“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55: 6-7

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Why Do Preachers Go into Preaching?

I am not a preacher, although I have spent more than the last two decades spreading the word. Preachers like to say, “I was called to the ministry.” I was not. I was told to deliver a message.

Ministry? What exactly is that anyway?

Many people have said to me that they want to support my “ministry”, and I have had to tell them, “I don’t have a ministry. I have a job to do, and the biggest obstacle in my path is people who claim to be ‘called to the ministry.’” If they were doing their jobs, my job would be a lot easier.

Few of the preachers that I know are eager to tell the truth. So few, in fact, that when you tell typical churchgoers the truth, they look at you like you are from another planet and say something like this, “If that were true, I would have heard it in church.”

Well, it is true, but they don’t hear it in most churches. That’s why I know that preachers as a group are hindering progress. Looking at the U.S. as an example, it’s easy to see that as a group preachers are failing miserably.

Churchgoers rely too heavily on preachers to do their jobs, and they have too much faith that their preachers are delivering. Churchgoers must learn to think for themselves, because very few preachers that I know are doing enough thinking. Some preachers are afraid to tell the truth, because the truth is not part of church tradition. They fear that they might be fired for telling the truth.

If telling the truth gets a preacher fired, then he is in the wrong church.

The latest edition of the New American Standard Bible (NASB) was released in 2020. It has been my go-to Bible since 1977. I started working on a Ph.D. degree in business in 1976. At that time, I used the King James Bible. For almost four years, I studied business strategy, but I spent at least as much time studying the Bible as I spent studying business. I switched to the NASB early on in the process, because it was clearer and easier to understand.

When the NASB 1995 came out, I bought a copy, and it became my go-to Bible. The changes were slight, but it did not matter to me at the time. It wasn’t until about 2000 that I realized that the NASB was not all that it was cracked up to be.

Backtracking a little to fill in a gap: In 1977 while I was working on my Ph.D., Yahweh gave me an assignment. I can’t divulge what it is at this time, but it was not teaching business to college students. My career teaching business at the University of Virginia turned out to be my training ground. I won’t go into detail about all the things I learned as a business professor that have helped me, but I learned not to accept what people tell me as the truth unless I can see evidence that it is the truth. I learned to look under the rocks and see what’s there. That way of doing things is so ingrained in me now that I do it instinctively. That’s exactly what Yahweh wanted me to do, and He didn’t want me doing it at a seminary where people are taught “the truth” along with “time-honored traditions” that mask the real truth.

There’s another reason why Yahweh did not want me to be seminary trained. Most of my work involves Israel, Jerusalem in particular. When I’m in Israel meeting with people, I am known as a business professor, and not just a business professor. I’m a business professor from the University of Virginia. That matters to Israelis. UVA has a global reputation, and it’s a good one. And I’m not just a business professor from UVA. I am a chaired professor in business from UVA. Israelis know what that means. They do not see me as a preacher.

They are right. I am not a preacher. I am a professor, and I have a message to deliver.

Getting back to my main point, in 2000 when I started writing His Name is Yahweh, I didn’t have the baggage that seminar students pick up. Those “time-honored traditions” that they are taught as articles of faith are serious problems, but few of them know it. They graduate from seminary and start preaching what they were taught. Problem is, they were not taught all the things they need to know, and they were not taught to question authority.

I was taught to question everything, and I do. When I started digging, I discovered that the truth is hidden in plain sight. That’s why I know that most preachers aren’t doing much digging.

The straightforward, simple truth is not in the Bibles that preachers hold up in front of their congregations and say, “This is the word of God.” No, my friends, the Bibles that preachers hold up are not “the word of God”. They are translations of Yahweh’s word that include many horrendous “time-honored traditions”.

The worst mistake that religious leaders (Jews and Gentiles) ever made was stripping Yahweh’s Name from translations of the Scriptures. His Name is all over the Bible, and when you put it in where it belongs, the message is loud and clear:

We have One Elohim, and His Name is Yahweh. We are supposed to love Yahweh with all that we are and to obey Him, because He is our only Savior/Deliverer and Redeemer.

Everything else in the Bible flows from that.

I was also taught to listen to Yahweh’s voice and to obey Him. That’s what I do, not perfectly, because I’m not perfect. The good news is that Yahweh doesn’t choose perfect people, because there are none. He chooses people and perfects them as they go about doing the jobs that He gives them to do. Perfection comes at the very end when the job is complete and Yahweh calls us home.

When the NASB 2020 came out a short while ago, I had finally had enough. The changes made in the 2020 edition are so slight that they are practically irrelevant. The things in the NASB that needed to be changed were ignored completely thanks to “time-honored traditions”. Those traditions have been in place for millennia. They have made it through seminaries and churches and synagogues for thousands of years unscathed.

I have taken off the gloves. I’m pointing my finger at seminary professors, Bible translators, Christian publishers, preachers, and rabbis who have failed to do their jobs. I have credibility that they don’t have, because I’m not a preacher. I’m not steeped in tradition. I’m not a religious person, either. I learned that from Yahweh. He didn’t call me to religion. He called me to Him. I don’t talk about religion much except to point out that most of what we call “religion” is man-made. That’s true for Christianity and Judaism.

Religion gets in the way because of those “time-honored traditions” that exist in every Christian denomination and in Judaism. Turns out that religion is more about those traditions than anything else.

Why do preachers go into preaching? If they do it to serve Yahweh, then they have some digging to do and some confessions to make to their congregations. They need to admit that they have failed to deliver and to promise to make amends. If they can’t or won’t do that, then they need to find another line of work.

This isn’t a new problem:

“Thus, you nullify the word of Elohim for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain; teaching as doctrine man-made rules’…. Every plant that is not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted, so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.” (Matthew 15: 6-9 and 13-14)

Those are the Messiah’s words. He was addressing the same problem that I’m addressing. He was not being unkind. He was simply telling the truth. So am I.

See the SnyderTalk editorials below:

Also, see these SnyderTalk editorials:

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See “His Name is Yahweh: A True Story”.

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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”

John 10: 14-18