Guarding His Flock Ministries

Is Jesus Jehovah, or Yahweh (YHWH), of the Old Testament?

“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” 2 John 7, NASB

Jehovah’s Witnesses exhibit commendable moral characteristics, especially when set against the backdrop of our culture’s moral meltdown. Members are generally “clean cut” and family oriented. In raising their children, they enforce outward standards of holiness and dress, standards which shame much of what is acceptable in today’s pan-evangelical churches. Unlike many professing Christians, they also possess a missionary zeal as evidenced by their neighborhood visitations. Few after all, have not been visited by them at their front door.

But despite credible characteristics, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not possess a right understanding of the doctrine of Christ. They refuse to accept the obvious New Testament assertions that Jesus is God (Colossians 2:8-9; Philippians 2:6; John 1:1; etc.). Like Unitarians, Witnesses believe that Jehovah alone is God.

The name Jehovah is the English paraphrase of the common Old Testament name for God, Yahweh (with vowels “a” and “e” added, the name Yahweh derives from the Hebrew name YHWH). About himself Yahweh states, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD (YHWH) is our God (Elohim), the LORD (YHWH) is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4). In his indictment of the idolatry of Israel, Yahweh declared through Isaiah, “Thus saith the LORD (YHWH) the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD (YHWH) of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). In light of Old Testament texts like these, Jehovah’s Witnesses rightly equate that Jehovah is singularly God as opposed to the idolatry, pantheism and polytheism of the pagans. But in their zeal to protect Jehovah’s unity, they deny Jesus’ deity.

So when looking at the Bible, the question arises, does the Jesus of the New Testament equate to be the personal and self-disclosed Yahweh/Jehovah of the Old? There is strong evidence which indicates that both Jesus and His disciples believed He was the incarnation of YHWH.

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From astrology to nativity: the role of the star in the Magi’s journey to find the Messiah.

“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ’Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him.” Matthew 2:1-2, NASB

Star Light Star bright,
The first star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

So goes the Mother Gooose Nursery Rhyme that many in their childhood repeated as they wistfully lay on their beds looking out the bedroom window at the sky above. From Disney to astronomy, stars fascinate the human mind and soul. But there are mystical and spiritual worldviews, ancient and modern, associated with stars, astrology and its attendant horoscopes being but one example. Stars can promote myths.

Among others, one that has accumulated around Christmas is that by night and by day from Babylon, or from places thereabouts, an ongoing star led three wise men or magicians to Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Christ child. Enduring frigid nights and blistering days and traveling by caravan on camels over desolate desserts, these ancient astrologers followed a star that first appeared in the east where they lived and practiced the occult arts, to the West where the infant (not baby) Jesus resided. The Christmas carol “We Three Kings” perpetuates the myth. The lyrics read:

First Stanza:
We three kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

Chorus:
O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright;
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to Thy perfect light.[1]

Preachers too help to perpetuate the myth that to locate Him who was born King of the Jews, the wise men followed an ever present star. One has written:

The star of Bethlehem was a star of guidance. This star guided the wise men through the desert and across great distances. It guided them to the Lord Jesus Christ.[2]

Yet questions abound around this Christmas scenario. Is this understanding of the role played by the star too star-struck?

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The “smoggy” spirituality of L. Ron Hubbard.

“The lamp of your body is your eye; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you may not be darkness.” Jesus, Luke 11:34-35, NASB

Many Hollywood celebs have embraced the religion Scientology, the teachings of the late L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). In 1950 L. Ron, a prolific science fiction author, wrote a book Dianetics that set forth his teachings. To promote these teachings, he realized the value of celebrity endorsement and to this day famous persons publicly align themselves with Scientology teachings, among them being such notables as Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Fox News legal analyst Greta Van Susteren. Through information and techniques offered at expensive seminars, Scientology offers people a method for coping with the stresses of life. The method works something like this.

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A meditation on Job 23:10.

“But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” Job 23:10, KJV

There is no state in life that we would more want to avoid than sufferings like unto those experienced by Job. In a short time, he lost it all–his wealth, family, friends and health. Job went from possessing everything to having nothing. No more pathetic scene exists in Scripture, save that of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, than that of Job, having lost it all and been smitten with painful boils from head to toe, sitting on the ash heap at the dump outside the city scraping his rotting flesh with a potsherd (that’s a sharp fragment of broken pottery), and his wife coming and asking him, “Dost thou still retain thine integrity?” and then telling him, ”curse God, and die” (Job 2:8).

Few people in life have experienced the trials of Job. Though everybody around him accused that he deserved God’s judgment because he had sinned, Job never did curse God for what had befallen him. Amidst all the negativity that surrounded him, Job believed that God knew the way of his life. Amidst the circumstances of life, do we also believe this?

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Encountering voices in the quiet of contemplative prayer.

“We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” The Apostle John, 1 John 4:6, NASB 

Through practicing the discipline of solitude and silence, contemplative spiritualists hope to hear God personally speak to them. As one nationally known personality stated on the Be Still DVD, “intimacy automatically breeds revelation.”[1] But if a voice speaks, there is some question regarding its identitity. Therefore in the video’s same segment, “Fear of Silence,” Richard Foster offers advice about how to discern who might communicate in the stillness. He said:

Learning to distinguish the voice of God . . . from just human voices within us . . . comes in much the same way that we learn any other voice. Satan pushes and condemns. God draws and encourages. And we can know the difference.[2]

Though there could be others, Richard Foster admits to cacophony of possible voices that might speak: first, human voices within and without (a source that could involve hearing oneself speak, in which case, contemplators would be listening to themselves); second, Satan’s voice; and third, God’s voice.

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No formation without regeneration.

“My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you . . .” Paul, Galatians 4:19, NASB

Within evangelical movement, especially on the part of the emerging church, we hear a lot of talk about “spiritual formation.”[1] The difference I have with the spiritual formation movement is not regarding the destination—Paul wrote that Christians need to grow-up “to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13)—but over the journey, how emerging evangelicals are proposing we get there. As the Holy Spirit incorporates Christ within and among believers, He sets Christ-likeness as the objective for every believer because that is the very meaning of the name, “Christian.”

The problem with so many evangelicals today is that they are not Christ-like.[2] Three decades of “pop worship,” with its emphasis upon entertainment at the expense of edification from God’s Word, has led to spiritual-emptiness. “Happy church” has not made for a holy church, and the deficiency has provided a spiritual climate in which spiritual directors, spiritual formation, and spiritual disciplines have emerged. As evangelicals experientially embrace the mystery of faith in our postmodern era, emphasis upon spiritual formation is becoming the vogue in churches, Christian universities, Bible colleges and seminaries.

Recently, I listened to a pastor explain to his congregation why they were not an emerging church.[3] In his conversation—they no longer call it preaching—he referenced Paul’s statement in Galatians 4:19 to justify employing methods of spiritual formation. The text reads: “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you . . . for I am perplexed about you” (Italics mine, Galatians 4:19-20). Connect the dots—formed . . . formation. On this basis, the pastor assumed Paul to have been a kind of spiritual director who promoted spiritual disciplines to affect spiritual formation. The pastor’s  assumption caused me to look at the biblical text to see whether Paul was promoting such an approach to spirituality. Ironically, what I discovered was opposite from what this pastor inferred the text to say. But first some background . . .

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Why the decline of Evangelicalism?

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7, KJV

The Word of God suggests there exists an intergenerational spiritual legacy which surpasses any other in value and importance. God chose Abraham because, “I know him,” said the Lord, “that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord . . .” (Genesis 18:19, KJV). For Abraham the faith was a trust to be passed on to his children for their spiritual blessing (Genesis 12:2). Fathers often begin businesses with the expectation that one day the sign on the front of the building might read, Father and Son. Family fortunes also pass from generation to generation as the names Kennedy, Rockefeller and Rothschild attest. Kings too create legacies for their descendents, for princes and princesses.

Like a baton handed-off between runners in a relay race, at least once the Christian faith was passed from a grandmother, to a mother, and to a son. Wrote Paul to Timothy, “For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well” (2 Timothy 1:5, NASB). However, with such a trust there is a danger.

We may take the trust too much for granted, and in doing so, fumble the baton. As she surveyed the spiritual carnage and wreckage within the biblical record, Ruth Graham once stated: “Christianity is but one generation away from extinction.” Part of the problem with today’s Woodstock generation is that somewhere the “baby boomers” lost or dropped the spiritual legacy of their fathers and mothers, and this failure, as the condition of our nation attests, has affected (or should I say infected?) our entire society.

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Vineyardism and the Toronto Blessing.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:22-24, NASB, Emphasis Added

Mother’s Day, 1994. When standing to be recognized in the church gathering, many mothers “fell and remained on the floor for about 20 minutes, laughing.” At a previous January service, the “participants were swept up in a fervor of what they said was the power of the Holy Spirit. They laughed or shook uncontrollably and fell to the floor.”[1]

The pastor of the church tells congregants:

Do we want you to shake and fall down? Are we disappointed when you don’t? Well, a little bit. We want you to focus so much that you are overwhelmed. . . . When the living God overwhelms you, it shows. It’s a big deal. Call it the baptism in the Spirit. Call it being nuked.[2]

About what happened at one Vineyard gathering, a pastor reported of a fellow who, “described [his] . . . experience as equivalent to six months of therapy.”[3]

What am I to believe about these manifestations? Do they come from the Holy Spirit? Or, in failing to appreciate and apply the “Toronto Blessing,” am I missing something that could bless my personal Christian walk and the congregation I pastor?

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A meditation upon Hosea 7:8.

“Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do not return to the LORD their God, nor seek him for all this.” Hosea 7:8-10, KJV

In a previous generation, a churchman observed of the church’s relationship to the surrounding culture of that era and said: “I looked for the church and found it in the world. I looked for the world and found it in the church.” In the history of American Christianity there perhaps has never been a time when the criticism uttered by that Englishman against the church of his day is not also an apt indictment of Christianity in our culture today.

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Mormonism and the divine-spiritual DNA of human beings.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:1-3, KJV

The religious group headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, claims to be Christian, but their teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ makes their claim suspect. Mormons, known officially as The Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, would like for us to view them as within Christendom’s pale, but the fact of the matter is, their professed Christology invalidates any such claim, and here’s why.

A key question differentiating true from false Christian profession is the one Jesus asked the Pharisees who like the Mormons, regulated their religious life according to a formalistic-legalistic system. To them Jesus personally asked this question: “What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?” (Matthew 22:42; Compare Matthew 16:13 ff.). The New Testament provides one answer to that inquiry, while Mormonism gives an altogether different one. To see the difference, we need to understand the Mormon view of the human soul-spirit, both that of Jesus and the rest of humanity.

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