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1 Corinthians 9:11
"If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it
too much if we should reap material things from you?"
Evangelism:
The Time
Is Now!
Section 7, Chapter 3
The Old Testament:
Absolutely Reliable Historically
God did not mean here that He had not made His name, Yehovah, known before, but that he had not made known his character and power by that name manifested through His deliverance of the Israelites out of bondage to Egypt. Before they only knew Him in character by the name El-Shaddai, a compound word meaning "God Almighty". They knew him in character as God-Almighty. However, because of the exodus and His providing them all that they needed during their forty years in the wilderness, now they know Him in character as the all sufficient God: Yehovah, "I am that I am."
Throughout the Old Testament, the names of the Prophets also describe aspects of God’s character. The following are examples of this: Isaiah, Why[vy, meaning: "The salvation of Yehovah."296 Jeremiah, hymry, meaning: "whom Yehovah appoints."297 Jeremiah wrote,
"Now the word of Yehovah came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.’" (Jeremiah 1:4-5)
Another example of a person in the Bible which describes the character of Yehovah is Joshua, [v/hy, who took over the leadership of Moses when he died and led the Israelites into the promised land. His name means: "Yehovah is Salvation."298 Finally their is Jesus’ name. When Joseph found Mary, his wife to be, pregnant, he planned to put her away secretly because he had not had sexual relations with her, so he knew the child was not his. As he was contemplating this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him the following:
"And as he was thinking on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord was seen by him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name JESUS, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.’" (Matthew 1:20-21)
What is the significance of the name Jesus? The name Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshua, [Wvwhy,286 translated Yesoo, jIhsou,286 in the Greek and Jesus in English. It means "Yehovah is Savior". The angel is telling us that Jesus is to be named Jesus because He will save us from our sins. God speaking through Isaiah in Isaiah 43:10-13 tells us about Himself,
"‘You are my witnesses,’ declares Yehovah, ‘And My servant whom I have chosen, In order that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was NO EL formed 220 and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am Yehovah; and there is NO SAVIOR besides Me. . . . So you are My witnesses,’ declares Yehovah, ‘And I am El. Even from eternity I am He.’"
Yehovah God tells us several things about Himself in this passage:
-
Before Him there was no God formed.
-
Two, there will be no God formed after Him.
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Three, that there is no Savior besides Him.
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Four, that His existence is from eternity past.
This passage forever dispels the myth that a created man can become God as is taught by some religions. Yehovah God tells us through Isaiah that He is the Only God, that there was no God formed before Him and that there will be no God formed after Him. Yehovah God tells us that He is the only God that exists, that He is the only God who has ever existed and that He is the only God who will ever exist.
Yehovah tells us something else about Himself. He states, "...there is no Savior besides Me." Yehovah God tells us that He also is the only Savior that exists.
The Angel of the Lord tells Joseph to name the child Jesus because he, the child, will Save man from his sins. Matthew and the angel of the Lord tell us that Jesus is Yehovah God who will save us from our sins. Jesus is God and Jesus is Savior. Jesus is Yehovah God of the Old Testament who became man, to save us from our sins. Yehovah God tells us that He is from eternity and Isaiah in Isaiah 9:6 tells us that Jesus is the Father of eternity,
"For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful,299 Counselor300, Mighty-El301, Father-of-Eternity302, Prince-of-Peace303." (Isaiah 9:6)
Why so many different names of Jesus? Because each of these names describes a different aspect of His attributes and character.
Jesus is Yehovah God because only Yehovah God is Savior and Jesus is our Savior. Yehovah God of the Old Testament and Jesus Christ of the New Testament are one and the same person. Jesus is Yehovah God our Creator and Savior. That is the meaning and significance of the name Jesus, it tells us about Jesus’ character and who He is. This is what Jesus was talking about in John 5:46-47 when he said, "For if you believed Moses you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me." Who was Moses writing about? Yehovah Elohim. Jesus tells us in this passage that Moses was writing about Him. This is what the Apostle John wrote in the beginning of the Gospel of John:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. . . . All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1, 3, 14)
John tells us that Jesus is the one through whom all things that exist were created. Jesus is our Creator. Jeremiah the prophet records about Yehovah, "Ah Lord Yehovah! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You." Yehovah God later states in Response, "... Yehovah who made the earth, Yehovah who formed it to establish it, Yehovah is His name." (Jer 32:17, 33:2). Isaiah the prophet records Yehovah God as saying, "But now, thus says Yehovah, your Creator. . . . I am Yehovah your Elohim, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." (Isaiah 43:1, 3). Jeremiah and Isaiah tell us that Yehovah God is the Creator and the Savior and since Yehovah God tells us that He alone is God and Savior, for Jesus to claim to be the Creator and Savior of man is for Jesus to claim to be Yehovah God, the Creator and Savior, in the flesh.
WHAT THE
HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS &
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
DISCOVERIES SHOW US
We see now that the fact that the Bible has many names for God is because each of these different names describe another aspect of His character. One should note that each of these names are not different names, but compound words composed of one or the other of God’s primary titles: Yah, short for Yehovah or El, short for Elohim, with an adjective attached describing something about His attributes and character. In my book titled, The Literal Historical Reliability of Genesis,34 I go into much greater detail about the many names of God in the Bible and their significance. Also in my book, Understanding Your Salvation in Jesus,304 I go into great detail about the Old and New Testament’s claim of Jesus as being the God: Yehovah Elohim.
Do historical documents and archaeological discoveries support this? Yes they do! One of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the second half of the twentieth century is the ancient civilization of Ebla.179/735 The significance of this find is that this civilization existed more than 1,000 years before Moses’ time and thus can be used to test the historical accuracy of the first five books of the Bible, especially Genesis.
Ebla was first discovered by Dr. Paolo Matthiae of the University of Rome in 1968. In 1975 while digging up the ruins of a palace he came across the greatest third millennium archive ever unearthed, up to 17,000 cuneiform tablets.179/731 These 4,300 year old tablets found in north western Syria show that Ebla rivaled Egypt and Mesopotamia as a major power of the ancient world.
By ancient standards Ebla was a megalopolis with a population of more than 260,000 people. Ebla had a democratic form of government. Though Ebla had walls around the city up to 150 feet tall, the palace had no walls around it. A king became king not because of lineage but by election. The king was responsible for the welfare of widows, the orphaned and the poor. If a king became derelict, a king could be ousted by a group of elders.179/741, 744 It was destroyed in 2250 BC by Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargan the Great.34/68
What did they discover in this find? They found that the tablets list more than 5,000 place names and picture Ebla as an economic giant that traded with Byblos, Mari, Assur, Kish, Khamazi, and other ancient cities. Ebla’s tablets record commercial records, treaties, chronicles and the history of a Semitic empire with Ebla as its center that once dominated much of the Middle East.179/731, 734-735 Howard La Fay, in a December 1978 National Geographic magazine, explains why these tablets survived in such good condition over 4,300 years of time.
"I looked down into the palace archive. The sockets of the wooden shelves that had held the incredible collection of clay tablets still pierced the plastered walls; the shelves themselves had burned, and collapsed around 2250 BC Ironically, the flames of destruction had baked the clay, preserving the texts for posterity." 179/731, 734-740
*Sodom and Gomorrah’s
Biblical cities mentioned in these tablets as related to The Book of Genesis are Sodom and Gomorrah and the five cities of the plains mentioned in Genesis Chapter 14 spelled exactly the same way as they are in Genesis. Previous to this find these cities and Sodom and Gomorrah were thought to be mythical only. 179/25-25
*Noah’s Existence Confirmed:
A second aspect of the Ebla Tablets which show the literal-historical reliability of Genesis are names mentioned such as Abraham, Esau, and Saul. Present as well is a name never found in ancient literature, except in the Old Testament: David. Further, the name of a king Ebrium, who reigned about 2200 BC, bears resemblance to Eber of The Book of Genesis, who was the great-great-grandson of Noah and the great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Abraham, the Biblical progenitor of the Hebrews.179/736
*Moses Had The Knowledge to Write
The First Five Books of The Bible:
Julius Welhausen made a major assumption that the reason Moses could not have been the author of the Torah was because there was no existing alphabet in the Middle East in his life time. The discovery of Ebla, however, not only reveals an alphabet 750 years before Moses’ lifetime, but three distinct alphabets: Akkadian, Sumarian and Eblaite.181/393 Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic are derived from Akkadian.385\79
Another critical presupposition made about Israel was that they could not possibly have developed in their day the moral legal system the Torah reveals. It was claimed that this moral legal system in Israel did not reach this stage of development until 800 to 1,000 years after Moses’ death. The tablets, however, found at Tell Mardikh, reveal that Ebla had comparable laws 700 years before Moses.180/25 One should also consider that Moses was raised a prince of Egypt in all of the learning and sciences of Egypt. Knowing this fact, to say that Moses did not know how to write is ridiculous.
As we have already dealt with, Biblical scholars have for years claimed that the Torah had several authors, not just the one, Moses, because several names are used for God like Elohim and Yehovah. Reverend Mitchell Dahood, Dean of the Pontifical Biblical Institute’s oriental Faculty and a renowned authority on the languages of the ancient Middle East shares that they discovered in the Ebla Tablets the names "Il" (El short for Elohim) and "Yah" (short for Yehovah) combined with Northwest Semitic personal names showing clearly that the name Yehovah was known a 1,000 years before Moses. Some of the compound names discovered were Mi-ka-il, our modern "Michael", meaning "who is like El?"; and "Mi-ka-ya", meaning "who is like Yah?".179/737-738
There are many other examples in Archaeology which provides an answer for the use of the compound name Yehovah-Elohim. Cyrus Gordon found at Ugarit (1400-1350 BC) deities with compound names. For example: Qadish-Amrar is the name of one and Ibb-Nikkal another. Thus it was discovered that it was common in ancient civilizations to use compound names for a god.269/132-133
Continued on pages
3,
4;
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Bibliography & Notes
Section 7 Chapters