“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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The Pruning of Christian Leadership is Just Getting Started
I’m beginning to get emails and text messages from people who are telling me that they have taken the message to their churches. In a perfect world, preachers, Christian publishers, and Bible translators would do their jobs, but we don’t live in a perfect world. People we have depended on to deliver have failed to perform. Congregations will have to take matters into their own hands and demand better. I have no idea how long it will take to get the job done.
Several years ago, I was talking with a small group from a Baptist church in Florida. I was telling them about Yahweh. In settings like that, I typically take about 30 minutes to lay out all the facts, and then we have a discussion. There was an older man in the group. He was silent throughout the presentation and during most of the discussion. At the very end, he said, “I used to wonder about that when I was in seminary.”
I said, “You were a preacher?”
“All of my life,” he said.
The man must have been in his mid-80s. I could tell by his eyes and the look on his face that one of his prayers had been answered, so I asked him, “What were you wondering?”
“I knew that the Name of the LORD was important,” he said, “and I wondered why we didn’t use the Name. At that time, I thought His Name was Jehovah, but now I know that it’s Yahweh.”
Turns out, the man was the retired pastor of the church that the group attended. I have often thought about that man and how he must have felt admitting in front of his former church members that he learned such a basic truth at such a ripe old age. I also think about why he didn’t pursue the matter further on his own during a career in the ministry. That day, I could tell that he really got it.
Some preachers are humble enough to accept the fact that they still have a long way to go, but my experience tells me that he was the exception, not the rule.
On one occasion, I was in Jerusalem with a small group of people from the United States. We were meeting with Israeli officials on matters of national security. One night, we were in one of our rooms at the YMCA Three Arches Hotel talking, and I brought up the Name Yahweh.
One member of our group was a former preacher. He will always stand out in my mind because of something he told me privately. He said that he got out of preaching, because it didn’t pay enough.
Can you imagine being “called to the ministry”, and then turning your back on your calling because you wanted more money? Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh, because he didn’t like the Assyrians. He wasn’t trying to run away because Yahweh wasn’t giving him as much money as he thought he deserved. Money didn’t enter into his thinking.
While I was explaining the importance of Yahweh’s Name and who Yahweh is, the former preacher interrupted me and said, “Neil, the Bible says ‘at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.’”
Since I already knew why the man got out of preaching, my attitude toward him was not very good. When he said that, something went off in my brain. I rebuked him in front of the others and told him in no uncertain terms that the Bible did not say that.
Normally, I don’t react that way when I am explaining things. I spent 25 years teaching college students, and I was careful not to put people down in front of others no matter how ridiculous their ideas were. I engaged them in discussion and brought them around to understanding what I was saying.
This case was different, though. The man went to seminary. He had been a preacher. I was explaining the most basic message in the Bible. And the way he said it made me angry. He had picked up a really bad habit that a lot of preachers have. They accentuate certain words to dramatize their delivery. Some of those words are Jesus, Lord, God, and Bible. He didn’t just say, “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow.” He said it like this, “At the name of Jeeesssus, every knee will bow.” He elongated the name, and the pitch of his voice rose with each letter.
I looked him straight in the eye and said, “That is not what the Bible says!” The expression on his face was shock. It was as though I had slapped him across the face with a wet dishrag. It was obvious that the man loved quoting Scripture, and he was good at it. He knew the words, but he didn’t understand what they mean.
I told him, “This is what the Bible says, ‘For this reason also Elohim highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every name, so that at the name of Yeshua every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Yeshua the Messiah is Yahweh, to the glory of Elohim the Father.’ Yahweh is the Name that is above every Name. Elohim bestowed the Name Yahweh on the Messiah, and every knew will bow and every tongue will confess to that Name and to the Person Yahweh. That’s what the Bible says.”
He simply nodded his head. No response was the right response.
On another occasion, I was talking with a group from Milledge Avenue Baptist Church in Athens, Georgia. I had been a deacon in that church while I worked on my Ph.D. I knew most of the people in the group, but I didn’t know one man. He was a preacher from another Baptist church nearby.
At some point during my presentation, the preacher stopped me, and said, “Do you think He was just saying that He wants His Name to stand out so people will know that He is the Mighty One?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “It is true that Yahweh wants His Name to stand out, but the message in the Bible is clear. Yahweh wants us to call Him by His Name and to tell the world about Him by Name.”
A few months later, a member of that preacher’s church sent me a tape of a sermon the preacher delivered. The sermon’s title was “The Importance of the Name of the LORD”.
I listened to the sermon as quickly as I got it, and I was very disappointed. First, it was way too long. Second, the preacher went on and on listing reasons why “the LORD’s Name” is important, but he never came close to saying “Yahweh” or any other name. To this day, I am still bewildered by that. Common sense suggests that a sermon about a name, any name, would actually include the name somewhere. That’s especially true if the Name is Yahweh. To me, that’s a real head-scratcher. It reminds me of the Messiah’s warning about the blind leading the blind.
I’ll give you one more example. Katie and I were in Jerusalem for several weeks, and we spent a weekend with our Israeli daughter and her husband, Chen. They live in Tel Aviv. On Shabbat, they took us to an old section of town that has become a popular tourist attraction. Tel Aviv has a rich history.
There was an old church nearby. It was open, so we walked in. Turns out, the church held services on Saturday. That’s the real Sabbath. Sunday is not the Sabbath. We were greeted warmly by church members. At about 11:00 AM, the preacher walked in. He greeted us, too. I told him how delighted I was that he honored the real Sabbath, and I asked him if He used the Name Yahweh.
His demeanor changed instantly. He looked at me as though I had committed the unpardonable sin and said, “No! I would never use that Name, because it might offend our neighbors.”
Katie and I spend most of our time in Israel in Jerusalem. In conversations with Jerusalem residents, I use Yahweh’s Name all the time. I don’t have to manufacture opportunities to use it. They pop up regularly. Rarely does anyone object, but if someone does take offense, I tell them that I wrote a book titled His Name is Yahweh and explain that Yahweh commanded us to declare His Name. No one who knows anything about the Bible can deny that truth. I have never had a problem.
Noam is a Sabra Jew, a native-born Israeli Jew. When she was a teenager, she lived with Katie and me in Virginia while I was writing His Name is Yahweh, and she is very familiar with everything in the book. She had a puzzled look on her face when the Tel Aviv preacher explained why he didn’t use Yahweh’s Name. I don’t know what kind of look I had on my face.
The preacher was wasting a perfect opportunity. I think either fear or ignorance was his problem. I don’t know which one it was. It might have been both. My best guess is that it was fear.
Imagine explaining to Yahweh that you didn’t tell the truth about Him, because it might offend someone. I am determined not to have that problem:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and in Your Name cast out demons, and in Your Name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” (Matthew 7: 21-23)
Conclusion
As believers, we have a job to do, and it may take a while to complete our mission. The people who were “called to the ministry” to deliver this message have failed miserably. Some of them may never get it. We can’t wait for them to catch on.
Yahweh has some work to do, too. I think He is just starting to upset the apple carts of a lot of preachers. The pruning of the church leadership is getting underway. Don’t expect a lot of help from men of the cloth. Talking with them is fine, but depending on them is not a good idea.
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Before you watch the videos below, read this SnyderTalk editorial: “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
