Chapter 1

To Know...

Who is the Biblical God?

GOD IS A PERSON

[God] Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son ... Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person ... Hebrews 1:2a & 3a.

As the Spirit, God is unapproachable. We cannot fathom the depth of His life; the almighty power that created everything including us. In our fallen condition, we need a link between us as vessels of clay and Him as eternal life. When the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses from the burning bush, Moses "hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God" (Ex. 3:6b). When Moses brought the people to Mt. Sinai, God. told Moses, "Go down, charge the people, lest they break though unto Yahweh to gaze, and many of them perish" (Ex. 19:21). After the 10 commandments were given and the people heard the thunderings and saw the smoke they said to Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die" (Ex. 20:19). After Moses broke the tables of stone because of the debauchery of the golden calves, Moses asked God to see His glory. God agreed in letting him see His backside from a cleft in the rock but He said, "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live" (Ex. 33:20). Because God is so awesome and powerful; because God is so pure in goodness and holiness; and because we are so sinful and wicked in our frail flesh, no man can see God and live. It would be like a bright light shining upon a great darkness. The darkness (our lives) would wash away into nothingness because of the flood of light. After Job had been devastated, his friends came to console him. Job in anguish cried about the difficulty in mediating with God. "For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any Daysman [mediator] betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both" (Job 9:32-33). The need for a bridge between God and man has always existed since we were separated from God by our sins.

Throughout the Old Testament, the omnipresent Spirit would reveal Himself as a human being. These supernatural manifestations of Himself are called theophanies. For example, when the three men appeared unto Abraham before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, at least one was the Lord Himself (while the other two are usually assumed to be the angels that saved Lot). This was a supernatural body put on by God for the sake of safely communing with Abraham. It is written, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). Or, in other words, the pre-incarnate Christ has visited the earth as the theophany; but more importantly, later came in His birth as Jesus Christ. As Elihu said to Job, "Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay" (Job 33:6).

The apostle Paul revealed to the Colossian church, "Who [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature...And he is before all things, and by him all things consist" (Col. 1:15 & 17). The invisible Word is the image of God that became the visible image of God in the Son, Jesus Christ. This is why He is the Alpha and Omega. Before His incarnation He was the image that Adam was patterned after. Therefore He is the first, and with His incarnation He is the last Adam that died and resurrected into a new creature that united God and Man in a new form.

When we ascribe human characteristics to God, such as the "arm of the Lord," or the "heart of God," and such, it is usually referred to as anthropomorphism, which means ascribing human characteristics to non human entities such as cats and dogs. However, this writer doesn't wholly subscribe to the concept as pertaining to God. Because God is a Spirit, which is a mystery, and all we have for understanding it are vague mental images of water, wind and fire (which are given as scriptural metaphors), people find it hard to imagine an eternal God with a human type body suspended in empty space. But the verse states that Jesus is the "express image of his [God's] person". Perhaps God has always had a body before the incarnation. As stated earlier, Moses asked to see God's glory and only saw His backside. Having beheld the angel of Yahweh in the burning bush, what was different this time? I believe that he saw the theophany in the bush, but the glory was His eternal body. Likewise Isaiah had a vision where he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne (Isa. 6:1) and Ezekiel saw visions of God upon a throne where "was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it" (Eze. 1:26b). If He did not have an eternal body in human form, at least, the human form is how He perceived His image when He designed mankind. Regardless of what one thinks about God having a body in the past, it is anthropomorphic to project our sinful nature on Him. And, for the last 2,000 years, God has had a permanent human body in the person of Christ Jesus.

HIS NAME

...and they shall say unto me, "What is His name? What shall I say to them? And God said unto Moses, "I AM THAT I AM" Exodus 3:13-14

God in English is the root to our word, "good." Our forefathers understood that all goodness comes from God. But the word translated from the Hebrew into God is Elohim . Elohim is the plural form of eloah . Arabic is a sister tongue to Hebrew, which is why their word for God is Allah. The root to eloah is el which means "strength." So the Middle Eastern view of God is that he is the strength or power of life. This is reflected in the translation of his title as the "almighty," which in Hebrew is el shaddai . Literally it translates as the "strong nourisher" which suggests the power to provide and to protect.

In most English translations the name of God is omitted and replaced with the uppercase letters "LORD" or "GOD." Sometimes the name of God will be given, usually as, "Jehovah." For example: "That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH [12], art the most high over all the earth" (Psa. 83:18). The name Jehovah is the hybrid of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton [13], , Yod, Heh, Waw (or Vav), Heh, which transliterates into our alphabet as YHWH or YHVH. The third letter is a W or V because biblical Hebrew differs from conversational Hebrew. There were no vowels used during the biblical era. The Masoretic Jews of 900 AD feared that the pronunciation of the Scriptures would be forgotten since Hebrew had died as a spoken language. So they developed a vowel system to preserve the Scriptures. But with YHVH, they feared His name would be uttered in violation of the third commandment, "Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in vain" (Ex. 20:7). So they created a new name by inserting the vowels from the Hebrew word, Adonai [14] , which literally means, "our lords," to create Y(a)H(o)V(a)H. The Yod, which transliterates as Y in our alphabet, is changed to J, because, historically, in other countries, the J is pronounced as our Y. Because of this Jewish tradition, English translators have done the same [15] by substituting the LORD (Adonai) for Yahweh.

I favor using Yahweh when quoting Scriptures because during that era of biblical history it was common practice to call heathen gods, "Lord," in deference to the mystery religions of that time. The true name of their pagan deity was a secret only for the initiate. The Bible speaks of Baal worship, which is Phoenician for, "Lord." Even the Hebrew word adon , which means "lord," is used in the Greek god's name, Adonis. It is in the interest of Satan to hide the name of God as a means of discouraging people from coming to salvation. The Bible says, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord [i.e., Jesus] shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13). This is from Joel 2:32 which says, "...whosoever shall call on the name of Yahweh shall be delivered." At that time it was imperative that His name be known in contrast to all the secret gods using the title, "Lord" [16].

Because there were so many gods called by the title, "Lord," Moses asked God to tell him His name at the burning bush. God replied, "I am that I am" (Ex. 3:14). "Yahweh," is related to that name. God declared unto Moses the eternal nature of who He is: that it is He alone who is self existent. His Hebrew brethren were to be encouraged that it wasn't just any pagan deity helping Moses, but the living God. Later the Lord said to Moses, "I am Yahweh: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Yahweh was I not known to them" (Ex. 6:2-3). The patriarchs had a covenant with God for his providence, hence the name El Shaddai, or God Almighty. With Moses a new covenant was being made with Israel, with a new covenant name, Yahweh, without which no one could come to God.

There is a curious thing about the English translation of the burning bush name, "I Am that I Am:" the Hebrew transliteration reads, Ehyeh asher ehyeh which literally translates, "I will exist as whosoever I will exist." This is in the future tense, not the present tense. Hebrew has no verb "to be" indicating the present tense as does the English. Instead, Hebrew has the verb hayah , whose root can be seen in Yahweh's name . He is eternal, but as a spirit, malleable. This name declared to Moses a statement of God's power as well as His eternal nature.

In the Old Testament he appeared in His supernatural manifestation called the theophany. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a "dove" (Matt. 3:16), and later as a "rushing wind" and "tongues of fire" (Acts 2:2 & 3). But, more importantly, God took on the form of a mortal man, Jesus. After Christ's resurrection, the Bible says that, "he appeared in another form" (Mark 16:12) when he walked with the two on the road to Emmaus. Also, to Mary Magdalene he appeared as a gardener (John 20:15). The most unique expression of this power of God is the indwelling of His Holy Spirit in believers. Through Christians, He appears to the world in yet another form. When Jesus said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matt. 25:40b), it was more than just identifying with believers.

God has changed His name. The name of the Lord is Jesus. The Lord refers to the man who died for our sins. The Father refers to God as a spirit whose relationship to believers has become intimate, as befitting family members. Without knowledge of the name of Jesus, the lost cannot call upon the Father. Unbelievers can not come to God by calling him Father, Lord, or God. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). And, ironical1y, Jesus said, "No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (John 6:44). Why? Because he said, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). In Hebrew, the name of Jesus is Y'shua which means, "Yahweh is salvation." It is the new covenant name that God has taken for Himself. Yet he also said, "My Father is greater than I" (John 14:28b). For this reason, orthodox doctrine ascribes the epithet, Father, to the first person in the Godhead. Respect for the third commandment doesn't mean to never utter His name, but to be respectful of His name.

Paul declared to the Philippian church, "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name (including the name, Yahweh): that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9, l0a, & 11). What does it mean that Jesus is Lord? Since it is to the glory of God the Father, we understand that we are talking about the man Christ Jesus, not the eternal Spirit called the Word (although this is splitting hairs since the Word is the man). The emphasis, however, is on the created spirit, soul, and body that made up the man in birth.

Lord still means master and ruler. Paul states, "Then comes the end, when he [Jesus the man] shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he [Jesus] shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:24-25). As the calendar states, AD, or Anno Domini, this is the "year of our Lord." Jesus the man rules the Earth now, and will forevermore, under the Father. Because of what he did on Calvary, the rule of the Earth was given to Him as a reward. Why? Because He walked in total obedience to God, even unto the cross. And he still is in complete obedience. The will of God continues to be expressed through the now glorified man Christ Jesus, therefore his name is above the name of Yahweh. For evermore God will always have a human body and will no longer need to appear in theophanies.

Finally, Jesus told the church of Philadelphia, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name" (Rev. 3:12). There is going to be a time when His name will change again. It will be an eternal covenant name that all over comers shall know.