Do you love God?

Just to clarify, my mother is Lutheran, my father is agnostic after being raised Roman Catholic. My brother was raised Lutheran, and I was raised Catholic. My wife refuses to admit any affiliation, as do I. But she is against afronts to god, so she believes something.

I went to Catholic schools and we were taught theology. But we weren't taught much Catholicism, because we lived it. So we learned about Islam, Various sects of Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, etc throughout the years.

In retrospect it was a good schooling. Strict, and often violent, but good. Anyone who's been to Catholic school probably isnt Catholic anymore...

Point is, having a lot of Irish in me with two warring factions of christianity on either side of my family, and caught in the middle while being taught other things and reading farther outside out of curiosity.... How can anyone say their god is true, and if you don't believe it, literally go to hell?

Oops

a reply to: sine.nomine

That's why I take issue with the Catholic church, they are essentially modern pharisees. I don't meant that to be intentionally insulting, but a comparison of their structure and observance of tradition over the word of God.

a reply to: GolgothaBridge

You stole the words from my mouth. Exactly.

a reply to: sine.nomine

That's why I consider myself an almost antireligious Christian. I believe in God and trust the Bible, but not what humans say about either.

a reply to: GolgothaBridge

I just trust that Jesus Christ paid for my sins through his death and burial and rose to give me eternal life with him if I will have faith on his work.

That is the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus and that is the grace of God for all men today.

Take it or leave it.

a reply to: sine.nomine

there are many gods in the Bible to which are you referring too?

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
a reply to: GolgothaBridge

I just trust that Jesus Christ paid for my sins through his death and burial and rose to give me eternal life with him if I will have faith on his work.

That is the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus and that is the grace of God for all men today.

Take it or leave it.

That is what you need to be saved. The rest is only a foundation to strengthen your faith in that for when the trials come.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Many Gods (elohim) but only one God of gods or chief God which we call Adonai or Lord or Master. His actual name transcends our language, but we have the term YHVH, Yahweh, meaning a mix of "I am" and "He who was".

The Jews had a fun trick where they placed the nikkud for Adonai over the letters for Yahweh and produced a non-pronounced written name. Westerners tried to actually read it as a real word and that's where we have the word Jehovah, but that's actually saying two words at once.

a reply to: GolgothaBridge

You need only take your rest in Christ.

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
a reply to: GolgothaBridge

You need only take your rest in Christ.

What are you?
What is Christ?

Stop.....just stop.....

Concepts and words lead one astray.

What actually is there if wording ceases?

a reply to: GolgothaBridge

It is funny. the Hebrew language had no letter "J" (jay) however they had the sound JAY and thier letter transliterated into our J "JAY with a "ji "sound. So Jesus is correct and Yesus is error. Just like Jehovah is the Name of the MOST HIGH GOD ALMIGHTY not Yaweh. Yaweh was a Greek tribal god of the Athenians, their god of wisdom, not the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Calling on a god with the wrong name will cause you to call on the wrong god.

a reply to: ChesterJohn
Naming the unnameable causes all the suffering.

Make no idols........or at least do not worship them.....see them for what they are.

Names, labels, words conflict......they all lie......the serpent with forked tongue.

Non conceptual reality is prior to concepts.....non conceptual reality is the first born over all creation.

Those that have ears hear..... those that
have eyes see.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Naming the unnamable causes nothing. Man causes suffering.

You are your own idol, the worship of self is why men build things to be remembered and a legacy for their children. This is how ancestor worship came about.

We are at it again.

Now God Almighty revealed to Israel his name, this name is not a construct of man.

Exo 6:2-3 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by [the name of] God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.

So if God says his name is nameable that makes you wrong and God right.

a reply to: ChesterJohn
Making an object of the self......is the first sin.

What are you?

a reply to: GolgothaBridge

“Yahweh” is obviously a transliteration, whereas “Jehovah” is a translation, and Bible names generally have been translated rather than transliterated (transliteration is basically where you take the Hebrew characters and swap them out for characters in the Roman alphabet that we now use). A transliteration usually sounds strange to the ears of those speaking the tongue into which the proper name has been transliterated.

Even more to the point is what the noted English Bible scholar J. B. Rotherham has to say on this subject. Especially is this of interest in view of the fact that he might be said to have been one of the pioneers in using the form “Yahweh” in transliterating the Tetragrammaton (in ancient Hebrew: יהוה ; transliteration: YHWH ; English translation: JHVH ; try not to get those mixed up as in your version: “YHVH”). His Emphasised Bible was published in 1897, whereas his Studies in the Psalms were not published until 1911, after he had died. In this latter work Rotherham returned to the use of “Jehovah,” which is all the more remarkable in view of how strongly he objected to the form “Jehovah” in the introduction to his Emphasised Bible. In explanation of his reasons for returning to the form “Jehovah,” he says in the introduction to his Studies:

“Jehovah​—The employment of this English form of the Memorial name [Exo. 3:18] in the present version of the Psalter does not arise from any misgiving as to the more correct pronunciation*, as being Yahweh; but solely from practical evidence personally selected of the desirability of keeping in touch with the public ear and eye in a matter of this kind, in which the principal thing is the easy recognition of the Divine name intended. . . . As the chief evidence of the significance of the name consists not nearly so much in its pronunciation as in the completeness with which it meets all requirements​—especially as explaining how the Memorial name was fitted to become such, and to be the preeminent covenant name that it confessedly is, it has been thought desirable to fall back on the form of the name more familiar (while perfectly acceptable) to the general Bible-reading public.”

(*: according to his opinion, I'm not aware of any good evidence for this particular claim)

Rotherham realized that what was important was not the more accurate pronunciation but the “easy recognition of the Divine name intended,” thereby keeping better in touch with the “general Bible-reading public” by means of a name that is “perfectly acceptable” and “meets all requirements” of its uniqueness. In a similar vein S. T. Byington in his Preface to The Bible in Living English notes that “the spelling and the pronunciation are not highly important. What is highly important is to keep it clear that this is a personal name. There are several texts that cannot be properly understood if we translate this name by a common noun like ‘Lord.’”

Those who object to the use of “Jehovah” might be said to “strain out the gnat but gulp down the camel!” (Matt. 23:24) How so? In that they make much of the correct pronunciation of God’s name, and yet they seldom if ever use it but prefer to call him “God” or “Lord,” which are mere titles, there being many called “lords” and “gods.”​—1 Cor. 8:5, 6.

How greatly the Author of the Bible set store by his unique name is apparent from the fact that his Word uses it to refer to himself more often than all other designations put together, for a total of 6,961 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. His concern is also seen in the fact that the expression “they shall know that I am Jehovah” occurs upward of seventy-five times in those writings.

The name “Jehovah” was chosen by Him with great purpose, for it literally means “He Causes to Become.” Jehovah’s distinctive name shows him to be a God of purpose. Whatever he purposes comes to pass.​—Isa. 55:11.

That there is only one true God who can be identified as such is clearly stated in the Bible at John 17:3: “This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ.”

It would be reasonable that any god who has personality would need a personal name to distinguish him from other gods with names of their own. It would preferably be a name designated by the god himself, rather than a name coined by his worshipers.

It seems, then, that the very first essential in any quest to identify “the only true God” would be to get to know him by name. Such a search is not at all difficult, for the name of Almighty God, the Creator, is clearly and simply stated at Psalm 83:18: “That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.”—King James Version.

Whereas the name Jehovah appears in the King James Version and other Bible translations, some prefer to use the name Yahweh instead of Jehovah. Which name is correct?

Whether the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton becomes Yahweh or Jehovah depends on which vowels the reader supplies to the four consonants. Today many Hebrew scholars prefer Yahweh as the true pronunciation.

However, consistency favors Jehovah. In what way? The pronunciation Jehovah has been accepted in English for centuries. Those who object to using this pronunciation should also object to the use of the accepted pronunciation Jeremiah and even Jesus. Jeremiah would need to be changed to Yir·meyahʹ or Yir·meyaʹhu, the original Hebrew pronunciations, and Jesus would become Ye·shuʹaʽ (Hebrew) or I·e·sousʹ (Greek). Hence, many Bible students, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, feel that consistency favors the use of the already well-known English-language “Jehovah” and its equivalent in other languages.

Some may argue that it does not really matter whether you address Almighty God by a personal name or not, and they are content to speak of and address God as Father or simply as God. Both these terms, however, are titles rather than names and are neither personal nor distinctive. In Bible times the word for God (ʼElo·himʹ, Hebrew) was used to describe any god—even the pagan Philistine god named Dagon. (Judges 16:23, 24) So for a Hebrew to tell a Philistine that he, the Hebrew, worshiped “God” would not have identified the true God whom he worshiped.

Of interest is a comment in The Imperial Bible-Dictionary of 1874: “[Jehovah] is everywhere a proper name, denoting the personal God and him only; whereas Elohim partakes more of the character of a common noun, denoting usually, indeed, but not necessarily nor uniformly, the Supreme. . . . The Hebrew may say the Elohim, the true God, in opposition to all false gods; but he never says the Jehovah, for Jehovah is the name of the true God only. He says again and again my God . . . ; but never my Jehovah, for when he says my God, he means Jehovah. He speaks of the God of Israel, but never of the Jehovah of Israel, for there is no other Jehovah. He speaks of the living God, but never of the living Jehovah, for he cannot conceive of Jehovah as other than living.”

John 20:17

Jesus said to her: “Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God.’”

No doubt about it, Jesus is here referring to another individual, “for when he says my God, he means Jehovah” (in the words of The Imperial Bible-Dictionary).

a reply to: GolgothaBridge
[continuing from where I left off in my previous comment where I was talking about John 17:3: “This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ.” (NW)]

Just knowing someone’s name, of course, does not mean that we know him or her in any depth. The majority of us know the names of leading politicians. Even prominent men and women in other countries may have names that are well-known to us. But simply knowing their names—even how to pronounce them correctly—does not in itself mean that we know these people personally or know what kind of people they are. Similarly, to know the only true God, we need to get to know and admire his qualities.

Though it is true that humans will never be able to see the true God, he has kindly had recorded for us in the Bible many details about his personality. (Exodus 33:20; John 1:18) Certain Hebrew prophets were given inspired visions of Almighty God’s heavenly courts. What they describe portrays not only great dignity and awesome majesty and power but also serenity, order, beauty, and pleasantness.—Exodus 24:9-11; Isaiah 6:1; Ezekiel 1:26-28; Daniel 7:9; Revelation 4:1-3.

Jehovah God outlined some of his attractive and appealing qualities to Moses, as recorded at Exodus 34:6, 7: “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth, preserving loving-kindness for thousands, pardoning error and transgression and sin.” Don’t you agree that getting to know about these qualities of God draws us to him and makes us want to know more about him as a person?

While no human will ever be able to see Jehovah God in his resplendent glory, it is recorded that when Jesus Christ was a man on earth, he actually reflected the type of person that Jehovah God, his heavenly Father, is. On one occasion Jesus said: “The Son cannot do a single thing of his own initiative, but only what he beholds the Father doing. For whatever things that One does, these things the Son also does in like manner.”—John 5:19.

So we can deduce from this that Jesus’ kindness, compassion, mildness, and warmth as well as his strong love for righteousness and hatred of wickedness are all qualities that Jesus observed in his Father, Jehovah God, while Jesus was with him in the heavenly courts before becoming a man on earth. Thus, when we truly come to know with understanding the full meaning of the name Jehovah, we surely have every reason to love and bless that sacred name, to praise and exalt it, and to trust in it.

Getting to know the only true God in this way is really a never-ending process, as is brought out clearly in the rendering of John 17:3 in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Here the correct tense of the verb “to know” helps greatly, for the present continuous tense is used rather than the simple present tense. Hence, we read: “This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ.” Yes, continuing to take in knowledge of the only true God, Jehovah, and of his Son, Jesus Christ, is a process that should never end.

Thus, the true God is readily distinguishable from the many false gods. He is the almighty Creator of the universe, including planet Earth and mankind upon it. He has a unique personal name—Jehovah, or Yahweh. He is no part of a mysterious triune god, or Trinity (see link at the end of my previous comment and consequent videos for more details). His Son, Jesus Christ, identified Jehovah as “the only true God”.

Some additional commentary about the spelling again:

After discussing various pronunciations, German professor Gustav Friedrich Oehler concluded: “From this point onward I use the word Jehovah, because, as a matter of fact, this name has now become more naturalized in our vocabulary, and cannot be supplanted.”—Theologie des Alten Testaments, second edition (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 143.

Jesuit scholar Paul Joüon states: “In our translations, instead of the (hypothetical) form Yahweh, we have used the form Jéhovah . . . which is the conventional literary form used in French.”—Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique (Rome, 1923), footnote on p. 49.

Most names change to some extent when transferred from one language to another. Jesus was born a Jew, and his name in Hebrew was perhaps pronounced Ye·shuʹa‛, but the inspired writers of the Christian Scriptures did not hesitate to use the Greek form of the name, I·e·sousʹ. In most other languages the pronunciation is slightly different, but we freely use the form that is common in our tongue. The same is true of other Bible names. How, then, can we show proper respect for the One to whom the most important name of all belongs? Would it be by never speaking or writing his name because we do not know exactly how it was originally pronounced? Or, rather, would it be by using the pronunciation and spelling that are common in our language, while speaking well of its Owner and conducting ourselves as his worshipers in a manner that honors him?

Source: Jehovah (Reasoning From the Scriptures)

Ah well, since I have some space left, might as well address this question from the same source:

Is Jehovah in the “Old Testament” Jesus Christ in the “New Testament”?

Matt. 4:10: “Jesus said to him: ‘Go away, Satan! For it is written, “It is Jehovah [“the Lord,” KJ and others] your God you must worship, and it is to him alone you must render sacred service.”’” (Jesus was obviously not saying that he himself was to be worshiped.)

John 8:54: “Jesus answered [the Jews]: ‘If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifies me, he who you say is your God.’” (The Hebrew Scriptures clearly identify Jehovah as the God that the Jews professed to worship. Jesus said, not that he himself was Jehovah, but that Jehovah was his Father. Jesus here made it very clear that he and his Father were distinct individuals.)

Ps. 110:1: “The utterance of Jehovah to my [David’s] Lord is: ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.’” (At Matthew 22:41-45, Jesus explained that he himself was David’s “Lord,” referred to in this psalm. So Jesus is not Jehovah but is the one to whom Jehovah’s words were here directed.)

Phil. 2:9-11: “For this very reason also God exalted him [Jesus Christ] to a superior position and kindly gave him the name that is above every other name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the ground, and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. [Dy reads: “ . . . every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” Kx and CC read similarly, but a footnote in Kx acknowledges: “ . . . the Greek is perhaps more naturally rendered ‘to the glory,’” and NAB and JB render it that way.]” (Notice that Jesus Christ is here shown to be different from God the Father and subject to Him.)

a reply to: whereislogic

I disagree with the last bit there. But the way I see the trinity may make more sense. Think of God as a software developer. That's the analogy that I use to understand it. commanding a universe into existence is easy then. This software is a videogame now. You can command planets into existence.

The human body named Jesus was God’s in-game avatar, fully him but also fully something outside the game. This being was fully human just like you and me in this physical world, however he was also fully outside this would and in full control just like you or I would be to a non-player character in a video game.

Now that we can view Jesus as a player avatar for God existing in the world that he designed, how do we explain Jesus praying to God (himself)? It would be best to view this as being for our benefit. Is there any time you have played a game and your player avatar was taking to You? While this is rare, we only have a small handful of times that Jesus prayed publicly, and I can also only think of few times that this has happened in a videogame, but it does occur. Your character turns to the camera and starts giving you information or commenting on the game. This is a breaking of the so-called “fourth wall”.

a reply to: GolgothaBridge

I can't think of any words that can do your awesome argumentative acrobatics justice. That was just the first image that popped into my mind.

No disrespect or ridicule intended, it was somewhat impressive after all, in some peculiar way. Just being honest about what kind of impression.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were some Scriptures you could support your comment and arguments with? Hopefully not taken too badly out of context, twisted or misinterpreted.

a reply to: whereislogic

No, that's a funny image. I know what you mean. But I don't think we can convince each other of our respective viewpoints. We will have to just agree to disagree on this issue and pray that God clarifies it in the end.