Friday, January 12, 2018

In which I address people who say YHWH is Satan

There are people out there teaching that YHWH (which I pronounce Yahuah) of The Old Testament in particular The Torah is NOT God The Father of the New Testament but rather is Satan.  The primary such teacher I have in mind in writing this post in a YouTube channel titled Good God.  Back in December I already addressed one particular argument of this channel, Is Yahuah described the same as Leviathan?

I'm not gonna address every single argument they make.  Just some basic key points.  In a way I shall be more understanding of their viewpoint then most who would seek to refute it.  And he is a Universalist, so in that area we agree.  I however believe The Torah is unviersalist as well.

In a lot of ways this view kind of follows the same logic as the Hebrew Roots movement, but draws opposite conclusions.  They follow a similar "God does not Change" mentality for example.  They feel simplistically that Paul teaching that The Law was a Curse and is done away with means we need to either reject Paul, reinterpret Paul, or view the God who wrote that Law as Evil.  My position however is that the Law had a role to play in the plan of Salvation, but it's job is now done.

A major starting premise of how this teacher builds his theology is saying the name YHWH was introduced at the Burning Bush.  I have already dedicated a blog post to refuting that common misconception.

He emphasizes the New Testament God's title as Father, yet acts like punishing his people for their Sins is inconsistent with that.  Which kind of shows a misunderstanding of what Fatherhood is that's similar to Muhammad's.

I do not myself know entirely how to deal with things like The Torah apparently endorsing genocide.  But what I do know is that everyone who has died in human history will be Resurrected.  And that punishing His Children when they transgress is part of God's responsibility as our Father.  But it is never a permanent disowning, His Mercy endures Forever.

This channel's doctrine is not Gnostic in the way a lot of people teaching something like this would be.  He does not teach that Jesus was the Serpent of Genesis 3 and it was a good thing that Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit.  The Serpent was Satan in his view.  However it is precisely that fact that leads us to a major issue in his internal logic.

He argues that the True God does speak through the name YHWH in some Old Testament passages.  Obviously that lends itself to a lot of him basically being able to pick and choose whatever he wants.  But his argument that we need to "rightly divide the Word of God" I would consider worth consideration, except...

He also clearly teaches that the Name YHWH belongs to Satan, and so we should never use it in worshiping the True God, and that's why it seemingly never appears in the New Testament.  But he also clearly teaches that Satan is a lair and the True God The Father never lies.

Therefore if a certain name is being used by both, if your quoting verses from the Prophets where the God speaking calls himself by the name of YHWH, and saying some are Satan and some are the True God.  It makes no sense to then say Satan is the one the name belongs to.  But that's what he does.

Much of why he needs to do this is because of narratives where clearly YHWH and Satan are both present as separate characters.  Starting with Genesis 3, and then going on to the Book of Job, I haven't seen him mention the scene in Zechariah yet. He could have argued that there are perhaps two Evil Gods in competition with each other, like Enki and Enlil.  Except he also loves to over emphasize and I feel misuse Jesus saying (when specifically talking about Demons) "A Kingdom divided against itself cannot stand".  The point of that quote was that you can't cast out Demons by Demons, that power comes from the Holy Spirit.  But we also see in Daniel 10 that the Nations are divided between Angelic Principalities who often are in conflict with each other.

However perhaps the most theologically important verse he feels the need to say was God The Father speaking in-spite of the speaker calling Himself YHWH is Malachi 3:6.
"For I am Yahuah, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."
First of all Malachi isn't even different revelations like some of the other Old Testament Prophets.  It's all essentially one speech Malachi dictated for a God calling Himself Yahuah  So if there is a single verse in Malachi that he needs to argue is Satan talking then he's written himself into a corner.

Second of all, this verse is NOT inconsistent in any way with the person speaking being the God who Wrote The Torah.  This teacher loves to talk about the Curses in Deuteronomy 29, but if you keep reading Deuteronomy into chapter 30, Yahuah does promise restoration, he does promise that in-spite of all these Judgments they will not be consumed.

In fact that wording in Malachi is specifically that because He is the one named Yahuah you can rest assured Jacob's children will not be consumed.  Ezekiel 16 also has this message.

He also teaches that the Sacrificial System is inherently Evil, and cites passages from the Prophets often taken as opposing it. The thing is, in the main passage from Jeremiah that is sometimes interpreted as opposing the Sacrificial system, the YHWH God speaking there also claims to be the God who brought Israel out of Egypt.  So again you can't have it both ways, you can't say He isn't the God who wrote the Torah because He's saying he didn't talk about Sacrifices, when He is clearly claiming to be that God because He brought Israel out of Egypt.

He likes to cite Acts 7 as saying it was an Angel who gave the Law to Moses.  Thing is the text of Exodus 3 also says it was the Angel of Yahuah who appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, so that terminology does not contradict the author wanting us to think of Him as the True God since Exodus was definitely written under that pretense.  The Angel of Yahuah is The Word, because angel in both Hebrew and Greek means messenger or message.

Revelation 19 has characters say Alleluia while worshiping the same God at who's Right Hand The Arnion(Lamb in the KJV) sits, meaning they are worshiping him as Yah.  Jesus, coming from Yeshua via Iesous is a Yah theophoric name, it means Yahuah is Salvation.

There is a lot in Revelation that hurts his argument that the New Testament God would not or even cannot do certain things the Old Testament YHWH did.  Not to mention II Peter 2 and 3 clearly saying the God Peter worships is the one who sent the Flood and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  And will in the future destroy the present world with fire.

He quotes certain verses from John's Gospel as saying no one had seen God before Jesus incarnation, to say Moses could not have been "Face to Face" with the True God.  But those verses mean something more specific, The Torah itself still puts a limit on how close even Moses was.  Jesus specifically said in John 8 that Abraham had seen him, and goes on to say "Before Abraham was I Am", identifying himself with the Angel of the Burning Bush, Jesus also quotes the Greek translation of "I Am that I Am" in Revelation 1.  And as far as The New Testament seemingly contradicting the Enoch and Elijah narrative by saying no one ascended to the Father before Jesus, that too I've already addressed.

He references the parallel Kings and Chronicles accounts saying in one place Satan and in another YHWH temped David to do the Census. This is explained by Job where it's clear Satan can't do anything without YHWH's consent, and the New Testament repeats that Satan can't touch us without God's permission, like Luke 22:31-32 and 1 Peter 5 and 1 John 5:15.  Satan serves as our accuser (prosecutor) but now Jesus is our Advocate (defense attorney), as 1 John 2:1 tells us.

He argues that YHWH is the Beast of the Sea of Revelation 13 by comparing the Second Beast to Old Testament prophets like Moses and Elijah.  And by citing Hosea 13:7-8's Lion, Leopard and Bear imagery being attributed to Yahuah.  Thing is Daniel 7 is clearly the more direct Old Testament reference in mind there, with the Ten Horns, and when you think about it even the Seven Heads are implied there.  And those Beasts also came from the Sea.  Now Hosea could also be relevant, but it's about Earthly Nations being tools Yahuah uses to Judge Israel, Revelation 13 is about the Nations themselves.

As far as the Beast from the Earth resembling an Old Testament Prophet.  Yes, that is why he's called the False Prophet.  He will seek to present himself as that, and I think maybe The Beast from the Sea will claim to be YHWH in some way.  But that doesn't make their claim true.  Remember that the Israelites identified the Golden Calf with YHWH.

Now it's true that Satan's New Testament depiction as the Archon of the Kosmos and God of this Aion can make it seem like New Testament Satan has a lot of Authority YHWH claimed for himself directly in the Hebrew Bible, when he calls himself the God of the Earth, the Lord of the Whole Earth and the Judge of the Earth.  But Daniel 10 shows us that each Nation has it's own Prince.  And the Hebrew word for Earth in those verses is sometimes used of specifically the Land of Israel.

I haven't watched all the material on this YouTube Channel yet, but I've watched hours of it. I definitely got the gist of how this argument goes.  From what I've seen though he hasn't mentioned Revelation besides chapter 13, and never Daniel.  My researching how to respond to his argument is kind of what caused to me to make some recent Revelation 11 observations.

Daniel could be interesting to his theory, since it only uses the name of YHWH in chapter 9 when Daniel is reading Jeremiah.  It's never used by the Angels who speak to Daniel or at all in the Aramaic chapters.  And only Daniel uses the names Michael and Gabriel for angels, which The New Testament also uses.  He could try to connect Daniel 7 to Hosea 13 being the fourth Beast is Ephraim, the subject of Hosea in that passage.

However, I think it's possible that Michael is The Angel of Yahuah.  Which would not be very compatible with his arguments.

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