“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 U.S. is Not a Christian Nation

Before you read this SnyderTalk editorial, please listen to this 26-minute lesson from J. Vernon McGee: Jeremiah 3:10—6:30. Listening to it will be well worth your time.

McGee died in 1988. This lesson is part of his legacy. It’s a global ministry called “Thru the Bible”. It’s broadcast on the radio, on the internet, and through various other distribution outlets. I think Thru the Bible is the most effective global ministry for Yahweh in the world today, even though McGee believed that Elohim’s Name is Jehovah.

In 1988, I had no idea how important Yahweh’s Name is to Him. McGee didn’t, either. Yahweh didn’t reveal that to me until about a decade later. By that time, McGee was dead.

Christian Tradition is Wrong

When I learned the truth, I did the things Yahweh told me to do to get His Name out to His people, but I was in for the surprise of my life. I never would have guessed what would happen.

I spent thousands of hours researching to understand why Yahweh’s Name is so important to Him. I laid out what I learned in a book titled His Name is Yahweh. In the book, I showed that the message I was presenting is in the Bible. In fact, it’s all over the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. Even so, many of my closest friends rejected the message. Most of them have never read the book, and most of them probably never will. Why?

One of my closest friends at that time was about 50 years old. He had been going to church all his life. He had served as deacon in his church for decades. He considered himself to be a very strong believer, but when I told him that the Bible says, “Everyone who calls on the Name of Yahweh will be saved,” he got visibly angry with me. With a stern voice, he said, “Neil, are you telling me that I’m not saved!?”

That person’s name is Dan. I said, “Dan, I’m just telling you what the Bible says.”

Dan was familiar with the message in the Bibles that he had read. Those Bibles say, “Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord (or the LORD) will be saved.” Yahweh gave that message to His prophet Joel. It’s presented in Joel 2:32. On the Day of Pentecost (Shavu’ot, a.k.a. the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of First Fruits) 50 days after the Messiah’s crucifixion, Peter delivered that exact message, and he quoted Joel verbatim in Acts 2:21. Later, Paul said the same thing in his letter to the Romans. You’ll find it in Romans 10:13, but Paul didn’t reference Joel. He should have.

Since Yahweh told Joel that everyone who calls on the Name Yahweh will be saved, do you think Peter and Paul would have misquoted Yahweh when they delivered their messages to believers and potential believers?

There is no way that happened. For both Peter and Paul, misquoting Yahweh on that critical point would have been unthinkable. To believe otherwise is foolish.

Dan was unfamiliar with the Name “Yahweh”. He had been a churchgoer for more than 50 years, and he had read the Bible many times. Not once in his life had he heard a preacher refer to the Messiah as Yahweh from the pulpit, and none of the Bibles he had read said anything about Yahweh. But the original Scriptures make it perfectly clear that the Messiah is Yahweh.

That fact is clear in the Old Testament (i.e., the Tanach) and the New Testament, but Dan believed Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21, and Romans 10:13 refer to the name “Jesus”. Dan had no idea that the name “Jesus” was made up.

The Messiah’s name at birth was not Jesus. It was Yeshua, and Yeshua means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation”. As far as Dan was concerned, my referring to Jesus as Yahweh was tantamount to heresy and telling him that the name “Jesus” was made up was like committing the unpardonable sin. Why?

The answer: Church tradition, and church tradition is powerful. Church tradition is wrong but it’s tradition, so people don’t want to touch it, especially preachers and longtime churchgoers. Since I wrote His Name is Yahweh, my opinions of preachers and churchgoers have changed dramatically.

I was telling Dan the truth, but he rejected it. The fact that I could prove that I was telling him the truth was irrelevant to him. Why?

There are 3 reasons:

1. The Bibles that most people read are terrible translations of the original Scriptures. That includes the King James Version of the Bible. People who think that the King James Bible is error free are sadly mistaken.
2. Preachers are not trained properly in seminaries, and few of them are serious Bible scholars. They are parroting the narrative they were taught without thinking. That’s a kind way of saying that they are intellectually lazy, and/or they are afraid to tell people things that they don’t want to hear. In other words, very few preachers are like the prophet Jeremiah. He delivered a message to the people of Judah that was hard for them to hear, but he did it because that was his job.
3. Most churchgoers want to have their ears tickled. They don’t want to consider things that challenge things they think they already know. That’s the exact opposite of growing in the word and growing as a believer.

On one occasion, Rowan Smith and a group of us were in Israel for a meeting. One night in Jerusalem, we were sitting in a room in the YMCA Three Arches Hotel, and I was explaining the importance of Yahweh’s Name. One of the people in our group had been a preacher. His name is Scott. After Scott heard my message, he said, “Neil, the Bible says, ‘At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.’”

Scott loves to quote the Bible and he does it in a pious (i.e., sanctimonious) way. He even has a Bible quote cadence that he uses. I guess he learned that cadence as a preacher. Problem is, Scott didn’t understand what the Bible actually says about the Messiah.

The verse Scott quoted appears in Philippians 2:9-11. This is how those verses are translated in most English translations of the Bible:

“For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knew will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11)

You should have seen the look on his face when I said, “Scott, that’s not what the Bible says. This is what those verses actually say”:

“For this reason also, Elohim (not God) highly exalted Him (the Messiah), and bestowed on Him (the Messiah) the Name which is above every name (Yahweh), so that at the Name of Yeshua (Yahweh) every knew 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.”

The look on Scott’s face when I explained it to him said it all. He was stunned. It was obvious that he didn’t understand what I told him, but the light came on for all the others in the room. That explanation resonated with them instantly. Yahweh’s Spirit was with us that night, but Scott missed it. What was the problem?

I don’t know the answer to that question. All I can say is this: Everyone in the room got it except Scott, and Scott was the only preacher with us.

Could the problem have been a combination of tradition and indoctrination? Maybe. Intellectual laziness might explain it, too. Whatever the answer is, these are verifiable facts:

1. Yahweh’s title is Elohim, not God. God is the name of a pagan deity that has become the generic title that most people use for Yahweh. Yahweh would never use the name of a pagan deity as His title.
2. Yahweh is the Name that is above every name.
3. Yahweh bestowed the Name Yahweh on the Messiah, so that at the Name Yahweh every knee will bow.
4. Eventually, every tongue will confess that Yeshua the Messiah is Yahweh.

All my friends are intelligent. Some of them border on being geniuses. Others are geniuses. Even so, few of them welcomed this message. A few did, and I am thankful for that.

Don’t Be Naïve

Eventually, I realized that I had been naïve. I believed that simply telling people the truth and proving that it is the truth would be enough. I didn’t realize how powerful church tradition is and how unwilling most churchgoers are to think for themselves using the Scriptures and the leading of Yahweh’s Spirit as their guides. To me, that was a shocking and disappointing discovery.

In McGee’s lesson that you listened to at the beginning of this editorial, he said, the U.S. “is not a Christian nation.” I agree with him.

McGee also said, “We are as heathen as Russia is.” I think that’s true, too, but there is a difference between Russia and the U.S.

In the U.S., preachers can tell the truth if they want to. In Russia, that’s not always the case. And believers in the U.S. are free to share their beliefs. In Russia, that’s not always the case.

In other words, we are not a Christian nation because the shepherds and the sheep are not doing their jobs. We are a heathen nation, because people who should be telling the truth are derelict in their duties. At best, they are asleep at the switch.

Most believers have at least one Bible, but few of them read it and almost none of them study it. They pay preachers to study the Bible for them, and they call it a tithe. They are making a serious mistake. The evidence in our nation shows that preachers and churchgoers are failing miserably.

Reading the Bible vs. Studying It

There is a huge difference between reading the Bible and studying it. Studying means to delve into the details and the underlying facts. That takes work, and that’s something most believers are unwilling to do. They would rather go to church and listen and be entertained than to put forth effort on their own.

If churchgoers studied the Bible, they could hold preachers accountable. They don’t study the Bible, so preachers can do just about anything they want and get by with it.

Paul was right when he said that believers in his day were drinking the milk of the word instead of eating meat of the word:

“But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in the Messiah. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human? (1 Corinthians 3:1–4)

Things are at least as bad today as they were in Paul’s day. To most believers, their opinions matter more than facts, because most believers don’t know the facts. Even worse, they don’t care that they don’t know the facts, and they will attack people who share facts that contradict their opinions. In their world, their opinions are everything and facts are nothing. Any educated, intelligent person should know how dangerous that is, but obviously, most believers are not concerned about it.

In Hebrews 5:14, Paul went even further. He said,

“Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.” (Hebrews 5:14)

Regrettably, most believers today are not mature, so they have a hard time distinguishing between right and wrong. I think you can say that our country is an anything goes place because of people who say they are believers. They will accept just about anything if it jives with their opinions.

Follow Yahweh

For reasons that Yahweh knows, now is the time for His people to know His Name, to call Him by His Name, and to tell others about Him by Name. If we do that, Yahweh will bless us. If we refuse to do that, we are making a tragic mistake. This is what Yahweh said:

“If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

I believe our nation is suffering and rapidly heading into the pit of depravity, because Yahweh’s people are not humbling themselves. They are not praying, seeking His face, and turning from their wicked ways. Therefore, Yahweh is under no obligation to hear our prayers, forgive us, and heal our land.

Most believers don’t even know that they are called by Yahweh’s Name. That is a disgrace, and it must change.

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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

See “His Name is Yahweh”.