the Word. In Deuteronomy 4:2 we hear Yahweh’s warning about changing the text in any manner:

Explicit Meaning in the Name

We read in Acts 4:12, “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Changing His Name is serious business and even impacts salvation. Names in Hebrew are tightly wrapped in their own meanings. Changing Yahshua’s name is not only identity theft, but it also alters His purpose for coming. He has gone from “Yahweh’s Salvation” to a name void of any innate meaning, showing again that Jesus is not Hebraic because Hebrew names have meaning.

The Savior Yahshua came to offer salvation. That is what Yah-shua means in the Hebrew. Act 4:12 tells us there is salvation in no other name. No Latinized-Grecian name or substitute title has that significance.

In his book, The God of Two Testaments, author Robert Brent Graves writes, “…the rendering of ‘Savior’ only gives part of the Hebrew meaning. In the original Hebrew, ‘Joshua’ literally means ‘Yahweh saves’ or ‘Yahweh-Savior’! For the first syllable of ‘Joshua’ in the Hebrew is Yah, an abbreviated form of Yahweh…” Graves further observes that Yahweh “has literally stamped upon the Messiah’s Name (1) His own name—Yahweh and (2) His own title—Savior.”

The Anchor Bible note on Matthew 1:1 reads: “Jesus. The word is the Greek rendering of a well-known Hebrew name. It was Yahoshu first, then by inner Hebrew phonetic change it became Yoshua, and by a still northern dialectal shift, Yeshua.” This reference goes on to say that the first part of the name, Yahu equals Yahweh, while the second comes from shua, “to help, save.”

Kittle’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament reveals through the Hebrew that the name Yahoshua was shortened after the exile. The shortened form Yahshua was in vogue at the time of His birth.

Benjamin Wilson’s Emphatic Diaglott says in the appendix under “Jesus”—”This name is composed of YAH, or JAH, I shall be and SHUA, Powerful;–“I shall be the Powerful.” Hence he is “mighty to save, and strong to deliver,” and will “save his people from their sins.

Eusebius, third-century scholar of the Biblical canon, noted that the Son’s name means the salvation of Elohim. “For Isoua among the Hebrews is salvation, and among them the son of Nun is called Joshua; and Iasoue is the salvation of JAH,” Ibid.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 2:10-11: “That at the name of Yahshua every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Yahshua Messiah is Sovereign, to the glory of Yahweh the Father.”

Man Decides Instead of Yahweh

Ancient Bible manuscripts from which your Bible was translated show the sacred names, but translators failed to carry them over and instead replaced them. Remarkably, they left many other Hebrew names virtually unchanged, such as: Satan, David, Abraham, Eleazar, Immanuel, Rachel, Joseph, Barabbas, Martha, and Tabitha.

It is fundamental to understand that names are not translated. Nor are specific names changed in going from language to language. Instead, the sound of a name is brought over from one language to another. William Smith is William Smith no matter where he goes in the world. His name isn’t translated or changed. He signs his credit card “William Smith” in every foreign country he is in. He answers to the name William Smith whether in France, Russia or Zimbabwe. When a dignitary from Russia or China visits the U.S., American newscasts pronounce his name the same as in his native language. Who would ever ask for the English equivalent of Vladimir Putin or the English version of Chinese leader Hu Jintao? Clearly, no one, because there is no English version. The same goes for the Father’s Name. It is the same worldwide in every language.

The Lord God?

The shocking negligence in the way the sacred Name was handled through the centuries was even prophesied in such passages asJeremiah 23:27, saying, “Their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.” Baal equals “Lord” according to the Hebrew lexicon. Jones’ Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names confirms that Baal is used in the Bible as “L-o-r-d.” The Companion Bible’s note onIsaiah 46:1 says of Bel: “Abbreviation of Baal=lord” (see note on Num. 25:3). You have forgotten my name for Lord, Yahweh foretold through the prophet.

Besides its connection to Ba’al, our English word “Lord” itself is a contraction of two words meaning “keeper of the loaf” (bread). It is from the Old English hlaford (hlaf=bread and weard=guardian (American Heritage Dictionary). Is it proper to use such a term for the Mighty One of the universe?

“God” comes from Old English gheu(d), “to pour” (American Heritage Dictionary). The Oxford English Dictionary adds that god also means to “pour as in a molten image.” Paul says there are many lords and many gods. We reduce Yahweh to just another common deity when we replace His Name with their titles. Doing so also changes His identity. He thunders in Isaiah 42:8, “I am Yahweh: that is my name: and my honour will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”

When you reduce Yahweh to a simple title—one that makes Him into a broad-spectrum, ambiguous and impersonal persona, you also water down his worship by the same measure. A one-size-fits-all belief goes along with a generic deity. Nothing specific is required when you worship a no-named mighty one. That’s modern worship in a nutshell, honoring a generic title with general worship and nonspecific behavior.

When you worship “Yahweh,” however, your worship takes on an identity as it comes under the mandates of the Creator Himself. It is to be conducted in very specific ways. His people adhere to the requirements of the covenant promise He made through His personal Name. That is why He established His Name in the very first of the Ten Commandments, so that Israel would understand that they were worshiping only Him exclusively; specifics of His unique worship will now be required of them. Exclusive worship in His one and only Name extends all the way to the end of the Bible. Concerning the 144,000, Revelation 14:1 says: “Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.”

The Price of Concealment

The one who owns the Name repeatedly commands that He be called by His Name and worshiped in that name.

Is it just a coincidence that the distinguished Philadelphia congregation, the most faithful end-time assembly, has not denied His Name? (Rev. 3:10).

Although Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament show His Name correctly, most Christian Bibles substitute “the LORD,” “the Lord GOD,” or “LORD of hosts.” (The Tanak uses the word “HASHEM” or the phrase “the Lord HASHEM/Elohim” instead of the Name “Yahweh.”)

This is by far the greatest cover-up in all of history by those who know better. It explains why so few Bible students know Yahweh’s Name today—as well as the True Worship that goes along with His covenant Name.

Most churchgoers have never heard Yahweh’s Name mentioned from the pulpit. A reasonable person would think that at some point most ministers would have turned on to the host of commands in the Bible associated with Yahweh’s Name and would have shown the truth about it to their congregations. Any sincere minister would teach this truth they learned in seminary, especially in light of the 7,000 times His Name appears in the Old Testament manuscripts. But it has yet to happen on a large scale. The age-old suppression of the Name has latent power. Tradition is a powerful force to reckon with.

What more does it take for Yahweh to prove to man that He has a personal Name by which He expects to be called and worshiped? Does He need to reveal His Name 7,000 more times before people begin to see its importance? He says over and over again how critical His true Name is to proper worship.

He Commands His Name Be Honored

Yahweh tied His promises, His covenant, and salvation to His Name. He commands His people to call on His true Name as part of His worship. “That men may know that thou, whose name alone is YAHWEH, art the most high over all the earth,” Psalm 83:18. It is nothing short of stunning that so few clergy are willing to teach this key salvation truth!

But some might ask, when it all comes down to it, does it really matter? Doesn’t He know who I mean anyway?

We’ll let Yahweh Himself answer that.

He says in Malachi 2:1-2: “And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith Yahweh of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.” Refusal to call on His true name is a condition of the heart. It says to Him you have no real desire to honor Him in all things. He says you are not completely true to Me if you can’t even honor me by my Name.

The issue is, does He “know who you mean” when your worship also fails to live up to what He expects? Both His worship and His people are tied to Him through His Name. It is not just a matter of knowing or even just using His Name. It is also about aligning your worship and your life with all that His Name signifies, because His Name defines Him. This is clear in Exodus 6:3: “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh was I not known to them.” This is a Hebrew idiomatic expression that means Yahweh’s Name was not yet revealed in its fullness through the sustaining and saving acts that He would eventually perform for Israel.

According to the Apostle Peter, our very salvation is through the Name Yahshua. Consider what he tells us in Acts 2:37-38. “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Yahshua Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’”

Yahshua warned in Matthew 7:22, “Many will say to me in that day, Sovereign, Sovereign, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Iniquity is sin. Sin is defined as lawbreaking, 1John 3:4. Along with knowing and using His name is the obedience that goes with it. Living a unique life of obedience is what He means by giving glory to His Name.

Those who honor His name will receive the blessings of life everlasting as they call on the only name that offers salvation. Acts 4:12says, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

What about you? Will you honor the One you worship by honoring His personal name? Will you be among the select ones who eagerly embrace what they have learned and submit to His Name in worship? That is what He expects of His followers. The first commandment says, I am Yahweh, you shall have none other mighty ones before me. If you honor Him by His personal, revealed Name, He will bless you as well.

Some will say: He has many names; He knows who you mean anyway; one name is as good as another; I speak English not Hebrew; His name just means his authority, and the pronunciation of His Name was lost. Each of these is soundly and decisively refuted by Yahweh Himself as well as by linguistic fact.

The Name Before Moses

Some believe that Yahweh’s Name was not known before He revealed it to Moses in Exodus, and therefore it cannot apply to all people. The following verses from Genesis reveal the error of this argument and show that Yahweh’s Name was indeed known by the patriarchs and used long before Moses:

►Eve called on His Name – Genesis 4:1

► Abraham called on the Name Yahweh – Genesis 12:8; 14:22; 15:2, 7; 21:33; 24:3;

► Abimelech used Yahweh’s Name – Genesis 20:4

► Isaac called upon Yahweh’s Name – Genesis 26:25

► Yahweh revealed His Name to Jacob – Genesis 28:13

► Anciently men “began to call on the Name Yahweh” – Genesis 4:26

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A great deal of misinformation has been written about notable personalities down through history, but nothing compares to the delusion and confusion in the minds of millions regarding the true Messiah and His earthly mission.

Centuries of false teachings coupled with widespread ignorance of the Scriptures have produced an entirely skewed view of the person of the Savior and what He stood for. If Satan, the father of lies, could convince millions to believe in a different messiah who completely misses the mark, then he could score a coup of staggering proportions. That is exactly what has happened as countless people have been misled as to the teachings and purposes of their Savior.

All kinds of false concepts regarding the Son are crystallized in conventional beliefs. They extend even down to such details as His physical appearance. Imagine for a moment that He revealed His identity on the old To Tell the Truth television program.  Millions of shocked viewers would stare in stunned disbelief when the announcer asks, “Would the real Messiah please stand up?” Rising from His chair is a rugged, muscular, olive-toned Hebrew with shorter, dark hair and beard, calling Himself “Yahshua” and proclaiming that He will set up His kingdom soon at Jerusalem.

Still seated on either side of him and staring forlornly into space are two fragile impostors. They sport shoulder-length, blondish locks, puppy-dog eyes, thin eyebrows, narrow noses, and lily-white skin — not unlike that popular painting of a frail, northern European “Messiah” decorating the walls of thousands of churches and homes. Rather than a Jew of the Middle East who was no stranger to hardship and hard work, these impostors present an image that is as far off the mark with regard to His appearance as popular beliefs are about what He taught.

Many of the early Christians, who were polytheistic in nature, would meld their former pagan gods and ideas into this new worship of the Messiah.The Early Alexandrian Christians were syncretic in their worship of the Messiah and Serapis (a Hellenistic-Egyptian god) and they would prostrate themselves without distinction between the two. A letter inserted in the Augustan History, ascribed to the Emperor Hadrian, refers to the worship of Serapis by residents of Egypt who described themselves as Christians: “The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumour. There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis…”      

Is it just a coincidence that image we see of the Messiah bears a disturbing resemblance to Serapis with his long flowing locks? Does this imagery square with the Bible when the Apostle Paul tells us it is a shame for a man to have long hair?1Corinthians 11:14.

To tell the truth, the Savior of the Scriptures is not the same one you probably have been taught from your youth.  He is quite unlike the individual described in contemporary sermons and Sunday school lessons.

Incredibly, millions who rely on Him for their very salvation are more ignorant of Him than they are about their favorite sports stars or Hollywood celebrities. Shouldn’t you want to know the truth about the One who stands at the center of your beliefs? Being that He is soon going to judge your life, isn’t it important to know what He said regarding salvation, as well as what His standards of judgment will be?

Clearing Out the Tangled Undergrowth of Error

You need no special revelation from on high to learn the truth about the Messiah. All it takes is an honest look into the Scriptures and a willingness to shed some popular but false concepts.

The most basic knowledge about Him, which is elementary to knowing anyone, is amazingly missing in traditional teachings. Most professed believers have been given bogus instruction about the One they claim as their Savior. Because of that fact, they do not know:

• when He was actually born
• what His and His Father’s Names really are
• what He actually looked like here on earth
• whether He had brothers and sisters
• why He came to earth
• what He taught about salvation and the Kingdom
• when He died
• how He died
• why He died
• whether He even died

With so much misinformation and ignorance surrounding the Messiah, how can millions say with complete confidence that they “know” their Savior?

One of the most eye-opening Scriptures regarding the Messiah is in the first verse of John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Yahweh, and the Word was Elohim.”

Who is this “Word” who was in the beginning? Verse 14 explains: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…” The Word is none other than the Son of Yahweh. He was on the scene at the creation of the universe. Proverbs 8:22-35 confirms His existence from the beginning of creation. Speaking to a group of Jews the Savior Himself testified to His heavenly existence before He came as a babe born in a manger. “Yahshua said unto them, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am’” (John 8:58). See also John 6:62 and John 6:38, where He said, “I came down from heaven.” His entire motivation, according to verse 38, was to “do the will of Him who sent me.” His Father’s plan, incidentally, has been the same from the beginning, Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17.

Everything in the universe was made by the Word, according to John 1:3. He is the image of the invisible Elohim, and “by him were all things created…by him and for him,” Colossians 1:16.

The facts surrounding His human birth have been skewed, which we are reminded of at the end of each secular year. Tradition says He was born at Bethlehem on December 25, yet the Scriptures never mention the day or even the month of His birth. He likely was born in the autumn, when shepherds would still be in the fields “watching their flocks by night,” Luke 2:8. This would not be happening in the middle of the cold, wet winters of the Middle East. The December 25th observance date derives from the ancient Roman Saturnalia, a celebration of the return of the sun-god Mithras at the winter solstice.

Nowhere in Scripture are we told to observe the birthday of the Savior; hence, no date is ever given for that observance. If His birthday were important to Him, and necessary to observe, you can be sure He would have told us exactly when it was. This is clear from those observances that are essential to Yahweh and His Son. For example, remembering His Son’s death at the Passover is explicitly mandated and, because it is so very important to Yahweh, the date to keep the Passover is precisely laid out for us (Ex. 12:6; Lev. 23:5). The same is true of the six other annual observances of the Bible.

Born a Hebrew, He Had a Hebrew Name

The Savior was born of Hebrew parents, Luke 1:27. It naturally follows that He would have a Hebrew name. “Jesus Christ” is a Greek name, and we know He was not Greek (see Luke 1:32; Hebrews 7:14).

Being a Hebrew who came in His Father’s Name, John 5:43, the Son would have a name tied to His Father’s.  It is no different with a son bearing his father’s surname today. And that is just what we find in Matthew 1:21, where the angel told Joseph that his son’s Name would be based on the key fact that He would save His people from their sins. Thus, we have Yahshua, a Name in the Hebrew meaning “Yahweh is salvation” (Yah-shua). No such meaning exists in the Grecianized name “Jesus.” “Christ” is a shortened form of the Greek Christos, meaning “anointed.”

Being a hybrid, the name “Jesus” has no distinctive etymological root meaning. In fact, the letter J did not exist in any language until the time of Christopher Columbus. This is a fact provable from any unabridged dictionary under the letter J. Therefore, no one referred to Him  as “Jesus” until the 15th century or 1,500 years after His birth.

The Anchor Bible explains His Name Yahshua in a note on Matthew 1:1: “The first element, Yahu (=Yahweh) means ‘the [L-rd],’ while the second comes from shua ‘To help, save’” (vol. 26, p. 2). Translator errors in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8 in the King James Version testify to the fact that “Jesus” was wrongly inserted in the New Testament text for the closer “Joshua” (Yahshua), son of Nun. Modern versions have fixed this error.

Why should we be so scrupulous and careful about what we call Him?  Do names really matter? Does your name matter to you? His Name certainly matters to Yahweh, who instructs us in no less than the very outset of  the Ten Commandments what His Name is, and in the Second Commandment that He expects us to worship none else, Exodus 20:2-3. He also warns against falsifying His Name, 20:7, which is done by the use of erroneous substitutes.

When we use another name in worship we are dishonoring Him and His Son by ignoring His specific commands to call on His Name, and therefore putting our will before His. To insist on using another name once we know His true Name is to defy the very One who gives us each breath. The four combined Hebrew letters of His Name are found 6,823 times in the ancient text, and He refers to His Name hundreds of times throughout the Scriptures. For example, He tells us to honor His Name (Ps. 66:2,4); call on it (Ps. 99:6); confess it (1Kings 8:33); love His Name (Ps. 5:11); praise His Name (2Sam. 22:50); think on it (Mal. 3:16), and trust in it (Isa. 50:10).

Common arguments against His Name are completely baseless. Nowhere in the Bible do we find any statement saying, “It doesn’t matter what you call Me, I know who you mean.” Neither do we find a single verse stating, “I have many names” or one verse that says, “All names for Me are acceptable if you are sincere in your worship.”

On the contrary, we learn that the truly sincere worshiper will honor His Father in all things, especially when it comes to His Name. Yahweh is adamant that He has but one Name. The Psalmist writes, “That men may know that You, whose name alone is Yahweh, are the Most High over all the earth,” Psalm 83:18. His people will know and be called by His Name, Deuteronomy 28:10 tells us. He commands us not even to mention the names of other “deities,” Exodus 23:13.

He says the false prophets have tried to make people forget His Name just as their fathers have “forgotten my name for Baal,”Jeremiah 23:27. Baal, the supreme deity of the Babylonians, is associated with the title “Lord.” When we call on Him by the title Lord, we not only violate His command not to do so, but we also invoke heathen worship traditions and place Him in a lesser role than the heavenly Majesty that He is. (In English a lord is a husbandman and landowner, not a Supreme Sovereign of the universe.)

The Savior Looked Like the Average Man

Besides His Hebrew Name, the Messiah looked like a typical Jew of His day with plain, average features, a fact that was prophesied: “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him,” Isaiah 53:2.

His hair was the normal, clipped style for a man of His time, and certainly not shoulder length. This is clear because He was a priest in the Melchizedek order (Ps. 110:4) and a priest had to have clipped hair, according to Ezekiel 44:20. Paul, who saw the risen Messiah, would never have said that it was a shame for a man to have long hair if the Messiah Himself sported long hair (1Cor. 11:14).

Yahshua, the firstborn in the family of Joseph, had four brothers: James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, and at least three sisters,Matthew 13:55-56, John 2:12. Therefore, His mother Mary (correctly, Miriam) was not a virgin for long. While dying Yahshua made arrangements for the care of His mother, John 19:26-27. His death, incidentally, was not on a cross, as popularly believed, but on an upright pole with wrists nailed overhead. This is clear from the words translated “cross.”  They are the Greek stauros and xulon, and mean a plain stake or pole without a crosspiece. John 3:14 tells us He was lifted up at His impalement in the same way Moses lifted the serpent up on a pole in Numbers 21:9.

The pagan origins of the cross can be traced back to Egypt where it was known as the “Ankh” (key of the Nile). It was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that literally reads “eternal life.” The Ankh was a symbol of life and fertility.

With the syncretistic beliefs of the early Roman church it is not surprising they grasped on to this symbol as their own. One only needs to look at the Vatican in Rome to see remnants of ancient Egyptian symbols, most notably the pagan Egyptian obelisk (phalic symbol) in  the center of St. Peter’s Square. Significantly, atop the obelisk they have added the cross. This obelisk was brought to Rome by pagan Emperor Caligula in CE 37 and relocated by Pope Sixtus V in 1586.

He Died or We Have No Payment for Our Sin

Some believe He did not actually die but went down to hell to preach to lost souls for three days. If He didn’t die and wasn’t resurrected from the dead, then we have no payment for our sins, 1Corinthians 15:13, 17. Sin’s consequences require no less than a death penalty payment, just as for Israel when they slayed animals on the altar. Yahshua became that death sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins, Philippians 2:8, Hebrews 9:27-28.

In Hebrew 9:15 we read that as the mediator of the New Testament, that He redeemed transgressors under the first covenant by means of His own death. The Evangels tell us plainly that He died on the stake, Matthew 27:50, Mark 15:37, Luke 23:46, andJohn 19:30. The expression, “Gave up the ghost” in the King James Version is an Old English euphemism for the act of death, when the spirit or breath of life (Greek pneuma) leaves a person and he becomes life-less. We also know through accounts like Peter’s testimony in Acts 10:39-41 that the Messiah literally died and did not just leave His body for a period of time while He remained conscious in spirit form.

Yahshua Obeyed and Taught Obedience by Words, Example

Of all the mistruths about Him, however, the most pernicious in regard to salvation completely misconstrues the Son’s purpose for coming to this earth. Many have the image of an iconoclastic Son who came bringing simple grace and faith to replace the failed law of His Father.

This widespread myth is openly expressed in traditional teachings in spite of Yahshua’s clear and unambiguous personal testimony to the contrary. He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled,”Matthew 5:17-18. So long as this universe exists, so does every aspect of the law. He said so Himself!

Many read “fulfill” and still think “do away with.” This is attributable to an endless chorus of clerics who find Yahweh’s law contemptible and teach against it at every opportunity. And no wonder. It is Yahweh’s laws that separate the true faith from the many false ones, Revelation 14:12. His way of Truth is guided by His laws and commands and to learn of His Truth is to begin obeying them.

What exactly did Yahshua mean by fulfill? If I fulfill my obligations I complete them. I do everything I was obligated to do. If Yahshua fulfilled the law, He did what the law required and He did it perfectly without sin. We know this to be fact because He did no sin,1Peter 2:21-22, and sin is defined as the transgression of the law, 1John 3:4. Being sinless and not transgressing the law means to be in perfect subjection and obedience to it. Because He was our example, He showed us the necessity to obey the Father’s laws just as He did, verse 21. See also Philippians 2:5 and 1John 2:6.

Many use the term “Mosaic law” in a disparaging way, saying that ancient Israel’s obedience to “Mosaic” laws is not necessary today. Yet, in Acts 7:38 – in the New Testament – we read that Moses at Mount Sinai “received the lively [living] oracles to give unto us.” Oracles refers directly to Yahweh’s “spoken words” which were given to Moses at Mt. Sinai.

In Romans 9:4 Paul explains that spiritual Israelites today are those who get the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of Yahweh and the promises. Peter says that ministers are to speak the law of Yahweh, 1Peter 4:11. Yet, few have the desire or courage to do what Peter said.

Yahweh’s laws are perfect, and they convert the soul, Psalm 19:7 tells us. Far from being a burden, obedience to His laws changes us, shows our love for Him, and carries untold blessings as well. “For this is the love of Yahweh, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous,” 1John 5:3.

He Magnified, Not Diminished the Law      

This is the most serious misunderstanding regarding Yahshua’s purpose for coming. He did not come to abolish the law given to Israel. Rather, He came to enlarge upon it, to make it more incumbent on Yahweh’s people, to teach us to obey, as He obeyed, for the right reasons. He explained that not only the sinful act itself but the very thought of the act is a sinful wrong, and He expanded the provisions of the law to cover wider applications, Matthew 5:20-47. Now just entertaining the thought of evil can condemn us.

He said that not even the least of the commandments are to be broken and those teaching against obedience to them will be called the least in the Kingdom, while those who teach His laws will be called great in the Kingdom, Matthew 5:19. Why would Yahshua say this and then in the next breath teach against obedience? After all, the law is exactly what He stands for and what His Father also stands for. “He that keeps His commandments dwells in Him, and He in him,” we read in 1John 3:24. His laws test our desire to honor and be true to Him.

The majority will not accept this key, essential truth. Human beings in their unconverted state are by nature rebellious against Yahweh and His standards. Paul warned, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against Elohim: for it is not subject to the law of Elohim, neither indeed can be.”

No wonder, then, that Yahshua’s coming to obey and uphold the laws of His Father would be met with widespread human resistance and denial. So much resistance, in fact, that His very purpose has been completely negated by the teaching that He nailed the moral law, along with the Ten Commandments, to the torture stake (popularly known as “cross”).

This teaching derives partly from a widespread misunderstanding of Colossians 2:14, where the “handwriting of ordinances that was against us” is in fact the added laws of man (which is what the Greek word ordinances –dogma – means: man-made law). Yahweh’s laws are never characterized as “against us” anywhere in the Word. On the contrary, Paul tells us they are “holy, just and good,”Romans 7:12. Yet it was the religious establishment of Paul’s day who gave these dogma or added, handwritten statutes of man, like “touch not, taste not, handle not,” the force of scriptural law, Colossians 2:20-22. Both Paul and Yahshua showed the difference between true laws of Yahweh and these “commandments and doctrines of men” that effectively separated Jew from Gentile and the Gentile from the Kingdom, in their eyes.

Above all, Yahshua taught only what was given to Him by His Father: “He that rejects me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.” Yahweh’s law first given to man in the Old Testament is still His law today, and Yahshua came to expand upon and perpetuate it. The only change was in the ritualistic law like animal sacrifices and man’s additions.

Scriptural law doesn’t exist for its own sake. Its purpose is rooted in Yahweh’s will for His people. Yahshua followed Biblical law because He did the will of His Father and did exactly what His Father sent Him to do, John 6:38.

His Truth Unifies Believers, Separates Others

Because Yahshua stands on the side of righteousness and obedience, He automatically generates division between the sincere follower of Yahweh and those who desire to live as they please. This is true even within families. Note how He demolished another popular myth, “Suppose you that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, No; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law,” Luke 12:51-53.

The Scriptures are characterized as a sword that cuts to the depths of soul and spirit, discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart, Hebrew 4:12. Yahshua also will return with the double-edged sword of the Word and separate the obedient from the rebellious,Revelation 1:16. He will be the Judge, John 5:22, while His Word – the law – will be the standard by which He will judge,Psalm 96:13.

This important fact is prophesied in Revelation 20:12: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before Elohim; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

How plain! If we will one day be judged by His Word, then it is crucial that we get in line with that Word now. His Word is the guide for living the life acceptable to Him. Yahshua Himself followed Yahweh’s Word (the Old Testament) and His living an obedient, sinless life was our example, 1Peter 2:21-22.

How often have you heard someone say something like, “It’s good  that the Savior is going to judge you and not me, because He will forgive; I won’t.” Many have the misguided notion that going around forgiving everyone is all that Yahshua will do. His job will be to automatically forgive even the vilest behavior regardless of whether that behavior is followed by repentance or not. This is a heresy of the greatest proportions and could only make sense if He did away with the law so that there are no longer any standards to live by. But as we have seen, He did the exact opposite – He magnified the law, raising the bar by extending it even to our very thoughts (Rom. 7:1).

Lawbreaking has serious consequences and requires repentance leading to forgiveness for those contrite in heart. At the same time it exacts a death penalty on the defiant who refuse to bow the knee to Yahshua.

We learn from the Word that Yahshua has righteous indignation for those who refuse to submit to Him once they know the Truth. He minced no words when it came to the self-righteous, religious leaders – the Scribes and Pharisees of His day – calling them hypocrites, snakes, sepulchers, and blind guides. He was patient and forgiving when it came to the ignorant, but He came down hard on the knowingly rebellious in clear and devastating terms.

The Wicked and Rebellious to Face His Wrath

Yahshua is returning to the earth to wrest its control from unruly and disobedient man.  Paul tells us, “For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” 1Corinthians 15:25-26. His actions will be forceful and decisive when He returns with a rod of iron to conquer defiant nations. “Then shall the Master go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle,” Zechariah 14:3.

Read the apocalyptic description in Revelation 6:14-17: “And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

When that day comes rebellion against the laws of Scripture will be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Those who say the laws were done away, but in their hearts know differently, will face an uncompromising Judge —who is the very One who gave those laws at Sinai for our own good. Everyone will either obey or taste the wrath of the Sovereign of the world.

Paul wrote these sobering words, “Seeing it is a righteous thing with Elohim to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Master Yahshua shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not Elohim, and that obey not the evangel of our Master Yahshua the Messiah,”2Thessalonians 1:6-8.

Daniel 7:27 tells us that one day soon everyone will bow to the authority of Yahweh, “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”

The Kingdom Yahweh sets up on earth will be placed under the rulership of His Son and run by His laws, Micah 4:2. Just as He did while He walked this earth, the nations will be keeping Biblical Sabbaths and Feast days. We read of this in the prophetic chapters ofIsaiah 66:23; Ezekiel 45, and Zechariah 14:16-19. All rebellion will be put down and the entire world will finally learn and practice His ways and worship Him on the Scripturally appointed days known as moedim.

The traditional, worldly holidays will be but a distant and flickering memory. Isaiah wrote, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Yahweh’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the Elohim of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Yahweh from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” 2:2-4.

Once obedience is universal the earth will return to its Edenic state, a re-establishment of a time when there was no sin and consequently the earth was a veritable paradise.  Yahshua’s role as “Yahweh’s salvation” will be finished. From Yahshua – the “Salvation of Yah” – He will become Yahzidkenu, “Yahweh our Righteousness” as the will of His Father is enforced across the whole earth, Jeremiah 23:6. Peace, happiness, and unspeakable joy will fill the lives of everyone.

At last mankind will understand the truth and realize the blessings of obedience that Yahshua taught while on this earth. Everyone will get in line with the ways of Yahweh and His Son. There will be no atheist or agnostic in the coming Kingdom on earth. All will know Him, from the least to the greatest. Satan will no longer be around to pervert the truth through false teachings and injurious heresies like “all His laws have been nailed to the cross.”

The inspired prophets boldly proclaimed that His laws will go forth from Zion into every corner of the planet, and then all people will discover firsthand the unspeakable blessings that come with following the ways of Yahweh.

May each of us hold to the sure hope of the soon-coming rulership of Yahshua the Messiah, the true Savior whose blood paid sin’s death penalty and opened the way of salvation. May we seek and learn all we can of Him, obeying Yahweh as His Word commands and as Yahshua taught, in preparation for that Kingdom.

The greatest blessing of a true follower of Yahweh is to be found worthy to attain His Kingdom, 2Thessalonians 1:5, and to show others the only way that leads to life everlasting through faith in Yahshua and a life of obedience to His Word.

Our Bible is a translation from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Out of both superstition and misguided reverence, the Name of the Father, Yahweh, was hidden in subsequent translations. The title “Elohim” and its shorter forms “El” and “Eloah” are Biblical Hebrew terms meaning Mighty One(s), and from these terms translators concocted the English title “God.”

One belief is that “El” and “Elohim” should not be used by the True Worshiper because ancient Canaanites referred to their pagan deities by these terms. The issue hinges on one pivotal question: who used the title Elohim first, the Hebrews who spoke the heavenly language of Hebrew, or the Canaanites who spoke a related Semitic tongue?

If we accept that Hebrew was the original language of mankind, and can show that “Elohim” is found in the oldest Hebrew texts available to us, then we can know that the word was inspired of Yahweh. That means it was used first in the Hebrew and only later was usurped by the Canaanites, not the other way around.

We can do exactly that by looking at the oldest Biblical manuscripts in existence, which are the Dead Sea Scrolls. A leather scroll of the complete Book of Isaiah was found dating back 1,000 years before the Masoretic text, the oldest Hebrew transcript in existence up to that point.

Every book of the Bible is represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, except for the Book of Esther. All through these scrolls we see the terms El and  Elohim in the Hebrew. From the very first verse of the Scriptures, the oldest Hebrew copy of Genesis refers to our Creator as “Elohim.”—“In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.”

In his book, The Temple Scroll (vol. 2), Yigael Yadin reproduces the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy in which Elohim is commonly used (for several examples, see Column LIV, Deut. 13:3, p. 401).

If Yahweh refers to Himself as Elohim, who is any man to say it is wrong? Would Moses, who was inspired to write the first five books of the Bible, ever use a pagan term for our Creator? The terms El and Elohim could not have “crept into” a later text of the Scriptures if they already appeared in the earliest one!

Because no manuscripts have been found that are older than the Dead Sea Scrolls, we conclude that Yahweh inspired the term Elohim. Moses wrote it and Israel used it.

Different Sources of the Biblical Text?

One theory cited by the opponents of the term Elohim says that our Bible is an editorial cut-and-paste job from several different manuscript sources. The older manuscripts, called the “J” source, contain the Tetragrammaton, while later ones, like the “E” source, employ the term “Elohim. From this they contend that “Elohim” is a later designation borrowed from the likes of the Canaanites. Opponents of the use of Elohim point to the “J” version as the oldest and more accurate one, lacking the words El or Elohim. Their argument collapses, however, in face of the following authority’s statement: “There is of course, nothing new in J’s use of Elohim” (The Anchor Bible, Genesis, Vol. 1, p. 37.)

This theory of the “documentary” view of the Bible, also known as the J-E-P-D hypothesis, was conceived by secular critics of the Bible ostensibly to bring into question the inspiration of the Scriptures. The Dead Sea Scrolls, as the oldest existing manuscripts, reveal a different story.

This hypothesis is also being discounted by modern scholarship as increasing numbers of Biblical scholars are acknowledging its fallacies.

In a 1959 interview in Christianity Today, distinguished Hebrew scholar Cyrus H. Gordon rejected the notion that the use of “Elohim and “Yahweh” as divergent names implies different literary sources (Higher Criticism and Forbidden Fruit). Yahweh’s Word is handed down to us by direct inspiration, according to 2Timothy 3:16, and is not the product of conflicting manuscripts and an editor’s scissors and glue.

Further, if we adhere to this theory, then the authenticity of Scripture itself is open to question. Is the Bible handed down by Yahweh, or given to us by way of editorial whim? That is of utmost and fundamental concern to the Bible believer. Inspiration of the Scriptures is the foundation on which our very beliefs must rest. If the Bible cannot be trusted then the Truth we hold is itself in question.

Cognate Languages, Similar Words  

A key ingredient to understanding this issue is knowing that Middle East languages are all cognate or related to one another. Just how similar they are is explained in How the Hebrew Language Grew, by Edward Horowitz. He makes this statement about Semitic languages, of which Hebrew and other languages in the Mideast are a part:

“The sister languages of Hebrew are languages such as Assyrian, Babylonian, Arabic, Syrian, Ethiopic, and also, as has been lately discovered, Egyptian. With these, its own sister languages, and not with the Indo-European group, Hebrew is intimately bound up. All the common Hebrew words are found with only slight changes in all the other Semitic languages. A good Hebraist knows literally hundreds of Arabic words without ever having studied Arabic, because Arabic and Hebrew have such a large number of words in common. …All the Semitic languages go back ultimately to an ancient parent Semitic language.”

That “ancient parent Semitic language” was Biblical Hebrew. We find that Israel upon entering the Promised Land had no trouble communicating with the various Canaanite peoples already there. That was because they spoke sister languages, much as Germans can understand both High and Low German.

Is it therefore any wonder that the Canaanites, living in the Promised Land, who spoke a Semitic tongue that derived from Hebrew, would use the same word Elohim that the Hebrews used — only applying it to their deity instead of to Yahweh?

We learn that the same thing likely occurred with the use of the sacred Name “Yah” in Egypt. Notice the following from theEncyclopedia of Gods by Michael Jordan: “Yah — moon god. Egyptian. Yah may have been an import to Egypt brought by the Semitic immigrants…” (p. 291).

The practice of name borrowing was common in history. As people migrated they took their beliefs, language, and names with them and spread them wherever they went.

One argument says that the terms El and Elohim crept into the Hebrew language years after the original Scriptures were written, citing Isaiah 19:18: “In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Yahweh of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction” (“city of destruction” is a mistranslation, and properly should have been “city of righteousness,” from the Hebrew ha-zedek).

This passage is a future prophecy concerning the conversion of Egypt in the Kingdom, when all will speak Hebrew. The verse has nothing to do with bringing a pagan Canaanite language to Israel. “Language of Canaan” is simply a poetic reference to the Hebrew tongue because of all the Hebrew-speaking Israelites who settled there (see Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature). Further, in the 8th century B.C.E., when Isaiah was writing this, the language of Canaan was Hebrew, not Canaanite.

As a footnote, in going from one language to another, the actual letters we choose to replicate the sounds in a name are essentially inconsequential, so long as those letters accurately express the sounds of the original word.

Some who think that “El” is wrong to use make peculiar substitutions, like replacing the “el” with a “yl” in words like “Israyl.” This is an effort to make it appear as if a perceived “problem” has been fixed. It is not much different when churchianity capitalizes “god” in order to make a generic title into a name.

But in this case, changing the “e” to a “y” amounts to changing the inspired Hebrew word itself by substituting a yod for the aleph in “el.” Does changing the “el” to “yl” return us to the proper, original word? If so, where is the proof that “yl” is more correct? Where is the Hebrew word “Israyl” found anywhere outside the private writings of a few detractors? Moreover, one wonders how the substitution of “y” for “e” makes any difference in the pronunciation of the word anyway.

We must never attempt to shore up our own private doctrines by changing the Bible to make it fit our beliefs, either by taking from it or adding to it. We have no authority to do so. It is Yahweh’s Book, not ours. The command in Revelation 22:19 is clear and sobering: “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, Elohim shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (see also Deut. 4:2, Prov. 30:5-6).

It is clear that El, Eloah and Elohim are proper in reference to “Mighty One(s)” in the Scriptures.

Biblical Examples of ‘El’

One can make a solid case that the original language on earth, handed down from the very heavens, was Hebrew. It was the language of the heavenly messengers, who always spoke to humankind in Hebrew and to those whose native tongue was Hebrew. Yahshua spoke to His Father in Hebrew (Aramaic) while hanging on the stake, Matthew 27:46. His words were not translated in the New Testament, which is auspicious for us.

Notice what He said. “And about the ninth hour Yahshua cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is to say, My El, my El, why have you forsaken me?” “Eli” means “my El” in Hebrew (“i” stands for the possessive “my”).

If El were a pagan term and condemned by Yahweh, our Savior certainly would never have used it in calling out to His own Father.

If “El” were a pagan reference, why do so many patriarchs retain “el” in their names? Elijah (EliYah), Elisha, Eliezer, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel and many more include the legitimate Hebrew word El. If El is so wrong, why is it found in the names of the great archangels Michael (a name meaning “Who Is Like El”) and Gabriel (“El Is Powerful”)? These angelic beings existed long before the earth itself, certainly long before any pagan languages or pagan deities.

After getting the promise of a great nation in the memorable dream about the ladder, Jacob called the site where he had slept “Bethel,” a name that means “House of El” (Gen. 28:19). Later, in Genesis 35, Jacob was told by Yahweh to go to Beth-el and build an altar there. Jacob called the place of the altar “El-Beth-el,” or “El of the House of Elohim.”  In Genesis 33:20 he again erected an altar, this time at Shalem, and called it “El-eloah-Israel,” or “El, the Elohim of Israel.” Certainly the eminent patriarch would never have named any place in honor of a pagan deity.

Even before this, Abram named his son Ishmael, meaning “El will hear.” The angel in Matthew 1:23 said that Yahshua’s name would be Emmanuel, meaning “El with Us.”

It is clear that the titles El, Eloah, and Elohim are legitimate Hebrew terms that were inspired of Yahweh and used by His people, including His own Son. To say they are from paganism is to believe a delusion of one’s own making.

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