YHWH: THE GOD TO BE FEARED
In this article, we are to examine the case a Muslim brought against Yahweh. According to this Muslim, Yahweh is “the Hebrew god Yahweh, whose biblical theonym is… identical to the ancient pre-Israelite Canaanite deity El, a bloodthirsty and warlike god whose cult demanded the holocaust of firstborn males”. Not only does this Muslim go to unreasonable length to prove his accusation, he also successfully crossed rivers and climbed mountains in order to display the folly of his beliefs as a Muslim. While we sit back and give him a round of applause for such an enthralling display, we should as well, out of love for him, bring him to a corner and chide him, telling him that he should put his mouth to where his heart is.
The article titled “My case against Yahweh” by Funsho Animashaun is probably a reaction (far be it from us that we should call it a rebuttal) against the book, “My case against Allah” written by our fellow brother in Christ, Evangelist Isang Udo Akagha who had been on the war front in apologetics for years. And if my guess turns out to be true, then we have to start by reiterating the bad arguments used by Muslim taqquiyists. Rather than go on the defensive, he went on the offensive. I must also add that this particular writer has a great appetite for inconsistencies and there is not even a slight indication in his write-up that he is worried about attacking his beloved prophet.
He started,
“Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.” (Psalms 18:7-11)
Salam alaekum everyone.
I hope you are not too surprised reading the verse you see here. This is a verse of the Bible where Yahweh is described whenever he gets angry. In Nigeria, we have 2 gods having similar features; Sango and Amadioha. This devilish entity sounds like a description of Satan, but believe it or not, actually comes from the Bible as describing Yahweh. I am still wondering how Yahweh would make darkness his secret place as illustrated in that exert.”
RESPONSE
First, let us start by walking Funsho through his own delusions by looking at the passage above through his own smokescreen and demonstrating to him that the smokescreen tactic he used is not enough to convict the inspired scriptures. In doing so, we ought to point out that no matter how different two deities are, they will always share some similarities. Muslims believed that Allah is responsible for creation of man but that does not give us the license to identify Allah as the Yoruba god, Obatala. The Satanic figure in the three major monotheistic religions in the world is a figure who also demands worship being given to him alongside God. We should not be taken by surprise if Satan in his cunningless pretend and try to imitate the Abrahamic God by acclaiming divine attributes to himself. If a true prophet described the true God and the false prophet described his master, Satan, there is no doubt that both will share some divine qualities as far as their description is concerned. Not until when they are asked to back up their claims does the true God is finally revealed.[1]
Second, while still using Funsho’s smoke mirror, we are left to wonder if he believed that the Yoruba god, Sango, had been existing long before this passage was written down. Whether he holds to the conservative view or to the typical documentary theory that was built on a wild guess and destroyed by grounded facts, he still has tons of explanations to give and wild theories to cook up. Since this particular Muslim is suffering from an inconsistency syndrome, we should not be surprised if he goes for the latter view.
Third, putting down the smokescreen glass and using our own natural vision that God gave us, it does not require the sixth sense for us to know that this particular passage is not meant to be literal but metaphoric. A Biblical commentator remarked that,
“The description which follows here is one of the most sublime that is to be found in any language… We are not to regard this as descriptive of anything which literally occurred, but rather as expressive of the fact of the divine interposition, as if he thus came forth in the greatness of his power. There is no improbability indeed in supposing that in some of the dangerous periods of David’s life, when surrounded by enemies, or even when in the midst of a battle, a furious tempest may have occurred that seemed to be a special divine interposition in his behalf, but we have no distinct record of such an event, and it is not necessary to suppose that such an event occurred in order to a correct understanding of the passage. All that is needful is to regard this as a representation of the mighty interposition of God; to suppose that his intervention was as direct, as manifest, and as sublime, as if he had thus interposed.”[2]
And drawing upon this figurative expression, another commentator said,
“… the shaking and trembling of the earth is often used as a symbol of the presence of God, and of the greatness of his majesty; as when he brought the children of Israel through the Red sea, went before them in the wilderness, and descended on Mount Sinai, which mountain then moved and quaked exceedingly; see Psalm 104:32; and it is easy to observe, that in this, and other parts of this majestic account of the appearance of God on the behalf of the person the subject of this psalm, and against his enemies, there are manifest allusions to the giving of the law on Mount Sinai; though it may be this shaking of the earth, and what follows, are to be understood in a figurative sense;”[3]
And again, we need to correct Funsho’s bland implication that Yahweh dwelling in darkness demonstrates His evil character. Throwing in some Biblical passages will help to shed light on the passage quoted by Funsho above.
And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, WITH DARKNESS, CLOUD, AND THICK DARKNESS. [Deuteronomy 4:11 JPS]
Blow ye the horn in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is at hand. A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, as blackness spread upon the mountains; a great people and a mighty, there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after them, even to the years of many generations. [Joel 2:1-2 JPS]
As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are separated, so will I seek out My sheep; and I will deliver them out of all places whither they have been scattered in the day of clouds and thick darkness. [Ezekiel 34:12 JPS]
That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness [Zephaniah 1:15 JPS]
The Hebrew word used here “עֲרָפֶל” [arapel] basically means thick darkness which is often used in reference to clouds. However, our readers should keep in mind that Yahweh dwelt among the Israelites in a pillar of cloud and fire on their way to the Promised Land.
The LORD was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people. [Exodus 13:21-22 NASB]
Interestingly, look at what this inspired writer wrote:
So it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud along with the darkness, YET IT GAVE LIGHT at night. Thus the one did not come near the other all night. [Exodus 14:20 NASB]
This is a cloud of darkness that emits light. Can you form that image in your mind? Have you ever seen a cloud during a thunderstorm? You will see flashes of light surrounding the clouds yet you cannot see into the cloud.
When Yahweh reveals Himself in cloud of fire, He is telling us that He is the Revealing Light YET He remains a mystery to all of us. Moreover, the darkness is meant to shield His face just as the body of Christ shielded the unveiled Glory of God from mankind. The darkness is meant to be an imagery, not for evil or wickedness but for invisibility and mystery. This particular commentary summed it up best,
“The darkness, or better as R.V., thick darkness, in which He conceals Himself from human view, symbolises the mystery and awfulness of His Advent (Exodus 19:16; Exodus 20:21, 1 Kings 8:12; Psalm 97:2).”[4]
Even if there are arguments that prove that Yahweh is evil and wicked, this particular objection is not one of them. However, Funsho had promised us that “this is just a tip of the iceberg” which means that his thinking hat is full of flimsy arguments like the one he gave above.
Our friend went on to exact arguments from Wikipedia, let us take a glance at it:
I would like to take exerts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
Yahweh (/ˈjɑːhweɪ/, or often /ˈjɑːweɪ/ in English; Hebrew: יהוה) was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah.[3] His exact origins are disputed,[4] although they reach back to the early Iron Age and even the Late Bronze:[5] his name may have begun as an epithet of El, head of the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon,[6] but the earliest plausible mentions are in Egyptian texts that place him among the nomads of the southern Transjordan.[7] In the oldest biblical literature he is a typical ancient Near Eastern “divine warrior” who leads the heavenly army against Israel’s enemies;[8] he later became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and of Judah,[9] and over time the royal court and temple promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses.[10][11] By the end of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the true god of all the world.[11]
RESPONSE
Muslims no longer attack Christianity from their own standpoint. They have to start shifting from one party to another just in order to attack the Christian faith. Did this Muhammadan even read this exert properly the way he should? This particular exert said that the exact origins of the name “Yahweh” is disputed and the article went on citing guesses and unproven hypotheses. Moreover, this particular exert is still using the debunked Documentary hypotheses as premise. The Old Testament study was once lost to these literary theorists until numerous archaeological evidences started feeding tons of the invincible well-researched and scholarly books to the fire.
A scholar warns,
“the view that the God of Israel was sui generis among the deities of antiquity was once standard fare, and still has many defenders. During the second half of the twentieth century, however, Old Testament specialists have had to tread more cautiously when making the kinds of comparison (or contrast) that undergird such a claim.”[5]
Second, Funsho should have read the Wikipedia caption over and over again before parading it as evidence against Christianity. He is more of an anti-Christian than of a Muslim apologist and he is not alone. This particular exert is saying that monotheism is a later development and that it did not become strict until the 6th century B.C. Is Funsho telling us that monotheists like Abraham did not exist until the 6th century BC? If Abraham starts existing around the 6th century BC, then that would put Moses within the first century BC. Is that the reason why the Quran said that Moses was Jesus uncle?
And this is what Wikipedia has to say concerning Allah:
“Regional variants of the word Allah occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic polytheistic cults. Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name as a reference to a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon. The term may have been vague in the Meccan religion. According to one hypothesis, which goes back to Julius Wellhausen, Allah (the supreme deity of the tribal federation around Quraysh) was a designation that consecrated the superiority of Hubal (the supreme deity of Quraysh) over the other gods.” [6]
Going by Funsho’s line of reasoning, are we not allowed to read the Christian theology back into the Quran? Is he willing to acknowledge that Allah is the Triune God worshipped by Christians and later proclaimed by Muhammad? Worse still, shouldn’t we count Allah as one of the numerous Arab deities if we are to give the pagans a say in this matter?
THE GNOSTICS HAVE AN ADVOCATE
Just in case you have a hard time believing in the resurrection, then you must have a rethink by taking a look at the fact that the Gnosticism which flourished in the second century and died out at the end of the sixth century came back to life in the article of a Muslim (though I am not stupid to think that he is the first to pen down such). In as much as Gnosticism is a threat to orthodox Christianity, Funsho thought it worthwhile for him to borrow their weapon kit and use it against us. That a Muslim (of all people) will go on to advocate “the gnostic” view of God is a reason strong enough to plant a foolish grin on the face of the Gnostics themselves.
That “various minor groups have recognized that the biblical god of Judaism and Christianity is the true deceiver of man” carries no weight when examining the true character of Yahweh. Many people also see Allah as a wicked and ruthless god while others view him as an alter-ego conjured by Muhammad in order to satiate his desires. With this in mind, going on to cite what others think about Yahweh is irrelevant. Throughout history of mankind, we see a lot of beliefs, though no matter how ridiculous and incredulous they were, we still find lots of adherent clinging to such beliefs and some are ready to lay down their lives for delusions they believed to be true. Funsho should have known that and should not try to build castles on mere opinions of men.
As time goes, Funsho starts getting confident that the “Gnostics intellectuals” were right concerning the character of Yahweh after chiming in on how the intellectualism of the Gnostics supersedes that of the medieval Christians due to their access to all the Biblical scriptures. Lest anyone take any chances of missing out his excitement, he wrote,
“The truth is that the Bible itself bears ample testimony that the supposed loving father of the Jews and Christians has a sadistic and evil nature and his numerous deeds documented in the so-called Sacred Scriptures are so abhorrent that most people today would believe that they were typical of a demonic entity. Upon reading the Bible objectively, it is evident that the Hebrew god Yahweh is a warlike, murderous and depraved character and it is clear that he has a great resentment for mankind. The biblical texts themselves put in doubt the morality and benevolence of the Judeochristian deity and do nothing more than confirm that Yahweh is the true adversary of humanity.“
RESPONSE
I will advise the readers to read one of my previous articles where I addressed the oft-repeated arguments used in order to malign the character of the loving Father of the Jews and Christians. That many books have been written to debunk the arguments that Yahweh is a cruel god shows that Christians have tendered irrefutable evidences for the goodness of Yahweh and that critics of the Bible are stubborn and most of them pretend as if there are no responses to their attacks.
Funsho started:
“And the evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand: and David played with his hand.” (I Samuel 19:9)
Is this not a laughable situation? God who we regard as the Holy One has an evil spirit. Consider that many modern Judeo-Christians consider God the opposite of evil, yet here we have, again, the clear Biblical wording of evil coming from the LORD.“
RESPONSE
Yes, this is indeed a laughable situation. Given the fact that the People of the Book not only believe that Yahweh is the opposite of evil but that He is also the Sovereign God as well and that everything that occurs in this world occurred because He permitted it. Whether the permission granted is in accordance with His Perfect will or not has no negative evidence against the holy character of Yahweh.
In as much as Yahweh had created us as free-will creatures, then it occurs that Yahweh must grant his creatures the permission to do whatever they are able to do as far as their nature grants. Yahweh forcing us to be good and loving is a violation of our free-will and that means we are no different from lower animals or robots. The sovereignty of God and free-will of the persons he created explains why Yahweh sometimes allow evil to happen. We are in a world where the forces of good and evil battles. During the harvest, the good shall be separated out from the evil. The good ones will live in eternal peace and joy in accordance with the perfect will of God since God is the source of our goodness. On the other hand, the evil ones will be taken to a place where they live out their wicked desires.
After Saul rebellion against Yahweh, he was deposed by Yahweh as a punishment for what he did. Moses also received a similar punishment by being forbidden to cross over into the Promised Land. Moses, rather than put up enmity against Yahweh and Joshua, did not hesitate to bless his successor and in his farewell speech, gave honour to Yahweh. On the other hand, Saul was driven by hate and was bent on killing his successor. The Spirit of Yahweh departed from him hence giving the evil spirit a chance to torment Saul.
Again, it should be pointed out that the exact identity of this particular spirit is not clear to us. Is it a demon from the kingdom of darkness who was permitted by God to torment Saul? Or is it an injurious spirit (it can even be a wind or any other dangerous physical entity) that comes upon Saul in order to give him sorrow and pain? Whether you opt for the former or the latter, it is clear that this particular spirit was sent as punishment for Saul’s rebellion. When one keep rejecting God, it gets to a point where God lift His protecting grace away from someone hence allowing the kingdom of darkness to take over the person’s life. If you harden your heart, it gets to a point where God will punish you by leaving you to obey your desires hence helping to harden your heart. In this world, you either belong to God or to the devil. There is no neutral ground.
Despite hoping that Funsho is merely representing the view of the Gnostics when he said that “in early Christian history, several Gnostic cults believed that the orthodox Church as well as the Old Testament, came from Satan”, the fragile hope was dashed when he later said that “Reading the Old Testament appears to affirm the observation that God and Satan, if not one in the same, at least work as a team.”. It is obvious that Funsho is happy being an advocate of Gnosticism.
He started again:
The Bible exposes clearly that Yahweh is a wrathful and intolerant god (Psalm 78),
RESPONSE
Being wrathful and intolerant is consistent with morality and holiness in as much as the anger is directed towards evil. Psalm 78 recounts the wonderful deeds that Yahweh displayed among the people of Israel and how the Israelites continue to rebel against God even in the face of signs and wonders. Despite the fact that Yahweh punished the Israelites, He still forgave them even though their repentant won’t last. For Funsho to believe that Yahweh is wicked because He is angry at the persisting rebellion of His people against Him, then Funsho must argue that rebelling against Allah does not incur his wrath.
Well-informed readers should know that Funsho is committing suicide here since we all know how Allah commanded the killing of people because they failed to honor his prophet. For all of Funsho’s assertion that Yahweh is a wicked deity for being “wrathful and intolerant”, one would think that Funsho’s god is a peaceful and tolerant god. In other words, Allah does not get angry. He is always happy whether you do good or bad. Since he is happy when you do evil, does that not make him a tolerant god? Is that not the holy God Funsho wants to bring us to?
warlike and militaristic (Exodus 13:3; Psalm 2:1-12; Deuteronomy 7:23-24),
RESPONSE
So, how does waging war against evil makes you evil as well? Is Funsho admitting that Allah does not fight evil?
murderous (2 Kings 2:23-24),
RESPONSE
Murder basically means killing of the innocent. So how does mocking and jeering the prophet of God make one innocent? Just because Yahweh is loving and good does not means that He is not a judge – albeit the Great and Perfect Judge. Bethel should be the house of God but the place has become a host to foreign deities due to the spiritual retardation of Israel. Unlike Muhammad who sought for the help of his followers to kill anyone who insulted him, Elisha rather called upon God to vindicate him – a prayer God answered. While Elisha’s act went a long way in proving his prophethood, Muhammad’s act, as best, does not prove his prophethood, it rather proves that Muhammad has followers who are ready to jump when he sighs.
genocidal (Exodus 32:27-28; Deuteronomy 20:11-17),
RESPONSE
The genocide is wrong if the people to be wiped out were innocent. Considering the fact that the Moabites seduced the Israelites into sexual immorality and caused the death of at least 24,000 Israelites, how does that make the Moabites innocent? How Deuteronomy 20:11-17 is command to commit genocide remains a mystery to me. The Israelites were asked to first make peace with the nations (under the judgment of God) and subdue them. If they are hostile, then the Israelites too should make war against them. I have already proven in one of my previous articles that these nations really deserved killing for all the atrocities they’ve committed against humanity.
unmerciful and cruel (1 Samuel 15:2-3),
RESPONSE
I cannot see how this proves that Yahweh is unmerciful and cruel. How does Yahweh judging the Amalekites for their wickedness proves him to be unjust?
The Israelites had their first encounter with the Amalekites, a semi-nomadic group of pitiless raiders, on their way out of Egypt. Yahweh declared through Moses that Amalek should be wiped out (Exodus 17:8-16; Deuteronomy 25:17-19). The feud never abated as the Amalekites would sweep into unprotected towns and villages on the edge of the southern desert, killing and looting leaving the survivors to starvation.
Samuel ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites once and for all. Readers should carefully note that the order, “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything… put to death men and women, children and infants…” (1 Samuel 15:3) is another example of literary style of violence common among the Ancient Near Easterners. Saul is said to have destroyed the Amalekites completely (1 Samuel 15:7) with the exception of the king and some animals. However, this is not so since Haman, the worst enemy of the Jews until Hitler, is an Amalekite of the Agag descent.
treacherous (Ezekiel 20:25-26),
RESPONSE
Here is another Muslim trying to corrupt the Torah. You do not even need to read the whole scriptures for you to know what is happening here. In the very Chapter 20 of Ezekiel, Yahweh started by recounting His good deeds to the House of Israel when He brought “them out of the land of Egypt into a land… flowing with milk and honey” (v 6), then he gave them commandments to cast away idols and not defile themselves with idols (v 7) but the Israelites rebelled and forsook His commandments despite severe warnings (v 9-16). Despite their rebellion, God still spared them and did not destroy them (vs. 17), yet they stubbornly refused and decided to the stay in their sinful ways (vs. 21). It has gotten to a point that Yahweh has to turn His back to them for judgment – hence He did so by leaving them at the mercy of statutes and rules that will destroy them. God had already given them His statutes and decrees yet the Israelites ignored them so God gave them THEIR OWN statutes that will eventually destroy them. This is another instance of blaspheming against and grieving the Holy Spirit.
infanticidal (Psalms 135:8; 137:9; Exodus 12:29)
RESPONSE
Funsho is taking issues with the killing of the Egyptian firstborn (I am yet to understand how Funsho came to the conclusion that all the firstborn of Egypt are infants).
First, we need to point out that the Egyptians were far from innocent. The Quran itself testified that the Egyptians took pride in killing the sons of the Israelites:
“Verily, Fir’aun (Pharaoh) exalted himself in the land and made its people sects, weakening (oppressing) a group (i.e. Children of Israel) among them, KILLING THEIR SONS, and letting the females live…” S. 28:4 Al-Hilali & Khan
The same is also said in Surah 7:127 and Surah 40:23-25. Funsho, when levelling the crime of “infanticide” against Yahweh, did not bother to tell us about the infanticide committed by the Egyptians which his own prophet made mention of.
Second, the killing of the Egyptian firstborn is an act of judgment carried out by Great Judge for the Egyptians refusing to let His people go despite giving them signs that they are already in danger for oppressing His people and refusing to let the Israelites go.
Psalm 137:9 is completely irrelevant to Funsho’s case. It is a desperate outcry by the Jews that the Babylonians deserved to be punished for their heinous crimes. The Babylonians, who conquered Jerusalem, burned the monumental Jewish Temple, gouged out the eyes of Zedekiah after killing his children while he was watching etc. obviously dashed the rocks of the Israelite infants to the rocks especially when the author remarked that “… blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!” (Psalm 137:8). The writer is wishing that another cruel empire will do to the Babylonians everything Babylon had done to the Jews. This has nothing to do with Yahweh dashing babies against rocks.
So, the claim of infanticide is denied upon closer evaluation of the evidence.
and drunken with his lust for gruesome sacrifice (Leviticus 1:5-9).
RESPONSE
Gruesome? Let’s look at the passage again:
He shall kill the bull before Yahweh. Aaron’s sons, the priests, shall present the blood and sprinkle the blood around on the altar that is at the door of the Tent of Meeting. “He shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar, and lay wood in order on the fire; and Aaron’s sons, the priests, shall lay the pieces, the head, and the fat in order on the wood that is on the fire which is on the altar; but its innards and its legs he shall wash with water. The priest shall burn all of it on the altar, for a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, of a pleasant aroma to Yahweh.” Leviticus 1:5-9
What is gruesome in killing of animals especially when compared to the prevalent human sacrifices among the contemporary nations of Moses’ days?
Second, let’s hear from the Quran:
“That they may witness the benefit (provided) for them, and celebrate the name of Allah, through the Days appointed, over the cattle which he has provided for them (for sacrifice): then eat ye thereof and feed the distressed ones in want” S. 22:28
“And complete the Hajj or ‘Umra in the service of Allah. But if ye are prevented (from completing it), send an offering for sacrifice, such as ye may find, and do not shave your heads until the offering reaches the place of sacrifice… And fear Allah, and know that Allah is strict in punishment” S. 2:196
You can also consult passages like S. 5:2-3; 22:33; 22:36 for more on animal sacrifices. While the sacrifices in the Old Testament has a theological significance that typifies and foreshadows the atoning and redeeming work of our Lord Jesus Christ, the reason behind the animal sacrifices in the Quran remains a mystery (keep in the back of mind that Muhammad is ignorant of the theological significance lying behind the Jewish ceremonial and Levitical laws).
Then our writer went on to ask a question I find very absurd:
Have we ever wondered why Jesus never spoke the word YAHWEH although he lived and died as a Jew and the word Yahweh never appeared anywhere in the New Testament?
RESPONSE
I don’t think there is any room for the growth of wild imaginations because it is not a strange thing not to find the Hebrew Tetragrammaton in the Greek NT corpus – the very same reason why you would not find the Hebrew word “Yehoshua” in the NT. The NT is written in Greek and the Hebrew Tetragammaton is translated to “Kyrios” in the Greek NT. The Jews who produced the Septuagint before Jesus also used the Greek word “Kyrios” as a translation of the Tetragammaton.
What conspiracy theory is the Bible hiding?.
The writer should stop looking for conspiracy theories he believes are lurking in every corner of the scriptures because he will end being greatly disappointed. He went on to produce links – links that are meant to respond to the Jehovah Witness’ ridiculous claims that the Tetragammaton is original to the NT autographs but later removed by later scribes. Well, below are the links he provided so that you can learn one or two things:
https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/jehovah-new-testament.php
http://jwfacts.mobi/does-jehovah-belong-in-the-new-testament/
So he remarked:
Are you surprised?!
Of course! Why will Funsho give us links that refute him and his strange bedfellow (namely the Jehovah Witness)? He is really confused.
His argument concerning the allegedly wickedness of YHWH in wiping out the Canaanite civilization has been demolished in my previous article located here. His contention that “Yahweh favours only the land of Israel and no one else” is as ridiculous as they come. Has he even bothered to read the Book of Lamentations and Habakkuk?
A look at some prophetic books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Joel, Zephaniah) in the Bible reveals a pattern. Israel is judged first while the other nations are judged later perhaps with the exception of Amos who had it in the reverse order. Each nation has its own moments in the court and each will be judged accordingly. Yahweh judged Israel based on the laws He gave to her and was harsher on her. Other nations were not condemned because they did not worship Yahweh or because they did not follow the Sinai Covenant, but because of their crimes against humanity. Apostle Paul puts it better when he said,
“For when the gentiles who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, while their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Romans 2:14-15).
This has been examined at a greater length here in one of my previous articles.
To keep this article from becoming long and boring to the readers, I bring the assessment of Funsho’s article to a pause. Lord willing, in the nearest future, more responses will be made to the rest of his article. For now, stay blessed.
ENDNOTES
- While YHWH has verified historical records at His disposal to attest to His greatness, Allah had none (with the exception of events he tried to hijack from the Bible). Whenever a historical record is verified to contradict Allah, Muslims rush to the scene to blast the ancients as liars, forgers and mistaken idiots.
- Barnes Commentary on Psalm 18:7
- Gill’s Exposition on Psalm 18:7
- Psalm 18 Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
- Robert P. Gordon & Johannes C. de Moor (2005), The Old Testament In Its World, Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. pp. 45
- Allah – Wikipedia
