The Christ in Prophecy Journal

The Divinity of Jesus: Myth or Reality? (Part 1 of 3)

The Deity of Jesus

Was Jesus really God in the flesh, or was His divinity simply something that His superstitious disciples dreamed up?

The divinity of Jesus is the central truth of the Bible. It is so fundamental that Christianity stands or falls on it. If Jesus was not God in the flesh, then His sacrifice for our sins was meaningless and we have no hope.

The divinity of Jesus is the central truth of the Bible. It is so fundamental that #Christianity stands or falls on it. If #Jesus was not #God in the flesh, then His sacrifice for our sins was meaningless and we have no hope. Click To Tweet

Satan is absolutely determined to convince mankind that Jesus was someone other than God in the flesh.

When Jesus came the first time, a few recognized Him as the prophet that Moses spoke of back in the book of Deuteronomy. Many thousands of years ago Moses said to the children of Israel before they entered the Promised Land, “A day will come when the Lord will raise up a prophet among you.” And, when Jesus performed many of His miracles, such as the feeding of the 5,000, they would come up to Him and ask, “Are you the prophet?” Jesus knew exactly what they were asking. They also asked John the Baptist, “Are you the prophet?” John the Baptist was a prophet, but He denied being the prophet because he knew what they were talking about when they asked, “Are you the prophet?” It was clearly a reference to the Messiah.

Most of the people in Jesus’ time were ambivalent about His identity. For example, some said He was simply a good man. Others believed He was a reincarnation of John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets. Some said He was the illegitimate child of fornication. And, some said He was a Samaritan with a demon. All of these you will find in the Scriptures.

Nothing has changed in 2,000 years! The satanic attack continues to this day.

Liberal theologians tend to dismiss Jesus as simply a good man. These are people who still claim to be Christians! They say, “Well, Jesus was just a good man, but He certainly was a person who was not God in the flesh, and if He thought that He was deceived.”

The greatest apologist of the twentieth century and one of the greatest defender of the Christian faith was C.S. Lewis. He actually didn’t become a Christian until he was in his 30’s. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis dealt decisively with the issue of those who say, “Yes, Jesus was a great man, a good man, but that’s all He ever was.” Here is what Lewis wrote:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. No, he would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman, or something else. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him ‘Lord and God.’ But, let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

All Christian cults today deny Jesus Christ’s supreme divinity. The Mormons, for example, claim Jesus was the brother of Lucifer, one of several thousand gods created by the “Super God.” Modern-day Hollywood has desecrated Jesus in movie after movie after movie.

The book The Jesus Mysteries goes to the extreme of claiming that Jesus was nothing but a myth and that He never really existed, despite the fact that there are few persons in ancient history for which there is more written, along with eyewitness accounts. The author claims that Jesus was nothing but a figment of His disciples’ imaginations!

As we near the time of Jesus’ return, the attacks on Him and His identity will intensify. Satan knows Bible prophecy. He can see the signs of the times that indicate that we are living in the season of the Lord’s return. And, as those signs intensify and have intensified, Satan has launched an all-out campaign to convince the world that Jesus is a fraud. Over and over he has done this.

For example, Satan rallied a group of so-called New Testament scholars who formed a discussion group known as The Jesus Seminar. Every member was a seminary professor claiming to be a Christian. They would meet say once every three months, and what they would do is they would assign everybody in the seminar several chapters from the Gospels to read. Then they would come together three months later, and they would vote on every saying of Jesus from their assigned Scripture. Every verse was voted on.

The members passed an offering plate around. If you believed that Jesus did not say that verse, you would put a black bean into the plate. If you believed He might have said it, you put in a grey bean. If you think He probably said it, you put in a pink bean. And, if you think He actually said it, you’d put in a red bean.

As a result of all that voting on every statement that Jesus made, The Jesus Seminar put out a book called The Five Gospels in which they concluded that there are only… 15 statements in the Gospels that Jesus actually said! They concluded that everything else Jesus said His disciples had made up. So, in The Lord’s Prayer, they said the only thing He said was “Our Father Who Art in Heaven” and they simply made up the rest of the prayer.

These people are teaching in our seminaries! These are people who claim to be Christians. The reason the book is called The Five Gospels is because they also concluded that the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, which was completely rejected by the Early Church, was the most reliable of all the Gospels, calling it a Gnostic Gospel. They believed this Gnostic Gospel should have been included in the New Testament as one of the Gospels.

Actually, there is an irony in these attacks, for they are evidence that Jesus was really God in the flesh. Why else would Satan motivate such attacks? We don’t see similar attacks on Mohammed, or Buddha, or Krishna. Nor do we hear their names being used as a curse word. Why is it that worldwide the name of Jesus is used as a curse word? The only explanation I can think of is a supernatural one, namely, Satan is actively involved in motivating universal hatred of Jesus because he knows that Jesus was and is God in the flesh.

In the second segment of this look into whether Jesus was truly deity or not, we’ll explore the biblical evidence.

Resource

David Reagan’s entire presentation, along with the other powerful ones made by Kelly Shackelford, Mike Gendron, Eric Barger, Mike Riddle and Ron Rhodes, are included in the Contending for the Faith 2019 Bible Conference video album. Get your copy today!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

RELATED ARTICLES

ABOUT AUTHOR View all posts Author Website

Dr. David Reagan

Dr. David Reagan is the Founder and Evangelist Emeritus of Lamb & Lion Ministries. He is a life-long Bible student, teacher, and preacher and he led over 45 pilgrimages to Israel. Dr. Reagan was the host of the radio then television program Christ in Prophecy for nearly 40 years.

1 CommentLeave a Comment

LEAVE A REPLY

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *