Hebrew Voices #41 – Proclaiming God’s Name on Nashville Radio

Nehemia Gordon on WTN Radio in Nashville, with Conservative Talk Radio host Michael DelGiorno.

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Hebrew Voices #41 – Proclaiming God's Name on Nashville Radio

 

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon with Hebrew Voices, coming to you today from Nashville, Tennessee. I want to share a conversation I had with Michael DelGiorno on WTN Radio 99.7, here in Nashville. That’s 100,000-watt station that reaches several states. Before I play the recording, I want to share an email I received through my website within minutes of the original broadcast. It came from a man named Matt, who wrote as follows. He wrote, “Just a quick note to say I heard Nehemia on the radio here in middle Tennessee. I was driving down the road, flipping through the channels, and heard some DJ say, ‘information and inspiration’. I held my breath. After him quoting Keith Johnson, he said something about Nehemia. I was whooping and hollering down the road. To hear our Heavenly Father’s name over the radio was quite a treat. Trust me on this. It’s hard to dance and drive at the same time.” [laughing]

Well, thanks Matt for sending that message. That really moved me.

Okay, here’s the conversation I had with Michael DelGiorno that got Matt swerving all over the Tennessee Interstate.

Recorded Announcement: WWTN, Hendersonville Nashville, the busy bee, heating and air conditioning studio. Information for you, opinion and SuperTalk, 99.7 WTN.

Nehemia: No, Nekhemia. It’s…

Michael: It’s Nekhemia?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: But then, you know what I love about this? Nekhemia Gordon.

Nehemia: Yessir.

Michael: It’s like, you expect it to be like Abrahimi or something like that after that. Nekhemia Abrahami. And then it’s like, “Nehemia Gordon”.

Nehemia: Yeah, no so Gordon’s actually a very common eastern European Jewish name. A lot of Lithuanian Jews were named Gordon. My ancestors came to this country in 1923 from a province in eastern Europe called Grodno, which is where the name Gordon comes from.

Michael: You grew up in the Chicagoland area, we have that in common.

Nehemia: Oh, you’re from Chicago?

Michael: I grew up in Arlington Heights.

Nehemia: Oh, I see your Cubs hat.

Michael: Yeah, see?

Nehemia: There you go.

Michael: Now, I’m wondering, for those of you who don’t know, he was born into a Jewish family of rabbis. Nehemia’s a native of Chicago. He lived in Jerusalem, Israel. I think you’re still living in Jerusalem, aren’t you?

Nehemia: I’ve lived there for over 20 years, yeah.

Michael: Wow. How are the allergies there? Maybe I’ll come home with you.

Nehemia: So, there’s a big problem with olive pollen, olive tree pollen. So, you have…

Michael: So, how does that differ from like our pollen in America?

Nehemia: Yeah, I guess it doesn’t...

Michael: Because I’m Italian. Maybe the olive pollen won’t hurt me?

Nehemia: It might not, but it bothers me. So, yeah.

Michael: I’m not going to go through this long list. There’s Wikipedia for that. Yeah, host name is Michael. You called me John.

Nehemia: Oh, sorry about that.

Michael: And Linden is… You know what? It’s the Christian side of him. He keeps records of all wrongs. It’s very embarrassing. I don’t care what you call me, as long as it’s not “late for dinner”. But no, it’s…

Nehemia: Sorry about that, Michael. [laughing]

Michael: But it’s a very, very esteemed life of study and scholar and so on. In short, one would call you a Hebrew scholar.

Nehemia: I’m definitely a Hebrew scholar…

Michael: And author. But, you know, among other things.

Nehemia: Yeah. And really, I started out growing up as an Orthodox Jew. My father was a rabbi, of blessed memory. And at a young age I was studying the teachings of the ancient rabbis, and I asked the question all the time, “Shouldn’t we be following what it says in the Bible?” And I was told, “No, you can’t understand a single word of the Bible without going through what the rabbis say.” And I said, “These rabbis are just speaking men’s words. Shouldn’t we embrace the word of God and reject the words of men when it’s not consistent?” And I thought I was saying something everyone would applaud and praise.

Michael: Oh, no. [laughing]

Nehemia: They said, “You mustn’t say that. That’s what those heretic Jews say.” And I found out there was this Jewish movement throughout history…

Michael: You’re always getting in that exact same trouble too, aren’t you?

Nehemia: [laughing] Yeah, well.

Michael: I mean, no, because one of the things I would say as far as kind of launching into it. I could give all of your earthly statistical, academia credibility, but what it really boils down to is this a man who seeks after truth. It’s just really that simple.

Nehemia: That’s what I’m about, truth.

Michael: Just truth.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: And it doesn’t matter what wall that leads him through. I think it’s half you and half God that keeps putting you in those positions. You know, busting all of those, and then you find yourself standing there and going, “I did it again. How did I get here?”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: Which I know this ended up being a very, very short segment. But that’s really where… I’m fascinated as much with the path of your life, the making of the messenger, as I am the message.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: And that may be different than you’re used to in interviews, because most people want to talk about your messages. And the patterns I see that God has done in your life… very similar to mine, or very similar to anybody with a curious, pure heart to seek Him. You’re going to go on Nehemia journeys…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: And you’re going to look around and go, “Now my family doesn’t like me. Now my temple doesn’t like me. Now the world doesn’t know what to do with me.” And I think that’s the journey of a life with a heart for God.

Nehemia: Well, I never was really concerned with what people said. I always just wanted to follow God’s word. And when I was a very young child… I mean, I was 12 years old and I was told, “You mustn’t follow what the Bible…” I’m a Biblical Jew, meaning for me, the Bible’s the Old Testament, what Jews call the Tanakh.

You have to understand, in Judaism there’s the Tanakh, the Old Testament, and then there’s what’s called the Oral Law, that is the teachings of the rabbis. And everything in life, from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to sleep at night, is dictated by this Oral Law.

And I was told, “You can’t follow that Bible. If you just follow the Bible, that will lead to your death. You’ll cease to exist, because there were Jews in history who did that and they’re not around anymore.” And I said, “I don’t care. I’ve got to follow God’s words, even if I’m the only one who does it.” And I found out later, I’m not the only one who does it…

Michael: No, and it’s not exclusive to the Jewish experience either…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: Because Christianity has certain denominations with dogma, and they’re told, “You can’t go directly to God with your sins. You’ve got to go through a priest” or you’ve got to do this or that. And so people are often put in that position, and we have an expression in Christianity, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” And you don’t have to wait to see if somebody would give you a little snippet here, and a snippet there.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: You can go get out a Hebrew dictionary, a Greek dictionary. You can get out concordances. You can go and study for yourself.

Nehemia: Yeah, for sure.

Michael: And what I love about your life that I want to talk about is, rather than just accepting… And I’m not comparing this to what we have in Romans 12:1, which is the patterns of this world, but to reject the regurgitations of others, to go seek God with your own eyes, see Him with your own face, hear Him with your own ears, and have Him reveal…

Nehemia: Yessir.

Michael: …to you directly… I mean, none of us would eat that way. You wouldn’t want me to chew up your food and then you’d swallow it, right? And I think there’s some real applicable lessons, especially on this Passover, and especially on this Easter.

You also worked with Reggie White, who’s a hero of mine.

Nehemia: I was his Hebrew teacher, yeah.

Michael: His Hebrew teacher.

Nehemia: I was one of those, a little… yeah.

Michael: And I guess, in this final little one-minute together, I would just ask you, as a Hebrew scholar, which I am not, anything in the ancient text that you saw that would have prepared you or pointed to a Chicago Cubs World Series?

Nehemia: [laughing] Absolutely not. No way, that could never happen.

Michael: Did this shatter every paradigm of your scholarship?

Nehemia: If that could happen, then we could have the Messiah coming tonight. I mean, anything’s possible in the universe if that happened.

Michael: Did you watch the World Series in Israel?

Nehemia: I’ll be honest, I’m not really into sports, and I went to a few Cubs games as a kid.

Michael: Oh, you smart guys are all nerds.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: Hang out with me. I’ll hip you up. More with Nekhemia Gordon when we come back, a Hebrew Bible scholar. What’s he doing on a conservative news talk show? It’ll make sense in a minute. It’s 2 before 10:00.

Michael: 10:05 in the music city, we have fair skies, 74 degrees in Franklin this hour. Mount Juliet, you’re fair and 73 down in the borough, sunny at 74 and downtown on Music Row, we’ve got Hebrew scholars, construction workers, naked statues, partly cloudy skies, and 73 degrees. It’s SuperTalk 99.7 WTM.

Oh, you crack me up. Do you need a loan? Can we do a wire transfer to Jerusalem? [laughing]

Oh, it’s 10:08 on this Good Friday, April 14th, 2017. I’m Michael, you’re you. I’m so excited to have Nehemia Gordon in studio with us. He’s a Hebrew Bible scholar. You actually taught Hebrew to Reggie White?

Nehemia: Yeah, you know, Reggie White was known as the Minister of Defense…

Michael: He was an amazing guy.

Nehemia: Yeah, he would go do ministry in the off-season for the younger people who might not know. He won the Superbowl, I believe it was in 1996, for the Green Bay Packers. And when he retired from football, he made it his life’s goal, he said, “I want to be as good a minister as I was a football player.”

And as he studied and started to investigate, he realized, “You know what? If I really want to know what I’m talking about, I need to learn the original language.” It was his goal to learn Hebrew, and I ended up being his Hebrew teacher.

Michael: Now, where were you when you did that?

Nehemia: So, I was in Israel and we would speak over the phone.

Michael: Wow.

Nehemia: And I went to Charlotte, North Carolina to be at his house four times throughout that period, and would stay for weeks at a time, teaching him Hebrew. And he was as intense about learning Hebrew as he was about being great at football.

Now, when he came to Israel, I took him around the country, and one of his goals in life, one of the things he really wanted to do, he had learned about this thing called the Aleppo Codex, that’s considered the great… It’s called the “Crown Jewel of Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible”. Every Bible today is based on the Aleppo Codex, and he wanted to go and see the original Aleppo Codex.

Well, one of the things I explained to him is that what they have on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem at the National Museum of Israel is a replica, because it’s too valuable. They’re afraid someone will walk in and blow it up, so it’s in a safe in this vault, in a walk-in vault.

So, he said, “Well, we’ve got to into the vault.” I’m like, “Look, Reggie. [laughing] Nobody gets into the vault.” So, I call up the director of that part of the museum and I tell him, “There’s this famous football player, Reggie White. He won the Super Bowl.” He’s like, “No. Ariel Sharon…” who was the Prime Minister at the time, “couldn’t even get to see this. We don’t show it to people. It’s not a game, it’s too important.”

Well, half an hour later I get a call from that guy’s boss. It turns out, one of the big donors to the museum was a football fan, and he says, “If Reggie’s willing to stand in front of the plaque where the guy who donated…”

Michael: Reggie White gets where the Prime Minister can’t.

Nehemia: Exactly, that’s…

Michael: Where next, the Holy of Holies?

Nehemia: Well, so he got in, and later Reggie said to a lot of people and to me, he said… he’s got this deep voice, like this. He said, “That was the best day of my life.” And I said to him, “Reggie, what do you mean, that was the best day of your life? You won the Super Bowl!”

Michael: Oh, I know it.

Nehemia: “Seeing the Hebrew manuscript was the best day of your life?” He said, “Yeah, it was an answer to prayer.” And I got to be part of that. He passed away in 2004.

Michael: Too young.

Nehemia: Too young. He was 43 years old.

Michael: Let me tell this. There is a tsunami of…

Nehemia: Do you know he died the date of the tsunami? Did you know that?

Michael: Oh no, I didn’t know that.

Nehemia: He died on December 24th, 2004, I believe it was, which was the day of the tsunami. I remember, I got the news. I was actually on the phone with someone. I was about to get on the phone with him, I call up, and I hear from his son that he’d had a situation, a heart attack, or whatever. And it was the day of the tsunami, the big tsunami.

Michael: No, I didn’t know that. What I was going to say is, there was tsunami of influence behind him. I mean, every life he touched he changed, he influenced, he impacted.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: Whether you’re Jewish or Christian, that’s the kind of life we’re supposed to be living. He was a great example.

Nehemia: He really lived by that.

Michael: I didn’t know you taught him Hebrew. Wow.

Nehemia: Yeah. And at the end of his life…

Michael: Was he a good student?

Nehemia: He was an amazing student.

Michael: I’ll bet.

Nehemia: He started out not knowing the Hebrew alphabet, and at the end he could read the Torah in Hebrew, that is the Five Books of... He could open up Genesis, and he’d read it very slow, and he’d have to look up words in a dictionary, but he was able to actually read Hebrew. And I’ve got to tell you… Look, I grew up going to a Jewish day school where we had five hours every day…

Michael: A day.

Nehemia: …of Jewish learning. There are Jews who go to Hebrew school who can’t read the Torah as well as Reggie White could towards the end of his life.

Michael: That’s passion and determination, he wanted it.

Nehemia: It really is. And look, part of it was raw talent, why he was such a great football player. Part of it was, “I’m going to do everything I can. When no one’s looking, I’m going to be running up and down hills in Tennessee.” That’s what he told me. He’d be running up and down hills in Tennessee to hone his skills in the off-season when no one was looking, no one was watching over him. He was doing everything he could to be the best football player he could, and that’s what he did with learning the Bible, and learning the language of the Bible, the Hebrew language.

You know, one of the things I’m really passionate about is God’s holy name, and that’s been an important part of my journey, because God actually has a name. And you know, it’s interesting, I’ll go and I’ll speak to groups of Christians and they’ll be like prayer warriors, people who literally will spend hours a day praying. And I say to them, “What’s God’s name?” and they say, “Well, God. His name is Lord. His name is God,” or they’ll say, “Jesus”. And look, I’m a Jew. I’m from the Old Testament…

Michael: Sure, sure.

Nehemia: …perspective. The name of God, who Christians call the Father, appears in the Hebrew Bible 6,827 times. It appears more than all the titles, “God, Lord, Almighty,” all those combined is His actual name. And in Exodus 3:15 He says, “This is My name forever. This is My memorial from generation to generation.” And one of my passions as a youth was to be able to call on God’s actual name.

Now, in Jewish tradition, we’re told that it’s blasphemy to…

Michael: Sure.

Nehemia: …speak God’s name, even though in ancient times there’s no question people spoke His name and proclaimed His name. And so this was one of my prayers, one of my passions, to be able to call on God’s name. And throughout my studies, I was always trying to find out, what is His name, for years. And eventually, I found the answer. His name is Yehovah. That’s actually how it’s written in the Hebrew manuscripts. And one of the things I’ll be sharing on Sunday at Nazarene Tribeca University…

Michael: I was going to get the shameless plugs in, so you didn’t have to.

Nehemia: No, it’s not shameless. I really want to share with people…

Michael: No, I know.

Nehemia: …we only have a few minutes here. And I want to share more information. Sunday at 5:00 PM at Nazarene Tribeca University at Tarter Student Activity Center, people can find out more at my website, nehemiaswall.com. I’m Nehemia. I built the wall myself, nehemiaswall.com.

I’ll be talking about this name and one of the things… This is a brand-new discovery, just in the last few months. I mean, I’ve been up until 5:00 in the morning many mornings, I can’t go to sleep because I’m so excited about these things.

Michael: Nothing Reggie White about you, either.

Nehemia: [laughing] Oh no, exactly. We were a perfect pair, right?

Michael: Yeah, I’ll bet.

Nehemia: Exactly. So, it turns out that the rabbis knew that His name was Yehovah. And this is confirmed in manuscripts of the Bible - that the scribes and the rabbis knew His name was Yehovah. The scribes hid His name in the manuscripts. Whenever they wrote His name, they left out one of the Hebrew vowels so His name was unpronounceable. And you come to it and you say, “How do we pronounce this?” And they’d say, “Well, the name’s hidden. It’s a secret.” There’s this ban that the rabbis have placed on the name about 1,900 years ago. We come and we can’t read it. And it turns out every once in a while, they slipped up and they put in the full vowels. And I’ll share how I discovered that. It’s an amazing story.

But what I found in the last few months is that the rabbis also talk about how this is a secret, and I found one particular letter written in 1608 by this rabbi named Meir of Lublin. And he writes a letter to another rabbi, and he says in the letter, “Look, it’s really difficult to put this in writing about God’s name, which is Yehovah,” and he gives the vowels. And he says, “Hide this letter in a pure and holy place, that unworthy not see it.” And I’m reading this in 2017 and I’m realizing they wanted to keep this secret because of printing… because of the will of God, I believe, that God wanted the secret to get out, of what the ancient Jews knew His name was. And now the secret’s out.

Michael: What’s the power in that?

Nehemia: The power is that He says in Numbers 6, He gives the priests a blessing to put upon the people. It’s the Priestly Blessing, where he says, “May the Lord bless you and keep you…”

Michael: “Keep you.”

Nehemia: But in the Hebrew it doesn’t say “Lord”, it says three times, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, the name Ye-ho-vah. It’s actually His name. And at the end He says, “And they shall place My name upon the Children of Israel and I will bless them.”

So placing God’s name upon people, placing the actual name “Yehovah”, that is the power of the blessing. And you know, this Sunday for Christians - I’m a Jew, but for Christians…

Michael: I’m going to get to that, yeah.

Nehemia: Sunday is Easter Sunday. And I don’t know if you know this, but do you know the first words that Jesus spoke after the resurrection, according to the New Testament? Do you remember what those words were? So, in the English it says, “All hail.” And you’re thinking, “What is he, a Roman, all hail Caesar?” right? And some translations it says, “Greetings,” which is in the Greek word hyrete, which means something like, “blessings upon you, greetings”.

And there’s a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew that I came across. I didn’t discover it, this professor in Georgia discovered it in the ‘80s. But in this Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, the first two words Jesus speaks – as He was known, Yeshua, back then – he speaks after the resurrection are the words, “Yehovah yoshia, Yehovah will save you.” He actually speaks, according to the Gospels, the first word out of His mouth is the name of His Father, Yehovah. And then He says, “He will save you,” and here’s the really cool thing, Michael, that those words “Yehovah yoshia” are actually the meaning of the name “Jesus” in Hebrew. Did you know that?

Michael: No.

Nehemia: The name Jesus is Yeshua in Hebrew.

Michael: Yeshua haMashiach, right?

Nehemia: Exactly, so Yeshua is actually an abbreviated form of Yehoshua, of Joshua.

Michael: By the way, this is fascinating stuff, because I wanted to make it clear, everybody. The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus

Nehemia: That’s one of the books I’ve written.

Michael: It was actually a paper you wrote that eventually got encouraged into being a book.

Nehemia: [laughing] Exactly.

Michael: And I encourage people to get it. And that book and this story gets me to the exegete of why I wanted you here.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: I love what you said to one person - I think it was a Christian who did this to you - and said, “What are you doing in my church?” kind of a thing. And you said, “Well, I was invited. Why are you here?”

Nehemia: [laughing] Why are you here?

Michael: “Who forced you?” And I find myself a lot…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: …in that situation, you know? Listen, I’m on the radio. If you don’t like what you hear, there’s…

Nehemia: Turn it off.

Michael: …there’s other stations. But I really think the making of the messenger is as important as the message. And you just sought out, following in a line of rabbis in your family. But with a curiosity, a thirst and a yearning for God’s face, not what’s in His hands?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: And an understanding and a truth directly from Him. And God had very unique plans for you. And that plan really boils down to this - that you find yourself… and if I’d have tapped you on the shoulder 25 years ago, you’d have looked at me like I was nuts. But you find yourself in Christian churches now…

Nehemia: That’s true.

Michael: … kind of as you were asked to do with Reggie White, to help us understand what we’re missing in not understanding the Old Covenant and the original language. And I’m sure you’re being exposed to some things that you weren’t exposed to, growing up.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: And that book, that paper and that book of Matthew was really a change…

Nehemia: It really was…

Michael: ….and a challenge for you.

Nehemia: …a turning point in a way. I mean, if you would have told me 20 years ago, “You’re going to actually be in a relationship with a Christian pastor studying the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew or any other language,” I would have said, “You’re crazy. I want nothing to do with Christians.” We have this long history…

Michael: Sure.

Nehemia: …of Jews suffering at the hands of Christians. And look, after I wrote a book about the Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew called A Prayer to Our Father, and it was co-written with a Christian pastor, and I gave it to my father, who was a rabbi, of blessed memory, and asked him to read it. And I said, “Okay, Dad. What did you think of it?” and he said, “Look, why are you doing this interfaith dialog?” He said, “Look, we’ve got our thing, they’ve got their thing. We’re happy. Let them be happy and don’t talk to them. We don’t want to interact with them.”

Michael: What are you missing by not interacting with us? And I’m going to ask you the more obvious question, what are we missing by not interacting with you?

Nehemia: So, here’s what I learned from my friend, Pastor Keith Johnson, who is a Methodist pastor. He’s an African-American gentleman. He’s actually the man who introduced me to Reggie White. He had a ministry in which Reggie White was involved, and he introduced me to him. And he said something really profound that at first I didn’t discern, and then over the years I’ve seen this. He said, “Nehemia, where we’re coming from, we have inspiration. And where you’re coming from, Nehemia, you have information.” And I was totally comfortable with that.

Michael: It’s a powerful way to say it.

Nehemia: We don’t deal with inspiration in the Jewish tradition. You know, terms like Holy Spirit and stuff like that? No, no, no - that’s for simple people who aren’t able to read these books. That’s this elitist attitude that I grew up with. But as I was walking with him in faith and interacting with people like him, I would see, “You know what? There is this inspiration.”

And he said something really profound. He said, “When you combine the inspiration and the information you get revelation.” And I’ve found that to be true. I’ve found that when I embrace the inspiration and I combine it with this information… I’ll tell you a story.

So, Keith Johnson and I were in South Africa, and Keith is an African-American gentleman, we were going and speaking. We spoke in 12 places in South Africa. Most of the places we spoke, quite frankly, were middle-class white establishments. He said, “I want to get in with the people,” meaning with his people. He wanted to go to one of these townships, and I was terrified. We go to this township, 400,000 people living in shacks. One person says, “You go in there and they kill you.” And they said it to him, not just me.

Michael: Right.

Nehemia: And I’m like, “I don’t think we should go here, Keith!” He drags me there. We meet this man, and he starts telling us his… and he’s a Christian pastor who lives in the back of a church with his children. And he starts telling us this story, and he tells us, he said, “Seven years ago, I had a dream. And in that dream, I saw four Hebrew words.” And he starts telling us this when he hears that I’m from Israel. He says, “Can you read Hebrew?” I’m like, “Of course, I can read Hebrew. I’m not illiterate. I live in Israel.” And he says, “Seven years ago, I had a dream. And in that dream, I saw four Hebrew letters.” And when you hear in English a four-letter word, you think a bad word.

Michael: Right, yeah.

Nehemia: In Hebrew, you hear a four-letter word…

Michael: It’s a good word.

Nehemia: …the first thing you think is God’s name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Yehovah. We actually call that the tetragrammaton, the four-letter word, right? So, I write down on a piece of paper, I say, “Are these the words you saw?” He looks and he’s like, “I’m not so sure,” because I have really sloppy penmanship. Keith shows him the cover of a book he wrote called, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, an amazing book. And he says, “Those are the four letters I saw!”

And here’s the crazy thing. So he saw God’s name, Yehovah, in a dream. And he waited seven years for a Jew to walk into his church in a township of 400,000 poor people, a place where Jews and Hebrew speakers never walked in.

Michael: I don’t want to burst his bubble, but could have gone to nehemiaswall.com and got that answer!

Nehemia: Well, but he doesn’t have internet. This guy had not even a smartphone, a dumb phone. You have to understand, this is a guy who like somebody donated the bricks to his church. Another person donated the mortar. These are people…

Michael: What did that confirm to your heart?

Nehemia: So what that told me is, God can speak to a pastor in a township in South Africa, which is outside the paradigm I was taught. I was taught that God doesn’t speak to Christians. He doesn’t speak to pastors. He only speaks to rabbis who are meditating and studying the Talmud – or from my perspective, studying the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. And I found out, God’s bigger than the boxes that we’ve created for Him.

Michael: Oh, and how.

Nehemia: God can speak to a pastor in a poor township in South Africa. And I go back and I look at the Bible and I say, “You know what? We should have known this all along. He’s speaking to the woman in the desert. He’s speaking to Hagar, the Egyptian handmaiden, and He hears her prayer. Why can’t He speak and give a dream?”

But here’s the amazing part about this dream that the guy received in Khayelitsha, in the township in South Africa. He never had any hope of interpreting that dream by himself. He didn’t know Hebrew.

Michael: Yeah.

Nehemia: I didn’t have the dream. But God knew that I would walk one day into that church, dragged by my Methodist pastor friend, Keith Johnson. And He knew…

Michael: Keith’s formula, his quote, should be on every one of our…

Nehemia: Inspiration, the pastor had the inspiration. I had the information and we put them together, and there was revelation.

Michael: It’s a revelation.

Nehemia: And God knew we would have to come together to get that message and that’s so exciting!

Michael: And that story is really the journey of how God has used you in a powerful way.

Nehemia: And I am so excited about being… I’m going to be sharing about this on Sunday at 5:00 PM at Nazarene Tribeca University at the Tarter Student Activity Center. People could find out about it on my website, nehemiaswall.com.

Michael: All right, so bottom line is, what’s a Jew from a rabbi… Hebrew scholar doing at a Nazarene University Sunday on Easter? That is the story of your life. [laughing]

Nehemia: I’ll be sharing about the first two words that Jesus spoke according to the Gospels, after the resurrection. What an appropriate time to be talking about that. His first two words were, first of all, the meaning of His name. His name means “Yehovah will save, Yehovah yoshia.” And that’s the name of His Father, Yehovah - the name of all of our Father - Yehovah, the Creator of the Universe. He spoke those words. And what is the significance of that name? I mean, it’s amazing. What that name means is so powerful.

Michael: The name above all names, and we should know it.

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Michael: Nehemia Gordon, I’d like to say it right. I’m like that guy on television that’s talking normal and then all of a sudden goes, “Nekhamaka.” Nehemia Gordon, he is going to be at Tribeca Nazarene University, Sunday at 5:00, at the Student Activity Center, and we would love to have you be there. You can get more information at nehemiaswall.com. I would encourage you to go to his website, see his books. I think there’s a lot that believers of Christianity can learn with the information from this particular scholar.

Nehemia: Amen.

Michael: And my last question, I was dying to ask you in person, and I know you didn’t discover it, but your work on The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus.

Nehemia: Yessir.

Michael: What do you do now with Jesus?

Nehemia: Well, if you would have asked me 20 years ago, I would have said, “Jesus was this evil man who came and caused trouble for the Jews.” And now I see He was actually a righteous teacher, who taught people in His day, the Jews, to follow the Torah, the word of God.

Michael: But as somebody that studies every word in the original language of the Old Covenant, you’re seeing in this Matthew your first glimpse…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: I’m not going to get with like the Bible scholars and argue, “Did Matthew write in Greek first, then it was Hebrew?” or whatever.

Nehemia: Right, but I believe him.

Michael: But you saw a lot of fulfillment that you were never exposed to, inconsistencies.

Nehemia: Well, I look at it differently. I would say, I believe him. If he said, “I came not to change one jot or one tittle, not to do away with the law or the prophets,” I take him at face value. I believe that was his mission and what he intended to do, and I find he was an amazing teacher. He taught some wonderful, beautiful things.

Michael: A lot of people feel that way about you, and they’ll see why at Tribeca University, 5:00 o’clock on Sunday, Easter Sunday, at the Student Activity Center. Again, get more information at nehemiaswall.com. Nehemia Gordon…

Nehemia: Shalom.

Michael: I still think it should be like a Nekhemia Abrahimi, or something. What have you got, a cousin, Nehemia…

Nehemia: Well, my middle name…

Michael: Nehemia Smith.

Nehemia: I’m Nehemia Shalom Gordon, actually.

Michael: See that? See, that’s even better.

Nehemia: My middle name is peace, shalom.

Michael: Peace, shalom.

Nehemia: Shalom.

 

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!


Shattering the Conspiracy of SilenceHebrew Yeshuah vs the Greek JesusA Prayer To Our Father Book CoverThe Naming of Jesus in Hebrew

  • Michael says:

    Nehemiah what verse number is it where Yeshua says Yehovah saves right after the resurrection? I cannot find that verse thank you so much.

    • Michael says:

      Ugg found it sorry to bother. Awesome wooooooohooooooo
      As they were going Jesus passed before them saying:
      May the Name deliver you. They came near to him, bowed down to
      him, and worshipped him.

  • Janie says:

    This was such a refreshing,inspiring dialog. I loved the statement made by Keith Johnson to Nehemia Gordon ….”when inspiration is combined with information….you get REVELATION ! Couldn’t have been said better.Praise be to YHVH for allowing me to see Him bringing His people together.

  • Joseph Cartwright says:

    Mr. Delgiorno needs to stop referring to this day as Easter ( pagan fertility goddess ).

  • Diane Watson says:

    I wish you had been able to finish your thought on the meaning of Yehovah!
    Enjoyed the interview and I am in agreement with Sandy, praying for your speaking event and for greater revelation.
    Shalom.

  • Sandy Knudsvig says:

    Praying for your speaking event in TN tonight, Nehemiah. Yehovah be praised with your sharing truth with people. Yehovah’s kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.