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December 9, 2007 ©Homer
Kizer Commentary — From the Margins
The Only Name ___________ Then Peter, filled with the Holy
Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being
examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means
this man was healed, let it be known to all of you and to all people of Israel
that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth [[0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø J@Ø ;".TD"\@L], whom you crucified, whom God
raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus
[This one] is the stone that was rejected by you, the builder, which has become
the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:8-12) __________ When
the rulers of the people and the elders perceived that Peter and John, speaking
in power and authority, were uneducated, common men, they were astonished (Acts
4:13), and they commanded Peter and John “not to or teach at all in the name of
Jesus [[0F@Ø]” (v. 18).
Nevertheless, Peter and the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit so that Peter’s
shadow falling upon a person healed the person, continued to obey God [2,è] (Acts 5:29). Peter and the apostles were brought
before the council. The “high priest questioned them, saying. ‘We strictly
charged you not to teach in this name, yet you have filled Within Sabbatarian Christianity is a poisonous
dogma that further marginalizes already marginalized disciples: this dogma
holds that non-Hebrew speakers must pronounce Jesus’ name in Hebrew, and that
disciples must believe that Jesus did not come as the only son (John 3:16) of
the Logos [7`(@H], who was Theos
[2,ÎH] and who was with Theon [2,`<] in the beginning (John 1:1-2). This dogma falsely
holds that the Logos was not the
creator of all that is despite John writing, “All things were made through him,
and without him was not any thing made that was made” (1:3). The Apostle Paul
writes, He is the image of the invisible God [2,@Ø], the firstborn of all creation. For by him all
things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through
him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold
together. And he is the head of the body, the Church. He is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ( The sacred
names dogma absolutely refuses to concede that God can die—and because
Jesus died at Calvary, those disciples who have eaten this poisonous herb
contend that Jesus cannot be God, but must be a man only, and because Jesus was
only a man He cannot be the creator of all that is. The ignorance of the sacred names faction is profound: time can be written as a
mathematical function of gravity, and by extension, mass. Thus, time does not
exist outside the creation. Heaven is a “timeless” supra-dimensional realm in
which the present moment never changes to the next moment. All activity occurs
in the existing moment; therefore, all activity must co-exist with all that has
come before and with all that will come after. All entities must function as
one entity. All living beings in this timeless dimension must function together
as cells function together in a human body. Because of the limitations that exist within a
paradox [two things cannot occupy the same time and space], the presence of life
and the absence of life cannot co-exist in any living being in heaven; so that
which has life has everlasting life and cannot perish or suffer decay. To have
life in heaven is to have everlasting life for the moment lasts forever.
However, when a living being leaves heaven and enters into the creation which
has been put into subjection to decay, this living being can die and actually
must die, for the moment continually changes to the next moment. What has life
this moment can lose that life in the next moment. Therefore, while Satan and
his angels cannot die as long as they remained in heaven, they will be cast
into the creation (Rev 12:7-10) where they can die, and where Satan will die by
having fire come out from his belly (Ezek 28:18-19).. So to say that God is
immortal in the heavenly realm is true, but when God [2,ÎH] leaves the heavenly realm to enter His creation,
He not only can die but He must die for this creation is passing away (1 John
2:17). It will not last forever. When the Logos
left the heavenly realm to be born as the man Jesus (John 1:14), the Logos ceased to exist in that heavenly
realm. The Logos did not exist in
this earthly realm as Theos. Rather,
the Logos existed as His only Son,
the human man Jesus of Nazareth. So the Logos
who was God and was with God in the beginning was no longer a spirit being like
the Father in substance. As a spirit being He ceased to be—He died—the moment
He left the heavenly realm to be born as man in this earthly realm. Disciples who have eaten of that poisonous sacred names herb cannot accept the
above. Most often they are too poorly educated to envision a timeless
dimension, or the movement from outside of time into time. As non-Hebrew
speakers, they will have learned enough Hebrew that they can mispronounce most
any name, and they have so little respect for the Tetragrammaton YHWH that they will assign vowel
pointing to it and attempt to pronounce it, which Jesus never did do—following
the traditions of the elders, Jesus sang Adonai
when He encountered the Tetragrammaton in Scriptures He cited. Matthew
transcribed Adonai as 6bD4@H [kurios],
and adoni [for a human lord] as 6LD\å when Jesus cited Psalm 110:1 (Matt 22:44). If
Jesus had attempted to pronounce the Tetragrammaton as sacred names disciples do, Matthew would have transcribed some word
beginning with rough breathing on an /I/. Plus, Jesus would have offended the
Pharisees more so than He did, and offended them for the wrong reason. Even
today, no sacred names disciple will
make Jews jealous by attempting to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, and the
Apostle Paul contends that salvation has come to Gentiles to make natural Salvation only comes through one name: Jesus of
Nazareth. It comes through no other. But it will come to the person with a
speech impediment, as well as to the person who speaks only English, or only
Mandarin Chinese, or only Hindi. It comes acknowledging that the Creator of all
that is—however His name is uttered—entered His creation, lived a sinless life,
took on the sins of Israel, and died on the cross at Calvary only to be raised
from the dead after three days, thereby giving His life as an acceptable
sacrifice for the lawlessness of all who will be of that great nation descended
from the patriarch Abraham, the father of the faithful. In no other name can it
be said that the Creator of all that is died for the person who would be saved.
Therefore, in no other name can a person be saved. Poisoned on locoweed, sacred names disciples will dare go where Jesus never trod, but
their folly can be forgiven them: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be
forgiven, but every other sin will be forgiven (Matt 12:32), including
blasphemy against the Father and the Son. And it is blasphemy against Christ Jesus that sacred names disciples commit when deny
that He, as the Logos, was the
creator of all that is, or that He was not God before He entered His creation
as His only son to die as the man Jesus of Nazareth. Blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit is committed by those who make themselves part of the great falling away
when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3), for all who have been born of
Spirit will then be liberated from indwelling sin and death by being filled
with the Holy Spirit, not a personage but the divine Breath of God. If a
liberated Israelite returns to sin or takes lawlessness back inside the person,
this lawlessness will not be forgiven the person for whom no more sacrifice
remains. And those disciples who refuse to recognize Jesus as the Creator of
all that is—and there will be many—will be uprooted by the lawless one who will
attempt to change times and the law. What happens to them when they are
uprooted remains to be seen [is outside of what prophecy addresses], but the
suggestion of prophecy is that they will be slain near the beginning of the
seven endtime years of tribulation. Is being slain for one’s belief in Christ a bad
thing? No, it is not. But to be slain for not believing in Christ being
the Creator of all that is becomes a slaying for denial of Christ, and the
disciple who denies Christ will, in turn, be denied by Christ before the
Father. Sacred
names disciples play a very deadly
game with Christ, a game in which they bet their salvation against what
apostles John and Paul wrote; for “‘as the Father raises the dead and gives
them life’” (John 5:21), Christ Jesus “‘gives life to whom he will’” (same
verse). The Son gives life by causing the mortal flesh to put on immortality,
the perishable to put on imperishability. And the disciple who denies that the
Son is also “God” [an English linguistic icon that was despised by Latin
theologians for cause] denies the only one to whom all judgment has been given,
and the only who will give to the disciple an immortal body. Christology debates caused great division within
the 4th-Century CE Church, which was already dead by then—and
Christological debates at this time reveal just how dead the Body remains. Either John is a liar when he records the following
words spoken by Jesus, what sacred names disciples
bet, or Jesus was God before He was born as His only Son: I [Jesus] speak of what I have seen with my Father,
and you [Pharisees] do what you have heard from your father. (John 8:38) If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing
what Abraham did, but you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth
that I heard from God. (John 8:39-40) If God [2,ÎH] were your Father, you would love me, for I came
from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you
not understand what I say? Is it because you cannot bear to hear my word. [sic]
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.
… Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them
is that you are not of God. (John 8:42-44, 47) The “Pharisees” were puritans: they sought to
worship God in purity, as do sacred names
disciples. But Jesus said that they were of the devil. By extension, this must
be said of disciples who refuse to believe that Jesus came from God as He
claimed; this must be said of disciples who cannot bear to hear Jesus’ words
about coming from the Father; this must be said about all who deny that Jesus,
as the Logos, created all that is. The case against sacred names disciples is simple: since they will not believe that
Jesus was God before He came as the only Son of Theos, nor will they believe that He is the Creator of all that is,
they deny Christ today and they will be denied by Christ when their judgments
are revealed. Why? Because their Father is not the Most High God but the
devil—they are tares that focus on the audibly heard sound by which they
identify themselves one to another rather than on the kingdom of God, which
comes when the glorified Christ returns with a name which no man knows (Rev
19:12). So it matters not how the name of Jesus is pronounced today, for this
name will not be His name when He returns. Every tongue will have to
pronounce a name that it has never uttered, for the names of this world belong
to this world which is passing away. As an aside, the controversy about the use of “J”
is a non-issue for Jesus’ name written as the angel Gabriel gave the name to
Mary is [0F@Ø< … English iconography does not use the first two
of these Greek characters. The rough breathing on the /I/ as indicated by the
Greek character /[/ would
have been, before the English vowel shift, quite accurately captured in the
sound assigned to the /J/ when this character made its debut 500 or so years
ago. The tragedy that will befall sacred names disciples when the seven endtime years begin would be
avoidable—the man of perdition will show them no mercy—if these disciples had
not made an idol of their tongues and how they pronounce a name that should
never be pronounced. Even the Pharisees of Jesus’ day knew better than to
render the Tetragrammaton YHWH into
visible sound, an oxymoron that accurately describes written words consisting
of vowels and consonants. The Tetragrammaton is not a word, for no word can
adequately describe God. And in English, that which cannot be described by a
word is grotesque … God is not
grotesque, but if a person ever wondered why gargoyles are on cathedrals, the
person has his or her answer: gargoyles are grotesques. God cannot be described by a word in a human
language, Hebrew included [the reason why the Tetragrammaton was too sacred to
be pronounced], for in the beginning He was two who functioned as One as if
married. Today, He is two who functions as One as if Father and Son. And though
the concept of two being One troubles English speakers, the concept should not
be all that troubling when a person realizes that “One” represents first
“unity,” not singularity. And it is in the sense of one being unity that
Jesus prayed, And for their sake [Jesus’ first disciples] I consecrate
myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all
be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in
us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you
have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I
in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world
may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:19-23) Jesus as the Logos
was one with the Father, and He is now one with the Father, and the destinies
of disciples are to be one with the Father and the Son. If a disciple is not
one with Jesus in this world, how does that disciple expect to be one with Him
in heaven? And the disciple who denies that Jesus was God before He came as His
only Son is not one today with
Jesus. * "Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001
by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All
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