First of all, let’s solve one simple argument. It’s pretty much a given that God is pretty smart. And therefore, God probably knows most of the languages on Earth. Ok, so He probably knows all of them. So we can assume that God speaks Swahili. He probably even speaks Quechua and Apache. So then we know that if someone who speaks Spanish says “Dios, socorro!!!” (God, help me!), that God will *understand* him. Granted, God may be offended that He didn’t use the proper name, but we know for a fact that God will Understand Him. So then, the only argument that remains is whether God PREFERS that you use the right name, whether He REQUIRES you to use the right name, or whether He DOESN’T CARE. Those are the only options. So which is it? And which is the “right name”?
Right up front we have to say that no one knows the proper name. Most believe it is YHVH, or YHWH, or just YH… but nobody can pronounce it. You see, the Jews were so terrified of speaking the name of God, oops, I mean, YHVW, that they forgot how. Hebrew doesn’t have vowels, per se. So the written language doesn’t tell us how a word was originally pronounced in most cases.
Imagine if even a word as short as “God” was written without vowels, like “Gd”. Now further imagine that as few as one hundred years go by without it being spoken aloud. Now finally, picture yourself, a native German speaker, let’s say, trying to pronounce that word then. Why, it could be Gad, God, Gid, Gud, or Ged - not to mention if there were two vowels, like Goad, or Giud, or Gead.
And there you have the problem with the perfect name. Only, it’s been a few thousand years and Hebrew bears less similarity to English than English does to German. Not only that, but YHVW most likely has three or more vowels in it. That means there are dozens of possible ways it could be pronounced. So no matter what you do, at best you MAY be able to spell it, you cannot ever PRONOUNCE the “perfect name” without divine revelation. But the question of the hour is, does God want you to try anyway?
Well, let’s find out by asking the age-old question - what would Jesus do? Read the rest of this entry »