Is a Christian Required to Use the Hebrew Sacred Names?

When we were over in India this last trip, we often get questions about various things, and that sometimes helps to stimulate maybe a thought that, well, you know, if they've got questions over there on this topic, maybe we do as well over here. And on this particular trip, and this was our eighth trip overseas, I heard more questions about, should we be using special names for God? Should we be using Yahweh or a variety of different thoughts about, you know, what's the right way to pronounce that name or to spell it, or Yeshua for Christ? Should we be using those names rather than God, the Father, and Jesus Christ? So, over the years, this topic continues to come up from time to time. In fact, I first started attending church in about 1972, and it wasn't long that I remember our pastor speaking about this particular topic, and I was a young guy at that time. I was probably about 16 years old, and I thought, I wonder why we're talking about that. I didn't even think that was even an issue, and yet brethren, it has been, and had been actually even before this time, but it was apparently an issue among many at that time in the Church of God. And so the pastor needed to address it, and it was addressed in other areas as well. Well, eventually I got a little older, went to Ambassador College, and I think it was about my junior year when it kind of came around again, and it was addressed at the college and maybe other congregations around the world. And so it's a topic that seems to come up over and over again. And I think we want to be cognizant of it, because it has actually taken some people out of the Church. And, you know, Satan has a way of trying to deceive us and trying to distract us, or try to get us onto some special knowledge of some kind, and it can tantalize us, and all of a sudden it begins to affect us. And so if it's something that's worked in the past, maybe it's something that will work again. There are certain people that are out there that believe, and I'm guessing genuinely, most of them are part of the Sacred Names Movement or the Sacred Names Group, or a Sacred Names sect, that they reject the traditional names, I suppose, or the biblical names as we have in the New Testament, of God. They reject Jesus Christ. They reject the word Lord. They believe that we should address the Father and Son only by their Hebrew names, of Yahweh and Yahshua, or some other derivative of that. Is there a correct name for God? Is there a sacred, special name that God wants us to use? And should a Christian only use Hebrew sacred names of the Old Testament? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. The title of the message today is a Christian required to use the Hebrew sacred names. And there's many, many different opinions about this topic, but I think opinions are one thing. But the thing that we really want to know is what God has to say about the topic. So my specific purpose today is to look at what God has to say in the Scriptures, to look at the biblical text, to look at what it has to say, to see whether we are required to use only the Hebrew names that are found in the Old Testament. So that's what we're going to focus on today. Now, the belief is that Christians are to only use or are required to use these in the Old Testament. So they're rejecting all of the New Testament references or names of God. They reject the New Testament, but they hang on to the Old Testament. Let's talk a little bit about history here. Any way to find out what's sliding around, John?

Okay, we're on three. Okay, all right. So let's go to the next slide, number four. Let's talk a little bit about the history here. What I found noteworthy to me is that the Sacred Names Movement is really recent when it comes to human history. I mean, this wasn't a first-century issue. This wasn't a second century issue. This wasn't an 18th century issue. This is very recent. It arose in the 20th century out of the Church of God Seventh-Day Movement. The movement was influenced by a few men. One of them was Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who changed the name of the main branch of the Bible student movement to the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931. And he based his belief on the importance of the Hebrew name of God. There was another member of the Church of God Seventh-Day by the name of C.O. Dodd. And he began keeping the Jewish festivals, including the Passover 1928. And then he adopted the Sacred Names belief in the late 1930s. So we're talking about the 1920s or the 1930s, very recent. Later on, there was an assembly of Yahweh that was formed. This was the very first religious organization in the United States for the Sacred Name Movement. It was formed in Holt, Michigan in the 1930s. The assembly of Yahweh believes that the name of Almighty Yahweh should be used along with his sons named Yahshua. And they keep many of the various things that we keep. They keep the Seventh-Day Sabbath from sunset to sunset, Friday sunset to Sabbath sunset. They believe in the festival days. And they have other beliefs here as well. So the Sacred Names Movement is a recent phenomenon which didn't begin that long ago in human history. So again, is the belief that Christians are only required to use Hebrew names of God, is it found in the Old Testament? Does God tell us that's what he wants us to do? Well, we're going to take a look here and look at a few things here.

The Sacred Name Doctrine supports the view that the Hebrew names of the Creator should be retained in that language. It shouldn't be changed. So if you speak English or if you speak Spanish, or if you speak German, when you refer to God, you should speak that name in Hebrew and in no other language. And so that's the belief that they have. Furthermore, large numbers of English-speaking Christians, this is their belief, their salvation could be at stake because they have failed to use these Hebrew names. They call the Creator God and Lord, which sacred name people say are mere titles because Christians call God God or Lord Lord that they feel that's wrong because those are titles. That's not his name. And their views, they do look at some biblical scriptures to try to back up their arguments or their position. Let's take a look at one of them in Exodus chapter 3. So that's our first scripture here. Exodus chapter 3.

And we're going to pick it up here in verse number 13.

God is calling Moses and he says, well, if you want me to go, how do I tell them what your name is? Who's sending me? Pick it up verse 13. Then Moses said to God, indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? Verse 14. And God said to Moses, I am who I am.

Which basically has to do with the eternal. I am who I am. And in the Hebrew, that's various Hebrew words here, meaning always have been, are, always will be. He said, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. Verse 15.

And God said, moreover, to Moses, you shall say unto the children of Israel that the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And this is my memorial to all generations. So in verse 15, where it says, the Lord, that word Lord is in Hebrew, it's YHWH, or it could be rendered YHVH, depending upon who you ask. Interesting thing about Hebrew is that when the Scriptures were inspired, you know, in the Old Testament, they were pretty much for the most part, not all, but mostly the Hebrew language. Hebrew does not, it has, doesn't have any vowels. It just has consonants. And so this is the word for God here in this particular verse. Verse number 15, where it says, moreover, God, that's Elohim, moreover, God, that's referring to Elohim, said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel the Yahweh. And I guess Yahweh is the word I'm going to use to describe the YHWH or the YHVH, but there's a question as to what whether Yahweh is the correct pronunciation. But just for simplicity's sake, I'm going to say Yahweh throughout the message today. But this is the word, one of these two is probably the correct word because even that's questionable, is which one is the right one. And also, of course, what is questionable as to which pronunciation. How do you really pronounce this? As we'll go along, we'll see that's an issue here. So that this, if this is his name, the thought is, is that this is what we should be saying. This is his name. They also bring in the third commandment. Let's go to Exodus chapter 20. We're in Exodus. Let's go to Exodus chapter 20 because YHWH, and I guess I'll defer to that one because there's two choices, but for simplicity's sake, I'll defer to the first one there and also pronounce it as Yahweh for simplicity's sake.

It says in verse 7 of Exodus chapter 20, again part of the 10 commandments, this being the third, you shall not take the name of the Yahweh, the YHWH, your God, your Elohim, in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless, who takes his name in vain. Now, the sacred name, people paraphrase this a little bit that says you shall not regard Yahweh's name as useless.

So you need to use it. It's an important name. This is how he's communicated himself to us. This is his name. We should use this name. So those are a couple of scriptures. There's others. We're not going to take the time to go through, but these are some of the scriptures that they point to as part of their evidence in their mind that we should use the sacred name.

So some believe you address the Father and the Son only by their Hebrew name, Yahweh or Yahshua, even though not everyone agrees on how to spell it or to pronounce it. So Yahweh, referring to the Father, and one of the spellings for Yahshua, there's many, for Jesus here. They believe. Now, what's interesting, though, about this idea is that those who claim that we should only use the right name for God don't necessarily agree on what that right name is. There's a lot of different thoughts out there. Some of them use Yahweh, some Jehovah, some Yahshua, Yesha, Yahshua. You know, there's all these different potential names that we can have, and this isn't all of them, by the way. This is just a sampling of what some of these are. And very sacred name groups will claim that one or another of these names is the correct one, so they all don't necessarily agree among themselves of what that correct name should be.

So the belief is that humans must only use the sacred name when addressing God, this YHWH, or again, some think it's YHVH, and that this name has to be pronounced correctly.

Now, these four letters here are called, and you may have heard this. Some of you have been around for a while, maybe others this is brand new, but it's called the tetragrammaton. That's a real fancy word, isn't it? Tetragrammaton. And basically what that means, it's Greek for the four letters, Greek for the four letters, or the four characters. And so some believe it's vital to use the sacred name of the tetragrammaton, and yet the pronunciation isn't agreed upon among many, many different people.

It's disputed, and some people believe that you, nobody really knows the correct way to pronounce this tetragrammaton of YHWH. So if the pronunciation truly did get lost, how did that happen? How did that happen? That's an interesting study here in history.

Most scholars believe that the tetragrammaton of the pronunciation of the YHWH or YHVH has been lost. But how? How did that come to be? Well, we've already touched on the fact that the Hebrew language is composed only of consonants. There's no vowels here as we understand that in the Hebrew language.

And so how did they know how to pronounce any of their Hebrew words? Not only this one, but all of them. How did they know? It was bioral usage. They would come to the temple, and it would be spoken. So they knew how to pronounce all of the Hebrew words that didn't have vowels in them. Vowels, as we know today, are very important in language. But for them, they didn't have these vowels.

Now, these vowel sounds eventually were added. They were eventually added, but they were not written down. They were not written down until around the sixth or seventh century AD after Christ. The vowels were added to the Hebrew. And of course, that was long after all of the Old Testament was written.

That was long after Jesus Christ had lived and died. That was long after the New Testament books had been written. But there was a group of Jews, Jewish scribes known as the Maserites. You may have heard of them. The Maserites, and what they did was they created symbols, various points to represent the vowels that they were using by the oral tradition.

So they began to put little like we would put in an A, or our vowels, A, E, I, or U. They were putting in various symbols that represented sounds. But they were adding that, you know, in the sixth and seventh century AD.

And up to that time, only consonants. Only consonants in the scriptures. Now, unfortunately, when it came to the YHWH, this tetragrammaton, which is the name of God, the name of the Creator, this was considered too sacred to be uttered. And they ceased to pronounce it for centuries. They did not pronounce the name of God.

And so, eventually, over time, Israel and Judah had come to forget how to pronounce it. Nobody knew for sure. Whenever the Jews recited the text, when they came to YHWH in the scriptures, they substituted the word Adonai. Adonai, which means Lord, it's been translated Lord in the English. They didn't pronounce the tetragrammaton. They pronounced Adonai. So today, today, no one on earth knows how to properly spell or even pronounce YHWH or YHPH because the vowel sounds have long been lost to the Jewish people. And this happened hundreds of years before Christ came in physical form to this earth. So even today, the Jews do not even try to pronounce it.

They do not try to pronounce YHWH because they know that they are not sure that they are making the accurate sound of the name of the creator. So the Jews themselves don't know the proper pronunciation of the Hebrew names for God, even though they have the Hebrew text, even though you would think that's the closest source that you could get. They don't know. Now, there's a man by the name of Robert Alter, and in his English translation of the Five Books of Moses, he explained why he did not transliterate the Hebrew name YHWH, but instead followed the King James Version using the word Lord.

He says this, the God of Israel is referred to through a variety of names in these texts, and it is by no means self-evident how to render those names in English. The most difficult of them is the Tetragrammaton YHWH. Modern biblical scholarship has agreed to render this as Yahweh, but there are problems with using that form in translation. The original Hebrew texts of the Bible were entirely consonantal, with the vowel points having been added well over a millennium after the original composition of the texts, because by then the Tetragrammaton was deemed ineffable, which is a fancy word for incapable of pronunciation, by Jewish tradition. It was re-vocalized to be pronounced as though it read Adonai, meaning Lord in English.

The confidence of biblical scholarship that the original pronunciation was in fact Yahweh may not be entirely warranted. In any case, Yahweh would have given the English version a certain academic archaeological coloration that I preferred to avoid, and it would have introduced a certain discomfort to Jewish readers of the translation.

I rejected the option of using YHWH because it cannot be pronounced, whereas the dimension of the sound seemed to me vital to translate. I therefore followed the precedent of the King James Version in presenting YHWH as the Lord in small upper case letters. Admittedly, any of the choices I have described may be debatable, but in all of them my aim has been to name the deity in English in ways that would be in keeping with the overall concert of literary effects that the translation strives to create. So most Hebrew scholars today admit that the exact vowel sounds and pronunciation of YHWH are not certain. Even the consonants themselves are not certain, because it could be YHWH or YHVH. So even from this point of view, if we look at it, it's ridiculous to say that we must use the so-called sacred names for God when no one knows for sure exactly how to spell it, and nobody knows for sure how to pronounce it.

No one knows the correct vowel sounds between these four consonant letters.

And different sacred names, as I mentioned, pronounce it differently. Not even the Jews will try to speak God's name in Hebrew, and yet we do have some messianic teachers who claim that they have the inside knowledge of how to correctly pronounce it. Yet other scholars disagree. In feel it could be pronounced YHWH or YHVH or YHVH or YHVH. There's just no way to be certain, really, is there, unless God reveals it. Now, if He reveals it, that's different, but He's not chosen to do that.

Further, there are other names and titles of God in the pages of Scripture in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we have examples of Jesus Christ and the names that they use in the New Testament, as well as the apostles and the disciples and Christians.

So let's notice on the screen here, it says, Jesus did not use the sacred Hebrew names for God.

Now, that's troublesome. That's troublesome, because if this was so important, Jesus Christ would have probably, in referring to the Father, He would have used that Hebrew name. But there is no place in Scripture that He ever does, and He's ever quoted as using it. And so, as we look at some of these claims, which I suggest mislead us, that we should only use the sacred names, we're going to see some names for God in the Old Testament period, and we're going to see that these are not the same names of God that Jesus Christ and the disciples use in the New Testament, as written in the New Testament. You know, the New Testament is a problem. It's troublesome, in a sense, before some of the sacred Hebrew names folks that claim this belief, because you can read the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, or like in the New Testament, you can read it from Matthew to Revelation, and there is no instance at all where Jesus uses the sacred name, nor does He command us to use the sacred name. Nor is there any other command that we see about sacred names. Let's go over to Mark chapter 15 in verse number 34. Mark chapter 15 in verse number 34.

You would think that Jesus would have used them, or that you would think that even in His last dying words, on the stake that He would have used the so-called Hebrew name for God when He referenced God. But we're going to find out, or ask the question, did He? No, He didn't. Jesus did cry out a name for God, but let's see what name it was. We're in Mark, did I say Matthew? We're in Mark chapter 15.

We're going to pick it up in verse 34. Mark chapter 15 in verse number 34.

It says that the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, "'Iloi, Iloi, lama sabachthani,' which is interpreted, "'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" Brethren, the language that Jesus used was Aramaic. It's not Hebrew. Jesus did not speak the pronunciation of the Hebrew tetragrammaton, did He? No, He didn't. And the Aramaic name for God is written in English as Iloi. It's actually, that is the Aramaic word. It's written in English as Lord, is translated as Lord here interpreted. Actually, it's interpreted in Greek because it goes, "'Iloi, Iloi, lama sabachthani,' which is being interpreted, "'My dios, my dios.'" God is dios in the Greek. Translated in English, "'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" So it's significant that Jesus did not use the tetragrammaton, four letters, the YHWH. In fact, there's no record ever in Scripture in the New Testament that He did.

Another big stumbling block, not only did Jesus not use the sacred names, not only did the disciples and others that wrote the apostles, another big stumbling block for the sacred names movement is the existence of Greek New Testament manuscripts. Why would that be a stumbling block?

Because we use these Greek New Testament manuscripts to come up with our English Bible, and they are the earliest manuscripts that exist, and they're written in Greek. There are over, there's an amazing amount of manuscripts that are out there, there are over 5,000 manuscripts, close to 5,500 Greek manuscripts, and in direct contrast to sacred name believer theology, all of the names for God are in Greek. None of them are in Hebrew. They're in Greek. Now, when it comes to the translation of the Hebrew names Elo Eloim, when it's, when in the Greek, it's translated Theos, which means God in English. Theos. And when it talks about Yahweh, it's Hurios. Let's go ahead and, I'm not sure if I've got that on the next slide.

Yeah, go ahead. So that's slide number 13. That is the one we should be on.

So when it comes to Eloim, when it's talking about Eloim in the New Testament, the writers use Theos, which is English God. And when it comes to YHWH, they use Kyrios. The Greek word Kyrios, which is English Lord. It's also noteworthy when passages from the Old Testament are quoted in the New Testament, because when they do that, again, the Greek word Kyrios is substituted for the Hebrew word YHWH. So you're actually quoting an Old Testament Scripture, and it still uses the Greek word, and not the Hebrew word YHWH. One example of that you can write down in your notes is when Matthew chapter 3 verse 3 quotes Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3. So again, when it's referring to God in Isaiah 40 verse 3, it's the YHWH, some pronounce it Yahweh, but when they're quoting the verse, they write it in Greek when it comes to God's name. It's Kyrios. So something to think about there.

Now, that doesn't go along, then, with the core of the sacred name theology, because if the use of the Hebrew sacred names was required by Christians, then they should be found in the New Testament Greek text, shouldn't they? They should be. Let's go on to the next slide. So the only fix is a theory. The sacred names people have is a theory that the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew, or Aramaic, that the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. There's only one problem. It's never been found. We have Greek manuscripts over 5500. This is where we get this book, in English. It comes from the Greek manuscripts, but there are no Hebrew manuscripts that predate the Greek manuscripts. There's none. I understand there are some Hebrew manuscripts that came later, but the thought was that they came from the Greek, because the Greek is the original ones. In fact, there's no Hebrew manuscripts that predate the Greek manuscripts, and none. Now, that would be... if there was something that was found, that would be different. That would be different, but nothing has ever been found. And so there's this theory that states the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew, complete with the Hebrew sacred names. But no such Hebrew or Aramaic text has ever been found, and yet there are over 5500 Greek New Testament texts. Now, there's another theory, and that sounds impressive, too. Let's go ahead and advance the slide. It's that the Greek New Testament was corrupted. So maybe it was the original, but it was corrupted, and the Hebrew name for God has been removed.

From all 5500 Greek manuscripts in the New Testament. Now, that would be a greater task than what would be humanly possible. Think about that. The editors would have all had to gather together all of these manuscripts from all over the civilized world and carefully remove all traces of the Hebrew YHWH and replace it, you know, with Kyrios or Theos. Kyrios occurs, let's go ahead and advance the slide, Kyrios occurs over 665 times, and the Greek word Theos occurs in the New Testament, 1300. That's a lot, isn't it? You've got to remove it even from one manuscript. That's a lot of work. And you'd have to do it from wherever these manuscripts are all over the civilized world. You'd have to remove all of that, those Hebrew words, and replace them with Greek words. You know, the editing necessary is beyond really the realm of possibility when you think about it, especially without leaving behind the evidence that there was an edit. Somebody erased it, replaced it with something else. There's another implication in this that's pretty big, in a sense, too, is that if there really was the ability to change the Scripture like this, what are the ramifications of that? How reliable, really, then are the Scriptures?

If someone can change the Word of God and take it out and replace it with a Greek word, something that was supposed to be sacred, something that was supposed to stay in the Scriptures, whether they're written in Hebrew or Greek, what does that say if that can be altered about the trustworthiness of the rest of the Scriptures? It begins to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. All right, let's go ahead and advance the slide.

Further, the New Testament was written in Greek. It was written in Greek, possibly some of it in Aramaic, but mostly Greek. You know, let's turn over to Matthew 24, verse 35.

Amid all the speculation about an original Hebrew manuscript, sacred names, adherents have to get furnished any evidence of any Hebrew or Aramaic New Testament manuscripts. And Jesus said this in Matthew 24, verse 35. He said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. They're still going to be there. They're here today. Jesus Christ's words are here today. If the name YHWH had been used, it would have been remaining in the text of the New Testament.

I'm going to read a little bit about the New Testament here, that it was written and inspired in Greek. This comes from the New International Bible Society. It says the New Testament was written in Greek. This seems strange, since you might think it will either be Hebrew or Aramaic. However, Greek was the language of scholarship during the years of the composition of the New Testament from 50 to 100 AD. The fact is that many Jews could not even read Hebrew anymore, and this disturbed some of the Jewish leaders. So around 300 BC, a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek was undertaken, and it was completed around 200 BC. It took them about 100 years. Gradually, this Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was widely accepted and even used in many synagogues. So the New Testament authors wrote in Greek. They did not, however, use really high-class or classical Greek, but a very common and everyday type of Greek known as Kohen Greek. For many years, some scholars ridiculed the Greek of the New Testament because many of its words were strange to those who read the writings of the great Greek classical authors such as Plato and Aristotle. But later, many records were uncovered of ordinary people, and amazingly, there were the same common terms used in everyday speech. And so the ridicule dried up. There were over 5,500 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. There are zero Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts. Wikipedia says this. So I was quoting from the International Bible Society. This is Wikipedia. The mainstream consensus is that the New Testament was written in a form of Kohen Greek. So Kohen Greek was the common man's type of Greek spoken in Christ's day when he was living his physical life on this earth. It was not the learned scholarly level of the Greek language, but was the level of the common Greek language spoken by common men and women on the street. People also commonly spoke Aramaic as well. So that's probably one of the reasons why the New Testament was written in Greek. I'm still quoting here. And Kohen Greek, common Greek, so everyone reading it would be able to understand the message. The other very common language that Jesus spoke also at that time was Aramaic, which was the language that the Jews spoke when they had been in the captivity in Babylon during the Babylonian Empire and then during the Medo-Persian and Greek Empire. So the two most common languages that were spoken and written in Christ's day were Aramaic in Greek. Some people still insist that the name YHWH is unique, and yet it can be clearly demonstrated that upper names of God are unique as well. Yes, Lyman. Kohen is that K-O-I-N? It's K-O-I-N-E. K-O-I-N-E. I should have put it on the slide.

In fact, there are many names and titles of God in the pages of the Bible. Let's go over to Luke chapter 1 verse 26. Here we find a story where God sends a message to his angel Gabriel to Mary to tell her that she's going to have a son and what his name will be. Luke chapter 1 verse number 26. Now in the sixth month, the angel of Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. Familiar story. Verse 28. And having come in, the angel said to rejoice highly favored one, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women. But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and considered what manner of greeting this was. And you can put yourself in her shoes. Then the angel said to her, don't be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. Well, in English, but it's coming from the Greek word, which, if we advance the slide, hopefully I've got it on there. Yeah, the Greek word is Iesus. You shall call his name Iesus. I suppose if you really wanted to get technical with sacred names, that God said we need to call him. That the sacred name is the Greek name. Now, that's not really what God's telling us. You are speaking to Greeks, and this is the name is what it is going to be in Greek, which has a meaning, Iesus, Jesus in English. You shall call his name Iesus. Now, God could have easily allowed Mary and Joseph to name Jesus, I suppose, what they thought desirable, yet God deliberately intervened and said, this is the name that you will call him in your culture, in your time, in your society.

Iesus or Jesus. You see, God deliberately chose that name. Now, did God want us to use Yeshua? Not what it was used. It's not what was used. He didn't do that. The text has it in the Greek. Not in Hebrew, not in Aramaic. It's in the Greek.

Now, does God have only one name, or does he have many names? You know, YHWH is not the only name or title that God uses. Let's go over to Exodus chapter 6. Exodus chapter 6.

And we're going to pick it up here in verse number 2. And God, referring to Elohim, spoke to Moses and said, I am the Lord. I am YHWH.

We're in verse 2 here of Exodus chapter 6. It says, and God, referring to Elohim, spoke to Moses and said, I am the Lord. I am YHWH. Some would pronounce it Yahweh. Verse 3. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name YHWH, I was not known to them. You know, the name God Almighty comes from the Hebrew El Shaddai. Think about this. Think about this. Well, here's another name. First of all, there's three names here. We've got Elohim, we've got YHWH, some think it's Yahweh, and we have El Shaddai. If it were true, as some of the sacred namers claim that no one can be saved unless they use the name YHWH, or however it's supposed to be pronounced, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob wouldn't be in the kingdom of God.

But we know that they will be, because He's saying this after He had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's saying this to Moses. They were already gone and dead. They never even knew this name YHWH. And yet we know they're going to be in the kingdom. Let's go to Luke 13 verse 28. They'll be in the kingdom because Jesus Christ said they will be.

Luke chapter 13 and verse number 28.

This isn't an all-inclusive proof by any means, but we begin to see here that if you have to be knowing these sacred names or to pronounce them in order to have eternal life, they never knew this name. Luke chapter 13 verse 28.

There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, Jesus said, when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust down. So the claim that you can only use sacred names such as YHWH or Yeshua or Jehovah to enter into the kingdom of God is not true. In addition to YHWH, there are other words and terms that God uses in the Old Testament.

Other names for God, El Shaddai, God Almighty, El Elyon. This is not an all-inclusive list. God Most High, Adonai, Lord, El Olam, Everlasting God, El Olam, meaning mighty ones, kind of the plural. We've often thought in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, he said, let us make man. It's like the Father and the Word, we're working together. El Olam, it's like carob meaning one angel, but carobim meaning more than one. We've got El meaning one, and El Olam meaning more than one. So El Olam, mighty ones, plural. The last one on the list. There are others. There's YHWH, jury, the Lord will provide in English, how we, in Genesis 22.14. What Yahweh Nisei, the Lord is my banner. Yahweh Shalom, the Lord is peace, and there's many, many more. Talking about some of the characteristics, the names of God that He has, which tell us about His character, who He is, what He does. A name identifies all of these things. He's got several names. Don't have time to go to Isaiah 9, verse 6, but His name shall be called Wonderful. It shall be Consular. It shall be called Mighty God. He's got more than one name.

And so, we see that there's more than just one title or one name for God. And if you narrow it down to YHWH, where nobody even knows how to pronounce it, for sure, or even how it's spelled, for sure. Let's go on. The true personal names for God are described and revealed in the New Testament. There are some things that God revealed about Himself, and names that Jesus Christ used, and the Christians used. So again, addressing the question, are Christians today required to use the Hebrew names of God found in the Old Testament? I think Jesus Christ plainly answers this question by His own example. Let's go over to Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1. Indeed, one of Christ's primary missions was to reveal the Father, wasn't it? One of the reasons that He came, because the Father was not plainly revealed in the Old Testament. That came by His Son. His Son was the one that's going to plainly reveal the Father. Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1, it says, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by His own Son, whom He's appointed many wonderful things, heir of all things, pretty all-inclusive there, isn't it? Heir of all things through whom also He made the world through His Son, Jesus Christ. So how did Jesus Christ reveal this supreme being?

Well, let's notice Matthew chapter 11. We've already touched on what He said when He was on the stake near the end of His death. Let's take a look at what He says here in Matthew chapter 11, and we'll pick it up in verse number 25. Matthew chapter 11 and verse number 25.

He said at that time Jesus answered. He's praying. He's talking to His Father. This is what He calls Him. I thank you, Father. Father is the Greek word patr. P-A-T-E-R. I thank you, patr. He's calling Him His Father. We understand the concept of a Father. Lord of heaven and earth. Now, that's titled Lord of heaven, but He's calling Him Father. Lord of heaven and earth, and you have hidden these things from the wise, and you revealed them to bathe even so, Father, so it seemed good in your sight. You know, the word reveal in the Greek means to reveal through teaching, accompanied by revelation that comes through the deed and act of learning. And all throughout the Gospel of John, when Jesus Christ is talking about this being, He's referring to Him as Father, or our Father, as He gave us the example to pray. When you pray, say, our Father. It's not a mystery. It's not complicated. It's actually very, very simple. It doesn't require us to learn a foreign language necessarily, or to use a foreign pronunciation of a name that really nobody is for sure how to pronounce. Now, in the New Testament, God's name is never written in Hebrew. It's written in Kohen Greek. Here, it's potter. Or in English, it simply means Father. And the Gospel of John alone, the name God, or the Father is mentioned, the Father is mentioned 117 times, just in that one book, 117 times. Let's go over to one of those in John 17, in verse number five. That one I've got on the screen for you, but you may want to look it up in your Bible. John 17 and verse number five. We're going to find here the prayer of John 17 that Jesus uses the term the Father here six times, and reveals the personal name of God, the Father is simply the Father. That's the name Jesus revealed to his apostles, and hence to the church. Verse five, and now, O Father, glorify me with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. Verse number six, I have manifested your name. I've made clear to everyone what your name is. I've manifested your name to the men you've given me out of the world. They were yours, you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

And the Greek manifested again means to reveal or to make known.

Let's go on to the next slide, which covers John chapter 17, verse 25 and 26. He says, O righteous Father, again the Greek word potter, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me, and I have declared to them your name. And I will declare that the love with which you love me may be in them, and I in them.

So the Greek word again, made known, means to reveal, mentally, spiritually.

So the personal name of God is the Father. That's how Jesus referred to him, as the Father or our Father. Again, Jesus instructed us to pray to our Father, our potter. He didn't say we should pray to YHWH. So God doesn't require the use of these Hebrew sacred names, otherwise they would have been written down. Otherwise God would have made it clear. Let's look at one verse. Go ahead and advance the slide. Paul could speak fluently in Greek, as well as he could write Hebrew. But he never wrote any of the Hebrew names for God in any of his letters, never once. He clearly reveals that the New Covenant Christians don't have to use those Old Testament names. Now he does use an Aramaic word here in Romans chapter 8 and verse 15. He does use an Aramaic name here. But notice that Paul didn't stress that sacred names are required here for salvation. He says, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Now you have not received a spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you've received the spirit of sonship, where why we cry out, Abba, Father. Now Abba is a personal intimate form of the word Father, meaning Daddy. It's something that produced a little bit more meaning to the audience there than just using the word Potter. He used the Aramaic word Abba, like a daddy, as a child would call his or her own father, or as an infant would say, Daddy or Papa. Paul's use of the Aramaic word Abba shows that if the sacred names were required for salvation, as some insist today, God would have inspired the Hebrew name to be here or to be written throughout the New Testament. Since the apostles, and hence I suppose the church down through time, were commanded by Christ to go into all the world, it's proper to use the translated names of God and Father and Jesus Christ in whatever language that that person speaks or understands or writes. Thus, as the Bible has been translated into almost every major language of the world, it's been translated into the names that mean to the culture, the language of that culture, or whatever they speak or understand. Talking about a supreme being, we're talking about a father. In India, they have so many different languages, but we know that they, like when we're down in Andhra Pradesh where they speak Telugu, they have a Telugu name for God, and it's meaningful to them. It's meaningful to them. Let's go to Acts chapter 4 verse number 12.

Some believe that unless you use the sacred name and pronounce it correctly, you cannot be saved. And one of the scriptures they use is Acts chapter 4 in verse number 12. So let's go over there. I think I've got that on the screen, so you're going to have to look that one up in your Bible. Acts chapter 4 verse number 12.

There is, nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So some imply that we should use the so-called sacred Hebrew name for God, but does that verse really say that here? I don't see that in this verse.

I don't think it says it here. This verse doesn't mention anything about Hebrew sacred names for God. In fact, if we look at the context of what the previous verses of what Peter's statements are to Annas the high priest and to Annas's cohorts, I think Peter referred to Iesus, the Christos. Let's take a look at that. Let's go back to verse number 10.

Well, let's go to verse number 9. It says, If this day we are judged by a good deed done to this helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all and to all the people of Israel, but that by the name of doesn't say Yeshua, Iesus Christos, in that name of Nazareth, and now in the course in English, it's Jesus Christ, of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead by him, by this man, by this name, this man stands before you whole.

Peter spoke to the high priest in the common Koan Greek language of his day, referring to Jesus Christ. Let's jump to verse number 18 in this whole same context.

Verse number 18. Also, even the high priest later says, So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all or teach in the name of Iesus.

You've been speaking in that name. Stop it. So again, the Greek language is used here as well.

So, if we can clearly see it's not necessary to use these sacred Hebrew names for the Father or for Jesus Christ.

Let's go on to the next one.

I'm going to quote now from something that's on the United Church of God website on this subject. Article entitled, Do you believe in using the Heavenly Father's true name Yahweh and the Savior's true name Yahshua, the Messiah? So whoever asked this question, it's a kind of a Q&A. Someone's asked the question. Obviously, they're coming at it from a different direction because they must believe that, because they say in the question, do you believe in using the Heavenly Father's true name Yahweh and the Savior's true name Yahshua? So I'll quote here from the article here.

Should we be using these sacred names? We do not believe that God requires us to use only the terms Yahweh and Yahshua in reference to the Father and Jesus Christ as if only these two terms spelled and pronounced exactly correctly constitute the only true names of God and Jesus Christ. The original text of the Bible contains not only Hebrew but also Greek, Aramaic, and Chaldean. The references to God that are included are from all of those languages.

Even in Hebrew, it isn't possible to be precisely accurate because the consonantal pronunciation YHVH or YHWH has been lost. Also, since the original Hebrew writings included no vowels, we don't really know the vowels that should go between the consonants or even whether the name has two or three syllables. For example, Yahweh or Yahweh or YHWH.

Further, there are no ancient manuscripts of the New Testament that have Hebrew names for God in place of the Greek names. Christ used the name for God that was commonly understood by his audience. It is reasonable to assume that the apostles in Acts chapter 2 used common accepted terms as they spoke in different languages to those of various regions that were hearing the truth of Jesus Christ's role for the first time. An important question to ask people who have expressed concern that Yahweh is the only name that we may use when addressing God is, why is he called by several names in the Bible? Elohim, El, YH, Elohah, Elian, Shaddai, Adon, Adonai, Adonim are various expressions in Hebrew for our Father. Moreover, the question above presumes that the name Yahweh refers exclusively to God the Father. While this name in the Hebrew Old Testament could refer to the Father, it often refers not to the Father, but to the Word, the one who would be born later as Jesus Christ. Studying about and meditating on all the names and descriptions of God that we have and given in the Bible helps us to grasp his awesome greatness, his power, his holiness, both of the Father and the Son. This study requires translating into our own languages. Following the logic that is appropriate to only use Yahweh and Yahshua, it would be inappropriate then to address our Maker as Father and our Messiah as Savior.

It's not sound reasoning to believe that God expects us to speak in our own languages which he divided at Babel. Yet, when it comes to saying his name, we are supposed to only say Yahweh and Yahshua even though we may be from America or France or Guyana or Borneo or Togo.

Further different languages mean different pronunciations for the name of God.

You probably recall how in Acts chapter 2 that each person from different parts of the Roman Empire that heard this sermon that Peter was giving on the day of Pentecost, they heard it in their own mother tongue, their own mother language, in which they were born. So it's clearly quite acceptable for people of different languages to refer to God the Father and God his Son Jesus Christ in the manner of their own particular language. Is God really concerned about the phonetic sound that people utter? I don't think from Scripture we could see that that's the case here. Otherwise, he would have made it very clear, wouldn't he, if he would have preserved the sounding of YHWH. Very clearly, if it was important, he would have clearly made it known.

He seems to be mainly concerned that we understand the power and the meaning that is embodied in his name and all the different names that he has. Wonderful, Pounceful, mighty God, and all of the others, the El Shaddai, the mighty one.

God says that there will be a pure language in the coming kingdom, doesn't he? In the Scriptures, we know there's going to be a pure language. And the Hebrew language, or any other language for that matter, is not pure. None of the languages are pure. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a need for a pure language. It would be Hebrew. God is responsible for the existence of all the languages. He inspired the preaching of the Gospel in various languages in the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came. He was the inspiration behind the Greek New Testament, where his names are translated from the Hebrew language into Greek. Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to use only the Hebrew form. And if we examine the New Testament, no example of Hebrew names are found at all by Jesus or by the apostles or by Christians.

So does God require knowledge of a specific name, secret password, or a set of vocal sounds for salvation? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't see it in the Scriptures. For the salvation come another way. I think it comes through repentance and a changed life and a yielding to the Creator and to his firstborn son, Jesus Christ.

So to wrap things up, brethren, there is authority and there is power in the name of the Messiah, in the name of Christos, in the name of Jesus the Christ, whether it's in Greek, whether it's in English, whether it's in Hebrew or any other language. People were healed. Demons were removed from people who had been possessed when they prayed in the name of Iesos Christos. So before, brethren, we accept the theories of some that it's wrong to use a word, any other word but a Hebrew word, YHWH, for salvation, for that salvation is only through the course of knowing the right name.

We need to recognize, I think, the overwhelming evidence that's contained in the New Testament to the contrary. Now, it should have been there in the New Testament, and it wasn't. We need to look at the example of Christ and the apostles and our fellow brothers and sisters, Christians, in the New Testament.