The Hawaiian-Emperor Chain Provides Evidence for Catastrophic Plate Tectonics

Here's a breakdown of just how explanatory the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model is in comparison to both slow and gradual plate tectonics and the Hydroplate model. Let's take a look at the North Pacific. You'll need a map which shows the sea floor. Here's a link for your convenience. Bring up this link in a separate tab or browser and follow along here or reference these pictures:

The first thing you will notice about the sea floor in the north Pacific is that it shows a long line of seamounts and islands stretching from the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, toward the south, and then going southeast to the Hawaiian islands. These are a long chain of volcanic mountains known as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, formed from lava flows on the sea floor.

The conventional explanation for this chain of volcanoes is that there is a hotspot in the mantle which sends up heated plumes of magma in a particular location due to convection cycles in the mantle. The Pacific plate, one of several tectonic plates that together form the crust of the Earth, is moving across this hotspot, and this forms a series of volcanic mountains that may or may not reach the surface of the ocean to form an island.

This conventional explanation is a good one. The Hydroplate theory does not even have an explanation for volcanism in the middle of a plate, as far as I am aware. The Hydroplate model suggests crustal plates with water chambers underneath that broke up catastrophically during the global flood and which may have moved sideways as the water was expelled from below. In that model, volcanoes occur at the margins of plates as they collide with each other. I have yet to find any reasonable explanation within this model for the existence of the Hawaiian-Emperor chain at all. The conventional model, in contrast,  does fit a number of lines of evidence and at least explains the existence of this chain.

However, there's more to this explanation. The CPT model involves rapid plate movements during the Biblical flood. In particular, at least one crustal plate subducted down into the mantle in a very short time (several weeks), setting off a catastrophic chain reaction around the globe and rapid tectonic movements that produced global flooding. The plate movements we observe today are remnants of these movements, but much slower than in the past. The conventional plate tectonics model, unlike CPT, assumes that current plate movements have been more or less constant for many millions of years at today's very slow rates.

How could we test which of these models is more explanatory? Well, here's one way of doing that. And you can do it from your home by looking at a map.

You have to understand that we can use the size of a volcanic mountain to estimate plate speed. If we assume a relatively constant rate of heated magma rising from this hotspot in the mantle, then the slower the plate moves, the more magma will accumulate in that spot. This forms a larger seamount. If magma continues to accumulate in the same spot, the seamount will reach the surface and become an island. If it continues even longer, the island will become larger and larger. If the plate is moving more rapidly, the seamounts will be smaller because lava did not have time to accumulate before that location on the plate moved away from the hotspot in the mantle. So how large these volcanic mountains are, and how far apart they are spaced, can tell us about the speed the plate was moving when they formed. There are going to be variations, but we want to look for overall trends.

We know where the hotspot is today. The largest and easternmost island of Hawaii is still experiencing lava flows today. It is still over the hotspot. If you move backwards along the volcanic chain, you are looking backwards in time. Not only do current measurements of plate movement indicate this, but radiometric dating concurs (though we can debate about the exact ages).

So let’s take a look at the chain. This is where the Google Earth link is handy because you can zoom in and rotate in order to look closer. Where the chain begins, the seamounts are all fairly small. If you compare them to the size of the largest Hawaiian island, there is a huge difference. This implies that the Pacific plate was moving much more rapidly than it does today when these sea mounts were formed. In fact, the entire chain of seamounts is much smaller than the Hawaiian islands at the end of the chain. This seems to imply rapid plate movements for most of this history, and then a profound slowing of the plate toward the end.

The most interesting feature of this entire chain is the very abrupt change of direction. The volcanoes were forming in a southward line (indicating that the plate was moving northward) and then they abruptly begin to form toward the east and only a little south. It's a very distinct inflection point. The seamounts immediately get smaller at the same time the direction changes. Not only are these first eastward seamounts smaller, but they are farther apart. All of these indicate an increase in speed. This tells us there was an impact on the east side of the Pacific plate that accelerated it toward the west. The plate increased speed and changed direction due to this impact. The plate which impacted the Pacific plate must have been the North American plate. So we can see evidence, in the seamounts, that the North American plate has crashed into the Pacific plate and altered both its speed and direction.

As you go from west to east (i.e. forward in time) after this impact, the seamounts grow gradually larger and closer together and then, as the speed of the Pacific plate drops off considerably, they begin to form islands. The islands grow larger and larger until you reach the largest island of all where there are still active volcanoes and slow plate movements and you have caught up to the present day. But this chain of volcanoes tells a story of much faster plate movements in the past.

Notice that I told you this assumes a constant rate of magma rising from the mantle hotspot. We can examine our assumption here. Is it reasonable? There are only three options: Either the hotspot is growing hotter, it is growing colder, or it is staying the same. If the hotspot is staying the same, we naturally come to the conclusion that the Pacific plate was moving much faster in the past and is now moving much slower. If the hotspot is growing colder over time, then the deceleration is even greater. If the Hawaiian islands are successively larger and larger even though the hotspot is now cooler than it was, then the speed in the past was even greater and it has slowed even more than we expect from a model in which the hotspot has remained unchanged.

The other possibility is that the hotspot is growing hotter and thus sending up more and more magma over time. This would make it possible for the plate movements to have been very slow the whole time. This is essentially the mainstream view. If the plate has been moving at a constant slow rate, then we would explain the increasing size of the islands by appealing to increasing temperature in the mantle hotspot. But that has a problem of its own. If the hotspot is growing hotter, what is causing that? And should we be concerned that it appears to be growing so much hotter than it used to be? In any event, it does not appear that these processes have always been occurring at a constant rate. Either the plate has slowed considerably or the hotspot has grown much hotter. I find the former much more reasonable for several reasons.

In this one volcanic chain, we have evidence, not only that the crustal plates are moving, but that they moved much faster in the past. But there’s more. We saw that the North American plate crashed into the Pacific plate and changed its speed and direction. This affects not just the Pacific plate, but the North American plate as well. This is most likely the impact that pushed up the Rocky Mountains. Conservation of momentum says that if the Pacific plate accelerated rapidly due to this impact, then the North American plate must have decelerated rapidly. This abrupt stop would crumple the North American plate along its western side. Not surprisingly, there’s a mountain range there.

These features are a lot easier to explain in terms of acceleration and deceleration of plates than if they were the result of slow, gradual processes with unvarying rates. This is just one piece of the puzzle for the CPT model. Yet it forms a handy side-by-side comparison of the competing models. 

The explanation commonly offered by mainstream geology for the larger size of the Hawaiian islands compared to the older seamounts is that the older mountains have shrunk over time due to erosion and subsidence. This explanation fails on multiple points.

1) There's no experimental evidence for this explanation, as far as I know. It is just thrown out there as a possibility.

2) It doesn't make sense of the similarity in size of most of the chain of seamounts. Do they shrink until they reach a certain size and then stay the same forever? Subsidence and erosion might be a potential explanation if we had a nice gradual increase in size all along the chain. Instead, we have what is supposedly tens of millions of years of seamounts that are roughly the same size, then a fairly rapid transition to much larger islands. The older north-south section is not significantly smaller than the younger east-west section.

3) The greatest erosion should take place on islands, not seamounts. Erosion forces should be stronger for the land above the water due to wind and rain and wave action. Once an island drops beneath the waves, that should slow its shrinking considerably. This should, again, result in a more even chain. That's not what we observe.

4) If we're suggesting that all of the islands and seamounts in the Hawaiian-Emperor chain were originally of similar size and some merely shrank due to erosion and subsidence, that simply doesn't work. If you take any of the Hawaiian islands, its footprint would cover several of the smaller seamounts in the chain. If the small volcanoes were widely spaced, it might make sense to suggest they had once been sizeable islands. But most of them could not have been that large initially because they are too closely spaced. A large mountain doesn't erode away into several small mountains. Subsidence might work if a tall mountain with several peaks sank until it appeared to be several smaller mountains, but it really doesn't look like that happened. Especially for the smaller seamounts, the ocean floor around them does not show signs of a larger mountain sinking. It appears relatively flat and undisturbed.

5) The older seamounts are not all that eroded. They're not gently sloping and rounded off. They don't appear to be the small remnants of eroded islands, in other words.

6) The erosion/subsidence hypothesis still doesn't account for the sharp change in direction or the drop in seamount size and increase in spacing afterward. The CPT theory accounts for all these facts at once.

Because of these lines of evidence, the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics theory has more explanatory power than either the mainstream Gradual Plate Tectonics view or the Hydroplate Theory, at least when it comes to explaining the Hawaiian-Emperor volcanoes. This is just one way of comparing and testing models. Creation science actually does offer testable models that hold up to scrutiny.

Homemade Granola Cereal

This is a super simple recipe that makes awesome granola cereal, and then you can jazz it up with all kinds of extras. This tastes way better than any granola I have ever bought. I might be slightly addicted. It's also cheaper than store bought and very healthy, with no corn syrup or preservatives. It can be easily made gluten free (use GF oats). It takes less than 5 minutes to mix it up and then it bakes. 

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons flax meal (optional)
1 cup sliced almonds
3 cups rolled oats

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a microwave safe bowl, melt the coconut oil and stir in the honey and maple syrup until well mixed.

(You can use all honey or all maple syrup, but a 50/50 combination seems to get the right flavor and texture. Honey tends to make it chewier and maple syrup tends to make it crunchier. Plus, honey has a more intense flavor, so I find the taste more balanced with half honey and half maple syrup.)

Add the salt, cinnamon, and flax meal. Stir in the almonds and oats until all are coated evenly. Spread on the parchment paper and bake about 20 minutes, stirring halfway. Remove the pan from the oven and gently stir again, then let it cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

For extra flavor, you can mix in all kinds of things like extra nuts (walnuts, peanuts, pecans, almonds, brazil nuts, etc), dried fruit (cranberries, blueberries, apples, cherries, apricots, raisins, dates, pineapple, and more), shredded coconut, or chocolate chips. I prefer to add extras when eating rather than stored in the granola itself. That way, everyone can choose the mix they like best. It also prevents the moisture in dried fruit from turning the granola stale or sticky.

There are so many ways to enjoy this. Bon appetit!

Note: This lower picture is a double batch, just out of the oven. The upper picture has dried cranberries added. That's my favorite version so far.

Online Church is Not Being the Church

Having online church services is not all bad, but it does have some major potential problems. In our impersonal, consumeristic society, it is too easy for people to stay at home on the couch and watch a screen for "church" instead of taking the trouble to actually go to church. This has become a significant issue in the last couple of years. Many of those who stayed home from church during the pandemic have not come back even though it is now mostly over. Too many have gotten lazy and no longer gather together with other believers at all.

Of course, there are positive uses of online services too. Having sermons available for those who can't be physically present is a generally good thing. Shut-ins or people who are traveling can still watch the service. People who are looking for a new church can view some services before they attend to help them know if the teaching is Biblical. These are valuable uses of our technology.

However, pastors and church leadership should be careful to explain that watching online services is not the same thing as being physically present in church. They need to call the people to actually attend in person, if possible. Watching church is not the same as being the church. It's better than nothing, but it's not a substitute for the corporate worship, fellowship, and accountability that actually going to church is meant to provide.

We are physical creatures, and God has called us to physically gather to worship Him together. There is something that happens when the people of God gather together in one place, in one accord, to worship their Savior as the body of Christ. God is present in a distinct way when we gather, when we sing in praise, and when we pray together. Staying home and watching church online is a little like watching heaven remotely on a screen. Nobody wants to do that! It's just not the same experience as being there. The Bible tells us that when any two or three gather in His name, He is there in our midst. He is in that place. There is a glorious, awesome presence of God in the physical place where believers have come together to bring Him praise and honor. We have to gather together to get those special benefits. We come together as the church to do corporately what we cannot do alone. Alone, we are believers. Together, we are the church. And that's a powerful thing. It's not just about hearing the message or singing the songs. It's about being the body of Christ. 

In addition to that, we need the church family, and the church needs us. All of us. We need to pray for each other, bear one another's burdens, and sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron. God has a right to have our full participation and to use our spiritual gifts for the benefit of our local church body. We are not called to be consumers, but givers, encouragers, servants, teachers, and exhorters of our fellow believers. We used to have a saying in church circles that being a pew sitter is not one of the spiritual gifts, but so many people aren't even sitting in the pews any more. They're withdrawing from the body and leaving all of us poorer for it. I don't just mean monetarily, though that is also a challenge for many churches, but we're lacking the talents and labor and fellowship that those missing believers were meant to be investing in us. And they're missing what we could be investing in them.

There's also another reason that we should be gathering physically as the church. God commands us to do so in scripture. It wasn't just a suggestion.

Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. Hebrews 10:23-25

Lacking a valid reason that one cannot attend, it is disobedience to sit at home and consume content instead of gathering as the church. Disobedience to God is sin. 

God calls us to leave our comfort zone and come together as the church, messy and uncomfortable though it may be at times. Without the church, we will be anemic Christians -  weakened, impoverished, and prone to spiritual attacks. Just as the predator wants to separate the prey from its herd, our spiritual enemies want us divided, isolated, and vulnerable. This is why God instructs us to gather together and lift one another up. He knows what we need and has provided the church to meet those needs. If we neglect the provision of God, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

It's time to get back to church.

If Resurrection is Impossible, so is Abiogenesis

A resurrection from the dead is much more likely than abiogenesis (generating life from non-life by natural processes). After all, a dead body has all of the necessary parts for life present already. It already has many proteins produced and folded correctly. It already has a genetic code built within DNA. It has phospholipid membranes already in place. It has cellular machinery. By far the biggest problem for abiogenesis is producing all of these things by chance. Just getting any functional protein without guidance would take billions of years of chance chemical reactions. A dead cell already has many proteins in place as well as all the other chemicals and parts needed for life.

So why don't we observe resurrections all the time in nature? Why don't bacteria, for example, spontaneously return to life after dying? That's many orders of magnitude more likely than abiogenesis, yet we have never observed it. That ought to tell you that abiogenesis is impossible. Generating life from non-life, like rising from the dead, requires supernatural activity.

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Note that this is a very straightforward and obvious logical argument. It will always be easier to do one step than to do that same step plus extra steps. Both abiogenesis and resurrection require turning non-life into life. That part is the same for both. But with abiogenesis, you don't have the parts present yet so you also have to build and arrange them. Thus, it is necessarily true that resurrection is easier and more likely than abiogenesis.

What continually boggles my mind is how hard the atheists fight this very straightforward logical deduction. I've posted this argument in multiple online groups, and I continually get atheists who deny that this is true. They consider abiogenesis a "scientific" pursuit and resurrection the crazy ramblings of religious people. They refuse to consider that it is necessarily easier to animate a dead organism with all the needed parts already present than to build the parts, get all of them present at the same time and properly arranged, and then animate it. They laugh at the idea of even a microbe coming back to life and accept abiogenesis as necessary in order to avoid God as Creator. And they think they're being the rational ones.

I can only conclude that rebellion against God forces people to descend into absurdity to avoid the obvious truth that there is a Creator to whom we owe honor and obedience. Rejecting God eventually means rejecting rationality.

The Biggest Mystery in the Bible

This is the lesson I taught the Children's Church class at my local church this past week. I thought others might find it useful for teaching their children as well.

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Today we're going to talk about the biggest mystery in the Bible. Did you know the Bible has mysteries? This one is the biggest mystery and remained a secret for thousands of years. But before I can tell you about the mystery, you need a little background information.

First, did you know that Jesus is in the Old Testament? The New Testament tells us about Jesus being born, growing up, teaching the people, dying, and rising again. But Jesus is God, and He already existed before He was born. He appeared several times in the Old Testament and talked to different people. 

Let's take a look at some of those times. 

Remember when God created Adam and Eve and put them in the garden, He told them not to eat of the fruit of just one tree. So then the serpent came and tempted Eve.

Genesis 3:6-8  So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 

Now, you probably know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin into the world. They had to leave the garden and the special relationship they had with God. 

But notice that God came to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve. How does God walk? Wouldn't He need a body of some kind in order to walk with Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve seem to have had a very close and personal relationship with God before sin, and He came and walked with them. 

I John 4:12 says that no one has seen God at any time. This must be talking about God the Father. No one has ever seen God the Father. But did anyone ever see Jesus? Yes. Jesus came to Earth and we know people saw Him and touched Him. The Holy Spirit is sometimes seen, but not as a man. He appears like a dove descending on Jesus at His baptism or as tongues of fire on the disciples of Jesus at Pentecost. But he's not a man. So if someone is seeing God and He looks like a man, it can't be God the Father or the Holy Spirit. It must be Jesus. So it sounds like Jesus is the one who came to walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the garden. He was there in the beginning.

But there's more. A lot more. 

Let's go to Genesis 18 when God comes to visit Abraham.

Genesis 18:1-22  And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him.
When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, "O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant."
So they said, "Do as you have said."
And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, "Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes."
And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
They said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?"
And he said, "She is in the tent."
The LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?" The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son."
But Sarah denied it, saying, "I did not laugh," for she was afraid. He said, "No, but you did laugh." Then the men set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way.
The LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him."
Then the LORD said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know." So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the LORD. 

After this, Abraham talks to God and asks Him if He will spare Sodom if there are still righteous people in it. He starts by asking if He will spare them if there are 50 righteous, then 45, then 40, then 30, then 20, then 10. So God promises not to destroy Sodom if there are even 10 righteous people in it.  

The text is clear that this is actually God speaking to Abraham, not just an angel. It says this was the LORD, which is the specific name of God, Yahweh. Yet He looked like a man. He even ate with Abraham. A vision can't eat food. He had to have some sort of body. 

Have you ever seen a cartoon where a ghost tries to eat food and the food just plops on the floor because he has no stomach to hold it? That is what would happen if there's no physical body. But that's not what happened here. God ate food with Abraham. 

So which person of the Trinity would this be -- God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit? This would be God the Son. He appeared as a man. This is Jesus in the Old Testament. 

Ok, so now that we know that Jesus appears as a man in the Old Testament and is identified as God, let's get back to the mystery. Remember that Jesus was prophesied throughout the Old Testament, that He would come and be God with us and save us from our sins. So the whole Old Testament is building up expectations for the Messiah. He was coming, but they had an incomplete picture of who He was. 

Take a look at Genesis 32. This takes place when Jacob, Abraham's grandson, is finally coming home to his family. His brother Esau hated him and wanted to kill him after he tricked him out of his birthright and blessing. Jacob went far away and he had been away a long time. But he's coming home and he doesn't know whether Esau is still angry with him. So he sends gifts ahead and then sends his family on ahead, and he stays alone on the other side of the river. 

Genesis 32:24-30  And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
Then he said, "Let me go, for the day has broken." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."
Then he said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed."
Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him.
So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered." 

So Jacob wrestles with a man, but then the man says that Jacob has wrestled with God. Jacob asks the man's name, but He won't tell him. It's not time yet for anyone to know His name -- the name of the coming One. 

It happens again in the book of Judges. The parents of Samson get a special visit.

Judges 13:2-22  There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, "Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines."
Then the woman came and told her husband, "A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name, but he said to me, 'Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.'" 
Then Manoah prayed to the LORD and said, "O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born." 
And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, "Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me."
And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to this woman?"
And he said, "I am."
And Manoah said, "Now when your words come true, what is to be the child's manner of life, and what is his mission?"
And the angel of the LORD said to Manoah, "Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful. She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe."
Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "Please let us detain you and prepare a young goat for you." And the angel of the LORD said to Manoah, "If you detain me, I will not eat of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, then offer it to the LORD." (For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the LORD.)
And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?"
And the angel of the LORD said to him, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?"
So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the LORD, to the one who works wonders, and Manoah and his wife were watching. And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the LORD went up in the flame of the altar. Now Manoah and his wife were watching, and they fell on their faces to the ground. The angel of the LORD appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the LORD. And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, for we have seen God."  

So it says here that the angel of the LORD appeared to Manoah and his wife, but then this person is identified as God. This happens again and again in the Old Testament. This "angel of the LORD" is identified as God Himself, not just an angelic being. But notice that they ask His name and He won't tell them. He says it is wonderful. In some translations, it says secret. It is not something that has been revealed yet. It's a mystery. 

So this is the biggest mystery in the Bible. The Old Testament reveals that there is this person coming to be the Messiah, but they didn't know His name. 

There's yet another time this mystery is pointed out.

Proverbs 30:2-4  Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely you know!

This is an interesting and unusual prophecy. He says he is ignorant of something important. He's lacking some knowledge. He asks a series of questions, which can only apply to God. God is the one who controls the winds and the waters and established the ends of the Earth. But then he asks what is the name of this God and what is His Son's name. So God has a Son. This is revealed to us in the Old Testament, long before Jesus was born. But they don't know His name. It's a mystery.

This question hangs unanswered for thousands of years. Adam and Eve walked and talked with Him. Abraham ate with Him. Jacob wrestled with Him. He told Manoah and his wife about their son who would be born. He was prophesied to save the people from their sins. He would bear their iniquities and by His stripes they would be healed. He would come from Abraham and from the line of Judah and then from the line of David. He would be a king forever. He would be pierced for their transgressions. He would be born in Bethlehem. All this and many other things had been prophesied about Him. But what was His name?

About 2,000 years ago, the mystery was finally revealed.

Luke 1:26-33  In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!"
But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 

So what was His name? Jesus. The most wonderful name of all time. Jesus means salvation. He came to save us from our sins. This was God's plan from the very beginning. He knew we needed a Savior. We can't save ourselves. Only God Himself could be the perfect sacrifice to take our place and be punished for our wrongdoing so that we could be forgiven. God gave us lots of information about the coming Messiah in the Old Testament so that we would know Him when He came. And finally, He came. He lived a perfect life. He died a horrible death on the cross. He rose from the dead. And now He offers us salvation if we simply trust Him. Salvation is His name. Jesus.