Hey, everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
And today I want to talk to you about the words of Jesus Christ on the cross when he said,
Eili, eili lama sabachthani, that is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Now, lately I've been seeing in the comments section on YouTube a bunch of bozos saying that that's a wrong translation
and that Jesus never said, why have you forsaken me?
So I saw a bunch of comments like that and then I searched on YouTube.
I found this bozo false teacher named Leslie Hale saying that this is a totally wrong translation.
It's the worst translation ever.
And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eili, eili lama sabachthani, that is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Let me tell you, friends, that's the worst translation there ever was.
And he's claiming that instead of saying, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
It should say, my God, my God, for this I was kept, my God, my God, this was my destiny.
You know, like a positive utterance, not a question, but a statement just completely turning this on its head,
coming up with something totally different.
But he did not say them negatively.
He said them in a positive way.
My God, my God, this was my destiny, for this I was spared.
So I'm going to prove to you in this video beyond a shadow of a doubt that that is just ridiculous and that is nonsense.
And that, of course, what he said is my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Let me break this down to you, OK?
This is the operative word here, OK?
Because the eili eili, obviously that means my God, my God.
There's no question about that.
Lama, lama means why, OK?
Even today in modern Hebrew, every day, millions of times, Israelis are saying lama because lama means why.
So lama sabachthani, and this is the word for him being forsaken.
OK, so let's talk about this word.
First of all, I've written it on the board as it appears in the Greek New Testament.
And then this is a transliteration, actually, in the Greek New Testament from the Aramaic word, shabachthani.
So this is not a Greek word, this is an Aramaic word, right?
But it's written in the New Testament in Greek letters, transliterated, OK?
And so here it is in its original letters right here, shabachthani, which means you forsake me, OK?
Now let me break this down to you, OK?
So here's the root of the verb here, shabach, OK?
If you know anything about Hebrew and Aramaic, the verbs in their dictionary form will typically be these three-letter roots.
So we have these three letters here, shin, bet, kof, OK?
Sort of like if you're learning Spanish, all of the verbs in the dictionary are going to either end in ar, er, or ir.
So you're going to have verbs like hablar, comer, vivir.
Then they get conjugated, you know, so I speak is hablo, you speak hablas.
So you got other conjugations, hablabamos, hablaste, right?
So you have all these different conjugations, OK?
But then this is like the root form, OK?
So we have right here shabach, and then here we have it conjugated, OK?
So shavakta is the second person masculine singular, u, forsook, OK?
So the perfect verb in the second person masculine singular is shavakta.
If we just cut off those last three letters, shavakta.
And then these last few letters here are the pronomial suffix, OK, which is the me part of it, OK?
So we have here shavakta, u, forsook, ni, shavakta, ni, u, forsook, mi, OK?
Now, you don't have to take my word for it that shavak means to leave or to forsake
because of the fact that this word also occurs in the Old Testament in the Aramaic section.
So part of the Old Testament is actually written in Aramaic.
Almost 99% of it is written in Hebrew.
But there are 260 some odd verses between the books of Daniel and Ezra that are written in Aramaic,
starting in Daniel chapter 2 verse 4 all the way to the end of Daniel chapter 7.
That's all Aramaic. So you have six whole chapters in the book of Daniel.
Then you have part of Ezra chapter 4. You have the entire Ezra 5 and most of Ezra 6 and 7.
So, you know, back in Ezra you have three, four chapters as well in Aramaic, a total of 260 some verses.
And here's the great thing is that because of that, this verb shavak occurs five times in Ezra and Daniel.
So we can go back to Ezra and Daniel and see that that's what this word means.
Let me just read you the examples here. Okay.
We got the first example in Ezra chapter 6 verse 7.
And this is the form that's used in Ezra chapter 6 verse 7, which is shavuku.
Okay. So this is this is an imperative like leave. All right.
And it's plural and it's a plural second person command imperative.
So it's saying, you know, leave. Okay. Shavuku.
And then, you know, we have some other forms because remember I said it occurs five times.
So we got three times as shavuku. We've got one time as tishtavik.
And then we have one time as lamesh bak. Okay.
Now, notice in all of these forms, you can see that the root letters are there.
Okay. Just like we have the three root letters here, shin bet kof.
Here we see shin bet kof. Here we see shin bet kof. Here we see shin bet kof.
So these are just different conjugations of that same one. Okay.
Here's your imperative plural, right? Here is this would be the hit payel form, feminine, singular, imperfect.
So it's tishtavik. And then here we have the infinitive construct, which is like to leave.
And let me give you these in English and then you'll see what I'm saying. Okay.
So the first one right here is Ezra chapter six, verse seven.
Let the work of this house of God alone. Let the work of this house of God.
Leave it alone. Right. Leave it alone.
This is the verse that's being used. Okay. Or I'm sorry, the word that's being used for leave it alone.
Okay. It's the same thing. Like I said, it means to leave or to forsake.
Why hast thou forsaken me? The truth is this. Our Lord Jesus never said that on the cross. Never.
It is a very bad translation.
So next example is Daniel two forty four.
And the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.
And the kingdom shall not be left to other people.
So when it says the kingdom shall not be left to other peoples that the shall not be left.
Shall be left is this word right here.
Teach to beak. Right.
It's feminine because my who is feminine kingdom who and it's teach to beak.
Right. It shall be left. Another example would be Daniel four fifteen.
Nevertheless, leave the stump of his roots in the earth.
Even with a band of iron and brass in the tender grass of the field and let it be wet with the dew of heaven.
Let his portion be with the beast and the grass of the earth.
Does that sound like it's being left, forsaken, abandoned?
Yeah, because it's being left to the dew of heaven to the beast.
The earth is being left out there. Okay. That's the same work.
So if we go through all these, the other two mentions in Daniel four twenty three.
Yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth.
And then later he says, whereas they commanded to leave. There's your infinitive to leave the stump.
Okay. Those all are fitting the context and fitting the meaning of what this verb means.
Shavak to leave or to forsake.
Okay. So if we tried to foist this guy's translation of for this, I was kept for this.
I was spared. This was my destiny. It doesn't work. It doesn't make any sense.
You'd be turning grammar on its head to try to foist that meaning into Jesus's utterance on the cross or into these five instances.
It's not going to work. Okay. But let's just talk about the elephant in the room here is that that's how the New Testament itself translates it.
Because remember, in the Greek, he gives a translation.
So Matthew and Mark translated it as why is thou forsaken me?
So if you're going to say that, oh, that's a wrong translation. Here's what you're saying.
The Greek New Testament's wrong. Here's what you're saying. Matthew got it wrong. You're saying that Mark got it wrong.
Okay. So not only are you saying the King James is wrong, not only are you saying that every English version,
because all the English versions say something along the lines of why is thou forsaken me?
Why did you abandon me? Why did you leave me?
They all say something along that idea. You'd be saying that they're all wrong.
And you're saying that Matthew and Mark are wrong, because here it is. I've got the Greek New Testament here.
Here it is in Matthew 27 46, where Matthew offers a translation of Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.
And here's what he says. He says, themu themu inati me ekatellipes.
Ekatellipes is the main operative word here.
I've written it on the board here, ekatellipes. And then ekatellippo would be the dictionary form.
And you never guess, going to guess what it means. It means leave or forsake.
Okay. And then, in fact, it's used nine times in the New Testament.
Seven times it's translated as forsake. Two times it's translated as leave.
One example would be where he says that will not leave my soul in hell. I'm not going to be left in hell or forsaken in hell.
Okay. But he's going to rise from the dead. Okay. After three days and three nights.
Okay. Here's Mark. And Mark offers a slightly different translation, but meaning the exact same thing.
So instead of themu themu, it says otheosmu otheosmu.
Instead of inati, it says isti, which is another way of saying why.
Isti me ekatellipes. And again, ekatellipes means you forsook.
You forsook. Why did you, jati, did you forsake me, right?
Ekatellipes. So here we see that the Greek and the Aramaic and the English all agrees.
The only person who doesn't agree is this guy on YouTube putting out a video trying to deceive the simple that are carried about and tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.
Now, where did he get this bogus teaching from?
Well, it goes back to a Trinity-denying false teacher named George Lamsa who came up with his own bogus, phony, so-called Bible translation, the Lamsa Bible, which is total trash.
It's a so-called translation of the Aramaic Peshitta, New Testament.
But guess what? It's rejected by every Aramaic scholar.
And when they looked at this, where he tries to say that this meant, for this I was spared, for this I was kept, this was my destiny.
They all scoffed at that because they said, look, this is a textbook.
Okay, textbook, second person, perfect, masculine, singular, shavakta, right?
It's not even an irregular verb. Shavak, shavakta, okay?
And then, boom, on the end, your pronomial suffix, shavaktani.
Folks, it's crystal clear that this means you forsook me.
Or if you go to the peshitta, and that means the straight, simple, sincere, true, that goes back to the original.
And what it says for sure is, my God, my God, for this I was spared, for this was my destiny.
In other words, I've done what you wanted me to do.
This guy's a liar and a fraud. Now, why would he lie about this?
Well, here, let me show you some audio clips of the most famous oneness Pentecostal devil of the 20th century, Trinity-denying false teacher, William Branham.
Let me play some audio of him praising Lamsa for denying the Trinity.
I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Lamsa today, the translator of the Lamsa translation of the Bible.
And such a privilege, I certainly can prescribe to his translation for meeting him and finding such a lovely spirit of a real, true, Christian believer.
God bless his gallant soul. I don't know if I've ever met any more spiritual man than Dr. Lamsa.
He said these American people don't even know nothing.
He said they're trying to take an Eastern book and make a Western book out of it. They don't even know their Bible.
He said there's no other name given under heaven, no other name for everybody that's ever baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
There's no such a thing as three persons and one God. And that is Brother Lamsa, Dr. Lamsa, the translator of the Lamsa Bible,
which is a bosom friend of Eisenhower and all the great diplomats of the world and everything else,
throwing his arms around me and said, someday they'll shoot you for that.
And people who deny the Trinity, they hate this verse. Okay?
You know why? Because it makes no sense if you believe in their false Jesus only doctrine or modalist doctrine,
because we as Trinitarians believe three persons, one God.
So it's God, the Father, and then you got Jesus, the Son on the cross.
And the Son is saying to the Father, why have you forsaken me? To the Father.
But if you're a oneness believer, it would be like myself, myself, why have I forsaken myself?
And that would be so stupid and wouldn't make any sense. So they can't accept that.
So what do they do? They change the word of God.
They twist the word of God and they secure their place in hell for eternity,
because the Bible says if you add to or remove from God's word, then you are eternally damned.
Okay? So instead of just teaching what the Bible says, they reject what the Bible says,
come out with their own Bible, like cults love to do, and twist it and change it.
And of course, it's not based on actual Aramaic study and scholarship.
It's based on nonsense. Okay?
But then not only that, I've written another verb on the board here.
I mean, we've already seen plenty of proof, but how about the fact that this statement that Jesus made on the cross is quoted in Psalm 22 in Hebrew.
Okay? And it's almost exactly the same in Hebrew as it is in Aramaic.
But instead of saying, it says, okay, so we have this verb here, instead of.
Okay, so see how close these are. Now, let me explain to you the difference here.
Okay, the difference is just the root. Okay, so here we have the Aramaic verb, and then here we have the Hebrew verb.
And this Hebrew verb is very common.
This is not a rare, it's used like 200 and sometimes in the Old Testament, and it's constantly used in modern Hebrew.
Like, for example, if I want to say in modern Hebrew, I have to leave now, I would say.
Okay, so notice,
Okay, means leave, or he left, right?
And then, like, down here, we saw the infinitive with
So, infinitive construct. So here, the only thing that has changed, notice how similar these words are.
We've got
You can see how similar those roll off the tongue, right?
Because the vowels are making the same sounds. You both have the
The only thing that has changed is pretty much just these three consonants have been replaced.
You're replacing the common Aramaic verb for leave, forsake, with the common Hebrew verb for leave or forsake.
That's it, okay?
So, the schwa here becomes
Because of the fact that this is a guttural letter, but look, same vowel, same vowel, and then, of course, this right here and this right here,
the comets and the pitak, they both are an ah sound. In modern Hebrew, there's not even any different pronunciation between the long a and the short a, ee.
So, you can see, it's the exact same thing. So, to sit there and say, oh, no, no, no, this has nothing to do with Psalm 22.
Now, the Bible on the whole is great and gives us the message of salvation, but sometimes they blow it.
And what they said was, oh, it's quoted from Psalm 22. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22 when he was on the cross. I can prove instantly he was not.
That's what Leslie Hale would have you to believe. That's what Lamsa wants you to believe.
That, oh, Jesus said it's on the cross had nothing to do with Psalm 22, but that's ridiculous.
It's just a coincidence that it's just almost exactly the same.
And I'm in the Greek, you know, it'd be Shavaktani in Aramaic or
Oh, nothing to see here, folks, even though these two words are synonyms, even though this is the exact Hebrew equivalent of this in Aramaic.
You can't even make this stuff up how dumb it is.
Don't let these people tell you, oh, this is the wrong translation. That guy couldn't speak Aramaic to save his life.
He couldn't speak Hebrew to save his life. He couldn't speak Greek to save. He's just lying to you folks.
And he gets all the thumbs up on YouTube and everybody watches these videos and just eats it up with fork and spoon,
because they are babes in Christ tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, or in most cases, they're not even saved.
So they're tossed to and fro because they don't even have the Holy Spirit guiding them.
And the Bible has these small mistakes. Don't think I'm against the scriptures. I've lived my life believing this is the inspired Word of God.
But we have to admit, and I could give several of them, grammatical mistakes and errors here and there.
So don't listen to this garbage from the so-called experts to go back to the Greek, go back to the Hebrew, go back to Aramaic.
Because guess what? When you actually check it out and look into it, you'll see that it doesn't pan out.
You'll see that what they're saying is a complete lie. And when they have to tell you how, I can tell you a million percent.
Eli, Eli, lama sabatsinai, my God, my God, this was my destiny, for this I was spared.
And look at me, friends, I will guarantee you one million percent.
That's what it says in the Aramaic. And Jesus was speaking in the Aramaic.
Well, there's no such thing as a million percent. So when somebody's coming at you with a million percent,
they're really just trying to snow you, OK, when they're coming at you.
Believe me, please trust me that I'm telling you the truth about what Aramaic.
No, you're not. The King James Bible is telling me the truth. God bless you. Have a great day.
I want you to get the DVD. I want you to get these notes. And I want you to send me twenty five dollars.
And that includes shipping and handling. And I say all the time and I'm sending again, if you can send more,
that will be an absolute joy because it's the more that keeps us on television.
We have no gimmicks. We have no scams. We have no schemes. We have no foolishness.