Please realise that Simon has written extensively on the subject so I have obviously included only part of his work in this article. If you are interested in reading the whole of the chapter please purchase the book at:
www.abrahamicfaith.com or from the following address: BM Abrahamic-Faith, London WC1N3XX by sending a donation payable to Simon Altaf.
Now for his message.
His language (headings my own)
The word Christian was used in an insulting manner for those following Yeshua as His name translates to IESOUS in the Greek and from this in the English we get Jesus Christ from where we get the word Christian. We must remember Yeshua is a Jew revealed to the Jewish nation to his people so why would a Jewish Messiah be speaking Greek?
It is more likely with the evidence that we have that He communicated in Aramaic and spoke about the prophets and the things that they had written about Him and how these will be fulfilled through Him. His Aramaic name is close to His Hebrew name EESHUA or the long name in Hebrew Yehoshua, which in Biblical Hebrew means, ‘God/Yah became my personal salvation’/ God’s personal name in Aramaic is MarYah that means Lord Yah or Master Yahweh. So which language did God preserve his NAME in? God preserved His NAME in Aramaic, the common language spoken during that time.
Jesus’ own testimony was that He revealed the NAME of Yahweh, it also highlights a contentious issue that if Jesus revealed the NAME of Yahweh then how come the New Testament writings in Greek which call God Theos or Kurios, could be reconciled. It would be unreasonable to believe that a population of Israel would ever find their Messiah hidden in the Greek names, which were really names of pagan gods, Jesus would be speaking His native language to his people so they could know that He was the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies spoken and written about Him by the Hebrew prophets of old.
The answer is easily resolved, Jesus did not speak Greek but more probably spoke the Aramaic language that the Jews knew and the New Testament
writings were first penned in this language and translated into the Greek.
The sacred names are preserved in the Aramaic language and we do have the Peshitta the Aramaic Bible that the Eastern Church holds and after doing extensive research on the subject myself I have come to the conclusion that the majority text of the NT was first penned down in the Aramaic, with the exception of the book of Revelation only being in Greek since we have not found its counterpart in Aramaic yet.
I am fully convinced this book is also either in Hebrew or in Aramaic because the idioms, the poetry is not
visible in the Greek, even we can see Aramaic words in the Greek which the translators left as they were.
Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’Why is Jesus Yeshua speaking in Aramaic? The answer is simple; He spoke this language to the people who understood it very well. He was pointing to Himself, a prophecy in Psalm 22 to let the people know that this is the prophesied Messiah spoken of by the prophets. You can access the interlinear translation of the Aramaic language of the Syriac text of the Peshitta online at www.peshitta.org. The Hebrew Bible or OT was majority written in a script dalled the ashuri script which is very close to Aramaic its sister language.
The books of Esther and Daniel are written in Aramaic, it makes sense since Esther was in Persia (today’s Iran0 and Daniel the prophet who was in Babylon (Iraq). Therefore, we can see that God preserved His sacred name not in Greek but rather in Aramaic since the sacred name is still the same in Aramaic as MarYah is a contraction of the Hebrew name for God, Yud Heh Vav Heh (YHWH) as Yahweh and Jesus is Eeshuwa wiich is Yeshua in the Hebrew.
The Trinity
First of all the word ‘Trinity’ itself is not in the Bible…one has to understand that this terminology was adopted by the church to explain what God is but the term itself is not very clear and can lead to ambiguities. Are we talking about three Gods or are we talking about three persons.
It is evidently clear that the Christian faith is a belief in one God not three gods. However what is not made clear at times is that this one God can and has revealed Himself in three persons. The Shma Israel is clear of who we worship.
Deuteronomy 6:4
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
John 17:24 Father, I desire that they…..for you loved Me before the foundation of the world.
The Hebrews passage has a lot of information, it talks about God who revealed Himself through His prophets in times past, in these last days
Jesus the Son of God (equivalent in that Jesus shares the divine nature) who is heir of ALL things, He created the world,
…Sitting at the RIGHT HAND is very interesting terminology because it refers to Himself as being God since it is God who by his RIGHT
HAND symbolic for God’s authority in heaven and on earth in all matters of judgement referred to as the judgement seat of Christ.
Exodus 15:6 Your RIGHT HAND, O Lord, has become glorious in power; Your RIGHT HAND, O Lord, has dashed the enemy in pieces.
Two distinct personalities of YAHWEH in action simultaneously:
Genesis 19:4 And YHWH rained brimstone and fire upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah, from YHWH from the heavens. 
Yeshua repeated this commandment in Matthew 22:37 and in the gospel of Mark it is even clearer:
Mark 12:29-30 Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love
the Lord your God with all your hear, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
Yeshua was simply reiterating what was declared in the TeNaCh (Torah, Nevim, Ketuvim – Torah, prophets and the writings).
The Hebrew word ‘Shma’ does not simply mean to listen with your ears but it means to ‘listen with your heart, to understand and to OBEY God’
Some people believe that Yeshua set a new precedent but did He? Yeshua did not set any new precedent but repeated what was already said by the
prophets of old so in other words by Ysshua’s own testimony He came to fulfil what the prophets declared about Him (Matthew 5:17).
Who was
the one giving those words to the prophets in times past? Yeshua Himself who communicated all these truths.
John 15:9 ‘As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you: abide in My love’
'A distinct person'
The Son is a distinct person from the Father and the Father loves
the Son, if I love my wife then she has to be a separate person for me to love her, though we both are one in flesh but two separate persons,
the same way God is one in compound unity ‘Echad’ but three separate persons.
ALL three persons of the Godhead share the divine nature. Another
way to understand this truth would be that there are three distinct centres of consciousness in the One Godhead.
This conclusion alone destroy the oneness theories out there who are deniers of the trinity who claim that God is only one person yet this one
person (the Father) according to oneness theory sends out His word the Son is a gross contradiction in itself because one person cannot send out
a second person. The divine person of the Father loving the Son in eternity also breaks the case for the Jehovah’s witnesses who claim Jesus is
not eternal.
Yeshua Jesus the Messiah has two natures, one human and one deity. He shares the divine essence with the Father, He is fully human showing all
human emotions in His humanity and in His Deity. He holds all authority given to Him by our Father in heaven.
Hebrew 1:1-3 ‘God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets. (2) has in these last days
spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; (3) who being the brightness
of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself
purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
He is the express image (likeness in character of God) so God’s character is imprinted on Messiah. The Messiah also died for our sins purging it
with His blood and ascended on right hand of Father which is a shortcut term to mean He is essentially sharing the nature of the Father and is
the second person of God the Son a title indicating His position in the Godhead.
The humanity aspect is explained in Isaiah 9:6 where He is called ‘Mighty God’, or El-Gibbor in the Hebrew, the root word for ‘Gibbor’ is
‘Bever’ which signifies ‘strength’
and the connotation is always in reference to a male not female because the strength denotes masculinity therefore, this person who is declared
as ‘mighty God’ is declared as fully human and fully God, this can be applied to no other than Yeshua of Nazareth.
In the Aramaic Peshitta it is even clearer, where the personal name of God, Yahweh, is presented as ‘MarYah’ that means Lord Yah or Master Yah
and we read in the Aramaic gospel of Luke:
Luke2:11 For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Saviour, who is Lord-Yah (The personal name of Yahweh applied
to the man Jesus the Messiah) the Messiah.
Romans 9:5 (NKJV) Of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God.
Amen.
Yeshua the Messiah is the image of the invisible God, which is to say He is Himself very God (Hebrews1:3).
I know some Jewish/Christian groups who also have problem with the plurality of the Godhead and try to do away with Jesus as the second person of
the trinity and fall into Modalism that God can only reveal in one person at a time.
Matthew 3:17 And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.’
This is to present only one example of two personalities of the godhead, God the father is saying ‘this is my beloved Son’ the person the Father
is referring to is no other than Jesus of Nazareth.
On a human level …is the Son of God, but in the spiritual realm even the demons acknowledge this to be the truth.
Matthew 6:29 And suddenly they cried out, saying, ‘What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have you come here to torment
us before the time?’
The high priest put Jesus the Christ under oath to tell them if He is the Messiah and the Son of God because they knew that under oath one cannot
lie and will bring a curse upon himself, Yeshua calmly testified ‘It is as you say’ thus affirming He is the Son of God and Messiah.
HE IS GOD
…Jesus Yeshua the Messiah not only declared that He is the Messiah who is DIVINE but also declared that HE IS GOD. Matthew 24:64 …Sitting
at the RIGHT HAND of the Power, declaring He is God and coming on the clouds of heaven…
Proverbs 30:4 Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters
in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know?
King Solomon asks a challenging question, what is His NAME and His Son’s NAME? In order for King Solomon to even ask this question indicates
that King Solomon knew the Father and the Son’s name and also knew that God was not a singular unity but an Echad (compound) unity.
Psalm 2:12 Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who
put their trust in Him.
Even the prophets understood the Father and Son spiritual relationship and warned of those who blaspheme this relationship in the wrong way.
We know the Father’s NAME is YAHWEH, the Son’s NAME is Yehoshua or Yeshua for the contracted form. This NAME in the Biblical
Hebrew literally means ‘God has become my personal salvation or saviour’. The Son carries the personal name of Yahweh in Him the reason why it is
Yeshua or has the short form of God’s personal name Yah, thus Yeshua is a play on words to also mean ‘salvation’ since it is God who brings salvation.
Proverbs 8:27 When He (Father) prepared the heavens, I (Yeshua the Messiah) was there, then I (Yeshua) was beside Him (beside the Father)
as a MASTER CRAFTSMAN
This verse confirms Jesus Yeshua the Son who is uncreated involved in creation confirmed by the prophets and disciples of Yeshua and He is
the second personality of the plural godhead so our understanding is accurate from scriptures.
Exodus 24:1a (YHWH is
the speaker; see Ex. 20:1-2) Now He (YHWH) said to Moses, ‘come up to YHWH…’
We can see that the word Elohim is a plural noun having the masculine plural ending’im’. The very word Elohim used for the true God in Genesis
1:1 is also used to refer to false gods as in Exodus 20:3 and for angels or men in leadership positions, while the use of the plural
Eloh-im may not prove a Trinity, it certainly opens the door for the plurality of the Godhead.
Words from the mystics
One important thing to understand is that God’s WORD i.e. the Hebrew Dvar and the Aramaic MEMRA can take on human attributes, these are mentioned
in the Targums (commentaries on the Bible) where the MEMRA which God uses to create. The Targums state that the MEMRA is one to be worshipped,
served and obeyed.
In Psalm 33:6 By the WORD OF YAHWEH were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the BREATH OF HIS MOUTH.
We see the MEMRA as the CREATOR above and the Holy Spirit both in action in creation. So who is the Memra: The answer is the living
WORD of God is always Jesus of Nazareth who was revealed through the virgin birth 2000 years ago but in times past before the virgin birth appeared
as a man who was worshipped by the ancients.
Now when speaking about the WORD made flesh (John 1:14)(LOGOS)John in 1:3 is the concept of this same MEMRA, the living sustaining
God Himself that actually proves the TRIUNITY of the Godhead, and the Bible does indeed say that the godhead was seen in the flesh referring to
Jesus of Nazareth.
Colossians 2:9 for in him dwelleth all the fullness of the GODHEAD bodily.
In the Jewish Zohar, (Mystical writings) a Bible commentary claiming to possess the ‘Keys to understanding’, WISDOM is here given the
title of METATRON. The METATRON is also the title given to the ‘Angel of the Lord’ who appeared to Moses as fire from within a bush
(The burning bush – Exodus 3:2). This WISDOM is referred to as the METATRON, is in fact a personality of the Lord God. Furthermore the
‘flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life’ is also given the title METATRON and Rabbi Simeon says
‘The way to the tree of Life is by the METATRON.’
Also we find in the Zohar Jewish mystical writings:
‘Come and see the mystery of the word YHWH; there are three steps, each existing by itself: nevertheless they are One, and so united that
one cannot be separated from the other.
The Ancient Holy One is revealed with three heads, which are united into one, and that head is
three exalted.
The Ancient One is described as being three: because the other lights emanating from Him are included in the three. But
how can THREE names be one? Are they really one because we call them one? How three can be one can only be known through the revelation of
the Holy Spirit.’
Now away from the mystics:
These three personalities, which Yahweh has revealed, have been revealed to Godly men over thousands of years and their record is a testimony
to who Yahweh really is and how He reveals Himself to men.
The people who think that the concept of the TRINITY is an invention of the church need to open their hearts and minds as this also exists in
the Jewish writings and revealed in the Bible if one cares to read and understand by their wisdom.
Not everything can be reasoned by logic, we cannot reason things like the virgin birth with logic but some things must be accepted by faith, the
same way in a Semitic mindset they do not need to reason in linear logic like the Western mindset e.g. how God can be so and so and act in certain
ways.
A case in point in the Bible for those who want to reason with the minutiae, God designed the Bible for ALL people to understand without fighting
over the issues but because man ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil he wants to reason everything.
In Exodus 33:20God states explicitly ‘You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live’ but earlier in the same book God had
declared in Exodus 24:10 ‘ and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and
it was like the very heavens in its clarity.’
As we can see at one verse God dictates that they cannot see His true form in His heavenly abode but in the other passage it is quite obvious
that God has revealed Himself as a man and this theophany is that as Yeshua, the dual nature of Yeshua as a man.
At a first look it appears that the verse is in contradiction but like I said in the Jewish Semitic mindset this was never felt a contradiction
by Moses who penned the original Torah, or by the scribes who copied it years later. This is only a problem with the Western mindset because it
wants to reason with everything. But in the Jewish mindset these are considered normal ideas that is why we do not see Moses startled at God
saying you cannot see me and live since he has already seen Him earlier and lived to write about it.