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Hallowed Be Thy
Name - What Is God's Name?
Anyone who has ever had much contact with a
Jehovah's Witness knows that they are preoccupied with the name used for God, to
the point of using the issue as a litmus test for who is in God's kingdom and
who is not. To them, if you call God anything but Jehovah, you are not a
true follower of God. Yet, if they bothered to do their own in depth study
of the names of God, they would know that God goes by many names and most of
those names describe a certain attribute of His. Here are some of those names.
God - for one thing, we all call God, simply
"God" which appears in the Old Testament in Hebrew as the world "Elohiym".
It is a plural noun that means "divine ones", indicating support for the
existence of the Trinity.
The Almighty - This name is "Shaddai" in
Hebrew and it means "most powerful" and it appears 48 times in the Old
Testament.
I Am - This name is mentioned in the book of
Exodus: "And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of
Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you;
and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus
shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."
[Exodus 3:13-14]. In Hebrew the word used of "I Am" is
hayad, which has a meaning similar to Jehovah, that is: "to exist", but
it is a verb, as compared to Jehovah which is a noun.
Jehovah (or Yahweh) - this is a Hebrew word
that means "existing one", so Jehovah is yet another DESCRIPTIVE name for God,
just as Elohiym (Divine Ones), Shaddai (The Almighty), and Hayad (I Am - to
exist).
What name is reserved strictly for
true followers of God?
Is it Jehovah? No. The name reserved exclusively for
true believers, true Christians, is found within three verses in scripture in
the New Testament. It is the word "Abba":
Mark 14:36 - "And he
said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup
from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt."
Romans 8:15 - "For ye
have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the
Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
Galatians 4:6 - "And
because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father."
The word Abba is translated "father." It has no
perfect equivalent in our English language but it is a term expressing warm
affection and the confidence and trust a son or daughter should have towards
their father. Only those who are truly God's children, whom God has
adopted into His family, have a right to call God by this name "Abba" or even by
the English word "Father". To call God Father. and yet not have been
"born-again" into God's family is one of the most serious acts of self
deception... to be a child of the evil one while believing that you are a child
of God. This is the mistake the Jewish religious leaders made as mentioned
in John 8:36-45.
Who fathered the Jehovah's
Witnesses?
What the Jehovah's Witnesses don't realize is that
their spiritual father is not the God of the Bible but rather a false prophet
named Charles Taze Russell who started Zion's Watch
Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence in 1879 which later became the
Watch Tower Bible And Tract Society which is
the organization that heads up the pseudo-Christian religion known as the
Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses would probably abandon their
faith if they bothered to do their own independent research on their religion's
founder and his beliefs. Russell got many of his ideas from
Nelson H. Barbour and
William Miller.
Miller was a freemason and also the founder of much of the doctrine promulgated
by the Seventh Day Adventists. Russell also had some strange beliefs regarding
pyramids, called
pyramidology.
So, based upon the person whose theology brought about
this religion we now call Jehovah's Witnesses, a more accurate name for his
followers is the term "Russellites" and NOT Jehovah's Witnesses. The
major flaw in the theology of Russellites is the same flaw in the theology of
just about anyone who names the name of Christ and yet is unsaved (unconverted
by God). That flaw is their lack of understanding of the nature of man
(his total depravity and lostness unless and until he is converted by God and is
indwelt by the Holy Spirit) combined with a lack of understanding of the
sovereignty of God (His prerogative to save whom He wills when He wills and to
do as He pleases with His creation).
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