Things I Like About Shepherd's Chapel

[scout]

Here is a chance to be positive about Shepherd's Chapel. Here we can accentuate the positive.

I'll start.

1. Arnold Murray and his son are very sincere men.

2. They come on my cable TV from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Monday to Friday.

3. He is a hard working man.

[Kestrel]

I like the fact that he clarified many points of Scripture for me, and enabled me to counter the JW's doctrine.

The really great part is that the JW's come around even more after I started countering their claims with Pastor Murray's teachings.

Just a few weeks back, I had the privilege of the "district overseer" come to the porch in an effort to ramp up pressure.

He asked simply what it was that kept me from pursuing the witnesses faith.

I answered for starters...................................IT'S SPELLED YHVH!


Stay tuned for a possible next episode!

[stage director]

I answered for starters...................................IT'S SPELLED YHVH!

Hi, Kestrel.

It is totally irrelevent, although some would be scholars attempt to make a case about it. The letters U, V and W all come from (are forms of) the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet *wav* ... Note that the same scholars who have a fit if you do not spell God's name YHVH will spell it as Yahweh or Yehweh when using vowels. The original was shaped like a Y and was written in Greek as a Y, or upsilon. Latin dropped the botton slash and made it into a V which later became a U. Matter of fact, a more correct modern rendering of the Tetragrammaton might be YHUH. In any event, God hears his name when we speak or write it because it comes from the heart, i.e. it is still sacred because we hold him sacred. That is not dependant on our ability to spell.

HEY UAU HEY YOD
. . . VAV
. . . WAW

None are incorrect. It's simply a matter of modern rendering, in the way Jesus, Yeshua and Joshua are all the same Lord.

Let me clarify... The name of God as is written is sacred. No modern renderings are this same written name. So unless you are going to revert back to the original Hebrew every time you pen it, it is not that written name... and the modern translations represent the same thing, i.e. an interpretation of the sacred name of God.

Of course there were vowels in the language. They simply weren't written as such. But the practitioners of the language knew how a word was pronounced because of the way it was written. It is true that there was no J. Our modern J is basically a phonetic equivalent, albeit the pronunciation is somewhat different, and a lot of it is the translation of Old English into Middle English into Modern English. Case in point, an 'i' in Old English often had the 'th' sound, and a 'y' was used where we now use 'i.' The word 'live' was spelled 'lyue.' In Middle English the vowel 'i' was spelled either 'y' or 'j' .. Now add the fact there will never be a perfect fit for ancient Hebrew into modern English, and imo it's sorta like straining at a gnat to nitpick the small differences in rendering. Think about it... even if you have the English equivalent written of the exact pronunciation in the ancient Hebrew, an Englishman, a guy from Brooklyn and a gal from Savannah are going to pronounce three different words! When I write the name of God I write it as YHVH, but I certainly know which Lord is being spoken of if it's written Yahweh, Jehovah or YHWH.

One last thing.. the J of the Middle English, which the KJ and Wycliffe bibles were written in, had our modern Y sound. So Jehovah would sound like Yehovah.

The Wycliffe, over 200 years older than the KJ, originally spelled Jesus as Jhesu and then later 'modernized' it to Jhesus. Same thing.

[smyrna]

Here is a chance to be positive about Shepherd's Chapel. Here we can accentuate the positive.

I'll start.

1. Arnold Murray and his son are very sincere men.

2. They come on my cable TV from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Monday to Friday.

3. He is a hard working man.

He's also a world class scholar who has much more knowledge than those who criticize him. It's the most disturbing thing about his detractors.

[dodge]

Hi Smyrna. With all due respect, I think it’s the way that Arnold Murray interprets the knowledge that he’s accumulated that critics have a problem with. I’m sure we can find other biblical scholars with just as much or even more knowledge than Murray who don’t see what he does in biblical verse. It’s all a matter of opinion, isn’t it? That’s why there are so many denominations and branches of Christianity and opposing points of view. I don’t know why you would be "disturbed" that Murray has critics who don’t agree with him.

[Kestrel]

Hi folks,

A pleasure to see you here!

Does this mean it's 'ON' again.

I hope we have learned our "collective" lessons. We'll see.

Our weather is too incredible not to take advantage of, and my dogs are letting me know by wrestling around at my feet, even as this post is coming to an end.

They get very, very jealous of my computer activities- go figure!

Stage, you very much qualified what I was inferring in my comment about HIS spelling. However, there is a very simple point that was made in my post.

After the river run, I'll let you know what it is.

Hey, quite pooches! (Oopps, talking to the kids here who just knocked into my chair pretty good). I'm beginning to suspect that they are reading my posts! LOL........

Not too much later,

Kestrel

P.S.

GREETINGS SMYRNA!

[smyrna]

Kestrel,

Greetings to you as well. I see this thread is off to a roaring start.

[smyrna]

Hi Smyrna. With all due respect, I think it’s the way that Arnold Murray interprets the knowledge that he’s accumulated that critics have a problem with. I’m sure we can find other biblical scholars with just as much or even more knowledge than Murray who don’t see what he does in biblical verse. It’s all a matter of opinion, isn’t it? That’s why there are so many denominations and branches of Christianity and opposing points of view. I don’t know why you would be "disturbed" that Murray has critics who don’t agree with him.

Dodge, I'm not "disturbed" Murray has critics. I'm a realist, everyone has critics, because there are enough whiners in the world to go around. What does disturb me are those who run around lying about the man, in an attempt to silence him or discredit him.

With that being said, though Christianity is certainly sectarian, there is much which unifies us. Only those who are negative use whatever differences there are to sow seeds of disunity and even hatred.