The Introduction the Series The Name of Yehoshua’s Father (is here).
Part 1
"Holy Father, keep through your own name…" Yehoshua refers to his Father's name distinctly. Not only so, but prays that those who are given to him by his Father would be kept in the name of the Father.
Yochanan/John 17:11
"Holy Father, keep through your own name those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are."
12 "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name:
those that you gave me I have kept…"
Was Yehoshua's prayer that those who would be known as belonging to him would be known by the Father's name? If so, what is the meaning of his statement that, while he was in the world, he kept those given to him in his Father's name?
Historically Christianity has identified those who belong to Yehoshua by the use of the title of "Christ" as a name. That is, they have "Jesus the Christ", which in Hebrew is, Yehoshua HaMashiach, as a single and complete name. When Gentiles began to be converted to faith in the Good News concerning him, they began to be called Christians, Messianics.
It would seem, then, that Christ/Messiah was the name in which they were kept. But is this so? Though this may be the name by which they are called in this world, is this the name by which they are kept unto the eternal world? Is this what Yehoshua was praying for to the His Father?
Indeed, by contrast, the one people that seem to have been kept in the name of the Father since Yehoshua left the world is the Jewish People. Was Yehoshua saying that the Jewish People was given to him by his Father and that what he had accomplished in the world was to preserve the Jewish People in the name of his Father? Was it with this understanding that he was praying that the Father would continue to preserve the Jewish People in the Father's name ~ until all souls that the Father would give him would be included with the Jewish People as one Israel?
Christian theology is not equipped at the present to understand a possibility like this, because it has no comprehension of corporate Humanity, or that the Jewish People is chosen and kept by G-d as a corporate entity.
At this point, we are left with an open question. We can look more closely at this question by considering the words of Yehoshua in the letters to the Seven Assemblies in the Book of the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach. We will do this in the next post in this series, The Name of Yehoshua’s Father - part 2. Look for that post later in the month of June, 2016.
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