Preface

God desires that all men come to salvation for He does not want anyone to perish. I am deeply grateful to God for saving me from sin and granting me the new life in Christ early on when I was in my teens. God has put in my heart a deep hunger and thirst for Him and His Kingdom. I always cry out to God, “O Yahweh, I want to know you more and follow you all the days of my life.”

Since 2005, I came to have a clear understanding of God’s salvation for mankind through a series of teaching on Biblical monotheism given to us by our beloved teacher, Pastor Eric H.H. Chang. Being able to sit in teaching sessions taught by Pastor Eric was a great privilege and blessing to all our coworkers. We would get inspired spiritually. Our spirits would get uplifted. The fire of God would burn deeply in our hearts. Yahweh God opened our eyes to see Biblical truth through His servant.

This book comes from Chapter 17 of a longer book (400+ pages) that I am presently working on, “Our Road to the One True God, YHWH,” which, if God willing, will be published at a later date. As I was working on this chapter on “Salvation in the Name of YHWH,” the Spirit of God kept urging me to write a more thorough exposition of Joel 2:32, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” This significant statement is cited by the apostle Peter in Acts 2:21, and the apostle Paul in Romans 10:13. A lot of spiritual riches are packed in this short statement regarding God’s salvation for humanity, and how we can live a life of faith prayerfully under the Lordship of God and Christ. Calling on the Name of the Lord concerns our salvation. In the course of meditation and writing, the freshness of the content has taken on a new life such that the present work is put into a short book for use in evangelism.

Calling on the Name of the Lord has been a life-long spiritual dis­cipline in my life. Through God’s Name, we encounter the one true God. God is not silent. He is silent only to those who resist drawing near to Him. I have learned to call on God’s Name to love Him, to walk with Him, to learn to be His friend, and to let God come close to me in all areas of my life. I call on God’s Name to save me from tempta­tions to sin, selfishness, self-deception, and pride. Daily, I call out to God to cleanse and purify my inner being. Many times, God rescued me physically even before I knew that my life was in great danger. Living in a spiritually complacent world in which Christians are falling asleep spiritually, I often need to cry out to God for His fire to burn fervently within me so that my heart does not grow cold. Calling on the name of the Lord has indeed taught me to have the right fear of God. In serving the church these past 30 years, I have learned to call on the Lord to mourn for the sins of the church and to overcome weaknesses that hinder my service to Him. God answers. God saves.

We experience God’s salvation by calling on His Name, not only in times of crisis but more so in every breath that we take each day. It is in the many ordinary events of life that God awakens us to experience His care, presence, protection, and salvation.

Salvation is a vast subject. This book focuses on one aspect of Soteriology, namely, how we experience salvation in the calling of the Name of YHWH. The message we hear in today’s churches is mostly centered on the popular precept that Jesus saves us. This begs a further question: How does Jesus save us? Apparently, the role of YHWH as Savior has been obliterated. I started my Christian life with such a proposition, and after listening to Pastor Eric’s expositions on Biblical monotheism, I searched the Scripture and consolidated the conclusion that YHWH God is the One who saves us through Jesus. With the title of the book “Salvation in the Name of YHWH,” I would like to share my first-hand experience and understanding on this Biblical theme. Our faith needs to be grounded on the authority of the Word of God.

In this book, I have woven into the writing a Biblical word study method to help readers gain a clearer understanding of the broader themes that emerge from the book of Joel, the Pentecostal message in Acts 2, and the overall salvation message in Romans 9 to 11. In a wider framework of these three passages, we can get a bird’s eye view to see the wood for the trees. God is dynamically moving forward His plan of salvation in progressive stages with the prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilled in the New. The Kingdom of God is advancing might­ily and steadily according to His time. The exciting news it that God’s Kingdom is dynamically coming ever so nearer to us. Are you part of this move­ment in the Kingdom of God?

In our outreach work at church, people often ask me about God’s salvation and how they can be saved. I pray that this book can answer some of their questions so that they too can experience God’s salvation and enter into the Kingdom of God. I welcome my readers to write and share your thoughts with me.

My prayer is that Yahweh, my God and King, will move your heart to call on His Name. May God be pleased to use this book to lead people to have faith in the one true God and in Lord Jesus the Messiah. Together, let us learn to call on the name of the Lord to experience God’s salvation in every aspect of our daily life.

Rosablanca Suen
Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong
[email protected]
February, 2021