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We’re going to talk about the doctrine of sacred names. There are some people who feel that if you have the right pronunciation of the right name of God that you alone have an in with God; everybody else does not count! You must have the right name and you must say the right name, and it must be free from any taints of any paganism at all whatsoever. If you do this, then you have that right connection with God!
With some of the Scriptures that we have used concerning works, let’s look at this as the very key place to start as far as understanding. I’ll tell you one thing, if it were true that we did have the knowledge of the sacred names, and if we did understand it, I don’t think that there is any guarantee that we would have the proper pronunciation anyway.
Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved… [it doesn’t say by the use of sacred names] …through faith…” If you have something in your hand, what does Paul say? What do you hope for! You have to have faith that you’re going to receive it! It is through faith!
If you have a sacred name, then this takes away from faith. I’ll show you why it takes away from faith and what it does. It gets down to a work of law!
“…and this especially is not of your own selves; it is the gift of God, not of works…” (vs 8-9). Using a sacred name is a work, because whenever you come to a name of God you must use Yahweh or Elohim or Yeshua—pronouncing Jesus’ name in Hebrew. “…so that no one may boast” (v 9).
John 4:23: “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth…”—meaning that we’ve been showing all along how your heart is if you want to take a spiritual temperature. How is your heart? your attitude toward God? If you have a physical name with a physical pronunciation that is not “…in Spirit and in Truth…”
“…for the Father is indeed seeking those who worship Him in this manner. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in Truth” (vs 23-24).
We are told by the ones who believe in the sacred names doctrine—and these are names of God, I’m not making fun of that; they have meaning—that if you have the sacred names and we use it that God will hear us. If we don’t have the sacred name and use it then God won’t hear us. How do we account for this?
Romans 8:23: “And not only that, but even we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, also groan within ourselves…” It’s talking about the whole creation travailing and groaning in pain. With some of the things we’re seeing in the news today, that sure is true.
Just groaning in pain, “…awaiting the sonship—the redemption of our bodies. For by hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for why would anyone still be hoping for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we ourselves wait for it with patience” (vs 23-25).
Verse 26 is one of these things that shows that the doctrine of sacred names really kind of hangs in question.
Verse 26: “Now, in the same way also, the Spirit is conjointly helping our weaknesses because we do not fully understand what we should pray for, according as it is necessary, but the Spirit…”—God’s Holy Spirit. It says in v 9 that if we have the Spirit of God we are His; if we have not the Spirit of God, we are not His.
- What if you understand about sacred names but you don’t have the Spirit of God?
- Will the sacred names do you any good?
- Chances are it won’t, because you’re none of His!!
“…but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us…” (v 26). The Spirit of God is doing something within us, for us, to God and back to us. Here’s what it is:
“…with groaning… [communication to God] …that cannot be expressed by us” (v 26). I’ve heard this verse used for those who speak in tongues. This is one they point to proving the speaking in tongues, but it’s just the opposite. Many times you get to the things that they try to prove and the Scripture really shows just the opposite.
If it is a “…groaning that cannot be expressed…” that means it cannot be mouthed with the human tongue or mouth. It cannot be uttered. This does not have anything to do with speaking in tongues.
When you speak in tongues, you are uttering something with your own vocal mechanisms, or manipulated vocal mechanisms. It doesn’t have to do with speaking in tongues, but let’s examine this in light of the sacred names.
What if you are praying and God’s Spirit is intervening and helping communicate to God your innermost feelings? beyond that which you can express yourself? Have there been times when all you could do is say, ‘God, help me!’? That’s all you can say. You felt more than that. I’ve felt more than that, but that’s all I could say.
What was going to God? I don’t know! God’s Spirit was relaying back to God more than what I was saying, with “…groaning that cannot be expressed…”
If you have a sacred name, then what? The point I’m trying to make is that if you use a sacred name that is not a key to getting to God more than anybody else. Not at all!
- Is it a sin to use a sacred name? No!
- Can you create sin in other people by using sacred names? Yes, you can!
You can create sin with any doctrine if you misuse it! Take the Jews; an interesting study: They were condemned because they misused the Law. Or, as we have said, they idolized the Law rather than worshiping the Lawgiver. So, we have a situation where sacred namers idolize the name rather than worship God. If you idolize a name, then you have a work of law. They make a law: you shall not pray to God unless you use His name. That is a work of law!
Julie Cassell wrote me a nice letter because she did a study on sacred names. I guess some there were trying to convince her that she ought to get all involved with sacred names. When you go through it there are a lot of things that you think sounds good, and maybe they are right.
Many years ago I went through a whole series on sacred names when I was in WCG. She sent this study and I think this is an outstanding study where someone can just sit down and take and lay it out very, very logically. Go to the Bible and you can prove what it true if you’re willing to let the Bible be your guide, follow it and not try an twist and turn it to make it something that you want it to say. She wrote me this nice letter:
Greetings to you and all the brethren! I’m writing to thank you for mentioning sacred names on a recent tape that you sent. I assume from this that you don’t have any other sacred name tapes to send me.
I thought that you may have worried that I may be going in that direction, so I would like to explain the reason for the study of this question.
As you know, a very dear friend of mine wrote me about sacred names. I only had three answers to give to her, which it turned out were not enough for me to be convinced that it was not God’s will for us to use sacred names.
One of them was in Zeph. 3:9.
It talks about language. In my study of it, almost all the places where it talks about sacred names and worshiping God and using His name, almost every one of those are in a Millennial setting. As we will see, as she points out here, the sacred namers have gone so much to Hebrew that they say, ‘Unless you have the Hebrew names, you cannot have contact with God.’ What if the Hebrew is not what it was back then.
Zephaniah 3:9: “For then I will give a pure language to the people, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve Him with one accord.” God is going to give them a pure language. Do we have pure languages today? No! English is the most polluted language around! We’ve got German, Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and since WWII a little Japanese and Korean in America. This is obviously a Millennial setting when this is going to take place.
I said that if we could only say God’s name in one language then that shows Him as a peculiar nationality, which He is not.
In other words, if we must address God in Hebrew only, is God a Hebrew? The Jews would like that, because that would validate everything that they have said.
I still feel that is valid, but my friend just said that she did not know of anyone who has said that Yahweh was a particular nationality.
I said that Yahweh was not the Father’s name, because Jesus was the Lord God—Yahweh—of the Old Testament. However, one could make a pretty good case from Psa. 83:18 that God the Father. called “The Most High” is Yahweh.
Also, Assemblies of Yahweh do believe the Yeshua—a name for Jesus, the Hebrew name, or type of Joshua—is Yahweh of the Old Testament.
I thought that this was really a good study.
- Who is the Father of the faithful? Abraham!
- Don’t you think that God would have revealed to Abraham the necessary things for salvation? You would assume that He would!
- Is Abraham going to be in the Kingdom of God? Yes, he’s going to be in the Kingdom of God!
Let’s see a surprising statement even by God Himself in talking to Moses.
Exodus 6:2: “And God spoke to Moses, and said to him, ‘I am the LORD…. [Yahweh] …And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty…. [El Shaddai] …But I was not known to them by My name JEHOVAH” (vs 2-3). Of course, this is where the Jehovah Witnesses get their thing. All of the Jehovah Witness’ Bibles translate the LORD as Jehovah.
This is why they have a lot of Mexican converts to the Jehovah Witnesses, because in the Spanish Bible the word for LORD is Jehovah. Obviously then, the Jehovah Witnesses then can really get a lot of converts among the Spanish.
He says, “…But I was not known to them by My name [YAHWEH] JEHOVAH.” That kind of does something to the premise then. If you have the word Yahweh, and this is necessary for salvation, why is it that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob didn’t have it? Either they needed to have it because it was necessary for salvation, or they’re not going to receive salvation.
But we know they’re going to receive salvation because Jesus said to the Pharisees, ‘When you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the Prophets in the Kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out…’ So, we know that they’re going to be there. This is kind of a hard verse for a sacred namer to deal with. This proves one thing: To God it was not important to reveal Himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as Yahweh.
From the paper presented: Sacred Name Doctrine by Julie Cassell
There are four parts to the sacred name doctrine. The first part proving that Tetragrammaton should be rendered Yahweh rather than LORD, and that Yahweh is the best scholarly transliteration available.
Transliteration means from one language to another; you retain the pronunciation of the original language.
Parts Two & Three: Doing away with certain titles, especially LORD and accusing, suspecting, condemning those who use titles, that they are taking God’s name in vain or worshiping idols, asserting that the Hebrew language is the only language in which the names of the Father and Jesus may be spoken.
That’s getting pretty strong. The only language!
And that the use of the names in another language is idolatry.
Part Four: asserting that the New Testament was written in Aramaic rather than Greek.
Just think about this for a minute. Aramaic is a dialect of Hebrew, a Babylonian dialect of Hebrew. Yet, they claim that you must have the Hebrew language, and is the only one you can use, and they say that the New Testament was written in Aramaic. You kind of have a contradiction there.
Part One has to do with the tetragrammaton, those four little markings that are the Hebrew letters YHVH, which are pronounced Yahweh.
Part One: I feel that the research that the Assemblies of Yahweh has presented concerning the name of Yahweh is true.
However, I might mention at this point that there is even a split among the Assemblies of Yahweh. There are the Assemblies of Yahweh and the Assemblies of YA, because some feel that Yahweh is not as good as YA. If you’re a German, you can do that just right.
The Tetragrammaton should most accurately be translated Yahweh rather than the substitution LORD. The research done on the word Jehovah is fine, it’s also the son’s name. However, once having presented all this, the Assemblies of Yahweh have gone off the deep end in asserting things that are not true, and thus have corrupted their own doctrine.
I want you to follow through how very cleverly she had thought this through to understand what has been done. This is one of these very, very important things in searching something out in the Scriptures. Follow the logic through to its very end! All the way through!
A person makes a statement, just like we found one right here: asserting that Hebrew is the only language in which the names of the Father and Jesus may be spoken. Then saying that the New Testament was written in Aramaic. They would love to say it was written in Hebrew, but they can’t.
As a matter of fact, this one sermon about the scrolls that they have found and the ashes of a red heifer, listen carefully because they have found the Hebrew Old Testament with Greek manuscripts right alongside of the New Testament. The Jews don’t like to let that be known.
Just to summarize what God did to the Jews: since they rejected Christ, He absolutely expunged everything that had to do with the writing of Christ in Hebrew. They are preserved in Greek. And who did the Jews hate the most? The Greeks!
So, God took the people that they hated and used their language to preserve about the Messiah. God will use that judgment. Example of how sometimes God will do that: We covered one time in the Old Testament where the people said to God that He just brought them out to kill their children. God said, ‘No, I didn’t bring you out here to kill your children, but since you said that, your children will live and you’re not going into the ‘promised land.’
Part two: Doing away with certain titles, especially LORD and accusing, suspecting and condemning those who use such titles of taking God’s name in vain and worshiping idols.
There are many ways of looking at some of these things, if you really come in at it. Let’s take what was done in the Bible study. Here’s a good example that you can use Strong’s Concordance and come to the knowledge of the Truth.
The Assemblies of Yahweh assert that if we say Lord rather than Yahweh then we are saying Baal, because Baal means lord.
This is not true. The word Adonai—Lord—not Baal...
Adonai is also another name for Lord. Baal is a name that is translated lord.
…was substituted in place of Yahweh. The word Adonai itself is used infrequently in the Old Testament referring to God.
Abraham used Adonai when speaking to God in Gen. 15:2; 18:3. David also named his fourth son Adonijah, which means ‘my Lord is YA’ showing that Adonai is proper in referring to God.
If Abraham used the word Adonai in referring to God, that was undoubtedly proper.
There is a Greek god called Adonis.
See what some of the things you’re getting into, when you get into that. Has Satan appropriated to himself every name of God that he could?
- Does he like to be called lord?
- Does he like to be called all mighty?
- Yes, he has!
Let’s look at the name Baal. If Baal—that word—of and by itself were inherently evil, would God have used it in reference to Himself? Of course not!
Isaiah 54:5: “For your Maker is your husband…” The Hebrew for husband is ba-al, a title that means master, lord, husband, ruler! So, when they worshiped Baal, the false god, that was a title that was given to Baal and they worshiped the false god, calling him master, lord, husband! The name Baal can mean just husband. That name is not necessarily totally evil. But when you say ‘Lord’ I have no concept in my mind that I’m talking about Baal-worship.
If you’re going to worship God in Spirit and in Truth, it is also what is the concept in your mind. That’s an important thing.
One Scriptures given as evidence of this doctrine is Hosea 2:16…
Hosea 2:16: “And it shall be in that day’…” What day are we talking about? Obviously, in the Millennium; almost 9 times out of 10 it has to do with the Millennium.
“…says the LORD, ‘you shall call Me Ishi… [husband] …and shall no more call Me Baali’” (v 16)—master, and not Lord. There’s quite a difference.
God is saying to the Israelites, ‘You will no more call Me Master or Lord, but you will call Me husband. Even these terms are kind of interchangeable.
- Baal means husband
- Ishi means husband
But in this sense it is a different kind of husbanding. Where it’s one of love and concern and not one of master or ruler in that particular sense.
Verse 17: “For I will take away the names of the Baalim out of her mouth, and they will no more be remembered by their name.”
The names of Baalim that are referred to in this Scripture are Baal-barith, which means the covenant Baal or Beelzebub (Exo. 14), which means ‘lord of the fly.’
Baal-Peor—lord of the opening
Beel and Beltis are names of Baal
This Scripture is not talking about the title Lord, if it were, God would not have called Himself Baal in Isa. 54:5. What has happened with this doctrine is actually the exact opposite of what the Assemblies of Yahweh originally intended to accomplish.
They strip God of His own rightful title—Lord—and give it or attribute it to Baal, just because it was used to honor Baal. There are titles of honor in every language under the sun. “Language is not pagan,” said Fred Coulter, “it’s the religion that is pagan.”
Honorable titles, which should be given to God, are given to false gods, demons, idols and men.
What do you do in that particular case?
I researched some names in my Book of Names and found that the name Molech, god of the Moabites, means king. If we follow the logic of this doctrine, this means that when we refer to God as King, we are speaking about Molech.
You can turn it around the other way. The Bible calls God King. See what she’s getting to here.
The Encyclopedia Americana says that Tammuz among the Semitic people was addressed as Adonai.
We just saw where Abraham addressed God as Adonai. But to address Tammuz as Adonai is taking God’s name in vain for an idol. That means my Lord, which from the Greek the word Adonis is derived.
So, do we strip God of His rightful title Lord because it is used to honor Tammuz? Or do we strip God of the title God because it is used to honor teutonic idols? Elohim is a title applied to God and other gods.
Every place where it says you shall have no other gods before Me, Exodus 20:2: “I am the LORD… [Yahweh Elohim] …your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods [elohim] before Me” (vs 2-3). It’s the same word when you go back to Gen. 1—in the beginning Elohim, God. And God said, ‘Let Us [Elohim] make man…’
In Exo. 20:2 God says, “…You shall have no other gods [elohim] before Me.” Did God profane His own sacred name by calling them gods? You see what happens when you get a work of law and you really start working this. You just back yourself into a corner and leave yourself no room.
Elohim is one of the sacred names of God, but it is also applied to other gods. Do we do away with that title?
Finally, I found in the footnote of the Holy Name New Testament in Rev. 9.
It’s interesting how this is given; it shows something, talking about the locust that would come out of the bottomless pit.
Revelation 9:11: “And they have over them a king, the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but the name he has in Greek is Apollyon.” What does the Hebrew word Abaddon mean? Father Baal!
So, do we now strip God of the title Father because it was used as a name for Baal?
What did Jesus come to reveal? Reveal the Father! What are we to call God? The Father! He said, ‘When you pray, you shall say, ‘Our Father, which are in heaven…’
What I feel is this, in the New Testament God has narrowed it down to two simple terms: the Father and Jesus Christ. What that does is it gets rid of all this sacred name stuff that you argue about, because you can go around and around with this stuff all daylong. He just brought it down to two simple terms: Father and Son! The Son is called Jesus Christ.
Just because titles can be used to honor or even name any deity or person does not do away with the necessity, value or significance in honor and worship of the true God.
It doesn’t! If we come to God and we say in our prayers ‘Holy Father’ we’re praying to God, and we are honoring Him! Just because someone goes up to the pope and says, ‘holy father,’ should we stop calling God ‘Holy Father’? God is the Holy Father! Should we stop doing that because the pope is called ‘holy father’?
What are we really doing if we do that? We end up with the exact opposite deferring to the one we don’t want to defer to! We have quit honoring God with what He should be honored with. I hope you all follow that!
She really did a good job with this paper. And this is what can happen when you ask God to guide and help you, and you do it with honest research and find it out.
Moreover, titles do not take away from the name Yahweh, but rather give Him the honor that is due. A major result of this doctrine has been to cause people to strip God of His rightful titles.
because they’re afraid to say it
Another thing that this doctrine has done is to cause the followers to falsely condemn and separate themselves from—disfellowship—brethren who are truly worshiping in Spirit and in Truth. This is as much a sin as taking His name in vain.
Then she quotes out of their magazine Assemblies of Yahweh, May/June 1985, under the article: Returning to the Ways of the World.
Think about this when I read it. It sounds very familiar. You build up a doctrine of works in which you then can control a group by this doctrine of works very easily. How much better to control a group than to monitor their conversations: What names of God do you use?
“You may think there is nothing wrong in worshiping with others who may use the names we know are not correct for the heavenly Father and the Savior. But don’t form company or associate with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? What agreement has the temple of Yahweh with idols?”
See what happens when you get something that is a doctrine of works, or salvation by works? See what you can come up with? You twist it all out of context. Even Paul said that when they put the one in the Corinthian Church that sinned out of the Church, and he said, ‘I don’t want you to be associating yourself with people in the world who may be of this kind, because we’re in the world.’ This completely does it the other way around.
What happens, you end up with just a little group that they’re bound by this little teeny doctrine, of which then they rigorously lord it over each other to make sure that they’re all dong it. You can’t even talk with your friends, neighbors or fellowship with Sabbath-keepers. The Assemblies of Yahweh keep the Sabbath and Holy Days and things like that.
Part Three: Asserting that the Hebrew language is the only language in which the name of the Father and Jesus may be spoken, that the use of equal names in another language is idolatry.
This is a very good section here, too.
Numerous reference materials do show the equivalent names of the Father and the Son in various languages. It is not what the names are that is really at issue, but whether or not to use the names, but the language of the names.
This is the real issue: The Assemblies of Yahweh are upholding the Hebrew language under the guise of upholding the Holy name.
(go to the next track)
It would really put me on pins and needles if I had to get together with a group and I didn’t say Yahweh just right and someone’s ears perked up and they had to write it down and take it to the minister. It can lead to that!
In their booklet The Heavenly Father’s Great Name, pg 22, they admit that there is no direct command, as such, to transliterate the “holy name” sound for sound into another language of the world.
In other words, there is no command in the Bible that says that you shall use Hebrew names only.
Yet, they condemn people for idolatry unless they use Hebrew names. Is it idolatry before God to say “the Eternal”’ rather than “Yahweh”?
What does Yahweh mean? It means the Eternal! For those of us who don’t have the Hebrew language, Yahweh doesn’t mean a thing! But Eternal does! The meaning is more important than the sound.
I’m glad we don’t have to go through things like this. I don’t want to get into a doctrinal argument with anyone. I love to answer Bible questions, but some of these harangues just get absolutely just out of sight. If you’ve ever sat on a doctrinal committee or where people have their own little pet doctrine to get along… I think that what we do here with our studies, we have complete openness in what we’re doing, and no one has a pet doctrine and trying to harangue! That makes it nice. When you get a pet doctrine and you’re haranguing it, it gets me upset.
In looking through their booklets, I find their whole basis for transliterating the name.
In other words, to say when you’re speaking in English and all of a sudden you come along and say Yahweh or Elohim, that is a transliteration. You can say the Lord, or the Lord God, or God.
The reason for transliterating the name…
Listen to this: they want to get away from the world; they don’t want to do as the world—right? Isn’t that what they say?
…is that world figures, such as presidents and prime ministers, have their names transliterated properly wherever they go.
First of all, this is not a commandment of God but a tradition of men, and it is not necessarily true.
You can take the name, just take my name Fred or Fredrick. In German even to transliterate it, you would not pronounce it the way the English do, but with an accent. You would not say John in German, you would say ‘yo-hon’—and so forth—the pronunciations are different.
But this is a different point. If they don’t want to be as the world, or practice as the world, why do they insist on a practice of the world in transliterating names?
If God’s name must be spoken only in Hebrew, then He must be a Hebrew.
That nationality; which He is not!
The Assemblies of Yahweh do admit this in their book The Missing ‘J’—pg 16. We can tell from an individual’s name whether he is Germanic, Spanish, Irish, Scandinavian, Oriental stock because of the permanence of his name.
I felt that I ought to prove that this is or is not God’s will for us to use the names in our own language. There is one New Testament Scripture, which I found that shows the name of Christ is proper to use.
When I read through and studied that some years ago about the sacred names, everything was just an axe-grind, and it really wears hard on you when you go through it. I think this is terrific what she has done, just to go through and look at what the Bible says. Here’s one very key, important place:
Acts 11: “Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to seek Saul, and after finding him, he brought him to Antioch. And it came to pass that for a whole year they assembled together with the Church and taught a great multitude. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”
Antioch was apparently the headquarters where the Apostle Paul worked out of; that’s where he actually started with Barnabas. It was a Greek-speaking church. Notice how this has been put together.
The disciples were first called Christians, not Messians. The word Christ means Messiah. They were not called Messians; they were called Christians at Antioch when Barnabas and Paul were teaching.
But in the Holy Name Bible, this part of the verse has been removed.
They have their own Bible and they put it out so you can read it and have all the names substituted. This part is taken out, removed.
Also removed is the Scripture showing that Saul used the Latin name Paul after he was converted and sent to the Gentiles.
I have never seen that version of the Bible, so I don’t know what they call him. I guess they just call him Saul all the way through.
Now we know that removing Scriptures in order to conform to ones doctrine is not the way that leads to life.
If it doesn’t fit throw it out; if you can’t make it fit then get rid of it! NO! That’s not the way to do it.
I did not have to go any further with that.
Part Four: Asserting that the New Testament was written in Aramaic rather than Greek:
I’m satisfied that with the work done in 1979 on sacred names series concerning the tremendous Greek influence of this time period is true.
It speaks of itself.
Also on one tape… [referring to me] …in the Assemblies of Yahweh booklet verse by verse called Exploding the Inspired New Testament Greek Myth.
I went through that verse-by-verse, paragraph-by-paragraph and it was just incredible the reasoning that they came up with.
He (Fred) read from the booklet things which are contrary to sound doctrine, such as “we must base all doctrine on the Old Testament until the originals are unearthed.”
That is the originals of the New Testament. If that is so, then God never sent His Word into the world, and people can’t be saved today. That’s what they’ve said in their books. It’s the other way around—Matt. 5-7. The New Testament is to show us how to understand the Old Testament.
What’s happening, and it was my conclusion in going through this, that they were gradually getting more and more back to Judaism and a ‘religion by works of law,’ of which one of the works of law was a sacred name.
Because the predominant influence in the culture at the time was Greek, and because Paul—who wrote most of the books of the New Testament—was sent to Greek-speaking Gentiles, and because Josephus, in his writings, showed that the official language of the time was Greek, for these and many other sound reasons I’m satisfied that the New Testament was written in Greek originally, and that the Aramaic assertion is not true.
Just one other thing you might note. The Aramaic version of the Bible is the called The Peshitta. It does not have the books of James, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, 1st, 2nd Peter or Jude and Revelation. Whatever they had in Aramaic, they were the ones who left at some time or other.
I am sure that because of the tremendous impact that Jesus Christ had that it was written in more than just Greek and Aramaic. I’m sure that we may uncover some things of Hebrew in it, in time. But the Jewish hatred for Jesus was so absolutely utter and complete against Jesus that it was… Like today, if the Jews do something and get caught, you cannot unearth it anywhere. The Jews stick together! If we have to wait for the Jewish New Testament to come on the scene there isn’t going to salvation for anybody.
Revelation 7:9 “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one was able to number, out of every nation and tribe and people and language, was standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and holding palms in their hands.” God has called people of every language, every nationality, everything.
I doubt that we could speak Hebrew without an English or American accent. Someone who speaks Hebrew you can almost pick it up right away because of their accent.
Even if we had a transliteration of the names, could we really say it properly? Could we ever be guaranteed that that was the name that was used during the days of Christ, or during the days of Moses, that that was the right one? Just look at the English language, how the pronunciations of words through a 3-400 year period have completely changed. Look at the spelling of the word ‘through.’ I couldn’t get it through my head when I was a kid, why was it ‘through’? That was the way the spelled it in old English!
Then you get a French word with ‘eaux’ on it and it’s pronounced with long ‘o’ sound. I was so glad when I studied German because every letter meant what it said. It’s the first time that I got my grammar straightened out. I had to go back to understand my English. I learned more English when I studied German; in German everything is precise. You say everything the way it is written out. And even their languages have changed.
There are many similar words in German and English. You would think that they would be transliterated from one language to another, but they’re not. Even the pronunciation is different. I doubt if we could come up with a proper pronunciation anyway.
Acts 2 perhaps undoes the doctrine of sacred names more than anything else; the doctrine requiring you to speak the names of God in Hebrew, though your native language is some other language. This one chapter undoes it more than anything else.
Acts 2:5: “Now, there were many Jews…” Who is a Jew? We think in our mind that it is anyone who is of the tribe of Judah. But a Jew can be anyone who is converted to Judaism.
You can see that today. Did not the Jews in so-called Israel go down into Ethiopia and bring back the Jews who were Ethiopians, but they were called falangist Jews. You read this in the paper that they rescued 12,000 Jews from starving in Ethiopia and here are all these blacks. They were considered Jews because they embraced the Jewish religion. So, this has to include more than just the nationality of Jews. I’m sure in this case that it includes more than just that.
“…who were sojourning in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when word of this went out, the multitude came together and were confounded, because each one heard them speaking in his own language” (vs 5-6).
If it were important that it only be in Hebrew, we’re right back that beginning event. Why was it that God accommodated them in their own languages? I mean, the Bible teaches the opposite. God accommodated them in their own language by a special miracle.
Verse 7: “And they were all amazed, and marveled, saying to one another, ‘Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that we hear each one in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and those who inhabit Mesopotamia, and Judea and Cappadocia…’” (vs 7-9). That covers the whole area east of what we call the Holy Land, clear up into the Caucasus’s, north of the Black Sea.
“…Pontus and Asia, both Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya which are near Cyrene, and the Romans who are sojourning here…” (vs 9-10)—strangers; God spoke to strangers of Rome. In other words, God spoke in the Latin language. He spoke to the Romans in their own language.
“…both Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; we hear them speaking in our own languages the great things of God” (vs 10-11). If we take it for just what it says, this shows that God is not concerned with the sacred names as a point of salvation. But God is concerned that we worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.
I thought that this was so well-done that I should just take this time to bring it to you, and also to encourage you in your own studies that separated miles and miles from anyone, that Julie Cassell is able to go through and do a nice study like this, sitting down and thinking it through, and pick through all the arguments that are thrown at her and be able to come to the knowledge of the Truth. I think that’s just fine.
Additional points:
With secret languages and code words that you have this as a way of gradating things up, and the ones that use secret words and secret handshakes are the Masons.
Sooner or later you get up to the top and what is the thing that the Masons are told when they finally, in all of their quests, get right up to the top and are told that truth does not exist. Yet, down here, in the lower levels, they’re told to seek truth. Then you get up at the top and truth does not exist.
Yet, they have all of the secret names, secret handshakes and great anticipation. It’s kind of like Satan’s religion. You finally get up and the and ‘sorry folks, there’s no salvation.’
Whenever you get into these physical things that you do—and I can see this more and more—and it’s more clear to me than ever before, that you’re going over this and not having done it for years, when you get into these physical things to do, and you create a work of the law, you come to the exact opposite of what God wants you to do.
You end up where you’re judging, condemning, and bringing things upon yourself and other people that God doesn’t want you to bring.
Then you’ve appropriated God to yourself and you won’t share Him with anyone else unless you give them the ‘secret key’ that gets right back to the things that the pagans had, to where the priests who had the keys of Jannes and Jambres to unlocked the gates of heaven or hell.
We still have that today in the concept with the movies and they show something about someone dying and going to heaven. Who is there? Peter is there, and he can let you in or not let you in! Still the same concept, there’s some little secret thing. All of these are pretty much the same flavor of it.
If you’re using these sacred names, you’re saying that ‘God has respect to me because I’m using them’ and not to you because you’re not, the Bible says that ‘God is no respecter of persons.’ It’s amazing how you can take this and go back to other Scriptures, where it says that the ‘Gentiles have not the law and do the things contained in the law, they are a law unto themselves.’ There is an exact principle there. God is not a respecter of persons.
But what this does if you follow the sacred name things, you’re saying that God is a respecter of person, only to those who use the name. That’s amazing!
All Scriptures from The Holy Bible in Its Original Order, A Faithful Version by Fred R. Coulter
Scriptural References:
- Ephesians 2:8-9
- John 4:23-24
- Romans 8:23-26
- Zephaniah 3:9
- Exodus 6:2-3
- Isaiah 54:5
- Hosea 2:16-17
- Exodus 20:16-17
- Exodus 20:2-3
- Revelation 9:11
- Acts 11:25
- Revelation 7:9
- Acts 2:5-11
Scriptures referenced, not quoted:
- Romans 8:9
- Genesis 1
- Matthew 5-7
FRC:bo
Transcribed: 6-7-15
