Ask any Christian, pastor, theologian, or even many scholars today, “Who is God?” and you are likely to be met with a quick pat answer: “Jesus.”
Unfortunately, that is not who GOD is.
While the above sentence may come off as a shock and surprise to many an everyday Christian who now think I am some “hell-bound apostate preaching Satanic lies of heresy from the pit of hell!” No, I am not that either. Grow up. That kind of idiotic fear mongering doesn’t work in the 21st century. At least not with intelligent people anyway.
What I am is basically Jewish in my knowledge and understandings of GOD more than I am Pagan (Gentile) Roman Catholic.
Some people would call me a Messianic Christian, or a Jewish-Christian, or even a “Judaizer”. Judaizer is meant as a pejorative term used to try to demean (bully) someone into accepting their Pagan (Gentile) Roman Catholic views of Christian belief, or in this case their Pagan views of GOD.
“But, you’re denying the deity of Jesus Christ, Keith!”
Yea? So? So does every Jewish scholar on the planet. Get over it. Emotional quips like the one above are just attempts at bullying the woefully uneducated.
But to answer the assertion: No, I’m not “denying the deity of Jesus”, I am simply not ascribing Jesus any form of divinity in the first place. The reason I don’t ascribe Jesus divinity is not because ‘I hate Jesus’ or any other such nonsense. The truth is I love Jesus, who he was and what he taught. The reason I don’t make Jesus into a god is because Jesus himself NEVER made such a claim and neither did any of his Apostles.
“Wait! What?! How can you say that, the Apostle John wrote—”
Stop. The Apostle John did not write the Gospel of John. The book is a complete forgery. (See the below article.)
The truth is, it was the Pagan (Gentile) Church in Rome who turned the Jewish messiah (“one who is anointed by GOD”) into a demigod when they adopted Paul of Tarsus as their primary “apostle”. You know, the same guy who persecuted the followers of Jesus; who himself never even met Jesus; and who then attempted to insert himself into the Apostolic Synagogue (Church) by preaching a totally different “gospel” than what the hand-picked “Super Apostles” preached.
Paul even openly admits his “Jesus” was different than what the “Super Apostles” were preaching. Paul’s Jesus was in fact a mythical Mithraic version of Jesus that never ever existed. (See the below article link if you don’t already know who Mithras is.)
Christianity’s Counterfeit Jesus, Part 2
How the Church Created Its Mythical Version of “Jesus”
Is Jesus “LORD”?
There is a reason why the Pagan Church in Rome, and by extension Christians who have bought into Rome’s Pagan version of Jesus, get really, really upset when you start to question the Church’s narrative about the so-called “divinity” of Jesus.
It is because the Church is Pagan and the god the Church worships, venerates, believes in, is just as Pagan, or “Gentile” if that term feels better to you; both terms mean exactly the same thing.
The god the Church created, manifests, and “believes in” is NOT the same GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Any Jewish scholar will tell you this. This is not about “belief”; this is about historical facts and how the Church in Rome turned the simple Jewish Gospel of Jesus into a Pagan Roman version.
Of course the Church repudiates any such notion with abject horror. “You cannot say that about Jesus! That’s heresy! That’s apostasy!”
Yes, I can say it; and I will say it; because it’s the TRUTH. And as far as “heresy” goes, here’s a little meme I created regarding the whole issue of calling someone a “heretic”, or “apostate”, or any other moronic bullying label you can think of. The point of the meme is that the Church used to throw people into prison for disagreeing with their lies. Thank GOD the Church doesn’t have that kind of power anymore, at least in first-world nations.
Have you ever wondered why people say and parrot, “Jesus is LORD”? It’s because they are attempting to convince themselves that a lie is somehow the truth. If you repeat the lie over and over enough times, you start to think it’s the truth, even though you know it’s not.
If Jesus really was GOD, we wouldn’t need to be parroting it. It would be self-evident fact. But the fact is, we in Christianity don’t even know the GOD of the Hebrews; we don’t even know the name of our own GOD.
What “Jesus is LORD” really means is that “Jesus is יהוה”, or “Jesus is YHWH” to use Latin letters. YHWH is the scriptural obfuscation of the TRUE name of GOD. We’ll get to this “obfuscation” business later in the article. Don’t go away, you need to know this.
What you may not know is that the name of GOD is littered all throughout the Tanakh (what most Christians call the “Old Testament”)? It’s used over 6,000 times, and yet you never read it once in any Bible translation. Ever.
Why is that?
What you read is “the LORD” usually spelled in all capital letters. Why? What is Christianity trying to hide from you? Why don’t Christian scholars and Bible translators want you knowing the actual name of the Hebrew GOD?
Take note of the editor’s comments at the beginning of the Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible from 1952 [amplification supplied]:
“While it is almost if not quite certain that the Name [of GOD] was originally pronounced ‘Yahweh,’… the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal [catholic] faith of the Christian Church.”
First of all, who died and left these Bible translators in-charge what is or is not “appropriate” to know about GOD!? This is unabashed arrogance. The deliberate withholding of the knowledge of GOD for the sake of someone’s pet dogma?
When this editor says that the “Name” was “discontinued” before the Christian era, what he is not telling you is a kind of lie, a half-truth actually.
The whole truth is that GOD removed their name from Israel because of Israel’s unabashed sin, their unrepentant paganism — a paganism that errantly demanded bloody animal sacrifices as somehow being something that GOD wanted and even commanded within Torah (the Law).
The truth is, GOD took their name from Israel because they were committing evil in the name of GOD, acting in ways that were not indicative of who GOD really was.
How do we know this?
Because if we read the Prophets, GOD tells us point blank the reason. Because of the evil that Israel did, GOD removed their name from them. And because of what Christianity is or has become, GOD has also removed their name from Pagan (Gentile) Christianity as well!
I think this is what makes Christians so upset regarding the name of GOD. We don’t know GOD’s own name. In fact, not only do we not know it—we don’t want to know it; and we don’t want to use it! We don’t want to even know that GOD has a real name because the Name of GOD EXPOSES something we as Christians are loathe to admit — that Christianity isn’t really the genuine religion or faith that GOD gave us.
What we have is a religion the Pagan Church gave us.
Here is what GOD says via the Prophet Ezekiel regarding their name:
“I judged [Israel] according to their conduct and their actions. And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, ‘These are the LORD’s people, and yet they had to leave the land.’ I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.
“I swear by my great name,” says the LORD, “that no one from Judah living anywhere in Egypt will ever again invoke my name or swear, ‘As surely as the Sovereign LORD lives.’” —Ezekiel 36:16–21 NIV / CEV / NASB; Jeremiah 44:25–26; See also Amos 6:8–11; Hosea 2
The Sin of Blood Sacrifice
Naturally, the big question we need to ask ourselves is: What “evil” did Israel (and by extension now, Christianity) do that “profaned” the name of GOD so badly that GOD removed their name from us?
Well, we’ve already touched on it—blood sacrifice. The act of killing something, or someone, to atone for a perceived petty sin.
I want us to note a few things from these verses in Ezekiel. “No one from Judah living anywhere in Egypt” does not actually mean Hebrews living in a place called Egypt; “Egypt” is a metaphor for people living in sin, or living within a pagan culture and doing pagan things.
Egypt was a Pagan nation that Israel came out of. The metaphor is interesting because the Hebrews were doing something in Egypt that they had learned from the Egyptians that GOD despised. In bringing Israel out of Egypt, they were supposed to leave those sinful cultural things behind.
Israel’s most egregious sin against GOD was indeed her learned desire to offer blood sacrifice (inherited from Egypt) and they indeed built from that an entire sacrificial system. Via the Prophets, GOD again and again condemns Israel for her sin of bloody sacrifices; and again and again Israel persists in demanding that blood sacrifice was something GOD wanted.
So why didn’t Israel just correct her sinful behavior? Because a group of foul, self-serving someones had written this egregious sin into GOD’s Law and then demanded that people follow it—or else.
The Lying Pen of the Scribes
The point here is that the Hebrews (Jews if you will) have and they know the historical true name of GOD. It is only we in Christianity who do not know the name of GOD. We do not know it because GOD took it from us, first from Israel if you want to get right down to the historical context; and then from we in the Christian world—and both for the same exact reason—we keep saying that GOD demands a bloody sacrifice in order to forgive our sin.
So it makes perfect sense for GOD to want to remove their name from anyone who misuses or maligns their character with such Pagan beliefs.
Because of a lying priesthood, ancient Israel was led to believe that GOD wanted bloody animal sacrifices—sacrifices which GOD openly repudiated. A few hundred years later, Israel was led back into the exact same sin, filling the Kidron Valley with a small river of blood running out the back of the temple with the slaughter of literally tens of thousands of animals. Don’t even try to tell me this barbaric act of carnage is something GOD needed.
Then in the Christian era, Paul saddles Christianity with the exact same sin, only this time Paul manufactures his patented “New Testament”, or “New Covenant” where we can forget animal sacrifices; no this time its a bloody HUMAN sacrifice God really wanted in the first place to forgive the world of their sin. All you have to do is just BELIEVE in what the Church demands you believe.
In fact, the entire book of Hebrews is nothing more than a pagan excuse that tries to pin a human sacrifice on GOD, meaning rationalize human sacrifice as something that GOD wanted. The whole book is utter and complete Hebrew-sounding balderdash and nonsense that would only make sense to someone who wasn’t in fact Jewish. In fact, the book of Hebrews is so bogus that Luther wanted to chuck the book out of the Bible along with a bunch of other ones the Reformers junked from the Catholic’s Bible some 500 years ago.
The biggest problem with Christian soteriology (how GOD forgives) is that GOD never once asked for nor commanded blood sacrifices to being with. Ever. And HUMAN sacrifice is totally repudiated as sin within Torah. No Hebrew, no Jew, and especially Jesus, James, John, and the rest of the Apostles, would ever even suggest such a thing!
Yes, as mostly uneducated Gentiles (Pagans) we read GOD ostensibly commanding a plethora of bloody animal sacrifices all through Torah. And because of this man-made Church tradition that demands we accept the whole Bible as being the “Word of God”, we have no choice but to concur that, “well, it sure seems that this is what God really wanted.”
But let’s take a quick look at the Prophet Jeremiah. GOD, speaking through Jeremiah utterly destroys the whole man-made (Church-made) notion that the Bible is 100% inerrant and inspired. GOD says,
“‘How can you [scribes, priests, elders] say, “We are wise, for we have the law [Torah] of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes [elders, priests] has handled it falsely?’” — GOD, Jeremiah 8:8 NIV, [amplification supplied]
… the lying pen of the scribes, meaning the elders of the Temple, REWROTE the Law of God into a FALSEHOOD, with their LYING pens.
Ouch.
Within this passage, GOD, speaking through the Prophet Jeremiah, in no uncertain terms declares that the Law (Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible) as originally given had been falsified, edited, by “lying pens”.
The translators of the Amplified Bible offer that the scribes and elders lied and turned the law into “a mere code of ceremonial observances”. That’s their take, but I’m quite positive it was much worse than that.
Whatever the scribes and elders did to Torah (again, the first five books of the Bible) under the leadership of Hezekiah (and perhaps even well before), GOD condemns as a LIE.
“But Keith, the whole books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are filled with God’s commands about sacrifices!”
I know they are. But just before GOD condemns Israel for falsifying the Law with all manner of bloody sacrifices, GOD corrects the record about these so-called sacrificial laws, saying:
“I gave your ancestors no commands about burnt offerings or any other kinds of sacrifices when I brought them out of Egypt. But I did command them to obey me, so that I would be their God and they would be my people. And I told them to live the way I had commanded them, so that things would go well for them.” — GOD, Jeremiah 7:22–23 GNT
Again. Ouch.
These priests and elders had edited what God had originally given and in doing so, they turned both Judah and Israel into an unrepentant people so wicked with their desires to kill something that GOD found need to not only punish and disperse the people through Assyrian and Babylonian defeat, but GOD took their very name from ancient Israel as well!
In short, the Law of GOD as written within the first five books of the Bible is FALSE, or at the very least contains a boatload of falsehoods. The extent of these falsehoods we will never know because what we have as Torah today came from (or through) the Hezekiah Priesthood and then through Ezra. We don’t know what may have existed before the scribes got out their “lying pens” and altered not just the tenets but the histories and books of the Law as well.
So naturally, the question begs asking, if GOD didn’t require the blood and death of something to forgive, what was the true mechanism of GOD’s forgiveness?
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” —GOD
What we can glean from GOD speaking via Jeremiah as well as other prophets is that sacrifice is something that GOD never asked for. What GOD did ask for was something much more profound:
“To do what is right and just is more acceptable [to me] than sacrifice.” — GOD, Proverbs 21:3
“Your sacrifices do not please me.” — GOD, Jeremiah 6:20
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” — GOD, Hosea 6:6
“[I] detest the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases [me].” — GOD, Proverbs 15:9
But we in Christianity are just SO enamored of Jesus loving us so much that he laid down his life as a beaten, bloody Human sacrifice for our sins that we just cannot seem to let go of the barbarism, the paganism, and the unjustness of such a horrific act.
Bloody sacrifices, animal or Human, make GOD out to be a hypocritical monster! But that is not who or what GOD is. A lot of us as Christians can see this. So we sort of SANITIZE this act of pagan brutality, veil its abject horror on our way to announcing that this is what the somehow “loving” pagan Christian god wanted to appease their anger, pain, whatever, over our collective sin. It’s abject hypocrisy.
But now we know that sacrifice is not what the GOD Jesus knew and worshiped ever asked for.
Repentance. Not Sacrifice.
The true mechanism for GOD’s forgiveness was merely repentance, not sacrifice. In fact, we see in the Gospels both John (Jesus’ cousin) and Jesus preaching a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin”. Not sacrifice.
But then along comes Paul who then takes the Gospel Jesus preached and turns it on its head, preaching a new pagan Gospel that sets Jesus himself up AS the human sacrifice for forgiveness of sin.
In one of my series here on Medium, I discuss this whole issue of Paul and the Catholic Church’s Counterfeit Jesus, so I’m not going to belabor the explanation in this piece. (See the below article links.)
Does the Christian Church Really “Believe In” Jesus?
Christianity’s Counterfeit Jesus, Part 1
How The Church Created Its Mythical Charlatan “Jesus”
What I really want to do with this article is introduce you to “The GOD Jesus Knew.” In fact, this is the title of a very good book you may want to read that will also illustrate in much greater detail the points I am touching on here. Serena Evenson is a magnificent scholar and talented writer. I worked with her as collaborator and researcher for this very excellent work.
The God Jesus Knew: And Christianity Forgot
Hiding the Name of GOD
Dr. Shmuel Asher is a Karaite Jewish scholar and rabbi who specializes in Ancient Hebrew Studies. Dr. Asher explains how the ancient Masorite scribes hid the name of GOD not just from ancient peoples, but from ourselves as well:
“Not only did our ancestors hide the name by the invention of their YHWH — Tetragrammaton, (יהוה) which is generally translated as Jehovah. Over much time they have sold this by-product to all religions, even in the Jewish community, that this was in fact the name which we are commanded to use instead, while very carefully side-stepping the proper Name that was actually given to Moshe (Moses) on Mt. Horeb.
“If that wasn’t clear, I will clarify; all professional orthodox and many non-orthodox clergy know the true Name! It’s you who do not! We are taught this true name, and even sing songs using this name that supposedly does not exist.
“However, the reasons given to us for hiding it from all Gentiles are as follows: 1) So the pagans can’t learn it and utilize its formidable power. 2) So that the common people do not defile it and treat it as common or base. However, when asked where this commandment is to hide the proper name of GOD from his people, all people, we get no good answer. That is because a truthful Torah answer does not exist.” —ASHER, Shmuel, Karaite Jewish scholar, The Land of Meat and Honey, Amazon
Dr. Asher’s revelation is stunning. Masorite scribes who translated their Bible, a Jewish text that is used to translate nearly every other modern translation, deliberately hid the name of GOD.
Within Dr. Asher’s comments above, he mentions something called the “Tetragrammaton”. This is essentially the four Hebrew consonants that obfuscate the true name of GOD within the Hebrew Scriptures. Typically rendered within the Hebrew as יהוה or YHWH in the Latin alphabet, many scholars have attempted to render the phonetic as “Jehovah”. Jehovah is a misnomer because a hard “J” sound does not exist within the Hebrew, so then this gets even further mispronounced as “Yahovah”.
Yes, it’s a mess.
Dr. Asher then raises a troublesome point:
Now here is where the big issues begin for most people who are not brought up within the Jewish community or culture, knowing the many hidden truths like this one. Exodus 3:15 has been manipulated, and the YHWH = Jehovah has been added in order to facilitate and perpetuate hiding the true name.
We [Jews] know that the YHWH — Tetragrammaton was a mechanism devised to be the tool used to actively aid in hiding His true Name. Even building on top of this by making it punishable law to say the name; this practice comes to us directly from the practices of pagan Babylon.
This YHWH title is closely associated with all manner of Kabalistic rituals through Gematria, as well as ancient and modern Masonic religious rites, the Catholic Church, and other satanic occult rituals. Unknown to most people, this YHWH title is found and used by all of the above.
Essentially what Dr. Asher is saying that the name “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” has been used in Pagan practice for millennia. But it is not the true name of GOD.
So what is GOD’s true name?
Revealing the True Name of GOD
When properly un-obfuscated, the true vowel points of the name of GOD are אהיה or AHYH in our Latin alphabet, and pronounced “Aheyeh”, even by Hebrew speaking people today.
Aheyeh—is and has been the true name of GOD.
Again, this name of GOD, properly rendered, is found over 6,000 times within the Tanakh (Old Testament).
There is much more detail to reveal about how this change of the name of GOD came about and why; but suffice to say the people of GOD were given GOD’s true name and even commanded to use it by GOD.
But when we as a people, both Jews and later Christians began using, or shall I say misusing GOD’s name within a Pagan context, meaning we were declaring that Aheyeh demanded blood sacrifice among other sinful actions that got written into the Law, it was Aheyeh who took their name away from us!
Judaism’s Obfuscating of the Name of GOD
When Moses speaks with GOD for the first time on mount Herob, he asks GOD, “Whom shall I say has sent me?”
GOD replies with their full name: “Aheyeh ashar Aheyeh” and he said, “So will you tell the children of Jacob Aheyeh has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14 as properly translated at by Dr. Asher)
In Christian translations of the Bible this verse appears to be the one and only time Aheyeh is rendered correctly translated as “I am”, thus the full name of GOD when transliterated into English basically becomes “I am that I am”.
Yet, here is where the weird disconnect takes place, in the very next verse the name of GOD gets lost, obfuscated, and is rendered as יהוה (YHWH). In one place in the Tanakh the name of GOD is rendered correctly, but in 6,000 other places within the Tanakh, the name of GOD gets rendered not as אהיה (AHYH), but as יהוה (YHWH).
This is not just some name transliteration issue, but is rather a deliberate obfuscation and later deliberate mistranslation of a proper name by intentionally replacing GOD’s actual Name with a title; which becomes, in effect, an alternate name—the LORD.
In Exodus 3:14, we read GOD saying, “My name is אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה אֶֽהְיֶה.” (“I am that I am.”) But in the very next verse GOD has now changed their mind and is essentially telling Moses now, “even though I just told you my name is אֶֽהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה”, AHYH (Aheyeh) tell the people that someone named יהוה YHWH (Jehovah/Yahweh) has sent you!”
The passage makes no sense. Until, that is, you understand what Jewish scribes were doing to the name of GOD—attempting to hide it from their pagan neighbors.
Conclusion—The Name of GOD
The Hebrew name for GOD has been deliberately obfuscated—hidden from us within our own Bible! Not just by Jewish Masorite scribes, but also by Christian translators themselves who should know better! In fact, many do know. They just don’t want YOU knowing the name of GOD.
Why?
Because “Jesus” is the name of your Pagan god given to you by the Roman Catholic Church. “Aheyeh” is the name of the Hebrew GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. A name the Church doesn’t want you knowing or using because, well, Aheyeh doesn’t demand sacrifice like the Roman Catholic “Trinity” does.
The historical Jesus, James, Peter, and the rest of the Apostles worshipped Aheyeh, calling on Aheyeh GOD by name! But you and I are now stuck calling on some nameless “God” by their title, “the LORD”.
The reasons for this obfuscation by modern Christian translators are many, but perhaps the most glaring reason for the continued obfuscation is that the two “gods” are NOT the same; they are not compatible. One demands a blood animal or human sacrifice; and the true GOD of the Bible, is one that is hidden from you, and they do not require sacrifice of any kind, only your repentance. Which is exactly what Jesus and John and the rest of the Apostles actually taught.
Christianity can claim all it wants, even jump up and down in red-faced angry temper tantrums, that they worship the true Hebrew god!!
But they don’t. The TRUE Hebrew GOD does not require sacrifice. (See the below article regarding repentance versus sacrifice.)
Christianity’s Counterfeit Jesus, Part 3
How The Church Created Its Mythical Version of “Jesus”
Pagan Roman Christianity worships a pagan god that demands a bloody Human sacrifice. That is not and never was Aheyeh, the GOD the real historical Jesus and Apostles knew.
Until Christianity unloads its pagan god’s demand for blood sacrifice, they will never be worshipping the GOD Jesus knew.
So, to properly translate the oft-quoted verse in Joshua by Christians the world over, I will simply end with this [my pointed edits supplied]:
“… if serving Aheyeh seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the pagan gods your ancestors served [in Rome], or the gods of the [Gentiles] in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve Aheyeh.”
