Butchering the Name of God

Who has ascended into heaven, or descended?

Who has gathered the wind in His fists?

Who has bound the waters in a garment?

Who has established all the ends of the earth?

What is His name, and what is His Son’s name,

If you know? [Proverbs 30:4; NKJV]

It would be interesting to see how many verses the "Old Testament" state that Yahweh has a son.  If we take the phrase "image of God" as literally as possible, then that too would be an allusion to the fact that God has a son, though there's only so much that can be gleaned from that phrase before things start to break down.  But that's not the point of this post.  Today, we're going to focus on the questions "what is his name" and "what is his son's name", or more accurately, we're going to focus on what they are not.

You might be thinking that the Sacred Names movement is responsible for the trend of butchering God's name (and his son's name).  And you would be partially correct.  But the first historical instance actually comes from the Hebrew scribes themselves.  When vowel points were created for the Hebrew alphabet (called the "alef-bet"), and the scribes started making copies of the Bible that had these points on them, whenever they reached the name of God, they would deliberately put the wrong vowel points on that name.  The vowel points used caused the name to be pronounced "Yehovah" (English equivalent is "Jehovah"), and these deliberately incorrect markings were to remind the reader to never pronounce God's name.  Instead, they say "adonai", which is Hebrew for "lord".  "Adonai" is God's title, not his name.  And because God's people (including Christians) follow human rules rather than God's rules, the completely pagan law forbidding the name of God from ever being pronounced is followed in spite of the law of Yahweh!

Today, we have the Sacred Names movement and other movements butchering God's name to some degree other another.  Some are not as bad as others.  The one's that can be abbreviated "YHWH" in its transliteration, and contain three syllables at most are the least egregious of these butcherings.  As for the rest (as far as I'm concerned), it's a different name, and therefore, a different god.  One that masquerades as the God of the Bible!  This deception is so much worse than the fake faith healers.  Because one killed by a fake faith healer may still be raised to eternal life if their faith is ultimately in Yeshua instead of the "faith healers", but those who put their faith in these demons disguised as God will perish in the lake of fire!

21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' 23 And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'" [Matthew 7:21-23; NKJV]

Again, different name, different god!  And while we technically do not know with 100% certainty what God's name is thanks to the above-mentioned scribes (I believe it's "Yahweh"), we do know with 100% certainty what our Messiah's name is!  It is "Yeshua" in Hebrew.  Of course, that won't stop people from saying that it's really "Yahshua" because that means "God saves".  This ignores the fact that (a) those who speak the language (rather than merely studying it to better understand Scripture) pronounce it "Yeshua", and (b) not every name that contains the "YH" is pronounced "Yah".  Some names ("Benyamin" for example) are pronounced with "yah" instead of "ye".

And, just like with the name of God, changing that one syllable simply because of a lack of understanding of the Hebrew language is the least egregious of these mutilations of the Lord's name.  And like with the first, I dare to say for the rest, different name means it's a different god!  A different savior!  The only exception to this rule would be if someone used "Yehoshua", but only because "Yeshua" is the contracted for of "Yehoshua", which literally means "God is salvation".