Does God change the names of people in the Bible?

That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity.

Well, hi, I'm Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the

Bible and the Christian life every day. We'd love to hear from you, and here's our phone number.

It's 833-3-the-Core. That's 1-833-843-243-2673. You can also email us your question at

Questions at Core Christianity.com, and you can post your question on one of

our social media sites as well. First up, let's go to a voicemail we receive from one of our listeners

named Brian. Why did God change Abraham's name from Abram to Abraham? And I think also he changed Jacobs name to Israel.

And I was just curious, you know, what his reason was for that.

Thank you.

Yes.

This is a great question.

Why does God change people's names in the Bible?

You think of the Book of Acts, for example, where you have

Saul of Tarsus, whose name is changed to Paul, and he becomes the Apostle Paul. And then, of course,

in Genesis chapter 17, Abram, his name is changed to Abraham. And then in Genesis chapter 32,

Jacob, his name is changed to Israel. Well, just, I think, one, on a surface level, we know that names have to do with identity. And so I think one thing we can

say, and this really relates to us in our own individual walks with the Lord as well, is that when an individual has an encounter with the true and the living God, there's this change.

There's this change in identity, we might say.

There's a new name that's given, a new name that's bestowed.

In Genesis chapter 17, with regard to Abraham, the name

change has to do with the fact that Abraham was going to be a father of a multitude, multitude of

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