View Resource Online
What I Have Written, I Have Written
Exodus 3:13-15 13 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? 14 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. 15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
John 19:19-22 19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. 20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. 21 Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. 22 Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.
· Many years ago, a beautiful painting was done featuring a large anvil, around which lay many shattered and smashed hammers on the floor. The caption below the picture was a phrase from 1 Peter 1:25 – “The word of the Lord endures forever.” More than one poet has been inspired by this very image, as Samuel Valentine Cole wrote, “Hammer away, ye hostile hands, your hammers break, God’s anvil stands.” Or, as an unknown modern poet has penned …
Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door and heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;
When looking in, I saw upon the floor, old hammers worn with beating years of time.
“How many anvils have you had,” said I, “To wear and batter all these hammers so?”
“Just one,” said he; then said with twinkling eye, “The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.”
And so I thought, the anvil of God’s word, for ages skeptics’ blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, the anvil is unharmed — the hammers gone.
· God, in a supernatural way, has sustained His Word down through the centuries against all kinds of attacks. Numerous tyrants have attempted to smash the anvil of God with the hammer of government power, but they are gone and it remains! In the last two centuries, while the “higher critics” have been sitting in stuffy libraries spinning their theories that the Bible is an unreliable, unhistorical and mythological book, modern archaeologists have stood by the hundreds on the soil of Bible lands and held the cold hard facts of history in their hands, undeniably proving God’s Word!
· 25 years ago, Time magazine stated, “After more than two centuries of facing the heaviest scientific guns that could be brought to bear, the Bible has survived – and is perhaps better for the siege.”
· Over 100 years ago, Charles Spurgeon observed, “If you want to be thought very wise today, but look very foolish in about fifty years, attack the Bible. Point out all the errors. But if you’re willing to be thought foolish now, but believing that in fifty years you will be vindicated, stand with the Bible.”
· The Bible has been examined more than any other book in the history of the world. Every word, syllable and letter has been scrutinized by hostile critics for centuries. And still it stands!
o Mark 13:31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.
· “Hammer away, ye hostile hands, your hammers break, God’s anvil stands.”
· Over and over, modern science has confirmed the Divine origin of the Bible. Even computer science has bowed its knee to the Word of God, as amazing linguistic and mathematical patterns continue to be found in the original text. Michael Drosnin’s best-selling 1997 book, “The Bible Code,” popularized this concept and swept to the top of the New York Times bestseller list:
Michael Drosnin, a former journalist for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, first stumbled across the work of mathematician Eliyahu Rips while on assignment in Israel. He discovered that the “Bible code” was a computer program containing Hebrew letters in a grid like a giant word-search puzzle. Rips had removed the spaces between the words creating a grid of 304,805 letters in 64 rows of 4,772 letters each, since according to tradition this was the way Moses received the Torah – “without break of words.” Using a technique called Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS), Rips and his colleagues had searched for the names of 32 influential Jewish sages – both Biblical and modern – to see whether their names and the dates of their birth and death were encoded in Genesis. This set the odds of finding such encoded information by random chance at 1 in 10 million. Mathematicians say 100 to 1 is beyond chance; the most rigorous test ever used is 1000 to 1. But they were all there.
Over the next two years, Drosnin’s own research would find key words, phrases, names and even specific dates relating to major world events in the Bible. The Gulf War, both World Wars, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Great Depression, and the Moon Landing were all located using Rips’ technique. Drosnin’s claim to fame, however, was the discovery of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s name with the phrase “assassin will assassinate” and the Hebrew year beginning in late 1995. In September 1994, Drosnin flew to Israel with a letter warning of the code’s prediction. Rabin chose to ignore it, but on November 4, 1995, he was shot by Yigal Amir in Tel Aviv. The assassin’s name and the place were not discovered in the code until later, but Drosnin already had an incredible story for his book.
The Bible code has yet to be scientifically refuted, although it does have its critics. Detractors have found occasional coded “prophecies” in other non-Biblical text such as “Moby Dick,” but nothing like the sheer numbers found in the Bible. “Shakespeare” appears with “presented on stage,” “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,” while the Oklahoma bombing is encoded in terrifying detail including “his name is Timothy,” “McVeigh,” “day 19,” “on the 9th hour,” “in the morning,” “he ambushed, he pounced, terror,” “two years from the death of Koresh.”
Since the first paper by Eliyahu Rips and his Jewish colleagues was printed in the scholarly journal Statistical Science, other tests have been carried out by professors at Harvard, Yale and the Hebrew University. None can dispute the mathematical patterns, although they remain dubious of the coded information allegedly found in the Bible. They unanimously caution anyone against making predictions of the future, pointing out that virtually all of Drosnin’s “prophecies” have been found “after the fact.”
The brilliant Sir Isaac Newton also tried to find such a code in the Bible, and he considered it more important than his Theory of the Universe. Newton so believed in the code’s existence that he learned Hebrew and spent half his lifetime trying to find it. But no mathematical theory applied by him worked. Rips, Drosnin and others have succeeded because they had technology that Newton did not. If the “Bible Code” is indeed real, then the hidden text of the Bible was encoded with a kind of time-lock, which could not be opened until the computer was invented in our generation! However, in spite of his discoveries, Drosnin still remains “staunchly non-religious.”
· Another undisputable “Bible code” was born 100 years before Drosnin, when Harvard scholar and Russian-born mathematician Dr. Ivan Panin began fifty years of extensive mathematical research on the original Bible texts. Since every Greek and Hebrew letter carries a numerical value, every word has a definite mathematical sum. It is a well-known fact that seven is God’s perfect number, found throughout the universe and the Bible itself. What is not so well-known is that God has contained an amazing mathematical phenomenon of sevens in the very words of Scripture!
· Dr. Panin found that in any self-contained passage (such as the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1), in any book of the Bible individually, or in the Bible as a whole, the following features are divisible by seven: total number of words, words beginning with a vowel, words beginning with a consonant, total number of letters, number of vowels, number of consonants, words occurring more than once, words occurring only once, words occurring in more than one form, words occurring in only one form, number of nouns, number of non-nouns, number of proper names, number of male names, number of female names, number of words beginning with each of the letters of the respective alphabets (Hebrew or Greek), number of words not found in any other book, numerical value of the total vocabulary, and numerical value of each of the various alphabetical groups of words.
· Dr. Panin discovered that there were no such features of seven in any other writings or in the Apocryphal books – but the pattern stops at Malachi and picks up without a break at Matthew! At his death, the Nobel Research Foundation took 43,000 sheets of his calculations and has continued his research. Dr. Panin challenged any man to write one paragraph of 300 words intelligently and produce just a few of these numeric phenomena – no one has ever been able to do it, even with the aid of the computer. And yet the Bible has 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses and 775,693 words! It was written by 40 authors over a period of 1600 years! And ALL of these features appear throughout every line of the Bible! No man could ever duplicate such an absolute miracle!
· What about these amazing structures that lie hidden beneath the surface of the Bible text? Do they validate my belief in God’s Word? NO! My belief in God’s Word was validated when I took Him at His Word and He changed my life! Drosnin’s Code is somewhat intriguing and Panin’s Theomatics are absolutely amazing, but they are hardly a “new revelation.” They are merely another small facet of something I already knew a long time ago:
o 2 Peter 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
o Luke 21:33 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.
o Psalm 119:89 For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.
· The most amazing proof of the Bible’s inspiration lies right on the surface of God’s Word! In the Old Testament alone, there are over 2000 prophecies that have already come to pass. Nothing vaguely resembles this in any other book in the world. Among other religions, 26 volumes that are claimed to be divine scriptures have no specific prophecies whatsoever, and many other books are laughable for their erroneous predictions.
· What a contrast to the Bible! The Old Testament contains 333 prophecies concerning just the coming of Christ, which include 456 specific details. And they were penned by many different writers between 1500 BC and 400 BC – hundreds of years before Christ was born!
· Mathematician Peter Stoner had his graduate students calculate what the odds would be of any one person fulfilling just eight of these prophecies. He found the chance was 1 in 1017 – or 1 in 100 quadrillion. Stoner gives an analogy to attempt to explain this:
Take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time.
· If that isn’t amazing enough, Stoner had his graduate students calculate the odds that any one person would fulfill 48 of these prophecies. The odds were 1 in 10156 – but Jesus Christ fulfilled 333 specific prophecies! Isaiah’s detailed predictions of Christ’s suffering in Isaiah 53 were written 700 years before the event – that’s like trying to predict what will happen in an election in AD 2700!
· Little is to be gained by understanding any “hidden codes” of the Bible if we ignore the PLAIN WORDS of Scripture! Quite frankly, most people still have trouble obeying the obvious things that are easily understood on the SURFACE of the Bible text!
o Matthew 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
o John 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
o 2 Peter 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
o John 15:14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.
· And yet, in spite of our “emphasis on the obvious,” much is to be gained by studying the details of the Bible. It is like a goldmine – the deeper you dig, the more treasure you find!
· Paul laid great emphasis on the STRUCTURE of Scripture, right down to a single letter:
o Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
· A good deal of Old Testament poetic literature was written in what might be called CODED form; this made it easier to memorize. In Psalm 119, each of the 22 sections is labeled by one letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each of the 8 verses in that section starts with that letter. In the book of Lamentations, each of the chapters is a poem with a similar “acrostic” pattern.
· In the book of Esther, which had to pass through the hands of the Persian censor, the name of God did not appear once – until the Jewish Rabbis looked at the “HIDDEN CODE” of the Hebrew language and found the name YHWH buried in five different places (1:20, 5:4, 5:13, 7:5, 7:7).
· To put it bluntly, the Jewish scholars missed absolutely nothing – not even the finest detail – in regard to the Holy Scriptures. It is amazing that they – like the author of “The Bible Code” – could know so much about God’s divine arrangement and completely miss God’s divine atonement!
· One of the “details” that the Jews were absolutely fanatical about was the name of God. God had revealed this name to Moses at Mount Horeb when he called him to be Israel’s deliverer from Egypt.
o I AM THAT I AM or I AM – This was the original form spoken to Moses by God Himself, carrying within it the concepts of being the Eternal and Self-Existent One, a being who is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient. (“I AM … everything you need!”)
o YHWH or YAHWEH – This name comes from four consonants (YOD, HEH, VAV, HEH) in Hebrew, and is thus called the TETRAGRAMMATON. Because ancient Hebrew was written only in consonants, those who read it aloud had to supply the vowel sounds. To actually translate this name into English, we would probably say, “The Eternal.” (i.e. Moffat Translation)
o ADONAI or ADON – This was a Hebrew word meaning “Lord,” used as a substitute for YHWH. When it was read, the Jewish congregation would reply “HA SHEM” or “THE NAME.” This eventually became the only way the Jews would refer to the proper name of God.
o JHVH or JEHOVAH or JAH or LORD – This was a 16th century English transliteration for YHWH. Thus, when God’s proper name is used in the English Old Testament, it is written as “Jehovah” or the capitalized word “LORD.” “Jah” is a shortened form, used in many compound names. “Jehovah” is also used in compound names for God.
o ELOHIM or EL – This was the Hebrew word most commonly used to refer to God. It is a plural word meaning “mighty,” as the Jews pluralized nouns to express greatness or majesty. “El” is a shortened form, used in many compound names such as “El Shaddai” (God Almighty).
o KYRIOS or LORD – This was a Greek word meaning “Lord,” but it was an inadequate equivalent as it was frequently used as we would use “Sir.” Jesus Himself assumed the title intending it in the higher sense of deity, but His purpose did not become clear to the disciples until after His resurrection. When Thomas realized the significance of a mortal wound in the body of a living man, he immediately put this title of respect together with the absolute title of Deity, exclaiming, “My Lord and my God!” in John 20:28. According to the Biblical record, the New Testament Apostolics never used “KYRIOS” after this to address anyone except Jesus.
· In heathen theology, you could defeat a god if you knew his secret name; but the true God was not afraid to reveal His name to Moses! However, the Jews eventually degenerated into much the same practice; not speaking the name partly out of reverence, and partly out of superstition.
· This tradition against saying “Yahweh” was due to a misinterpretation of one verse in the Torah:
o Leviticus 24:16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death.
· The Jews, after returning from the Babylonian captivity (450 BC) began to reverence the name “Yahweh” so greatly that they outlawed the very use of it, first for the common people, later for the priests. Finally, only the high priest was allowed to say it, and then only on the Day of Atonement. When Simon, who was the last high priest permitted to use it, died in 270 BC, a total prohibition against saying the name came into force among the Jews. “Adonai” became the substitute word.
· BY THE TIME OF JESUS’ EARTHLY MINISTRY, THE JEWS HAD NOT HEARD THE PROPER NAME (YHWH) OF THE GOD THEY WERE SERVING FOR OVER 300 YEARS!
· GOD NEVER REVOKED THIS NAME! It was His redemptive name and all the compound names of God are built on it. Even in the Old Testament, people could call on the “name of the Lord” …
o Genesis 4:26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.
· THERE ARE MANY COMPOUND NAMES OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT:
Jehovah Elohim Genesis 2:4 The Lord, Our Creator
Jehovah El Elyon Genesis 14:22 The Lord, Most High God, The Owner
Jehovah Adonia Genesis 15:2 The Lord, The Master
Jehovah El Olam Genesis 21:33 The Lord, The Everlasting
Jehovah Jireh Genesis 22:14 The Lord, The Provider
Jehovah Rapha Exodus 15:26 The Lord, The Healer
Jehovah Nissi Exodus 17:15 The Lord, The Banner (“Miracle”)
Jehovah MakaddeshKem Exodus 31:13 The Lord, Our Sanctification
Jehovah Shalom Judges 6:24 The Lord, Our Peace
Jehovah Shaphat Judges 11:27 The Lord, The Judge
Jehovah Saboath 1 Samuel 1:3 The Lord of Hosts
Jehovah Zidkenu Jeremiah 23:6 The Lord, Our Righteousness
Jehovah Raah Psalms 23:1 The Lord, The Shepherd
Jehovah Elyon Psalms 7:17 The Lord, The Blesser
Jehovah Hosenu Psalms 95:6 The Lord, The Maker
Jehovah Gibbor Isaiah 42:13 The Lord, The Mighty
Jah Jehovah Isaiah 12:2, 26:4 The Lord, The Jehovah
Jehovah Shammah Ezekiel 48:35 The Lord, The Everpresent
· BUT ONLY ONE COMPOUND NAME IS REVEALED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT:
· In Hebrew … Jehovah Jehoshua Messiah
· In Greek … Kyrios Iesous Christos
· In English … Lord Jesus Christ
o Colossians 1:14-19 14 In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: 15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. 19 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;
o Colossians 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
· Neither the Old or the New Testament uses the word “trinity” or associates the words “three” or “persons” in any significant way with God. No passage says God is a holy two, holy three, or holy trinity, but over 50 verses call God the “HOLY ONE.”
o Isaiah 47:4 As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel.
o Isaiah 54:5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
· David prophetically spoke of Jesus using the term “Holy One,” and his prophecy was quoted and confirmed by both Peter (Acts 2:37) and Paul (Acts 13:35).
o Psalm 16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
· During Jesus’ earthly ministry, the demons recognized that He was One God manifest in flesh!
o Mark 1:23-26 23 And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, 24 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. 25 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. 26 And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him.
o James 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
· God accompanied the revelation of Himself in flesh with a new name. That name is Jesus, which includes and supersedes Yahweh and all the Old Testament compound names. Jesus is the redemptive name of God in the New Testament. It is the name of supreme power and authority, the only saving name, the name given for remission of sins, and the highest name ever revealed.
· JESUS is the Greek form of JOSHUA (YAH-SHUA), which means “YAHWEH IS SALVATION.”
|
YAHWEH |
JESUS |
| Isaiah 45:22-23 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. | Philippians 2:10-11 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. |
· According to the Mishna, “He who blasphemes is liable only when he will have fully pronounced the Divine Name.” At Jesus’ trial, the Sanhedrin found Him guilty of blasphemy (Mark 14:62-63) for this reason – He had constantly used “I AM,” the unutterable name of God, in reference to Himself!
· Even back when they used to pronounce God’s name, the Jews taught that when you said “JAH” you should kick the dust off your feet and move, because you were standing on holy ground. That is why even today the Orthodox Jews are in constant motion at the Wailing Wall. Ezekiel saw a vision of the cherubim running around God’s throne like wheels of lightning; according to Isaiah, these were the angels who pronounced the name of God in their ceaseless worship:
o Isaiah 6:1-3 1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. 2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. 3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD (YAHWEH) of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
· Suddenly, a carpenter from Nazareth is casually using the proper name of God – the name they have not been allowed to say for over 300 years – to describe Himself! But Jesus had a right to use God’s name because HE WAS GOD! The Jewish religious leaders were outraged – they understood who Jesus was claiming to be, even if some modern theologians do not!
· The Hebrew “code” which is obscured in English was painfully obvious to the Jewish religious leaders every time Jesus spoke! The phrase “I Am” (Greek: “Ego Eimi”), appearing to us as just another pronoun and verb, identified Him to them as YAHWEH!
· John 4:24-26 (TO THE SAMARITAN WOMAN AT THE WELL) God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am (he). (I AM)
· John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
John 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life..
John 10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
John 10:11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
John 11:25 (TO MARTHA AT LAZARUS’ TOMB) Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
John 14:6 (TO THOMAS) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
John 13:13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
John 8:24 (TO THE PHARISEES) I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am (he), ye shall die in your sins. John 8:28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am (he), and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. John 8:58-59 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
Matthew 14:27 (TO THE DISCIPLES, WALKING TO THEM ON THE WATER) But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. (TAKE COURAGE, I AM)
John 18:5-6 (TO THE SOLDIERS ARRESTING HIM) They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am (he). And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them. As soon then as he had said unto them, I am (he), they went backward, and fell to the ground.
Mark 14:62 (TO THE HIGH PRIEST AT HIS TRIAL) And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
· Jesus has enraged the Sanhedrin repeatedly by using the unutterable name of God, but this time He has done it in a court of law. They rush their prisoner to Pilate and demand that He be crucified. Even though Pilate is seemingly impressed with Jesus, they force him to carry out the execution through political pressure. Pilate is powerless to save the Nazarene, even though he wants to.
· In an unusual move, Pilate himself writes an inscription and has it placed on the cross of Jesus. In three languages (Hebrew, Greek and Latin) it says: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Just another epitaph to the Greeks and Romans. But as “many of the Jews” begin to gather and read the inscription over this Galileean, the Chief Priests suddenly see that they have a problem.
· They rush to Pilate insisting, “Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.” Pilate’s firm answer is, “What I have written I have written.” Literally, he says, “What I have written, I will not change one bit!” What was the problem that so upset these scholars of the Law?
· Written over Jesus’ head in Hebrew was, “Yeshua HaNazarei v-Melech HaYehudim.” But to the Jewish leaders, the “Bible Code Experts,” all they could see was the pattern of a condemning acrostic, as the first letter of each word (YOD, HEH, VAV, HEH) unerringly spelled out “YHVH” for all to see! It was not a carpenter’s blood that was being shed that day, but Yahweh’s blood!
· Even after their enemy was dead, the Chief Priests were still nervous! They came to Pilate demanding Roman guards to secure the tomb until after the third day (Matthew 27:62-66). Pilate told them to use their own guards, and once again made a puzzling remark – “Go your way, make it as sure as you can.” He is literally laughing at their efforts now – “Do your best to keep Him in the grave, but if THAT MAN said He’s going to rise from the dead, He’s going to rise from the dead!
· The resurrection of Christ is unique among world religions. Confucius died and was buried; Lao-tzu wandered off and died with his water buffalo. Buddha rotted with food poisoning; Muhammed died in AD 632, his body cut up and spread all over the Near East. But Jesus rose from the dead!
· I am firmly convinced that Jesus was who He said He was – Almighty God! Others call for us to lay down our distinctive “Oneness, Jesus Name” message, but “what I have written, I have written!” The early church had power precisely because they were so sold out to this awesome revelation!
o Colossians 3:17 An whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
