From the Desk of Jeff King

Will you trust Me?

I heard the LORD whisper those words while pacing a hospital waiting room in 2003. A staff member had just handed me a consent form to sign as doctors were rushing my wife back to surgery several floors above. A blood clot was discovered following her cancer operation earlier that day. Feeling numb and exhausted, I answered the LORD softly, "Yes."

In 2006 I heard the same dialogue – almost word for word – in the ABC miniseries "The Ten Commandments." Facing the Red Sea, Moses (Dougray Scott) looks panicked as he hears the roar of approaching Egyptian chariots. God speaks to Moses in a still small voice and Moses responds softly in this brief exchange:

God: "You know who I AM"
Moses: "Yes"
God: "Do you trust Me?"
Moses: "Yes."

Both encounters had similar outcomes: God showed up. My wife survived breast cancer, and the Israelites the exodus. I believe God still would have drawn close and comforted us had He chosen not to heal Alisa. We were safe in His hands, regardless of the outcome.

Overall I was not impressed with the miniseries; the script often strayed from Scripture. But in this brief scene a secular network captured what a genuine relationship with the LORD should look and sound like. Here is the YouTube clip:

Some of you might be facing a trial or crisis. It could be sickness, unemployment, a broken relationship. But don't lose hope. Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth is near to those who call upon His name. He sees your tears. He hears your cries. And the great I AM is asking you softly, "Will you trust Me?"

What is His Son's name?

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?
Proverbs 30:4

John Boylan is a Hebrew word detective. Without the aid of a computer, he "letter wraps" text to mine hidden gems from the Old Testament. His most significant discovery is the name of Messiah embedded in the Hebrew Scriptures.In Boylan's copyrighted diagram above, the words "HaShem" and "Yeshua" intersect to form the ancient Hebrew letter tav, which resembles two crossed sticks. The bottom of the tav touches the horizontal text in Proverbs 30:4, "and what is His Son's Name?" HaShem is Hebrew for "The Name," a term used by Jews to refer to God. Yeshua means salvation in Hebrew and is the real name of Jesus Christ. Four times in the book of Revelation Yeshua identifies Himself as the Aleph and Tav, the beginning and end. God answers His own question in Proverbs 30:4 by embedding the names of His Son in the shape of an ancient tav symbol. The tav has significant meaning in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel 9:4, Jews who reject idolatry are sealed with a tav symbol on their forehead, protecting them from God's judgment. In the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947, 11 tav symbols appear in margins next to Messianic passages.

The position of the tav in Boylan's diagram is also a picture of the crucifixion. The cross symbol touches the middle Hebrew letter of the highlighted text. The tav is flanked by six letters to the right and six to the left. Six is recognized biblically as the number of man. Yeshua was nailed to a crossbar with thieves on his right and left (Mark 15:27-28), fulfilling Isaiah 53:12, "He was numbered with the transgressors."

Jewish scholars have been mining embedded nuggets from Scripture by hand for centuries. Boylan, a Gentile, says his research is a "non-interactive method wherein God Himself is the revealer and the reader becomes nothing more than a passive observer. . . . Our study is about God and is not some fanciful attempt to predict the future. These are teachings about God alone, His Nature, His Being and His Will as regarding His creation and our human understanding about Who He is and What He wants us to know about Him and His Messiah."