What is the Name of God?

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G.B. asked:

More important than the number of the beast is the NAME of GOD!! Both old and new Testaments state that whosoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. The saviour said he came in his father’s name. So he has the same name as the father. What do you think the correct name out of the many expounded is? And how do we ensure that it is correct???? Any help on this issue would be appreciated. Thank you very much.

Acts 2, Joel 2 does not mean God’s Name is Magic

This topic is covered in great detail in my first book Planet X in Bible Prophecy, including the verses you cite of Joel 2 and Acts 2 about calling upon the name of the lord to be saved which are amazing prophecies of the future final fulfillment of the Biblical Feast of Pentecost before the Great Tribulation at the coming of Wormwood at the 6th seal. But it really has nothing to do with knowing his name and pronouncing it as the cause of being saved, but to tell us an attribute of the people who will be saved, that they love God enough to find out and use his name (Psalm 91:14) and are under a prophet who has taught them exactly what it is and how to say it, just as Jesus did to his disciples (John 17:6,26). This is contrary to how religions then and today operate in replacing the name with Lord or Adonai or even forbidding learning and saying the name as Judaism traditionally has done. It is not about magic syllables you must know to save you, but part of the restoration of all things promised by Jesus to come with the End Times Elijah before his second coming (Mark 9:12).

God’s Name According to the Oldest Complete Manuscripts

As for what the name actually is, what I state therein is that if we trust the Bible to be accurately preserved enough for doctrine then why do we not look to it to know God’s name which is written almost 7000 times as YeH-?-VaH (missing the middle vowel)? The reason is people have been taught that the vowels for YHWH were replaced by the scribes with the vowels for “adonai”, or “lord”, but you can prove this is not the case at all by comparing the two words in Hebrew (an exercise my book takes you through). In fact, although in most cases in most manuscripts one vowel indeed has been removed to prevent the name from being accidently pronounced (against Jewish law) when read, in some of the oldest complete manuscripts the scribes apparently forgot to erase the vowel (in about 50 places). The vowel that appears there, “o” (cholam), is consistent with the vowels used in all the names of the prophets, kings who have the first three letters of God’s name at the beginning (theophoric names) such as Jehoshaphat, Jehoshua, Jehoiada, Jehoram, etc.

Of course you must remember that these are not good transliterations into english since there is no J in Hebrew and the letter there Yod actually makes the sound of “Y.” This gives us “YehoVAH” (accent on the last syllable), of course very similar to the classic transliteration of “JeHOvah.” I believe saying “YehoVAH” is as accurate for God’s name as saying “Da-VID” (accent on last) is for King David’s. But I cannot say for sure how to exactly pronounce either of them without a prophet arriving to reveal it to me.

Jesus’ Real Name and Its Meaning

By the way, Jesus does not have the same name as the father. He came in or under his father’s authority, which is the other understanding of what coming in someone’s name means. His original full name is Yehoshua the same name given to Joshua under Moses, which means “Y’hovah is salvation.” Yehoshua became shortened to Y’shua due to the Jewish ban on saying the name of God which Yehoshua contains 3/4 of.

Which Temple Does Malachi 3:1 Refer to?

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Rob asked:

Hi Tim,

Malachi 3:1 states “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming ” says the Lord of Hosts. NASB. To which temple does this refer, and who constructed it?

Without a doubt the NT is clear that John the Baptist fulfilled this prophecy (Mark 1:2 = Malachi 3:1). In that case the temple that the Lord or Messiah visited would be Herod’s temple. History shows that Herod The Great demolished and renovated this Second Temple originally built by the returning Babylonian exiles (but it was still called the Second Temple because the altar service and other ceremonies were never interrupted).

Dual Prophecy

However, we must always keep in mind with prophecy that usually they are dual. The former or intermediate fulfillment will fulfill certain aspects but not all of the entire prophecy. Later, the entire prophecy will be fulfilled in a latter or final fulfillment.

A classic example of this is Isaiah 61:1-2 which Jesus read in the synagogue of Nazareth at the start of his ministry in a Sabbath year. He proclaimed the Sabbath year and the start of his ministry by reading those two verses saying that they were now fulfilled. However, he stopped short of finishing verse two because it contained something he was not going to fulfill until his second coming, namely, “the day of vengeance of our God,” a clear reference to the Day of the Lord, or Yom Kippur at the end of the Great Tribulation.

It’s clear that Malachi 3 is another case of a dual prophecy of Jesus’ first and second comings because if you keep reading to Malachi 3:2-5 it, too, speaks of his coming at the time of God’s judgment and wrath right before the tribes of Israel are returned and purified for service in the Millennial Temple.

Who Will Build the Malachi 3:1 Temple?

If you want to know who I think will build that temple, I would have to guess the Jews of this generation. We’re told by prophecy that a Third Temple will be built before the Great Tribulation (Rev 11:1-3) so that the Antichrist can sit in it and declares himself God (2The 2:4) and delude the whole world in this way (2The 2:11). This temple is already slated for prefab construction by the current Sanhedrin in Israel, if it has not already secreted been. This must be the temple that is referred to as the Lord coming suddenly to, rather than the Millennial Temple of Ezekiel 40 which will be built later under the purified Levites mentioned in Malachi 3:3.

How To Understand Bible Prophecy Yourself For Sure

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Bible Prophecy Scorned

While most Christians believe that the prophecies of the Bible are impossible to understand or a distraction from more important areas of study or ministry, I’ve become convinced that Bible prophecy has an undeserved bad reputation. It’s clear from the statements of Jesus and the apostles that we should be just as learned in the roughly 1/3 of the Bible that is prophecy as the rest of the Bible. Further, I believe that we can even know for sure if we understand it properly, by following certain guidelines that amount to “rightly dividing the word.” In my latest blog post I’m sharing one such guideline.

Without a doubt there is a lot of confusion on Bible prophecy. There seem to be as many interpretations as there are would-be interpreters. You can listen to one and it sounds good until you hear the next one that contradicts it yet also is appealing. Which one is right? How can you know for sure? It’s enough to turn anyone off from studying prophecy.

Face Value Reading – Not Breaking Scripture

What if there was a way to understand Bible prophecy and to know that you understand it correctly? There is a way and you already know how to do this. The trick is to read the prophecies just as you would any other verse. You must take them at face value and resist the temptation to try to assign a different, contradictory meaning to them when the face value does not make sense to you yet. Sounds too easy? Well it is actually very difficult to do this, as evidenced by all the many interpetations out there. It requires patience and high Bible literacy, because each verse can still have several face value readings because of the limits of language so each of these must be tested against every other related verse of the Bible.

The only way that so many interpetations are possible is because interpretors allow themselves to assign almost any imaginable meaning to the words of the prophecies which break not only its face value meaning, but of also other scriptures elsewhere in the Bible that they are simply not aware of or have similarly misread. They habitually break this rule because they believe that Bible prophecy is primarily symbolic and must be interpreted, rather than having the symbolism on top of the primary plain meaning. They thus usually go too far by coming up with meanings to the symbols that negate the primary plain, literal, or face value meaning of the words.

In other words, the common approach forgets what Jesus instructed in John 10:35 that the plain meaning of “Scripture could not be broken.” He reminded his hearers of this when refering to Psalm 82:6 where it astonishingly says, “Ye are gods” because they had accused him of blasphemy merely for saying he was the son of God. How can that verse literally say that men are gods and make sense? Well this is a good example of a verse having multiple possible face values. The word there for “gods” is elohim which is not strictly used to refer to supernatural deities but also “judges” (Ex 21:6; Ex 22:9) or God’s representatives. Jesus required his hearers to accept this face value meaning of the verse in defense of himself also being an elohim or son of God. Of course reading it to say that men are literally deities would break many plain verses, so that meaning could not be what is intended

Here are some other examples of where this principle could be used:

Other Examples of Face Value Contradictions

  • Revelation 12’s Woman with the twelve stars crowning her head and moon at her feet: Yes, this image clearly conveys to us the meaning of Israel as Joseph’s similar vision was clearly interpreted to mean (Gen 37:7-10). But John said he saw this in the heavens. And the moon and stars happen to reside in heaven. As does a constellation of a woman called Virgo or Betula, the Virgin, in Hebrew. As it happens, this exact scene John saw was visible in the sky or heavens when Jesus was born on September 11, 3 B.C.E. It literally came to pass just as written.
  • Ezekiel 38’s Gog Magog attack on Unwalled Israel: It is popular to try to say that this does not refer to literally unwalled villages of Israel as it plainly says but to unwalled cities of America today or to Israel today symbolically with no defense politically. However if you compare Ezekiel 38 with Revelation 20:7-10 we will find the same Gog-Magog attack on Israel after the 1000 years of peace during the Millennium during which we are told the weapons of war are burned and converted to peaceful use (Eze 39:9; Isa 2:4; Joel 3:10; Mic 4:3). Israel will literally have no weapons and no means of defense at the end of the Millennium when the attack comes. Therefore it is invalid to try to apply this prophecy to any other nation or Israel at any other time than that, or you break scripture.
  • Ezekiel 37’s my servant King David: The Sages of Judaism and Christianity both like to interpret “David” to mean Messiah. However why can’t David be David? If you read the passage carefully it explicitly confirms the resurrection. David is considered one of the righteous who is expected to be in the First Resurrection (Rev 20) of the righteous to rule for the Millennium. The passage says he’ll be king of the restored and united Israel. That’s fine since the Messiah will be King over all the Earth and needs kings over individual nations and cities. Therefore what gives anyone the right to say that David is not David here (or in Eze 34:23) when it does not say it is a parable and it makes sense fine once you understand a little about the timing of the resurrection.
  • Star Wormwood is Nuclear Plant Chernobyl: Or some other idea that what is described is not a star at all as Revelation says. If Star Wormwood is not what Revelation says, then I’m hard pressed to explain the sequence of impacts starting at the 6th seal and ending with the 3rd seal.
  • The 144,000: You’ll often hear that these are not really all twelve tribes from all Israel but just Jews (which is only one or two tribes), or that they are a certain Christians denomination or not even 144,000 actual people at all. Once again there is no basis to change the face value when there is a good explanation to be found simply by studying the twelve and seventy-two(!) that Jesus sent out as a type of the literal 144,000

How You Become Sure

If you strictly adhere to this principle of taking verses at face value and not letting any interpetation of prophecy break the face value of any verse, you will be on your way to rightly dividing the word of God. It will certainly take more time than coming up with what you subjectively think it represents. However, in time if you keep it up you will eventually arrive at the right understanding. And you will have the confidence to know that you are right.

Why? Because you are not playing any tricks to explain a verse. The meaning you arive at takes the face value of the words and fits it in the consensus of the face value of all the other verses in the Bible. If there are no verses read at face value that contradict how you are understanding a passage then you can be sure you are right. Of course, arrving at this point takes a high degree of Bible literacy and enough time usually to do several iterations of eliminating each of the possible face value meanings that most verses may have as other verses are brought to your attention which contradict your present understanding. Through the process of elimination the true intent of each verse fitting in the context of the whole bible will eventually be arrived at.

Conclusion

By the way, this principle of not breaking the face value of Scripture applies to all Bible study. Many of the popular Christian doctrines that are commonly taught break the face value of some astonishingly plain verses. However, I’ll leave it to you to discover which ones yourself rather than risk roasting anyone’s sacred cow . Just know that if you apply this principle in all your Bible study you may end up having to renounce some of the doctrines you have been taught by religion but you will find comfort in knowing that the Bible is making sense like never before.

Is the Rapture before Wormwood?

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Mary asked:

Revelation chapter 7 talks about the four angels holding back the winds of the earth and sealing the 144,00 children of all the tribes of Israel. Right after that it speaks about the great multitude in heaven which appears to be the rapture. So during the 7th Seal and third trumpet, the star Wormwood is hurled into earth. Are you saying that christians will still be here on earth when Wormwood hurles into earth, and that the rapture will not have taken place?

Yes, I’m saying that the rapture comes after Wormwood, otherwise the firstfruit saints would not need sealing protection as the first half of Revelation 7 depicts nor would the Woman of Revelation 12 be brought to a place of safety for 3½ years at the start of the Tribulation. Wormwood is here from the 6th seal through 4th trumpet but the rapture comes at the last or 7th trumpet at the same time as the dead in Christ are raised according to Paul (1The 4:16, 1Cor 15:52). Revelation 20:4-5 says explicitly that the first resurrection of the dead includes people who overcame the mark of the beast and his image which of course means the resurrection and rapture cannot occur at the start or tribulation. Finally, Jesus in the Olivet Discourse agreed that after the Tribulation his angels would come with a trumpet to gather all his elect (Mt 24:29-31). “The elect” is used elsewhere in the NT to refer to the church (1Pet 1:1; 2Jn 1:1; Tit 1:1).

Myself I doubt that Revelation 7 is depicting saints in heaven after the rapture. We already have an explicit depiction of that in Revelation 15 (the sea of fire and glass). Instead I think Revelation 7 is showing all God’s children from all nations and races (rather than primarily Israel as the first phase of his plan works with) living with him constantly after the new heaven and new Earth as Revelation 21 and Isaiah 65 predict. This would explain why they are always with the Lamb in the Temple rather than ruling on Earth with him (and remember none of us are ever going to be omnipresent like God). However, even if Revelation 7 were depicting saints immediately after the first rapture, it gives no timing information as to when the rapture itself is.

How Can Planet X Be Revelation’s star Wormwood?

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Lou wrote:

Dear Tim,

I finished reading your book, and was very impressed. Thank you for writing it. I have a question:

You state “a rogue planet called Wormwood will approach dangerously close to Earth. Although it itself will not hit us, Earth will pass through its rocky tail or debris field.”

Yet the Holy Scriptures, in Rev 8.10-11, tell us differently: “.. there fell from heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of the waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood ..”

How do you account for this?

This is a common question so I’ve added it to the FAQ and am pasting here as well:

The first answer is that “Planet X” is a misnomer. It is the term coined by NASA for any as yet undiscovered planet orbiting the sun after Pluto, the 9th planet (X of course being the Roman Numeral for 10 or tenth). However, the little information leaked from NASA and other scientists that we have says that Planet X is actually not a classic non-luminous planet (except only by reflected light) but a red or brown dwarf (a small star). This fits with what Revelation says about Wormwood as a star that “burns like a lamp” in the sky.

The second answer is that the 3rd trumpet does not say Wormwood directly hits the earth but only that it “falls upon 1/3 of the waters.” If you want to see Revelation describe a direct impact on the earth from an extraterrestrial object, see the 2nd trumpet, or even the 1st trumpet for multiple where each time the complete collateral damage is itemized. The language there is much different. Its impossible for an impact to affect only 1/3 of the waters and not also damage land, people, crops, etc. as you see described for the major direct impacts of the 1st and 2nd trumpets. Also, if an object large enough to shine on its own hit the earth, all life would be over right then (or even if our own moon hit us). A direct hit is clearly then not what is being described given all of this. Instead, it must be referring to the tail (that we must be passing through) raining down and poisoning the waters. If we are not passing through a tail of Wormwood, then there is no way to explain the progression of tiny to large objects impacting the earth from the 6th seal through the 3rd trumpet while Wormwood is described as seen shining in the sky after it all (instead of lodged in the side of the earth!).

America Falls Before or After Wormwood?

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Lou asked

Does the turmoil and destruction caused by a planet x [wormwood] come before or after the ‘demise’ of America (babylon) thru war? It would appear that the destruction of 1/3 of the world by this planet would utterly disable most of the wolds technologies (fuel, food, and electrical energy production/distribution, etc) .. making it nearly impossible for nations to wage war against one another. Not to mention that much of the worlds harbors and ships would lay in destruction also.

We can know for sure from Revelation 14’s three angel’s messages that the fall of America the Babylon occurs right before the rise of the Beast at the 5th trumpet that places the mark on everyone. This is because the 2nd angel message announcing the fall of Babylon comes before the 3rd angel message warning not to take the mark (which is introduced at the start of the Great Tribulation).

Further, America’s fall must be after the 4th trumpet which is the final effect of Planet X/Wormwood because the first angel’s message warning people to repent happens right before Planet X/Wormwood passes at the 6th seal. Because Planet X happens so fast in the 6th seal through 4th trumpet, it’s doubtful that an enemy attack would happen before the 4th trumpet hits. So I place the fall of America between the 4th trumpet and 5th trumpet for this reason. It makes a lot of sense as you say with infrastructure out that America’s military relies on more than any other country for its advantage that this would be when Russia and her communist allies would strike.

If you doubt any nation will have the ability to wage war after Wormwood, then just note that the 6th trumpet speaks of a war between the Beast (essentially the revived Roman Empire with England/the lion at the helm – Dan 7:4 ) and enemies from the north and east (Dan 11:44 – China and Russia) will start a war with him. Also there is the final war of Armageddon after this making a total of at least three clear wars prophesied after Planet X. (A fourth would be the pretrib, pre-wormwood Arab-Israel war coming first).

24 Elders Future? Rapture To Replace 1/3 Angels?

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Tom asked:

It seems when John saw the 24 elders wasn’t there a mention of a vision? So would it be possible the end time visions seen by John the 24 elders, the saints under the throne were visions of future events as the book of revelation is written? This has not yet come to pass. But our Lord is soon in coming all the prophecies are up!!!!!! It won’t be long. But what I have read will come to pass heaven is ready to receive us. One third of the heavens were swept out with Satan. Are we the one third to take their place? Only wondering…..

By all indication, the 24 elders were already in heaven in the present back when John saw his vision of the throne room. Just as the Messiah was already ascended and in his place there. If we take these to be men as the evidence points to, then this makes more sense then saying this in some yet future resurreciton/rapture of only 24 people. I still think the best explanation is that these 24 were “raptured” at the time Jesus was to fulfill the Wave Sheaf prophetic rehearsal of Leviticus 23.

If I understand your other question correctly you are asking if we are going to heaven to replace the 1/3 of the angels who Satan marshalled in rebellion against God (Revelation 12)? The purpose for us going to heaven is not because it needs population but because we are not “appointed to wrath” (1The 5:9). Jesus indicated that the rapture would be right before God’s seven bowls of wrath fell. And by the way, the angels are still in heaven today because as Job and Revelation 12 indicate, their casting down with Satan after being banned from heaven is not until the start of the Great Tribulation of his wrath (the reason for the “woe, woe, woe” mentioned in Revelation 12 is the same as the three woes of the 5th, 6th, and 7th trumpets).

Safest Place in the USA from Wormwood

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April wrote:

My question is: Where geographically in the U.S. is the safest? If scientist are aware of meteor locations and the estimated landing areas. And according to christian beliefs, the left behind theory. If left behind, what should I do?

The Bible only indicates one place where God’s people will be gathered to safety before the End Times catastrophes described in the Book of Revelation start. Joel 2:30-32 tells us the location of this place of safety from the same the blood moon and other heavenly and earthly signs of Rev 6:12’s 6th seal.

As you might guess, that place is not America, but the same place that the 144,000 will be gathered to and sealed (Rev 14). If you are left behind in America at that point, there is still hope as there will be survivors everywhere (Zech 14:16). However the best plan is to start understanding and accepting that you will one day be faced with the decision to listen to the call of the promised End Times Elijah to move to Israel from America (as Revelation 17-18 and Jeremiah 50-51 explicitly say).

As these things take long dedicated study to piece together I recommend my book Planet X in Bible Prophecy to help you understand.

Rapture Series Coming

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I am writing a series of articles this month to teach enough of the Bible so you can understand the timing of the rapture. The Bible gives enough clues to make this goal possible, and to even be sure that you are right in your understanding. The trick is to learning how to accept the plain sense mean of the prophecies rather than replace them with symbolic interpretations that ignore the plain sense. Once you do that you can begin to fit all the pieces together like you would a big jigsaw puzzle.

To get started you first need to believe that there is a rapture and that we can and in fact should know the timing of it (a couple of things that are not granted these days).

Read these articles to address these doubts. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the announcement of the new articles as they are completed.

You can find the homepage to the series here: Rapture Year Timline Series