“Yahshua”–Believing in the Meaning of His Name

The  disciples are looking up into the serene face of the risen Savior.  They have been with him for forty days now—witnessing the glory in His every word and movement.  He has taught them precious things “pertaining to the kingdom of God.”  He has also instructed them to stay in Jerusalem and “wait for the promise of the Father.”  He has told them to wait for a spiritual baptism in which they will be immersed in God’s very own Spirit.  No water like John’s baptism—this time the power from on high will come upon them.

This promise to them must have been difficult to believe because instead of asking questions about it, they ask a question concerning the kingdom.  Thinking He was talking about a political government, they ask, “Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?”

He responds by saying that the times and seasons of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel rests in the Father’s power.  Shortly, you will be given some of this power from the Father.  That is the first step in the restoration process.  You disciples must begin to receive some of the Father’s power so that you can be witnesses of Me, not only locally, but throughout the whole world.  First receive the power of the Father, and then He will restore the government to Israel in due season.

This account in the first chapter of Acts begins the talk of the restoration of all things in the post-resurrection era.  Peter picks up this thread in Acts 3: 21 when he tells the crowd on the day of Pentecost that   “the heaven must receive” the Savior “until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”  In other words, the Savior Yahshua will not be returning to set up the kingdom of God here on earth until all things are restored.

Restoring the Knowledge of His Name

And one major piece of the puzzle that God is restoring is the knowledge of His name.  First, we must become aware of His original Hebrew name.  But that is only the beginning.  The secrets of God’s power are locked up inside the holy name of God—secrets to His power, secrets about receiving answers to our prayers, and secrets about how to have Him flow through us to heal, which, in turn, shows that the Father is alive and well and living in His sons and daughters.

Clues to the Power in His Name

Peter gives a clue to this healing power found in His name five verses before in Acts 3:16.  Peter and John had, of course, just received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire on the day of Pentecost.  They go to the temple; a lame man asks alms from them.  Peter then delivers his famous line.  “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Yahshua the Messiah of Nazareth rise up and walk.”  And the man was healed!

And he starts to walk and leap around in the temple, praising God for healing him.  And everybody standing around knew this crippled man, and “they were all filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened to him” (v. 8-11).

And Peter, looking around, realizes that the people think that they had healed him somehow.   So he straightens them out and tells them that it was the Holy One who had healed him.  In fact, he gets even more specific about just how the man was healed.  “And his name through faith in His name has made this man strong.”

Wait a minute now.  Let’s not just pass over this lightly.  It was “His name through faith in His name” that infused that poor man’s legs with strength.

Now if a person nowadays could channel this power by just saying, “in Jesus name,” then everybody would be healing the sick everywhere  And we know that is not happening.  So there has to be more to it than just speaking a formula, such as “in Jesus’ name.”

And, yet, we have thousands of so called men of God running around the earth trying to invoke the name of God in order to heal someone.  They will say earnestly, “But He said that if we ask anything in his name, that He would grant it.”

Now all of us at one time or another labored under this thought.  We have understood this to mean that if we say the special words, “in Jesus’ name,” that somehow or other God would answer our prayer requests.

But upon further reflection, just saying those words, “in Jesus’ name” tacked onto the end of a prayer, does not guarantee anything.  Our minds, of course, did not know what else those words could mean.  After all, someone supposedly much more knowledgeable about God than us showed us how to say “in Jesus’ name” after our prayer request, and so we, without questioning it, began to say it.  We were young and impressionable.  We did not know any better.  We were spiritual children, “tossed about by every wind of doctrine.”

And then a wonderful thing happened.  We learned about the sacred names.  It was a glorious revelation at the time.  And so we began to replace the name of Jesus with God’s Hebrew names.  And, so, we naturally ended our prayers, asking all “in the name of Yah, or Yahweh or Yahshua.”

But we still are saying the words, “in Yahshua’s name,” at the end of our prayers the same way we did with, “in Jesus’ name.”  We have the name right now, but why aren’t we seeing the fruit of our prayers?  Why are we powerless to heal in His name?

The key:  Believing what His name means

It is time for us to get a deeper understanding of His promise, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do…” (John 14:13).  YHWH earnestly desires to share this with us.  He wants us to have the power to be His witnesses.  So what is the key to understanding what this means: asking anything in His name and receiving it?

The key lies in believing what His name means. Three steps are on this road of understanding.  First, we need to know His name.   Second, we need to know what His name means.  Third, we need to believe in the meaning of His name.

The Hebrew name of Immanuel, God with us, is Yahshua.  There are many variations on the spelling.  Spellings may be different by one or more letters.  Different camps are adamant that their spelling is the correct one.  I’m not trying to be glib here, but until He or one of His heavenly messengers speak His name to us, it is difficult to be sure.  Paul of Tarsus, under the influence of the Spirit, said that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.  Getting to the spirit of His name is more important than the exact spelling, as rendered in a foreign language called English.  Understanding its meaning is the important thing.

Yahshua means “Yah is Savior.”  “Yah” translated means in essence, “The Self-Existent One.”  So, “Yahshua” means “The Self-Existent One is Savior.”  YHWH created everything, says many verses of scripture.  It also says that Yahshua created all things.  “He was in the world and the world was made by Him,” says the apostle John.  “You shall call His name “Yah Is Savior,” for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Believing in the meaning of His Hebrew Name

It is when we get to this third step that the going gets tough.  Believing in the meaning of His name.  That is the difficult part because one must throw away preconceptions about His name, and there are plenty.  This is the crux of the matter, however.  If it were not difficult to come to this part of the quest for God, then everyone would have the power.

This is what, literally, separates the sheep from the goats, the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.  To believe the message contained in His name, we must believe its meaning.  And it means that Yah, the eternal Spirit, the Father, dwells in a human vessel known as the Son of God, and that entity, called the Holy One of Israel, is the Creator and Savior of mankind.

There are not “two men and a dove” up in heaven somewhere.  There are not two gods in two different forms sitting on two different thrones.  The Father is invisible—period.  If you want to see the Father, you will have to go to the “expressed image of the invisible God.”  In other words, you will have to go to the Son, for He is that very image of God.  And so are we humans, for that matter.  We have been created by the Pattern Himself in His own image.  You want to see what God would look like here on earth?  Just look around at your brothers and sisters walking the globe.  That is the reason that he said, “If you cannot love him who you can see, you cannot love Him who you don’t see.” To love the invisible Father we need to love His visible image.  That would be Yah in human flesh—Immanuel, an invisible Spirit, dwelling in the Son, who is sitting upon the throne.  For He is the First and the Last, and “Beside YHWH, there is no savior” (Isaiah 43:11).  The prophet Isaiah saw into the throne room in heaven; he is a reliable witness to His majesty.  We need to believe him.  KWHancock

The Parable of the Leaven Hidden by the Woman

Things in this world are not what they seem.  Our perception, or lack thereof, causes us to see only what we have been told was there.  So we only see what we expect to see.  The rest of what really is available to see lays dormant to the eye.  It waits for someone to perceive what was there all along.

Take reading the Bible, for instance.  Every person who reads it, reads it through a matrix of past teachings and doctrines that they sat under, making it difficult to see it with fresh eyes.  Every denomination has pet doctrines that serve as a prism for their followers to see through.

It is the “leaven that the woman took and hid in three measures of meal” (Mt 13:33).  “Leaven” in scripture is hypocrisy.  “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1).  The key word here is “to hide.”  Leaven is hid during the kingdom of heaven years after the resurrection and ascension.  It is hid in the food that the followers of the Savior are to eat for their spiritual sustenance.  Leaven is hid through false teachings about God.

False Doctrines Multiply

And “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Gal 5:9).  A little false doctrine multiplies like a bit of yeast in a lump of bread.  It soon spreads throughout the whole lump of dough.    That is what the false religious system, symbolized as the “woman,” has done.  Their false teachings cloud the truth so that the truth cannot be seen.  They hide the truth with smoke and mirrors and spread confusion and a false sense of security.  The Savior in the next verse after His warning about the leaven of hypocrisy says, “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”  False teachings about God hide the truth from the eyes of casual onlookers.

You mean things really are covered up where the average person can’t see them?  Yes, according to the Messiah.    We are doctrinally to partake of the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” Paul says.  That would then make leaven insincerity and falsehoods.  Bread is a symbol for sustenance.  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”  So leavened bread, spiritually speaking, is not the true word of God, but another doctrine.

Many say, “Doctrine is not the important.  Just loving Jesus and each other is the important thing.”  This is some of the old leaven we are to purge out.  The apostle John was strong on the importance of sound doctrine.  “Whosoever transgresses and abides not in the doctrine of Christ, has not God.  He that abides in the doctrine of Christ, he has both the Father and the Son.”  Doctrine is translated from a Greek word that simply means “instruction.”  We, then, are to abide, or to continue in the teachings and instruction of Christ, the Messiah.  If we do not continue in them, then we “have not God,” according to the apostle John.

That is how important the doctrine of God is.  But this takes us full circle to this dilemma: What is the teaching/instruction/doctrine of the Savior?  If we have been eating of a tainted, leavened bread that seems to be truth, but is actually hiding the truth as seen above, then how will we be able to see the truth?

It is here that many will balk.  They will think in their hearts that the old wine is better; the new wine we can’t trust because it is new. “I already know the truth.  I’m set.  Many will go on their way and not delve any deeper into this area.

But wait!  Don’t throw this aside! I want to prove to you that there are things hidden right in your own Bibles that you have read a hundred times or more and never saw.  How can I say this with conviction?  Because I just experienced a profound revelation of truth in the Bible—a truth that was always there in black and white—literally there, but I had never seen it.

I was reading Paul’s writings in I Corinthians 10:4-9—what he said about the children of Israel in the wilderness.  “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”  A footnote loomed out at me on the word “followed.”  It said, “that went with them.”  In other words, “They drank of that spiritual Rock that went with them…”  The children of Israel drank in the words of Christ, for He went along with them on their journey in the wilderness.

This intrigued me, so I turned to Exodus 17 to read about this.  We have all heard of the story of the miracle of Moses smiting the rock and water coming out to quench the thirst of the people.  In that passage, the children of Israel chided Moses for bringing them out “to cause us to die of thirst.”  Moses then cried to YHWH and YHWH responded by saying,  “And Yahweh said unto Moses, Go on before the people and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go.  Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.  And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel” (Ex 17:5-6).  Okay.  Moses smites the rock and water comes out of it. A great miracle, indeed, but we have all read this passage many times.  What’s new?

Go back to where Yahweh is speaking, “Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb…” I will stand before you there upon the rock in Horeb! Yahweh stated here that he was about to stand on the very rock that Moses was to smite.  Picture it!  God Almighty, in His glorified human form, the one He spoke through in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, the one who appeared to the patriarchs and prophets—Yahweh said that He will stand on that rock that Moses would smite for water, and He would stand there in the sight of Moses and the elders of Israel.  And Paul, getting the revelation of this wrote that the children of Israel saw and heard Christ; they drank for that spiritual Rock that went with them through the wilderness, and that Rock was Christ.  The Anointed One was there in the wilderness.  He is the arms, the legs, the body of the invisible God, Yahweh.  Yahshua is the “expressed image of the invisible God.”  When Yahweh said, “I will stand on the rock,” He would use His glorified form, Immanuel.   Invisible Yahweh poured fully into His glorified form standing there on that rock that Moses struck!  What a sight!  What a glorious moment in the history of this world.  The children of Israel had no excuse for acting the way they did, for He went with them and stood before them, His feet above where the water was gushing out!

I never saw that before.  I have never heard this or read this before.  This revelation was a complete utter gift that God gave to me for no merit of my own.  I share this so that, yes, others may see the glorious appearing of the Savior in Moses’ day.  But more importantly, I share this so that we all can see that there is more to all of this truth than what we first thought.  It is the “unsearchable riches of Christ.”  We all have not even scratched the surface.  His works are so grand and glorious that John said that “if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” (John 21:25).

Consequently, we must remain open to new revelation.  We must open our minds and hearts and pray that God would lift the fog of old leaven teachings that conceal and hide the truth of what God is doing and will do in the earth shortly.

THERE IS MORE! The old teachings of the old denominations won’t get the job done in this day.  God is doing something new in the earth.  He is calling forth a group of men and women who will remain open to new revelations.  He said, “Behold, I make all things new.”  That’s a “new covenant…a new heart…new wine…new bottles…new testament…new cloth…new commandment…new doctrine…new creature…all things are become new…a new man…new creature…a new and living way…new heavens…a new earth…a new name…a new song…and a new Jerusalem.”

If there is nothing new in our spiritual life, then we are missing out on God’s work in the earth.  And He will do all of this as He restores all things that He spoke through His prophets since the world began.  What a God!  KWH