Yahweh in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament are usually viewed as independent personalities. In the Old Testament, God speaks to the prophets and Jesus Christ appears to people and in this way speaks to His creatures. However, the difference between Yahweh and Jesus Christ is much smaller than is widely assumed.
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Separated from God or not separated?
For many believers, Jesus Christ appears in the entire Bible for the first time in the New Testament. Born as the Son of God through the Virgin Mary. As if Jesus Christ only began to exist from that point on. However, other believers know that, for example, according to John 1:1-3:14, Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate, begotten by the Holy Spirit. But probably only a few believers know that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, also appears many times in the Old Testament. He is simply called neither Jesus Christ nor Immanuel, but Yahweh. The Hebrew word “YHWH”, which is not even pronounced by followers of the Jewish faith and is translated as “Yahweh” or “Jehovah”, is actually Jesus Christ.
If Jesus Christ is not the same as Yahweh, this would result in an inconsistency in the Bible. Sin separates us from God, for example in Isaiah 59:2:
“But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”
Adam and Eve’s sin led to their expulsion from paradise and thus their separation from God. Jesus Christ took upon himself all the sins of men and thereby became sin himself. The result: separation from God (Father). Jesus Christ himself suffered greatly from this separation. One of His last words on the cross was according to Matthew 27:46:
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?“
Since humanity has had a thoroughly sinful nature since the first fall, the separation from God is actually sealed “chronically”. The question that arises here is who actually spoke to all the prophets about the entire Old Testament if there is a dividing wall between God and people. If this is God (Father), then sin does not separate us from Him and the Word would be unreliable here. The solution is very simple. It is Jesus Christ who speaks to people. He is Yahweh.
The Old Testament and the New Testament provide numerous indications that Yahweh not only could be Jesus Christ, but definitely is.
“The first and the last”
As we know, Jesus Christ is the King of kings and the Savior. The prophet Isaiah received the following message from the Lord,Isaiah 44:6:
“Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.“
Isaiah 48:12-13:
“Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last. Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together.“
Isaiah 41:4:
“Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.“
There is only one (Creator) God. This is undisputed (at least among those faithful to the gospel). This is also clearly described in the First Commandment (Info). Here says the Lord, He is “the first and the last.”
The book of Revelation was dictated by Jesus Christ to John on the island of Patmos. He knows how to report what he has heard, as in Revelation 1:10-11:
“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.“
Further information in Revelation
Revelation 1:17-18:
“And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.“
Revelation 2:8:
“And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;“
He who calls himself “the first and the last” are not two different things, but one and the same. This is also proof that Jesus Christ is fully God who came into this world as a human being. Two cannot be “first and last” independently of each other at the same time.
Jesus Christ the “everlasting Father”
In the book of Isaiah, God is also announced as the Son coming into the world, as in Isaiah 9:6 (5):
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
The arrival of Jesus Christ (“a son is given”) is unmistakably announced here. This son also has the name “mighty God” and “everlasting Father”.
Jacob realized who the man really was
Jacob, the son of Isaac, had been on the run for many years from the vengeance of his brother Esau. Jacob, the younger brother, had fraudulently stolen his birthright. One day Jacob was startled because someone was standing behind him. He assumed he was being pursued and immediately started fighting. This fight lasted all night. The next morning Jacob realized that he didn’t have the slightest chance, because this man was not human.
Genesis 32:24 (25):
“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.“
However, Jacob recognized who he was looking at. It was Jesus Christ. Jacob immediately wanted to wrest the man’s blessing as a sign of His forgiveness for the betrayal committed against his brother. Jacob received the blessing.
Genesis 32,30 (31):
“And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”
That was also the reason that Jacob was given a second name. A name meaning “wrestling with God”, Isra-El, or Israel. Jacob recognized that it was God.
Revelation 22:12-16:
“And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.“
“I Am That I Am!”
Moses, still 80 years old and in exile, encountered the burning bush. Here the Lord introduced himself as his God and also the only true God. Moses, abandoned as an infant in the River Nile and found and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, had no idea of the true Creator God. Moses was raised in Egyptian tradition. That’s why Moses also asked what he should say to the people of Israel, who were still held as slaves in Egypt, who had sent him. What’s the name? Exodus 3:13-14:
“And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.“
God introduced himself as “I Am THAT I Am.” The “I Am” sent you. A statement that enraged the Pharisees centuries later when Jesus Christ spoke to them in John 8:58:
“Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”
A wording that seems strange at first glance. In many (modern) Bible translations, this sentence has been “normalized” and thus the identity of Jesus Christ, the voice from the burning bush, has been eliminated. Beforehand, Jesus Christ gave a strong hint with the fence post that He was already known to Abraham as such,
John 8:56:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.”
Small circle of believers
But at the end of time only a small minority will profess Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son, the Word of God. He told this to the prophet Isaiah himself, Isaiah 10:20-21:
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.“
Nothing has changed
Since God never changes, the possibility for man’s salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ before His appearance as a human being was the same as it was from His crucifixion to the present day. This alone guarantees God’s promised eternal righteousness (Psalm 119:142).
The separation from God (Father) is accomplished with man’s sin. The only “thread” that keeps people alive is already an expression of grace and the indirect connection to God (Father) through Jesus Christ. For no one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ (John 14:6).
Little acceptance – big rejection
The Savior in the New Testament is Yahweh in the Old Testament. A circumstance that some religious circles do not like at all and are also rejected. For religions that reject Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God and therefore also God at the same time, the fact that He is Yahweh of the Old Testament or the Torah and Tanakh is out of the question at all. For Jehovah’s Witnesses who see Jesus Christ as merely a created angel, “Jehovah” as one and the same does not fit into the concept either. The greatest opponent of the divinity of Jesus Christ today, in “quality and quantity,” is ecumenism and the Roman Catholic Church as its body.
While the simple Jehovah’s Witness is a victim of the correspondingly modified “New World Translation”, for other religious groups there remains the ideological rejection that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, came into this world as a human being. The original Bible Students, the forerunners of Jehovah’s Witnesses, once used the English King James Bible. Only with the so-called Watchtower Society did the “development” of its own translation and also “theology” follow.
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ final break from the true gospel came after the death of founder Charles Taze Russell in 1916 and the takeover of the business by his successor, Joseph Franklin Rutherford. But Jehovah’s Witnesses would also easily have the opportunity to find out the truth if they would just look outside the box and compare the stories they used with other versions of the Bible.
Jesus Christ in the attackers’ sights
The adversary began the war against Jesus Christ with his beginnings of rebellion (Info). A battle that he lost long ago with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now all that matters is the destruction of creation and thus also of nature and people. A process that, as usual, has been fictionally twisted into the opposite, but is only recognized by most people as a big mistake when it is already too late (Info).
Bible verses from King James Version
