This verse in Exodus 3 is almost guaranteed to make you think of Popeye: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Jordan explains, “Jehovah is the one who's going to do for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob what He promised to do, and He gives them a shorthand of that name.

“He says to Moses, ‘I am that I am,’ meaning, ‘I'm the one who's going to accomplish my purpose. You go to tell Israel that I am sent me.’ So, to Moses He gives this full meaning of the name, and to Israel He gives shorthand. If you write, ‘I am,’ that's an incomplete sentence. It takes something added to that ‘I am’ statement in order to fill up the sentence and complete the information.

In general, says Jordan, “It’s a fascinating thing in the Bible to see God go in and begin to reveal Himself. The first man who ever asked God to tell him His name wasn't Moses, it was Jacob in Genesis 28.

“The last man to ask His name gets the complete statement of His name for the first time in Scripture and that's Paul. There's a fullness of the revelation of who Jehovah is that you never receive until you come to the ministry committed to the Apostle Paul.

“I used to teach a message entitled, ‘A Sentence that Took 1,500 Years to Write.’ He starts out with just ‘I am’ and there’s a blank. Literally, what He was saying to Israel was, ‘I will be for you whoever you need me to be. I am—fill in the blank—and I'll do that for you.’

“Whatever they’re going to need in order to accomplish God's purpose for them, He was going to be that. It's Jehovah who is going to do for Israel and bring redemption.”

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Each of the Four Gospels represents a different view of Jesus Christ. Matthew talks about Him as Israel's king, Mark presents Him as the servant of the Lord, Luke reveals Him as the embodiment of manhood and John shows Him as Jehovah who will bring Israel's kingdom; bring her deliverance and make her the blessing to the Gentile nations that Matthew, Mark and Luke are designed to demonstrate.

Jordan explains, “The reason John stands separate from what are called the ‘synoptics’ is not because of the different writing style everybody always wants to talk about. The writing style is different in order to communicate the doctrinal difference. The doctrinal difference is that it's as Jehovah—as He’s identified in the Book of John—

that all the other things are accomplished.

“The Book of John is designed to take Israel by the hand, lead her through the substance (or the full knowledge), not the shadow—give substance to the shadow of how to get right into the presence of God. . .

“That’s why in John you have Jehovah laid out so clearly and He gave them this little vignettes—these little ceremonies to perform, these little theatres—in order to express to them what He’s going to do for them as Jehovah.”

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In Genesis 22, when Abraham goes up on the mount with Isaac to sacrifice him, this is where God identifies Himself as Jehovah-jireh, meaning, “Jehovah who will provide a sacrifice.”

When Isaac asks where's the sacrifice, Abraham says, ‘God will provide himself a lamb.’

Jordan explains, “I know Abraham didn't mean in that (statement) everything you and I understand in it, but he understood Jehovah was the one who was going to provide the sacrifice that made a difference, and he went there and offered Isaac in ‘type’ willingly. . . God stayed his hand, and the most perfect type of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in all the Bible is in Gen. 22. It's even better than Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 as far as just a fullness of a ‘type’ is concerned. Isaac is received by Abraham as back from the dead.”

Now, compare this to the statement comedian-actress Julia Sweeney makes in her new one-woman Broadway show called Letting Go of God: “This Old Testament God makes the grizzliest test to peoples' loyalty, like when he asks Abraham to murder his son Isaac. As a kid we were taught to admire it. I caught my breath reading it. We were taught to admire it! What kind of sadistic test of loyalty is that, to ask someone to kill his or her own child? And isn't the proper answer, ‘No’?”

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When Israel came out of Egypt, they were redeemed first by blood, then by power. Jordan says, “They were literally redeemed from a false religious system and the oppression of the darkness of Egypt; from being held in the power of the satanic policy of evil. And they were redeemed by the blood of a lamb that God Himself provided.

“Peter says, ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.’ You see, we’re able to live in view of the redemptive sacrifice that Christ had made.”

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In His Second Coming, Jesus Christ crosses the Jordan River at the same spot Israel crossed it in Joshua and that's the reason Joshua puts down those twelve stones.

“The twelve in the river mark the spot where He's going to come across,” says Jordan. “It's where Elijah went across when he went out and hit the ground; when he went out of the land of Israel, tracing Israel's steps. Elijah goes back in at that same spot. It's the same spot where John the Baptist baptized the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a tremendously important place marked out in the Bible over and over and over again.”