Dutch translation 14px  16px  17px  18px

Who is Yahweh?

Preface.
Many years ago I knew a number of “brothers and sisters” who had a high opinion of themselves. An inevitable accompanying phenomenon was that the brave souls who did not intend to bow to the blown ego of these “self-made kings” were considered unsuitable by them for service in the Kingdom of God. In practice, however, that kingdom consisted almost entirely of the carefully constructed image of these do-it-yourself kings that maintained their own kingdoms through intimidation, manipulation, espionage and more of such obscure practices. What these kings said at the time and are still claiming, as I have understood from eyewitnesses, is discussed on this page, among other things. Initially I was not in such a hurry to pay attention to this topic on my website, but as it often happens, I became quite convinced that work had to be done. With this subject I hope to be able to achieve that for many people it will contribute to a better knowledge of Yahweh. By the end of this page, it will become clear what exactly was and is being proclaimed by the aforementioned people.

 

Deception in a sheepskin.

Over the centuries, masses of questionable figures have made frantic attempts to keep the fire of confusion and despair burning under a religious cooking pot in which the remnants of what was once the gospel of Jesus Christ are mixed with a lot of from the time of the first apostles which is held for truth. And of which not everything is truth. It all reminds me of the words of the apostle Paul who spoke to the elders of the church at Ephesus in Acts 20:29,30:
I myself know that after my passing, grim wolves will come to you that will not spare the herd; and men will arise from your own midst who speak the wrong things to attract the disciples after them.”
And as was to be expected, those grim wolves did not spare the herd. In such a way, Jesus warned His disciples that after His departure to the Father, persecution and oppression also awaited them. In John 15:20 we read this warning: “Remember the word that I have spoken to you: A slave is not above his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my word, they will also keep yours.” The grim wolves that Paul was referring to were responsible for part of those persecutions.

It is obvious that the word prosecutions will easily make people think of brutal violence and torture. In the Bible, however, the devil is, among other things, called the “old snake”. A striking characteristic of a snake is that it can twist itself in the most impossible bends, so that it constantly changes shape. One thinks that one has a reliable representation of his appearance but one moment later, nothing can be found of it anymore. The devil, the old serpent, is constantly changing in appearance, and one of those outward appearances is that of an angel of light. And in that form he also persecutes the church of Jesus Christ. The dangerous thing about it is that it looks so innocent and genuine. However, it is no more than one of the many masks behind which this snake hides.

After saying goodbye to His disciples, Jesus took His place at the right hand of the Father. The “old snake” then seized his chances to exterminate the early congregations that emerged shortly thereafter, and for this purpose this winding snake made use of its many forms, including its (almost) perfect disguise as angel of light. It may come as no surprise that he can always find henchmen for that play in this dark world. Paul gave a description of these people in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15: “For such people are mock apostles, deceitful workers, who present themselves as Christ's apostles. No wonder too! After all, Satan himself poses as an angel of light. So it is nothing special if his ministers also present themselves as ministers of justice; but their end shall be according to their works.”

In his letter, Judas also mentions this when he writes in Judas 1:4: “For certain people have crept in that have traditionally been written down to this judgment, wicked ones, who turn the grace of our God into debauchery and the only Ruler, our God and Lord Jesus Christ deny” (translated directly from the original Greek text). The expression creeping in indicates that these certain people have nested themselves unnoticed within the congregations, which is only possible if their disguise is deceptively real. Were that not the case, their sneaking in would not have gone unnoticed for long. Jesus Himself already predicted this in Matthew 7:15: “Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheepskin, but inside they are predatory wolves.”
The bad thing about this is that these disguised wolves do not sit still but thanks to their disguise, as seemingly sincere Christians, they can spread their lies within a congregation in order to initiate a hidden revolution. Which ultimately, because that is what satan t is all about, leads to a destroyed church. I write this from experience.
It is a proven method in this world to infiltrate opponents and dissenters and to undermine their organization from within. That is the well-known and all too often successful “Trojan Horse” tactic that has defeated many thousands in Christianity.

 

The hidden identity.

To return to the actual subject of this page: just as the old serpent can hide his own identity, he has also endeavored since the fall of men to distort and mask the identity of the Creator, his greatest enemy. Looking at the history of the Jewish people, a picture emerges of a rebellious people who received laws from his God to steer the daily life of that people in the right direction and to maintain the good relationship between God and people. The history of the Old Testament shows us that very little of the latter was achieved. The attitude of the people of Israël is defined by God Himself, as we can read in, among other things, Isaiah 29:13: “Because this people is only approaching Me with words and honoring them with their lips, while keeping their heart far from Me, and their awe is a learned commandment of men to me, therefore, behold, I continue to deal wonderfully with this people, wonderful and wonderful: the wisdom of his wise shall be destroyed, and the understanding of his wise shall be hidden.”

In the New Testament Jesus meant to say exactly the same thing in Matthew 11:25-26: “At that time Jesus raised and said: I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid these things from the wise, but revealed to children. Yes, Father, because that has been pleasant for You.”
We can expect a just judgment from a just God. And this judgment in the two quoted texts from Isaiah and Matthew is that the secrets of the Kingdom of God are not intended for the hypocrites, the faithless, the haughty, and those who are wise in their own eyes and want to be honored as teachers by the people. Jesus encountered the most opposition from such people during His gospel preaching. Their concern was that they would lose their prestige and honor because of all the people's attention for that strange wanderer from Galilee who cared about the fate of the poor, healed the sick and even raised the dead. In John 12:19, among other things, we encounter their reaction to all this: “Then the Pharisees said to one another, You see before your eyes that you achieve nothing; behold, the whole world is after him.” That they prefered to get all that attention themselves, is obvious.
What we learn from both the apostate behavior of the people of Israël and the hostility of the religious leaders in Jesus' days is that in both cases the deepest nature of their God was a mystery to them. James 4:8 teaches us about this: “Come near to God, and he will approach you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you who are inwardly divided.” As long as there is no question of approaching God, we do not have to rely on Him approaching us and revealing Himself to us. In fact, as we have already been able to read in Isaiah 29:13, God deals with the “wisdom” of the “sages” and a few chapters further on we find in Isaiah 44:25: “Who wipes out the signs of the false prophets and the fortune tellers denounces as fools; who makes the wise go back and makes their knowledge foolish.” And in Isaiah 59:2: “But it is your iniquities that bring separation between you and your God, and your sins make his face hidden from you, so that He does not hear.”

There is talk of keeping God's face hidden in this passage and this shows that the most recognizable of Him remains a mystery to the rebellious. Over the centuries, many theologians and “biblical scientists” have attempted to understand the essence of God, but all these attempts are absolutely fruitless as long as God's conditions are not met. And all those conditions can be summarized in the words that the three apostles heard during the glorification of Jesus on the mountain in Matthew 17:5: “While he (Peter) was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice from the cloud said, This is My Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to Him!” If we are expected to hear to Jesus, we are expected to respond to the gospel that He had received from the Father and what Jesus passed on to us. The latter we find in John 12:49 where Jesus says: “For I have not spoken of Myself, but the Father who sent Me has given Me a commandment myself what I must say and speak.” Where people believe they have to replace this gospel with all kinds of religious rules, the condition of the Father is not met and as a result the nature of the Father and that of the Son remains hidden from them. When God hides His face, He hides His identity so that this identity remains a mystery. And what He hides remains a mystery. In this case it concerns the mystery of Yahweh. That the identity of Yahweh has thus remained a mystery for all the rebellious ones has been sufficiently substantiated.

Know the Lord.

In contrast to the foregoing, it will all ultimately lead to what we can read in Hebrews 8:11: “And no longer will they teach each his fellow citizen, and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all know me, from the smallest to the largest among them.” Is this not ultimately the reason why man was created? God wants to be known. This is what Jesus showed in John 14:21: “He who loves my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” So “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them” here means being obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and whoever is responding to it does exactly what we saw in James 4:8: “Approach to God, and He will approach you.” So Jesus' statement: “I will reveal Myself to him” and the words of James: “He will approach you” have the same meaning: the unification of Creator and man.
Jesus' statement: “I will reveal Myself to him” is related to His promise to the disciples about the coming of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, which He would send after His departure from this earth (John 16:7). The hidden association with Jesus through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit is therefore the only way to really get to know Him.

 

Who sent me.

If we study the foregoing carefully again, then something remarkable comes to the fore that we miss all too quickly. In the aforementioned quote from Jesus in John 12:49: “For I have not spoken of Myself, but the Father who sent Me has given Me a commandment myself, what I must say and speak”, shows that Jesus did not speak from Himself but on the contrary passed on the words of the Father. And in Matthew 17:5 the voice from the cloud said: “This is My Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to Him!” This teaches us that the Son passes on the words of the Father and in turn tells the Father that we have to listen to His Son. That, in other words, we should only pay attention to what the Son has to say. John the Baptist also witnessed this and we find this testimony in John 3:34 where he says: “For He who sent God speaks the words of God, because he does not give the Spirit in moderation.”
So Jesus speaks the Father's words on behalf of the Father. We find this again, superfluously, in John 7:16: “Jesus answered them and said: My teaching is not from me, but from Him who sent me.” Jesus was the messenger of the Father and everything He spoke and did happened on behalf of the Father. This was not a new situation but, and here we touch on the subject of this page, a continuation of the situation that already existed in the time of the Old Testament.

The Ebionites (and their successors).

In his “History of the Church”, the church historian Eusebius describes the rise, in the first centuries of our era, of a Jewish-Christian sect called the Ebionites. There appeared to be several variants with the same name but, how could it be otherwise, with a different vision. And that vision concerned, it can be guessed, the person Jesus Christ. In one variant, the opinion prevailed that the virgin birth of Jesus was a figment. In that vision, He was just a human being and did not differ in anything from his brothers and sisters. In their vision, that whole “god who became human” story was nothing more than a fabrication.
The other variant of these Ebionites had no problem at all with the biblical fact that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit. But there too people refused to believe that Jesus had existed before. The much-discussed “pre-existence” (= the fact that Jesus already existed before He became human) was absolutely excluded from both variants. What they did have in common was their rejection of the apostle Paul's letters and the desire to stick to Jewish laws.
It was obvious that this topic has occupied Christianity more often since then. The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes already stated in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been, that will be, and what has been done, that will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” And what was then proclaimed by the Ebionites can now be heard again. If we consider all the attacks that have been opened since the day of Pentecost on the gospel of Jesus Christ and on Christianity in general, we must conclude that the central figure in it, Jesus Christ, has had to suffer the most. When Saul was stopped on his raid on Damascus and met in the middle of the road with a higher power unknown to him, he was told: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4), It was Jesus Himself who put an end to Saul's manhunt and told Saul on the spot that he was not busy picking up a bunch of religious fanatics, but that he was persecuting Jesus Himself.

Since I started the (previous) website, I have come across the most diverse views and opinions about the person Jesus Christ, about His position, about His origin, about the role He may or may not have played or about His future and status. It was to be expected, in a world that is still controlled by a superior who sees his time running out. In Revelation 12:12 we find this warning: “Woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.”
And if a domestic cat can make strange jumps in order to save itself, we don't have to expect that annoyed predator cat with its legs crossed will be waiting for its downfall. The apostle Peter makes no secret of this when he writes in 1 Peter 5:8: “Become sober and vigilant. Your adversary, the devil, goes around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he will devour.” He can do this with the violence of a tearing lion but also, and that is even more dangerous, in the form of an angel of light.
Together with my experiences from many previous years, this smear against the person Jesus Christ leads me to the inevitable conclusion that we can, without any doubt, regard Jesus Christ as:

 

The most hated man in the world.

Due to a coincidence, after years I was again determined by events from my own life, which I had long since left behind. I therefore initially did not intend to pay any attention to it again and certainly not via a website. However, things went differently and although I did not look for it myself, after a series of considerations, I still had the courage to delve into what I saw emerging in my own circle years ago. I have seen people change that I have known closely for several years. It was ultimately a spirit of resistance and hatred that drove our church apart with traumatic consequences for most of those involved. The refinement of all this was, how could it be otherwise, that it all took place under the guise of (supposed) holiness. As we also read in 2 Timothy 3:5: “......who with an appearance of godliness have denied the power thereof; keep these at a distance.” The unbearably harsh climate during the last meetings is something that will always stay with me.
Years before, I made the statement to someone that it was the spirit of anti-christ who made every effort to get a firm grip on the congregation. While at first I sometimes doubted those words, I had to conclude not long after that I had hit the nail on the head.

But, in order to grasp the cow by the horns, I want to first briefly describe here what the doctrine that the persons concerned adhered so fanatically. And yes, it largely came down to what the Ebionites, mentioned above, had already invented: that person Jesus of Nazareth was only a human. Nothing God in a human form, that's all nonsense. So, according to their beliefs there is in the Bible no suitable foundation for that theological construction.

An annoyance for the Jews, a foolishness for the Gentiles.

What particularly struck me when I studied the subject on this page was the contrast I found in it. A contradiction that has determined the fate and history of the Jews. In Deuteronomy 10:20 we see what was expected of the people of Israël: “You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve Him, cleave unto Him, and swear by His name.” The history of the Old Testament teaches us that too often that fear and service did not end up so much so that the Prophet and Judge Samuel was already told by God: “.....for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me that I should not be king over them” (1 Samuël 8: 7). And now for the striking contradiction: in stark contrast to the apostasy that the people of Israël have shown time and time again is the unimaginably disciplined way in which the scribes of the people were concerned with copying the surviving Bible books. What is particularly striking here is the respect and awe for the name of God. After the Babylonian exile, the Jews did not even dare to pronounce the name Yahweh for fear of abusing it in any way.
When Jesus endeavored to make the gospel of the Kingdom of God known to the people during His stay among the people of Israël, He faced the same hostility and unwillingness that had determined the behavior of the people of Israël for centuries. Not long before, John the Baptist also collided with the Pharisees and Sadducees and told them in Matthew 3:9: “And think not to say within yourselves: we have Abraham as father, for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham!” For the Jews believed that as Abraham's descendants they could rely on the covenant that Yahweh had made with Abraham in Genesis 17:9: “And God said to Abraham, And as for you, you will keep my covenant, you and your offspring, in their generations.” That did not work because John the Baptist had already let them know in Matthew 3:8: “Then bring forth fruit that responds to conversion.” Appealing to a covenant, that since Abraham's days had been trampled underfoot by his offspring had no value whatsoever. It is the conversion and the accompanying fruits that God is all about. There is no substitute for that, nor a covenant that is only honored on paper.

The split behavior that John the Baptist and, not long after, Jesus were confronted with, was a continuation of the contradiction between the respect for the written Word and the Name of God on the one hand and the hostility and resistance of the Jews to the (spoken) Word of God on the other hand.
In Isaiah 29:13 a striking description is given of this (as we already read above): “And the Lord said, Because this people is approaching Me with words and honoring with their lips, while keeping their heart far from Me, and their awe for Me is a learned commandment of men.” In the Old Testament there was no room for Yahweh in the heart of His people and in the New Testament we see its continuation during the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus and then since the apostles' mission. During the latter period, Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 1: 23-24: “But we preach a crucified Christ, an annoyance for Jews, a foolishness for Gentiles, but for those called, Jews as well as Greeks, [we preach ] Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Paul is referring here to the rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the Jews who, also during Paul's mission journeys, were opposing almost everywhere he came and wanted to prevent Paul from preaching the gospel. It must therefore be said that, when studying Paul's missionary journeys, it is striking that it was mainly the (religious) Jews who had this hostility on their conscience. Comparing this hostility to the behavior of the Jews in the Old Testament, I come to the same conclusion that the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in Ecclesiastes 1:9 had already drawn: “What has been, that will be, and what has been done that will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.”

 

The invisible Father.

The big problem the enemies of Jesus Christ keep on colliding with is that it is not them but God Himself who always has the final say. And that the outcome of all their clever ideas will therefore turn out differently than they had envisaged. To get the right insight into the subject of this page, the position of the Father must first be determined. In 1 Timothy 6:13-16 Paul lets his light shine on this when he writes to Timothy: “I commend for God, who gives all life, and for Christ Jesus, who has declared the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment immaculate and impeccable until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in due time will cause the blessed and only Ruler to behold, the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality and inhabits an inaccessible light, none of us has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal power! Amen.” Paul briefly describes here that the Father occupies a position that is above all else that cannot be grasped by us humans and that far exceeds our imagination. There is even an inaccessible light here and that none of us has ever seen the Father or can see the Father. The apostle John also expresses this with the words: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is at the bosom of the Father, he hath known Him.” (John 1:18). And in his first letter he repeats this when he writes in 1 John 4:12: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us and His love has become perfect in us.” And in Colossians 1:15 Paul puts it as follows: “He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” What Paul and John write about the Father here is one of the main pillars in the gospel of the Kingdom of God. And why? John has actually already given an answer to this with the words: “the only begotten Son, who is at the bosom of the Father, who (!!) made Him known.” Jesus did this when He taught His disciples and showed the people who the Father is in His words and deeds so that, shortly before His capture, He could answer Philip: “I have been with you so long, Philip, and do you not know Me?? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how then do you say, Show us the Father?” (John 14: 9). Jesus had made an effort to make the being and character of the Father known to His disciples. Although there were some references to the existence of the Father in the Old Testament (as in Psalms 110:1), the Father remained the great unknown until the time of Jesus' preaching. And that is certainly not so strange because wasn't it because of the fall of man that there was a separation(!!) between God the Father and the sinful man?? Because that was the reason why Jesus Christ went the way to Calvary in order to bridge the insurmountable gap between the holy, invisible Father and sinful man. That present gap was again clearly expressed by Jesus in His response to the enemy Jews, in John 8:19: “Then they said to Him: Where is your Father? Jesus answered, 'You know neither me nor my Father: If you knew me, you would also know my Father.” What applied to the Jews also applies to all other people and that is what Jesus puts into words in John 17:25: “Just Father, the world does not know You , but I know You, and these know that You have sent Me.” In Luke 10:22 Jesus expresses this unfamiliarity with the Father in the following way: “All things have been given to me by my Father and no one knows who is the Son, then the Father, and who is the Father, then the Son and whoever the Son wants to reveal.” However, as a result of His preaching, He can in John 17:26 conclude his high priestly prayer with the words: “and I have made known to them thy name, and I will make known your name, that the love wherewith thou loved me be in them, and I in them.” By the name of the Father, Jesus means the being and character of the Father and this name of the Father had become a mystery to sinful man because of the fall of man. In our modern age in which the spiritual darkness visibly advances, it has also become a dominant trend in the evangelical world to undermine the seriousness of sin and its consequences. Which makes one think superficially about the separation that arose from sin between the Father and this creation. However, that was no small matter, that was absolutely dramatic!! Without Jesus as the only way to the Father, that would have been an eternal separation from the Father and therefore an eternal death. It is precisely about the seriousness of sin that, under the influence of demonic doctrines, one thinks remarkably light-hearted in the evangelical/charismatic realm.

So, the situation is that the invisible Father was revealed by Jesus during His walk on earth. Jesus Himself confirms this again in John 6:46: “Not that anyone has seen the Father; only the One who comes from God has seen the Father.” We must therefore conclude that the Bible leaves no doubt that God the Father lives in an inaccessible light and that He is the Father, as the apostle Paul describes it: “that none of men have seen or can see.”

 

The judge of the whole earth.

From the foregoing we have seen that the Father lives in an inaccessible light and that Jesus Christ is the only one who knows the Father, has seen Him, and has made His being known to people. That may be all well, the better-informed reader may think, but what about certain events that we encounter in the Old Testament? One of these events described in the Old Testament is found in Genesis 18. There we read that Abraham was visited by three men.
One of them was recognized by Abraham as Yahweh. Chapter 18 begins with the statement: “And the Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre, sitting in the heat of the day in the entrance of the tent. And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, three men stood by him; when he saw them, he went out to meet them from the entrance of his tent, and bowed to the ground.”
Yahweh appeared to Abraham there in a human form, accompanied by two angels. These angels moved on after their visit to Abraham to remove Lot and his family from Sodom. The Jewish Bible scholars were well aware that this was Yahweh in a human form. This led them to adjust the text of verse 22. We read there now: “Then the men turned from there and went to Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord.” Originally it must have stood there: “but the Lord still stood before Abraham.” Because they found it inappropriate that Yahweh took a wait-and-see attitude toward Abraham and thereby gave Abraham the opportunity to say what he was up to, and because they found that wait-and-see attitude toward Abraham a humiliating situation for Yahweh, they fit the text out of respect for Yahweh so that we now read in our Bible that Abraham took a wait and see attitude toward Yahweh. If we read that text accurately in the context, it appears that this text does not have a logical order in its current form. The three men appeared to Abraham together at the beginning of chapter 18, and it was expected that they would also leave again. However, that did not happen. The two angels continued their journey, but Yahweh remained standing before Abraham. It would therefore have been a more accurate description of this incident if the contrast between the departing angels and the still waiting Yahweh had been emphasized. Instead, we read in our Bible that it was Abraham who kept waiting. This adaptation of the text shows that the Jewish scholars very well realized that this was about Yahweh in a human form. That it was certainly not a ghost appearance is also evident from the fact that Yahweh even ate what Abraham, as host, had set before Him (verse 8). Just like Jesus ate the piece of fried fish that the disciples gave Him to eat after He unexpectedly appeared in their midst again after His resurrection (Luke 24:42). In Luke 24:39, Jesus even says: “Behold my hands and my feet that it is I; touch me and see that a spirit has no flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” As proof of this, He ate the piece of fish before their eyes. What the disciples witnessed at Jesus' appearance was a similar situation to that in Genesis 18 where is described that Yahweh ate the meal that Abraham had set before Him.

 

The similarity.

After Abraham began his supplication for the perhaps still present righteous in Sodom, he makes a striking confession in verse 25: “far be it from you; would not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” In John 5:22 Jesus makes a statement that has strong similarities with Abraham's confession: “For the Father also judges no one, but has given the whole judgment to the Son.” With these words, Jesus shows us that He Himself is the judge who will judge the living and the dead. Again in Acts 10:42 Peter testifies of this: “and he has commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who has been appointed by the Father as judge over the living and the dead.” And Paul testifies in 2 Timothy 4:1: “I expressly testify before God and Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, with appeal both to his appearance and to his kingship....” In 2 Corinthians 5:10 he writes: “For we must all be made manifest in the judgment seat of Christ, that every man may take away what he has done in his body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” And in Romans 14:10 again: “You, however, what do you judge your brother? Or also you, what do you dislike your brother? For we shall all be put before the judgment seat of Christ.” (according to the basic Greek text).
We cannot deny that the descriptions of Jesus found in the New Testament correspond to the statement of Abraham. The relationship between these is discussed again later on.

They beheld God and they ate and drank.

In this context we can find in Exodus 24 another special event. At this event Moses received the law on stone tablets. But before that, Moses received the commission that we read in verse 1: “He said to Moses, Climb up unto the Lord, thou and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israël, and bow down afar off.” The actual climbing of the mountain is then described in Exodus 24:9-11: “And Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israël. And they saw the God of Israël and it was as if a pavement of glaze lay beneath his feet like the sky itself in clearness. But He did not stretch out His hand to the forefathers of the Israëlites; they beheld God and they ate and drank.”
From a distance the prominent people of the people witnessed this spectacle, and although they were watching Yahweh it says: “But He did not stretch out His hand to the prominent people of Israël.” In other words: they were allowed to live.

However, an entirely different event can be read in Exodus 33:20He said: You will not be able to see My face, because no one will see me and live.” This gives the impression that there is a contradiction. On this occasion, Moses was again on Mount Sinai to receive the law on stone tablets for the second time after he broke the former in his anger and disappointment, after seeing the people dancing for their d-i-y idol. However, the difference with the previous appearance in Exodus 24 is that Moses made a special request in verse 18: “But he said, Let me see your glory.”
Yahweh's answer to that was: “I will let my glory pass you by, and call out the name of the Lord to you: I will be merciful to whom I am merciful, and have mercy on whom I have mercy.” He said: “You shall not be able to see My face, for no man shall see Me and live.” In Exodus 24, the elders of the people saw the shape of Yahweh from a great distance, but Moses apparently was not satisfied with it. His request to be allowed to see Yahweh's glory was that Yahweh would show Himself in a different form than in Exodus 24 was the case. But with that Moses actually went too fast and he was told that no sinful person could see Yahweh's glory and therefore His holiness without this having drastic consequences.
Paul confesses in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a mirror, in riddles, but soon face to face. Now I know imperfectly, but then I will know fully, as I myself am known.” Eventually this will become reality, but in Moses' days this was still unthinkable. The difference therefore lies in the way in which and the form with which Yahweh reveals Himself. After all, Abraham also spoke to Yahweh from man to man, but at that meeting He appeared in a human form.

....who walked in the court in the evening coolness....

Then we have the experiences of the first human couple in the garden of Eden. Shortly after the disobedience of Adam and Eve, they heard to their horror that someone approached, as we read in Genesis 3:8: “When they heard the sound of the Lord God (original text: Yhwh Elohim), who walked in the garden in the evening cool, man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees in the garden.” The fact that they immediately understood who was arriving and that they could hear from the (known) sound who was approaching shows that they had not experienced this meeting for the first time. They recognized the approach of the Lord God, but their weighted conscience prevented them from meeting Yahweh. They knew very well that they had been wrong. And they understood that they could not face Yahweh. That their shame because of their nudity also played a part in this incident is actually only a side issue because the discovery of their own nudity was the result of their burdened conscience and not the other way around.
There is undoubtedly a lot to say and write about that, but what matters in this connection is the simple fact that the Lord God, thus Yahweh, walked in the garden in an appearance that was recognizable to man. Not as a ghost or spirit or something of that nature, but very ordinary, in a shape that could be seen and addressed by man.

 

Serving spirits.

We can read several times in the Bible about appearances of angels, in which they appeared both alone and with others, as has already been described above (in response to Genesis 18). They appeared in the form of a person or, as Daniel experienced, in the form of a supernatural being. Then it could happen that the person in question broke out in sweat and he fell trembling to the ground to worship this heavenly appearance. But even without exception, the angel then intervened with the announcement that he would not tolerate worship.
For example, the apostle John did this twice as we read in Revelation 19:10: “And I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, Do not do this! I am a fellow servant of you and your brothers who have the testimony of Jesus; worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” And again in Revelation 22:8-9: “It is I, John, who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down at the feet of the angel who showed me these things, to worship. But he said to me: Do not do that! I am a fellow servant of you and of your brethren the prophets and those who keep the words of this book; worship God!
It is made clear twice by the angel to John that he is only allowed to worship God and that the angel may not accept worship. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells us about the angels in Hebrews 1:14: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

 

Because if Joshua had brought them to rest....

In the Hebrew letter, Joshua, as leader of the people of Israël, is mentioned in connection with the rest of the Kingdom of God. That is the climate that will control the life of every true disciple of Jesus despite the fierce attacks he will experience from the realm of Satan. We find this in Isaiah 32:17-19: “And the fruit of righteousness shall be peace, the effect of righteousness rest and safety for ever. And my people shall dwell in a dwelling place of peace, in safe dwellings, in places of undisturbed rest, even when it hail, so that the forest falls down, and the city sinks down.”
We read in Hebrews 4:8: “For if Joshua had brought them to rest, he would not have [more] spoken of another, later day.” The emphasis here is placed on the fact that Joshua did not get the people of Israël into that rest, even though under his leadership the people of Israël took possession of the Promised Land. The rest of the Kingdom of God required an immeasurably much better covenant than the covenant that Yahweh had made with the people of Israël in the desert. That better covenant required another Joshua with a better army than what Joshua had at his disposal. An army that would be able to redeem the entire earth from the occupation by the kingdom of Satan.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

We have already seen above in Revelation 19:11-14 that this gentleman (army) of the Lord was mentioned as the hosts who are in heaven. Well the case is that in the Old Testament Yahweh is mentioned among other things the Lord of Hosts (Yahweh Zebaoth).
In Isaiah 6 we find a telling example of this: “In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne and his hems filled the temple. Seraphs stood above Him; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And the one cried out to the other: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. And the doorposts shook with a loud shout, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, Woe unto me, I perish, for I am a man unclean in lips, and dwell among a people that are unclean in lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts . But one of the seraphs flew towards me with a glowing coal, which he had taken from the altar with tongs; he touched my mouth with it and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; now your iniquity has passed away and your sin is atoned.”
Like the people described above, Isaiah also witnessed the sight of Yahweh as the Lord of hosts, and he was not killed for it, as he expected.

Yahweh is salvation.

The name Jeshua means “Yahweh is salvation” or also “salvation” and is the same name as Joshua. So: Joshua = Jeshua. From Numbers 13:16 it appears that Joshua received his name from Moses at a later age: “These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; and Moses called Hosea the son of Nun Joshua.” With this name change the prophet Moses already looked forward to the Joshua of the new covenant.
The name Jeshua is therefore not just an empty cry because the only savior we know is Jesus Christ, who bore the name Jeshua at the time of His presence in this world. This name therefore unquestionably related to Himself, for He was Yahweh(!) Who came as the savior of the world.
Abraham realized that he had Yahweh, the judge of the whole earth, facing him. We come across this again in Peter's confession in Acts 10:42: “And He has commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who is appointed by the Father as judge over the living and the dead.” This is also confirmed by what Jesus Himself said about it in John 5:22: “For the Father does not judge anyone, but has given the entire judgment to the Son.”
Abraham recognized Yahweh and Peter spoke about Yeshua. Both recognized the same Yahweh. Peter had come to know Him as the carpenter from Nazareth who went through life as Jeshua.

 

Yahweh = Jesus Christ.

If we summarize the previous list, the result is:

All in all the result is: Yahweh = Jeshua HaMoshieyach = Jesus Christ . And God the Father?? He has never been seen through human eyes, as has been stated above, because He lives in an inaccessible light.

The outcome Yahweh = Jesus Christ has quite a few consequences for certain people who believe that they, as Abraham's descendants, can rely on the (outdated) covenant that Yahweh once made with Abraham. For they have rejected that same Yahweh as Jeshua HaMoshieyach (= Messiah) and there they will soon hear a few things about it if they will stand before the Judge of the whole earth!!

 

Jesus is our Creator.

There is even more: it may be clear from the above that Jesus is even our Creator. This is confirmed at several places in the Bible. For example in:

So it was our Creator who hung on the cross at Calvary because of our sins!!

The name Jeshua in the Old Testament.

Because my knowledge of the Hebrew language falls short, I have appealed for more information about the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the knowledge of Messianic Jews who master Hebrew (of course) flawlessly. From that it became clear to me that the name Jeshua can be found about a hundred times in the Old Testament. Whenever there is talk of salvation in the Old Testament, with a few exceptions, the same word Jeshua is used as we also find in Matthew 1: 20-21 where Joseph is convinced of the supernatural origin of Mary's child. Moreover, it is unmistakably stated in this text that the name Jeshua is connected to the term salvation. We read in verse 21: “She will give birth to a son and you will give him the name Jesus. For it is He who will save His people from their sins.” This indicates that the name Jesus (Yeshua) is directly related to the redemption of man from sin (Yeshua = Jesus = Yahweh = salvation).

A good example from the Old Testament is Isaiah 62:11: “For the Lord makes it heard to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your salvation is coming; see, His reward is with Him and His retribution goes before Him.” The correct translation from the Hebrew root text is Jeshua (= Yahweh is salvation). Moreover, not a thing or an event but a person is indicated by it, according to the words His and Him used. And that person is Jesus Christ! The correct translation of this text is therefore: “For the Lord makes it heard to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your Jeshua is coming; see, His reward is with Him and His retribution goes before Him.” In my opinion, these facts must be able to saw at least three legs away from under the table on which the Orthodox Jews have displayed their opposition to Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And such a table will probably not last long!

The large and the small Yahweh.

If we now consider the foregoing, we cannot ignore the fact that the Father, like we have read in 1 Timothy 6:16: “......inhabits an inaccessible light that none of the people has seen or can see.....” And in John 1:18 we read: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is at the Father's bosom, He has made Him known.”
If we then look at the above-discussed encounters that nevertheless took place between Yahweh and those mentioned, then we must establish that in those cases there is someone other than God the Father.
This means that God the Father is not the same as Yahweh who had several encounters with people in the Old Testament. That is why Jewish sources show that the ancient people of Israël were already familiar with the existence of the Father. He was known as the great Yahweh, in contrast to the little Yahweh who later made the gospel known as the man Jeshua and after His death and resurrection instructed His disciples to further expand the Kingdom of the second Joshua = Jeshua to to be able to make people from all nations His disciples.
We must therefore make a clear distinction between:

The name: I am who I am means that little Yahweh is forever immutable. This is also underlined by the Hebrew writer when he writes in Hebrews 13: 8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” In James 1:17 we read the same about the Father: “Every gift that is good, and every gift that is perfect, descends from above, from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or hint of turning.” In this respect too, Jesus is the image of the invisible and unchangeable Father, such as Colossians 1:15 lets us know: “He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

I am not going to delve into the question of the origin of the Son and whether or not He was created by the Father. At the time, these kinds of considerations also had to do with the creation of the “Christian” trinity dogma from which an incomprehensible construction has emerged that up to the present has mainly caused a mountain of confusion. Because this originally pagan dogma has never been able to give an adequate answer to the nature of the Father and the Son. We must also take into account the simple fact that we, humans, are limited by the natural phenomenon of time and for that reason we cannot imagine something as elusive as “eternity”. If we worry about “how long had Jesus been there before the creation came about?” we are again thinking in terms of time. We should not do that, we will only be able to understand that properly once we ourselves are history and have left time behind us.
For now we still see through a mirror, in riddles, but soon face to face. Now I know imperfectly, but then I will know fully, as I myself am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

 

The Word of God.

Let us now return to what has already been quoted above about Jesus' mission as He Himself expressed it in John 12:49: “For I have not spoken by myself, but the Father who sent me has given me a commandment myself, what I must say and speak.” Jesus spoke this on behalf of the Father during His stay on this earth, but also before that. As little Yahweh, He was the link between the Father, who is above everything else, and this creation. This is also quoted by the Hebrew writer: “After God (the Father) had spoken to the fathers many times and in many ways in the prophets, He has now spoken to us in the last days of the Son that He has appointed as the heir of all things, through whom He also created the world(!). This, the radiance of His glory and the imprint of His being, who bears all things by the word of His power, has, after having accomplished the cleansing of sins, Seated at the right hand of the majesty on high.” (Hebrews 1:1-3). We read here that God the Father spoke to the fathers through the prophets. In Isaiah 6, however, we saw that the prophet Isaiah by the little Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts, was instructed to speak to the (rebellious) people. Little Yahweh was the commissioner of Isaiah and all other prophets, which we find among other things in Zechariah 7:12: “They made their hearts like diamonds, so as not to hear the teachings and the words of the Lord of hosts (Yahweh Zebaoth) by his Spirit, by the service of the former prophets. Then a great wrath came from the Lord of Hosts.”
So Jesus Christ was the voice of the Father passing on the words of the Father to His prophets as little Yahweh, and as Jeshua HaMoshieyach, He was also the voice of the Father and the only link between the invisible Father and us humans. In John 14: 6 Jesus can therefore say: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” He is the only link between the invisible Father and man. That was also the case in the Old Covenant. The apostle Peter also makes an interesting statement in this regard in 1 Peter 1:10-11: “The prophets searched and searched for this salvation, who prophesied of grace that was meant for you, as they searched for what kind of time the Spirit of Christ meant in them, when He bore witness beforehand of all the suffering that would come upon Christ, and of all the glory thereafter.” Peter leaves no doubt here that it was the (Holy) Spirit of Jesus Christ who inspired the prophets. And that Spirit made Himself known to them as Yahweh.
As the Word of God (John 1:1-14), Jesus spoke the words of God and He was the one who, in the authority of the Father, brought about this creation through the words of God that He spoke. This is what we find in Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the world is created by the word of God (Jesus Christ), so that the visible does not arise from the perceptible.” With the same authority of the Father, Jesus performed His miracles and healings during His days on earth.

Yahweh: forgotten, Jesus: not welcome.

Elsewhere on this site I have paid attention to the hostility of the Orthodox Jews towards the person of Jesus Christ (page not yet translated into English). They have no message to Him as Messiah. The ironic thing now is that when rejecting Jesus as Messiah they invoke the words of Moses that God is one. We see this in Deuteronomy 6:4 where Moses teaches the people of Israël: “Hear, Israël: the Lord is our God; the Lord is one!

If we read the context in which we come across these words, they can very well be interpreted as a call to the sinful people to always and continually realize that the holiness of Yahweh should not be doubted. And that holiness is expressed, among other things, in the fact that there are no contradictions in Him, that He is therefore not divided into a light and a dark side, and has no two natures. This is in contrast to the sinful man who, too soon, at best, takes refuge in a lie in order to conceal some “minor imperfections” from the outside world. However, the Bible simply calls this, straightforward, hypocrisy!
In addition, it is quite possible to explain these words, as the Orthodox Jews do, such as: there is only one God. That is why there is no room for the second God in the theology of Orthodox Judaism. The history of the Old Testament, however, has taught us that many times there was even no room for that one God in their minds while they nevertheless worshipped a multitude of “gods.” What we can summarize with the words: “in a heart where there is room for many, there is no room enough for one.”
In 2 Corinthians 6:11-12 Paul blames the Corinthians: “Our mouth has opened against you, Corinthians, our hearts are wide open; you do not find too little room with us, but it is too scary inside you” (You have limited space, according to the original Greek text). Indeed, no great God fits into such a heart. There is no room for that, as was not the case with the Jews in the Old Testament. For the people of Israël little Yahweh was the only God they had to take into account because, as has been stated above, little Yahweh is the (only) link between man and God the Father. The prophet Jeremiah ultimately witnesses the consequences of the infidelity of his people toward little Yahweh when the last two tribes of the people are taken into exile in Babylon.
In Jeremiah 2:32 he passes on this indictment of Yahweh to the people: “Will a girl forget her outfit, a bride her belt? But My people have forgotten Me, countless days.” Jesus also met the same mentality time and again during His walk in Israël at the time. Apparently most of His contemporaries were waiting for another messiah, which the apostle John put into words in John 1:11: He came to His own....

 

....but His people did not receive Him.

The four gospels show us that in the days of Jesus little had changed in the attitude of His people since the days when the prophets were killed by their forefathers. Every time Jesus called Himself the Son of God, the Jews were again looking for stones to kill Him for those words. In their opinion it was a blasphemy that Jesus equated Himself with the Father, which we read in John 5:18: “For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill Him, because He not only violated the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father and thus equated Himself with God.” However, they knew the Father only as the great Yahweh, as a God who did not interfere directly with man but left everything to the little Yahweh. And that little Yahweh stood there right in front of them! It was this Yahweh who, as Jesus of Nazareth, announced the Father as the apostle John put it: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is at the Father's bosom, he hath known Him” (John 1:18). Jesus' enemies appealed to the laws they had received from Moses, forbidding them to serve other gods, who are essentially not (Galatians 4:8). The fact that their apostasy to Yahweh and their disobedience to the laws of Moses, already discussed above, had already definitively destroyed their credibility is further confirmed by their hostility to Jesus. While they did realize that He was sent by a higher power. The most striking example of this realization is the nightly visit of Nicodemus to Jesus (John 3:1-21). Nicodemus confessed: “Rabbi, we know that you were sent from God as a teacher; for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.” Here a Pharisee spoke on behalf of the other Pharisees while admitting that they were very well aware of the supernatural nature of Jesus Himself, and of His words and deeds. In any case, they saw Him as a teacher sent by God. Also in Mark 15:43 we find someone with the same conviction as Nicodemus: “Joseph of Arimathea, a considerable member of the Council, who also expected the Kingdom of God; and he dared to go to Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus.”
And in John 12:42 we even read: “And yet many of the princes even believed in Him, but for the Pharisees they did not come out of it, not to be banished from the synagogue.”
Despite this knowledge, Jesus was handed over to the Romans by the majority of them to be crucified. The conclusion that we can draw from this is the same one that was already drawn by the apostle John: “He came to His own, but His people did not receive Him.” (John 1:11).

Jeshua Hanozri Wemelech Hajehudim.

When I read the Passion I get the strong impression that the Gentile Pontius Pilate understood better who he had before him than the Jews themselves. In John 19:19 we read: “And Pilate also had a letter written and placed on the cross; it was written: Jesus, the Nazirite, the king of the Jews.” In their own language this was: “Jeshua Hanozri Wemelech Hajehudim.” The four initial letters of this title formed the name YHWH, so that the enemy Jews saw the name of their God in horror. Panic everywhere. Perhaps it was even the very first time for those hypocrites that they (by the help of a pagan!) realized Who they had nailed to the cross. They knew about the existence of a God by tradition, but the essence of that God was a mystery to them. In Isaiah 29:13, cited above, we could read: “And the Lord said, Because this people is only approaching Me with words and honoring with his lips, while keeping his heart far from Me, and their awe is a learned commandment of men for me, therefore, I see continue to deal wonderfully with this people: the wisdom of his wise will be destroyed and the understanding of his wise will be hidden.” Like a learned commandment from people, that's how their awe for Yahweh is described here and a learned commandment is something that is imposed from outside. That has nothing to do with an inner conviction. This attitude can be summarized with the word hypocrisy and because of this hypocrisy, the true identity of Yahweh remained a mystery to them. This is unambiguously brought to their attention by Jesus in John 8:19: “Then they said to him, Where is your Father? Jesus answered, You know neither me nor my Father: If you knew me, you would also know my Father.” And in Isaiah 59:1-2 we read: “Behold, the hand of the Lord is not too short to redeem, and his ear is not too powerless to hear; but it is your iniquities that separate you and your God, and your sins hide his face from you so that he does not hear.” Yahweh kept His face, that is, His identity, hidden from them. When the Jews watched with satisfaction how Jesus was nailed by the Romans, To their horror they were reminded of the name of “their” God. There was a fanatic protest against this, but Pilate's answer to their protest was: “What I have written, I have written.” (John 19:22). And he was right.

 

The modern Ebionites.

Finally, I come back to what I wrote at the beginning of this page about certain people who had great difficulty with all this and have to acknowledge that the Creator of heaven and earth has put on flesh and blood in order to descend to the lower terrestrial regions and in that capacity to show all hell that things can be done differently. Unlike what sinful man had demonstrated until then, namely, a complete powerlessness to return to the original situation that existed before the fall of man. It is to be expected that people who have upgraded themselves to be saviors of the world will find it all too easy to connect with the father of lies. This father of lies already convinced people in the garden of Eden that the path of least resistance would be the most successful. We all know that things went “a little differently” in the meantime.
I once dared to examine the revised gospel of these do-it-yourself prophets, which soon led me to the conclusion that there is nothing new under the sun because it ultimately corresponds to the claims of the Ebionites, the Jewish-Christian sect from the first centuries of our era, that made Jesus an ordinary person, just as Islam and the Orthodox Jews do. Their biggest stumbling block is the “pre-existence” (= the fact that Jesus already existed before He became human) of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just like their ancient predecessors, the modern Ebionites also twisted themselves in all sorts of turns to show that Jesus is definitely not a God but just a person who was still future before his birth. In his letter cited above, however, Judas shows something very different when he writes in Judas 1:4: “Certain people have crept in that have traditionally been written down to this judgment, wicked ones, who turn the grace of our God into debauchery and deny the only Ruler, our God and Lord Jesus Christ.” (translated directly from the original text). Judas calls Jesus Christ our God here and he is not alone in this. Paul does the same in his letter to Titus. In Titus 1:2-3 we read: “....in the hope of eternal life which God, that cannot lie, has promised for eternal times and that He has revealed in our time through the Word of the preaching that has been entrusted to me according to the commission of God, our savior.” (Translated directly from the original text). That our savior is Jesus Christ may be clear after all of the aforementioned. And a little further on in Titus 2:9-10: “The slaves ought to be subject to their masters in all things, pleasing, not contradictory or unfair, but each establishing a good faith so that they adorn the doctrine of God our savior in all things.” (translated directly from the original text). And in Titus 2:13: “expecting the blessed hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.” The apostle Peter does it again when he writes in 2 Peter 1:1-2: “Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained faith as precious as we have through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: grace and peace are multiplied by the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.“ So here we come across three New Testament writers who make no secret that Jesus is God.

Since I was confronted with the views of these modern Ebionites a few years ago, I have often wondered what their real objection is to the existence of Jeshua HaMoshieyach before coming into this world. While studying their findings, it soon became clear to me that they had, it was to be expected, thoroughly digged through the Bible in order to be able to refute any clue in the direction of their inequality. It turned out to be, until November / December 2002, the most cunning teaching I had studied until then.

Nonetheless, I soon found out what the real motive behind this doctrine was, and I found some huge gaps in their carefully constructed defensive wall, so I immediately took the opportunity to do what Paul instructs us to do in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5: “for the weapons of our campaign are not carnal, but powerful for God to destroy strongholds, so that we break down the reasoning and every ramp that is being raised against the knowledge of God, every conception as a prisoner of war under obedience to Christ.”
That particular page has not been translated yet.

I want to conclude this whole argument with a statement of the little Yahweh Himself from Isaiah 57:15: “For thus saith the High, who abide forever and whose name is the Holy One: In the high and in the holy I live and with the shattered and humble of spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and the heart of the crushed.” A greater contrast is not conceivable in this creation. He, who lived in His inviolable heaven, has also shown(!) His compassion by becoming like people, living physically with the shattered and humble of spirit. With which He showed that He is not a God who can only speak easily from His copper heaven, but on the contrary Himself, for example, has gone the way of most resistance. To open the way to the Father again for us, the shattered and humble, by the way of the cross to Calvary. To realize this can make a person very small.....

Proverb:
The gospel is far too complicated for adults.
Only a child can comprehend it.
(after Matthew 18:3)
Sources