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.
