By Rabbi Moshe Joseph Koniuchowsky

So much has taken place over the last few weeks in regards to those who feel that God and Jesus are legitimate common names for Yahshua and Elohim and those opposed. Both sides of the debate make valid and coherent arguments. Both sides have made their points mostly from scripture and are therefore to be admired. Personally I along with my staff at Your Arms To Israel, have very mixed feelings about this continuing struggle in both the sacred name movement, as well as the Messianic Israel movement.

While we are usually outspoken and quite clear as to our hard-core positions, on this issue and in this editorial we will limit our use of scripture. Since that is uncharacteristic and out of character for YATI, I am confident you will come to see why. In recent years, Yahweh has blessed me with a personal revelation as to the memorial redemptive names of both He and His Son. Through months of study and confirmation of the Ruach HaKodesh, I am convinced beyond any controversy, that these are the only true names of Father and Son.

Then in January, I was introduced to another well-balanced aspect of the true names, with the reminders that YAHWEH HAS TITLES THAT ARE EQUALLY AS INSPIRED since He Himself ascribes these titles to Himself. As a Jewish boy growing up in Yeshiva, I was quite familiar with these titles, since we never mentioned the sacred names instead sticking exclusively to the inspired titles and a couple of not inspired titles. When I would begin to read the sacred name, my teachers would invariably stop me or shout me down and immediately correct me by replacing my transliteration with a name substitution. That error continues in most religions to this day. Those who do use sacred titles do honor Yahweh, if and only if they use them in conjunction with Yahweh’s personal name, since these titles are His, regardless of a pagan connection. They are clean, for we must not call common or unclean, the titles, things or people like Cornelius that Yahweh has cleansed.

Now where does that bring us in regards to the titles God? Remember, I am editorializing this point of contention simply because both the pro God and anti God forces have valid Scriptures that we all know. The Scriptures are clear, that Yahweh and Yahshua have both Sacred Names and sacred titles. We as His children that follow Him are free to use both. We find many instances, where Yahweh uses Elohim, Baal, Molech etc. to refer to Himself. Alarmingly we find no such usage of the title God by Yahweh Himself, anywhere in either covenant. What we are left with is no biblical justification for using God, when we cannot find Yahweh ever sticking this title on Himself. Since He does not apply it to Himself, the smart worshipper would best be served by avoiding its usage, especially in the reality of the availability of so many other good titles, in so many languages. Remember non inspired but translated titles like, Senor in Spanish, Elaha or Mara in Aramaic, Master in English, even Lord, all have their Hebrew inspired equivalents. God does not. I do not desire to take YATI where angels themselves fear to tread!

Even if one can make the case that the English God is merely a linguistic legitimate outgrowth of the Hebrew inspired title Elohim, we the have to weigh the benefits or the lack of benefits we gain by using this title. As my good friend Dale George says. We do not have to use God but we can use God. On this I concur. So for the staff of YATI, the issue is not so much, can we but should we. Does its usage short-circuit our divine 2 house mission and burden, which is to help His people Israel to remember to use the Name hidden by national amnesia and self-righteous religionists for 2500 years?

Before we leap forward, there is a scripture that causes all of us at YATI great concern. In Isaiah 65:10 Yahweh warns backslidden ISRAEL, that they are the ones, (not another nation and not the nations) who have left and forsaken Yahweh, in favor for GAAD or gimmel daled, pronounced GAADE! So the question is, are we REALLY Israel? Not can we use God but should we use God? Israel has a recorded history of having left Yahweh in favor of a deity whose personal noun name was GAAD in 721 BCE. That would include both houses, since that time period was right at the time of Ephraim’s dispersion or the first Israelite holocaust. That is a fact. Whether one of the gates of the New Jerusalem will be named Gad is completely irrelevant. Whether babies were named GAD EL is irrelevant. What is relevant is what is our mission TODAY right here and right now, in our day and our time, to be Israel, to an Israel, yet to be fully renewed and fully restored? THAT IS THE ISSUE! Even if one can linguistically make the case that using God, as a common noun title is permissible for all nations, (though Malachi 1:11 shows Yahweh’s desires for all heathens to even know His Name) would not our usage of God in place of or in conjunction with Yahweh, make us like all the other heathen nations? We are called to be different then all nations and bear our burden. Anything that makes us like the nations (food habits, feast days, Shabbat habits, clothing, actions, morality) cannot be of the Father. I have two neighbors. One a Christian who is probably a born again Ephraimite. Another an unregenerate heathen! They both think Yahweh’s name is God! What separates the born again neighbor from the heathen neighbor? Nothing! To the world, both are "God’s people" and both do not know Yahweh’s real Name, primarily due to the uninspired title God. THEY FEEL SNUG IN THINKING THEY HAVE THE REAL NAME OF YAHWEH. This is an error and blindness of massive proportion. (GOD has become the name de jour of a society that has lost touch with reality and does not want to know Yahweh’s real name.) Neither neighbor of mine can be separated from the other, especially if the heathen is one of those "moral heathens." No clear-headed individual can argue that "God" is to blame, for the masking and ignorance of the Father’s revealed name, at least in our Anglo-Saxon society.

What better way to stick out as a royal priesthood, a chosen nation a PECULIAR PEOPLE, then by REFUSING TO mimic the nations, who use GOD as a substitute for Yahweh. Are we Israel? If we are Israel, then we should be looking for new ways to further separate from the heathen nations, not assimilation ways where we can be like them by conforming to their dubious terms and thus share their linguistic beds. What makes Israel different than the nations is that we do not choose names and titles to call our deity. Rather, we as Israel redeemed and restored, are THE ONLY NATION ON EARTH, THAT HAS HAD THE TRUE CREATOR APPROACH US, THROUGH REVELATION by gifting us with His Name and the Name He desires (ONLY) Israelites to call Him. Yahweh could care less what 25,000 denominations call Him. They have not been called to carry the torch of His divine Name. IT WAS ISRAEL WHO RECEIVED IT and ISRAEL WHO SUPPRESSED IT THROUGH ENEFFABILITY AND NOW ISRAEL AND ISRAEL ALONE IS BEING HELD REPSONSIBLE FOR ITS PAST AS WELL AS THE NAME’S FUTURE RESTORATIONS!

Israel is different. He wants us to know His Name and thus proclaim His Name to the nations (Malachi 1:11). Denominational Christianity does not have that burden, as do Israelites. While the usage of the Sacred Names may not be a salvation issue, it is an Israelite issue and can be seen clearly as such. In Exodus 3:13, Moses tells Yahweh that the CHILDREN OF ISRAEL will demand to know His name. (A functional characteristic of a true Israelite). Yahweh answers Moshe in Exodus 3:14-15 "thus you shall say to the CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, (not all the nations) "I AM" hath sent me to you. THUS SHALL YOU SAY TO THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL YHVH Elohim……….There it is. This Name is not for the nations to bear or proclaim. It was to be a prized time and memorial treasured possession for ONE NATION to proclaim to the nations. To other nations He was to be known simply as the GOD or Elohim of the Hebrews, until the Hebrews did their job. THOSE NATIONS ARE CHARACTERISED BY THE FACT THAT THEY DO NOT KNOW THE NAME OF YAHWEH. As Pharaoh so eloquently stated: "I do not know a Yahweh (Exodus 5:2)!" Will we at long last do our job?

And that’s the way Yahweh has ordained it. That is the issue at hand as far as the staff of YATI Int’l Ministries is concerned. If Messianic Israel is another denomination in Judaism or Christianity, then by all means let’s go ahead and be like all the nations and call Elohim God in English. Boy we would sure fit in nicely then and have large crowds! Or we can overcome (Israel) the heathen practice of ascribing names and titles to a deity of their own imagination, by BOLDLY proclaiming that it remains an eternal and irrevocable mitzvah to call on Yahweh-Elohim, the only Name that was revealed and not invented! What a privilege and what a gift given by the Almighty Yahweh, to make Israel fully different then all the nations. That is the core of the current debate. Are we really Israel or are we just people hurt by the church and/or Messianic Judaism, who want to try something, anything new?

Remember our main problem. We, who are of the calling and the commission to restore the true names of the Father and Son, have an awesome responsibility to discharge our burden. If we who have been given much do not faithfully discharge our responsibility to teach, disciple and instruct the people to forsake the title of God, BECAUSE most people believe God to be His name, we have not been faithful to Him! Those are the facts. 99,999 out of 100,000 people in the world whether they are believers or heathens, all will wrongly confess that God is the Father’s TRUE name. Try this yourself. Take a sample survey. The results will be eye opening!

Thus it seems to me that this fact alone, should demonstrate that we simply cannot reaffirm that error, by telling people that it is permissible to call Yahweh my God. Even if one can make a case that it is kosher to do so, it becomes non-kosher, if we make others stumble in their attempts and hunger to find truth as returning Israel. If you and I have been commissioned as a chosen and small remnant to this truth, sent specifically with a divine burden to the nations to reintroduce them to the Father’s Name, we must be faithful to that call by not sending out a confusing signal. If we continue to send out a confusing signal, people who are in confusion already will remain in their comfortable habits of confusion, rather than accepting the pain and rejection associated with any major yet more biblical lifestyle adjustment.

In this culture so permeated with the usage of the uninspired title God, (that really with almost total unanimity believes God to be Yahweh’s personal noun name) we must counter that with our divine burden of discharging the Names. If we teach others that Yahweh is our God and that you can still call him Yahweh our God, we are not only leaving people with a choice, we are allowing them to remain in the God lifestyle, by telling them that they already call on God and PS his name is Yahweh. Only by challenging the status quo through radical yet loving confrontation, will we force the society we live in to choose EITHER IN FAVOR OF GOD OR IN FAVOR OF YAHWEH (Joshua 24:15-16). Only then can we begin to hope to make inroads into the revelation and restoration of His Name as it is intertwined with our nations restoration. Rev 14:1 reminds us that those in Zion, bought with the Lamb’s blood, will be those who proudly proclaim the Father’s name. The implication is clear. The true Zion will carry that name!

When deciding on a course of action in discharging a divine burden, we are left with a haunting fact. The society we are called to change has forsaken the personal proper noun name of the Elohim of the bible and has prepared numerous tables for God. (You can eat at literally thousands of GOD tables any Sun Day morning.) That fact cannot be wished away, or proof texted into oblivion. If our goal is to restore the true Name, we must do as did Yahoshua (Joshua) our leader and challenge the "people of ISRAEL", (others will not respond) to choose between Yahweh and God. Isaiah did the same. Will it be Yahweh or God, he boldly wrote? Our culture’s fascination and indoctrination with the uninspired title God, is a replica of the culture of Yahoshua’s day. We as returning Israel must issue the same call, as did our forefather. Even if our society does not worship the GAAD of Isaiah 65, it does worship a new GAAD by virtue of the fact that Yahweh’s name remains masked. This new GOD proves itself as dangerous as the original GADD of fortune. For anyone to deny our culture’s infatuation with the modern generic term GOD and its haunting similarity to the GAAD of Isaiah 65 can only be termed as denial! If I offered you 2 cans of tuna and told you that one can may have 1% of poison which can would you choose? The can without any poison! That’s the point. If there is even a 1% chance that GAAD of Isaiah 65 is the same as GOD today, we must choose the other option with hundreds of available titles.

This becomes a wisdom issue and not a theological one! Why risk eating the poison can when other cans are mercury free? Israel had once left Yahweh for GAAD! YATI sees this issue, as would any evangelical Christian see evangelism. What strategy do we use to most INFILTRATE the culture we are trying to AFFECT? If by allowing them to choose between GAAD or Yahweh as an alternative for Yahweh’s name, 99,9999 out of 100,000 will stick with GAAD. (Just the other day, a rabbi who dislikes the sacred names found out that God was an acceptable translation of Elohim and now is using this documentation to rid, silence or purge all Yahwists in his assembly. That is a perfect example of society’s bondage to the term GOD). People are creatures of habit. That is the issue and remains the issue. Even if it is lawful linguistically or perhaps even theologically to use the title God, IT IS NOT EXPEDIENT NOR PROFITABLE for restoring the kingdom to ISRAEL and thus an obstacle to discharging our burden. Those facts cannot be twisted nor changed. Dale George reminds us that each and every person and organization must seek Yahweh to determine if the title God is profitable or expedient or the best course for them to follow. In the cause of rebuilding ISRAEL, I dare say that those who insist on the popular yet unscriptural cultural title GOD for Yahweh or used in conjunction with Yahweh, are derailing their own train.

I submit that if we really are Israel and if returning Ephraimites are not Jewish wannabees as is often claimed, then they will and must forsake GOD’s table and GAAD worship for Yahweh’s Name and His worship. It is no longer a theological battle, a linguistic battle or even a personal preference battle. Nor is it any longer a sensitivity issue. It is Israel or the nations! Where our citizenship lies, there will our confessions be!

Had we been living 2000 years ago when English was not the prevalent global language it is today, GOD would have been no difference than Theos, Mara or Elohim. One Hebrew, one Greek, one Aramaic and one English title all referring to Yahweh. However 2000 years later we have almost 6 billion people who unscripturally have come to believe that God is the name of Yahweh. This radically evil yeast, calls for radical extraction measures, which is namely this. To challenge the GAAD culture or those who swear up and down a stack of Bibles that GAAD or God is Yahweh’s real name, with 2 choices, Either continue to use GAAD as a proper noun, even though it is a common noun, or get rid of that heathen practice and adopt Yahweh as the true and only Name and go and tell 1 million people the truth and nothing but the truth.

As theologians and lovers of scripture it may be hard for us to swallow our pride and admit that we have come to a bridge that cannot be crossed theologically or etymologically. Since usage of God is probably lawful and linguistically permissible, we cannot forbid its use by legislation or demand. Thus we must replace error with truthful reason. We must approach these people with the message that they have BEEN CHEATED AND BETRAYED BY INHERITED LIES OF PAGAN SOCIETY. Once introduced to Yahweh’s real Name, we must warn them that since His name is not GAAD, they must not use it as a name or a title for Yahweh or in conjunction with Yahweh, for if we allow them to choose between GOD or Yahweh or to continue to refer to Yahweh as their personal God, due to old bondage’s and habits, they will choose the evil and not the good. Familiar sin is just sin that is familiar. Hard core habits and hard and stony hearts do not change easily. If we give those we minister to the option of calling Yahweh as their God, they will invariably revert to their old habit and old ways, and once again FORESAKE YAHWEH FOR GOD, this time with your personal assistance. Instead of imparting a divine burden, we will be found guilty of issuing licenses to continue in familiar sin. Maybe if the average Joe knew that the Father ‘s real Name is Yahweh and that God is just an uninspired title, maybe things would be different. But the reality is that unless these people are given a reason to call on Yahweh, they will cling to GOD believing wrongly that that is the Father’s name. We must deal with reality not with wishful thinking. That is the issue. The reality is that "knowing therefore the terror of Yahweh, we persuade men. Yet we who are 2 house proponents have the best reason of all. Here is the mother of all reasons:

If we are Israel, it was our forefathers who forsook Yahweh for GOD worship. IT WASN"T THE CHURCH! And is it not interesting that Yahweh has refused to ever pin that title on Himself, unlike those of Baal and Elohim, Eloah, Theos, Mara and Molech. So if Yahweh disassociated Himself from that common title and if we give culture a choice, modern culture will choose wrong 100% of the time, since the wrong is the familiar. It is on these grounds that YATI will not use that title and will not teach in that title and will not foolishly proclaim the scared names to our culture with the option of allowing that culture to revert back to old habits, which are now all but impossible to break without a revelation! Yahweh rebuked Israelites for being those who made the wrong choice. Will we follow the error of our forefathers? Or will we uses both sacred names and titles that Yahweh pins on Himself and wisely choose to reverse the errors of our Israelite fathers and their GAAD worship? Will we finally FORSEAKE GOD and prepare a table for Yahweh in Israel, which is where His table resides? Our mission, message, burden but most importantly our nation’s direction is at stake.

This is a battle for our nation and our nations calling to bear His name before the nations! Israel will be restored and will be restored by people willing to invade the culture, not play Syncreticzed Copy Cat Poker with it. Those responding to restoration truth, (the two houses and restored name) will reveal themselves as Israel by willing to reverse any and all evil trends in Israel, no matter how deeply entrenched Those willing to use Yahweh’s real Name all the while holding onto the treasured title of GOD as in Yahweh is my GOD, will show themselves lacking in the full vision of Israel’s restoration through the art of compromise. This society is radically in error and this day and hour calls for radical disciples and a radical message. A message that teaches people that Yahweh is no longer their God but Yahweh has come to expose God and all his cultural baggage!