I´m trying to understand John 1:21a, where John the Baptist denies that
he is Elijah. Yet Matthew tells us specifically that he was Elijah
(17:12-13), and Mark and Luke both make this clear as well (Mr 9:13 and
Lk 1:17). I´m not sure how to reconcile these verses. Could John the
Baptist have recognized Jesus as Christ without recognizing himself in the
prophesy of Malachi 4:5? Was John lying or deliberately dissimulating? Or
am I missing something here?

--
Warren Post
Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras
http://srcopan.vze.com/


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Why do we have "The Lord" in our bibles rather than Yahweh?

This is a very common question.

It all began with a Jewish tradition called the "ineffable name"
doctrine.

Jews, for various reasons, started to substitute His name with the
Hebrew title "Adonai". 

Adonai is the Hebrew word for "Lord".

This information can be easily verified in many Bible dictionaries and
various encyclopedias.

For instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica states: quote

"Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, his name being revealed to Moses as
four Hebrew CONSONANTS (YHWH) CALLED THE TETRAGRAMMATON.

AFTER THE EXILE (6TH CENTURY BC), and especially from the 3rd century BC
on, Jews ceased to use the name Yahweh for two reasons.

As Judaism became a universal religion through its proselytizing in the
Greco-Roman world, the more common noun elohim, meaning "god," tended to
replace Yahweh to demonstrate the universal sovereignty of Israel's God
over all others.

At the same time, the divine name was increasingly regarded as too
sacred to be uttered;

it was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word
Adonai ("My Lord"), which was translated as Kyrios ("Lord") in the
Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament."

unquote


We see in the above quote that Jews started to vocally replace the name
"Yahweh" with "Adonai" (Lord) for two reasons:

1. It was beginning to be believed that His name was too sacred to be
uttered

2. They preferred to simply call Him "Elohim" rather than "Yahweh" to
demonstrate to the world that He is the only true Elohim.

While on the surface these reasons may seem honorable, they are VERY
unscriptural.

They were and ARE attempts to improve on Yahweh's already perfect ways.

*If Yahweh really wanted a substitute, why would He have placed His name
there to begin with???*

Though scripture says to follow Yahweh rather than man, we find that
nearly 7,000 times the most important Name of all is replaced with