This article is an excerpt of pages 53-56 from the May 2007 edition of Tim McHyde's excellent book on Nibiru, Planet X, Wormwood, and the book of Revelation titled Know the Future — A Bible Prophecy Breakthrough. It is reprinted here by permission of Tim McHyde.
Joel 2:32 — And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of YHWH shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as YHWH hath said, and in the remnant whom YHWH shall call.
Care must be taken not to read this verse too hastily and come to the wrong conclusion. A person trained only in churches might read this verse and conclude that God delivers all who cry out to him in trouble. Meanwhile, a “sacred namer” might find reassurance here that his sincere attempts to vocalize God's name correctly will ensure his deliverance. Yet, neither of these understandings comes from a careful reading that takes into account what Scripture defines as those who “call on the name of YHWH.”
The call upon the name of YHWH here does not refer to any one-time emergency supplication to God by just anyone. We know this because Scripture tells us that the answering of prayers for deliverance in times of trouble is something reserved for the righteous only—those who already have been diligently seeking YHWH for some time.
Psalm 34:17 — 15 The eyes of YHWH are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry; 16 the face of YHWH is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the Earth. 17 The righteous cry out, and YHWH hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. 18 YHWH is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. 19 A righteous man may have many troubles, but YHWH delivers him from them all;
Proverbs 15:29 — YHWH is far from the wicked: but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.
If this were not the case, then once the wicked saw their life in danger, they could simply cry out and be saved from going through it. Instead, YHWH responds to the cries of the wicked only during the period of warnings that always precede judgment. These warnings are given to wake people up so they can repent and come to have a saving relationship with YHWH of their own unfettered free will choice. Once the judgments begin to directly threaten peoples' lives, any repentance that results is now forced and meaningless. In other words, YHWH is not impressed with the repentance of those who have waited until they have a gun to their head before they seek him. This is why it is written:
Isaiah 55:6 — Seek ye YHWH while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
Jeremiah 11:14 — Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for their trouble.
The story of the Flood is a perfect illustration of this. YHWH gave the antediluvian world 120 years of warning through Noah's preaching and his observable construction of a ridiculously large ship. The ark had plenty of room for any who would respond to the warning. However, none did until rain began to fall for the first time in history—no doubt a frightening phenomenon to those outside the ark. Yet the door to the ark had been closed, and despite the unanimous calls of the wicked for deliverance, it would not be opened to them. Likewise, Joel is not referring to everyone who calls upon YHWH's name receiving deliverance—wicked and righteous alike—but only the righteous.
Neither is Joel 2:32 teaching that properly pronouncing the divine name with the correct vowels and accent is the basis of anyone receiving deliverance. While it is true that God's name is important to him (meriting the Third Commandment) and that few people have ever known it, this information alone does not save you. It should be obvious that God does not base who he saves off of what facts they know or because they address their prayers to “YHWH” instead of the titles “Lord” or “God.” If that were how it worked, then any wicked person who gained this information could save attempt to use these supposed “magic syllables” to save himself.
To be sure, to call on YHWH's name requires that you know it, and understanding the issue of the divine name is a key to understanding our instructions in Joel 2:32. The fact is that knowledge of the name is indeed very rare, even among those who have read the entire Scriptures. If it even occurs to them that their Creator has a name, most of the time they believe it is either “The LORD,” “God,” “HaShem,” or “Adonai.” But, none of those are his name; they are just English and Hebrew titles.
On the contrary, the Hebrew Scriptures reveal that his name is four letters long and spelled Yod-Hey-Waw-Hey, best transliterated into English as “Y-H-W-H.” Since the divine name actually appears 6,828 times in the Hebrew text, you would think that it would be better known. Unfortunately, there is a tradition of replacing the name. It started with Judaism and continued with the other Bible-based religion, Christianity.
Traditional Judaism has long considered the name too sacred to pronounce and has forbidden its use. Instead, adonai (“lord”) or HaShem (“the name”) are used in place of pronouncing YHWH. Christianity has followed suit by translating YHWH as “LORD” or “GOD” in most of their English Bibles (the ASV being one notable older exception, along with many new translations coming out of the Hebraic Roots movement).
However, there is a major problem with these traditions. They break YHWH's express will as found throughout the OT to use his name. For example, the Torah is commanded to be read out loud every seven years (Dt 31:11) which alone requires vocalizing the divine name 1820 times. Many of the Psalms even command us specifically to praise and declare YHWH's name repeatedly. And of course the verse we are considering from the Prophets, Joel 2:32, leaves no doubt that to “call upon the name of YHWH” is proper.
But, unfortunately, the vast majority of people who read these verses about YHWH's name do so as members of either Judaism or Christianity. If it even occurs to them to ask about the obvious contradiction between their religion's practices and what the Scripture says on any subject, they are given the opinion of one of their denomination's revered wise men, explaining how those verses do not really mean what they literally say. This usually works, as most people do not have the discernment to see through these explanations. However, for those who are not satisfied with the explanation, they have still another reason to ignore what the Scripture really says. Members of an organized religion realize that their membership depends on accepting its “statement of faith.” To hold and confess views which contradict the party line would quickly get oneself ostracized from the organization—and from one's friends and business contacts there. Few love the truth so much that they are willing to face receiving the “left-foot of fellowship” while being told, “So, you want to develop your own views on what the Bible says? Well, let us help you do that by keeping your friends here and our services from cluttering your schedule!”
Even those who have had the bravery to leave organized religion in search of truth may still not know exactly what YHWH's name is. False teachings that we have accepted tend to stay with us until we take the time to question and disprove each of them. All those ideas that we never get around to reevaluating remain a part of our distorted reality. This maintains our incorrect paradigm, which causes us to filter out any information to the contrary (called the paradigm effect by Joel Baker).
This is especially true regarding the divine name. If anyone is taught anything on the divine name, they are taught this: “we cannot know the pronunciation for sure because the original vowels of YHWH were replaced in the Hebrew Scriptures with the vowels for adonai.” This is the universally accepted view among scholars. Because of this, people look for evidence on the pronunciation to all kinds of external sources. They come up with all kinds of answers for how to pronounce YHWH. The most popular guesses are “Yahweh” and “Jehovah”, but there are many other “hebroid” permutations of the consonants and vowels in popular use.
Unfortunately, very, very few take the time to find out for themselves what the best Hebrew manuscripts actually say, instead of trusting what “they say” to be correct (a dangerous habit). In Jerusalem in 2002, I was fortunate enough to have met Karaite Jewish scholar Nehemia Gordon, author of The Hebrew Yeshua Vs. The Greek Jesus and learn the following on this subject.
The Ben Asher manuscripts are the most ancient complete texts of Scripture. If one checks them (Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex B19a (L)) they will find that the spelling of the words adonai and yhwh are as follows (consonants capitalized and vowels in lowercase bold):
aDoNaY (vowels: hataf patach / cholam / kamats)
Y'H-VaH (vowels: sheva / no vowel / kamats)
The vowels of the two words are clearly different! If the word YHWH truly had the vowels of adonai, then it would show up as “Yahovah”, instead of “Y'h-vah” as it does. Clearly the original vowels were not replaced. However, one of them is missing. We can be sure of this omission because in Biblical Hebrew there is no such thing as a hey (H) in the middle of the word that does not have a vowel. What happened to the vowel? With the ban on the pronunciation of the name, the scribes apparently did not want people to accidentally pronounce YHWH when reading it, so they removed one vowel.
But, thankfully, they did not do this consistently in every manuscript. The B19a (L) manuscript is the earliest complete Masoretic manuscript (and the basis of BHS/Biblical Hebraic Stuttgartensia). Here, the divine name is not written consistently in all 6,828 instances as Y'H-VaH, but in over 50 instances appears as Y'HoVaH, with an “o” appearing in the place of the missing vowel (e.g. Mal 4:5). It is significant that no other vowel besides “o” (cholam) was “accidentally” inserted into the divine name. The scribes apparently forgot to suppress the name in a few instances. As they pronounced what they were copying, they probably followed the natural tendency of writing exactly what they were vocalizing, rather than omitting the cholam as it was written in the original (see this in the Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament).
“Y'hovah” would also agree with the vowels used in the many compound Biblical names starting with the first three consonants of YHWH, such as Jesus, son of Nun (“YHWH saves”). Nevertheless, please note how when these same first three letters appear at the end of a name, that they receive different vowels, such as with Isaiah /YeshiYaHu. This is why reconstruction attempts like Yahweh, Yahueh, Yahuweh are ridiculed as “hebroid” by those who know ancient Biblical Hebrew. Obviously, Y'hovah is very similar to the popular pronunciation “Jehovah”, which is rejected by many for various reasons. As Hebrew does not have a “J” sound it disqualifies “Jehovah” immediately (the yod there actually sounds like a “Y”). In addition, the Hebrew texts indicate that the accent is on the last syllable, as in Y'hovah. To pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable, similar to how Jehovah is pronounced, would be wrong. (To hear the pronunciation, click this link. Press the play button if it does not play automatically: www.escapeallthesethings.com/yhovah.wav).
But even with these corrections made to “Jehovah”, some people reject anything remotely similar to it, believing that such renderings require that the word YHWH descend from the Hebrew root H-V-H meaning ruin, calamity, and destruction—concepts they find unsuitable as the root meaning of God's name. However, this is yet another piece of misinformation that is cleared up by sound Biblical Hebrew scholarship. Because yod and vav often interchange when a Hebrew root is conjugated, the root of YHWH can still be H-Y-H, meaning to be, as Ex 3:14-15 points to and scholars generally accept as correct.
This has been just an overview of what the evidence from the most accurate Hebrew manuscripts shows God's name really is—Y'hovah. The point here has not been to comprehensively cover all aspects of this big and very old subject. Instead, the main goal was to illustrate just how hard today it is to arrive at that knowledge needed to call upon God's name as Joel 2:32 describes.
First, one must realize it is important to know (which is evident when you literally read Joel 2:32 and many other Scriptures). Then, one must search diligently for it. Then, one must finally discover it and confirm its correctness for oneself. Misinformation, deception, opposition and even rejection are constant obstacles all along the way. However, this is all par for the course in searching out truth today.
From this illustration we can finally understand the identity of those who know the name of Y'hovah and call upon it in the end times. As a rule, they are not members of organized Judaism or Christianity. Traditional Judaism forbids the scriptural use of the divine name. Christianity does not teach about the name of God, largely focusing more on Jesus Christ than Y'hovah God. While Christianity and Judaism do have some truth to glean from, there are limits to what you can learn under such religious influence.
It can take courage to leave organized religion with all of its trappings. To then have to face trying to understand the Bible on your own can also be a scary prospect. Yet it is a necessary step for those who want to know the truth at all costs. Once they start understanding from their studies that religions do not teach what the Bible says, they have a decision to make. They either stay where they are and compromise the truth, or leave so they can comply with what they have learned and so be able to receive more truth (Lk 12:48). This, by the way, is the only way that we can keep growing in grace and knowledge (2Pe 3:18). We must be willing to make sacrifices and other tough choices. Doing so proves to God that we are serious and no longer “lukewarm.” In other words, those who call upon the name of Y'hovah must love him and his truth above anything else. They are truly on the narrow path through the strait gate that Jesus spoke of (Mt 7:12-14). These are they who call upon the name Y'hovah habitually and confidently—and he answers them. Notice that Psalm 91 says exactly this and beautifully describes the close bond between Y'hovah and those who love him and know and call upon his name:
Psalm 91:9,14-15 — 9 Because thou hast made Y'hovah which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation ...14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. 15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
This connection between knowing God's name and having a loving relationship with Y'hovah is well established in the OT. After the Messiah arrives to reign, he will be leading all of the lost tribes of Israel home to serve Y'hovah. Many prophecies (e.g. Jer 31) record that they will stop their sinful ways and have a relationship with God at last. Once again, the knowledge and use of the name is emphasized as part of right relationship following true repentance:
Jeremiah 16:21 — Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is Y'hovah
Isaiah 52:6 — Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.
Zephaniah 3:9 — For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Y'hovah, to serve him with one consent.
Zechariah 13:9 — And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, Y'hovah is my God.
Thus, we see consistently that those who love and serve Y'hovah will eventually learn and call upon his name.
This sets them apart from those who read the Bible as members of man's invented religions and do not know, nor use, Y'hovah's name. But let me stress again that this information, and its use, is not an end in itself. Instead, Scripture points to it as a sign of those few whose lives start and end with their love for Y'hovah (Ps 14).