The Real Name Has Power

A Jewish friend of mine recently asked me, "If Jesus is our Jewish Messiah, and the whole Old Testament is about Him, how come His name is never mentioned, even once?"

Then one morning while sitting on my back patio and watching the squirrels and birds feed after I put out that morning food I began to think once again, as I often did, that there was just something not right about the use of the transliterated name Jesus. This name came to us as a translation from Hebrew to Greek, the written form of the New Testament Gospels.

   

I knew from my Hebrew language studies that the name Jesus was not of Hebraic origin but was used because it was as close as the scribes could get to conveying the power of the name of the Messiah to the literate world in place at that time and aimed at the Gentiles of the eastern provinces of Rome who spoke Greek.  This was the beginning of my problem because once I began a thorough investigation of the Greek title Iesous Christos the floodgates opened to the waters of confusion because so much of this title was pulled from the Pantheons of Greek mythology which I will leave to the reader to search out and investigate on their own if they truly desire the truth.

    

Now I knew in my heart that the Old Testament includes a Gospel (Good News) pointing to the coming Messiah, as can be found in so many declarations throughout the Old Testament. For in the Old Testament all great characters were given names with a specific and significant meaning.

For example, in Genesis 5:29, Lamech called his son Noah [Comfort], saying, “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and tell of our hands.”  Genesis 10:25, Eber calls his firstborn son, Peleg [Division]; “for in his days was the earth divided.”  Genesis, chapters 29-32 the same is true of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob (changed to Israel-God's Prince), and all of Jacob's sons. In Exodus 2:10, Pharaoh's daughter called the baby rescued from the Nile, Moses [Drawn-Forth]: “and she said, because I drew him out of the water.”  We can go on and on to show the deep significance of Hebrew names but we no longer have that because the point has been made.

  

But I could not find the bridge I knew must be there to bring the whole picture to light. So I began, that morning while feeding the birds and squirrels, to ask God to show me the answer to this continually contentious and nagging idea that something was wrong about the name Jesus. I was answered with the inspiration to search for my answer among the writings of Jews themselves.  This led me to Jews who asked the same question and from them I was pointed to the Hebrew Bible and there it was,  suddenly and glaringly obvious, the true NAME of Jesus, found in the Old Testament about 100 times all the way from GENESIS to HABAKKUK!  Yes, the very NAME that the angel Gabriel used in Luke 1:31 when he told Mary about the Son she was to have.  

"Where do we find that NAME?" you ask.  Here it is, friend: Every time the Old Testament uses the word SALVATION (especially with the Hebrew suffix meaning "my," thy," or "his"), with very few exceptions (when the word is impersonal), it is the very same word, YESHUA (Jesus), used in Matthew 1:21. Yeshua written Yod-Shin-Vav-Ayin, is a masculine noun that means "He is salvation" or "He saves." Let us remember that the angel who spoke to Mary and the angel who spoke to Joseph in his dream did not speak in English, Latin, or Greek, but in Hebrew; and neither were Mary or Joseph slow to grasp the meaning and significance of the NAME of this divine Son and its relation to His character and His work of salvation.

So now when you read the Old Testament and come to verses like Genesis 49:18, when the great Patriarch Jacob was ready to depart from this world, he by the Holy Spirit was blessing his sons and prophetically foretelling their future experiences in those blessings.  He exclaims, “I have waited for thy salvation, 0 Lord!”   What he really did say and mean was, "To thy YESHUA (Jesus) I am looking, 0 Lord"; or, "In thy YESHUA (Jesus) I am hoping (trusting), Lord!"  That makes much better sense.

Isaiah 62:11 King James Version (KJV)

“Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation (YESHUA-Jesus) cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.” This becomes a clear picture of the proclamation of YESHUA-Jesus as our salvation.

Remember, the message of The Teaching of the Messiah is clear and easily understood if you just clear your mind and heart of all the traditions and nonsense taught by men. They have created a mine field of confusion with their interpretations of this and that or summarily stated this or that doesn’t matter, it does matter! Open yourself as a clean slate and only seek the Truth from the One who gave us the Scriptures, the One who’s Word it is and the One where you will find all truth and knowledge, just ask.