Page 121 - Attractive Deception - The False Hope of the Hebrew Roots Movement

The Bible is filled with admonitions for the disciples of Christ to study, to examine carefully, to test
all things before embracing them. Both Christ and His apostles admonished the churches to beware
of wolves, to be alert to false doctrines, to walk wisely in the midst of a crooked and perverse
generation. Over and over the New Testament warns believers to “not be deceived.” They are told to
“be on the alert because your adversary the devil prowls about as a roaring lion seeking someone to
devour” (I Peter 5:8).

What is the condition of the church today? Are they alert and vigilant? (Luke 21:36, Acts 20:31, I
Thessalonians 5:6) Are they skilled and powerful in their handling of the Word of Truth? (II Timothy
2:15, Acts 18:24) Do they act as the noble Bereans, searching the Scriptures diligently to see whether
the doctrines and practices they are encountering are established and confirmed by the word of
Yahweh? (Acts 17:10-11) The answer on all counts is a resounding “NO!” How then will the people
of God be able to stand in the approaching hour when the dragon will open his mouth and pour out
a flood to sweep the church away to destruction? (Revelation 12:15) How will they stand in an hour
when deception will be so subtle, so powerful, so persuasive that if possible even the elect of God
might be deceived? (Matthew 24:24)

Brothers and sisters, hear these words of admonishment and correction. You will ONLY be able to
stand as you exercise YOUR responsibility to test all teachings, looking to the Spirit of Christ and the
testimony of Scriptures to identify both truth and error. If you shirk this duty, you do so at your own
peril.

We must cease being followers of other men and begin to act as followers of Yahweh and of His
Christ. The only explanation I have arrived at for so many Christians adopting this false practice of
replacing the name Yahweh with substitute words, and even then adopting the tradition of replacing
the vowels with the underscore character “_” is that they are imitating the error of others before them.
The cycle of error will only be broken when the people of God begin proving all things themselves.

I was a young teenager in the 1970s when I discovered that the King James Bible I was being taught
from had unfaithfully rendered the divine names. I had my Strong’s Concordance out and began
going verse by verse replacing the generic words “Lord,” “God,” and “Lord God” with the English
equivalents of the Hebrew words. I began to write over each occurrence of these references to divinity
“Adonai,” “Elohim,” and “Yahweh.” I soon became daunted at the challenge as I found that the word
Elohim, meaning “a mighty one,” occurs 2,596 times in the Old Testament. All but a few of these
occurrences are used as references to Yahweh. The word Adonai which translates into English as
“Lord,” occurs 324 times in the Old Testament, though many instances of it are to people rather than
to deity. Most daunting of all, the name Yahweh appears 6,828 times in the Hebrew text of the Old
Testament. The shorter name Yah appears an additional 48 times. All of these uses of divine names