In this video, Dr. James Kennedy addresses the crucial question of who Jesus Christ is and how it separates Christianity from every man-made religion. He emphasizes that Jesus is not just a prophet or a good teacher, but that He is God Himself. Dr. Kennedy explains that the deity of Christ is essential for the redemption of the elect throughout the ages. He offers a booklet and cassette titled "How I Know Jesus is God" to help Christians effectively witness to cults and non-Christian groups.

Coming up next on Truths That Transform, the main difference between Christianity and every religion. Stay tuned. This is Truths That Transform, the daily radio program of Coral Ridge Ministries and Dr. D. James Kennedy. Dr. Kennedy's ministry is dedicated to spreading the gospel of Christ and applying the teaching of scripture to every area of life. Stay tuned for insights into the crucial issues facing the church in the 1990s and beyond. Almost 2,000 years ago, a unique figure appeared in Palestine, and the world has never been the same. He was known as Jesus of Nazareth, and today Christians know him as their Messiah. Who was this Jesus? That is the most important question you will ever answer. And it is the one which separates Christianity from every man-made religion. Let's join Dr. James Kennedy as he explains from the Bible who Jesus was and is. Who is Jesus Christ? Next to the question of whether or not there is a God, this is no doubt the most important question that can be urged upon the human mind. Who say ye that I am? Who is this one upon whom our hopes of heaven depend? Who is Jesus? What is meant by the term Son of God? It's interesting that in the motion picture by the title, Oh God, in that rather irreverent film, God is asked the question, Is Jesus your son? And the cigar-smoking God replies, Yes, Jesus is my son, and so is Buddha, and so is Mohammed, etc. Who is this Jesus of Nazareth? What does it mean that he called himself the Son of God? Now, he frequently called himself the Son of Man. That is a messianic title which is taken from the Old Testament book of Daniel, when he said, Ye shall henceforth see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of power and glory. The Son of Man coming to judge the world was an Old Testament picture of the Messiah. What did he mean by the Son of God? Well, the Jews had no difficulty understanding it. Whereas millions of Americans seemed quite perplexed and confused, the Jews knew quite well what he meant. And when he said that he was the Son of God, they took up stones to stone him. They became so enraged at this, and when he asked why they stoned him, for what good work, he said, they said it was not for any good work, but rather because thou being a man, makest thyself God, that by calling God your Father, you are making yourself equal with God. They understood well what that meant. Jesus Christ is God, not a mere created being. The Trinity does not consist of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the creature, but of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. This is the most basic, most important, most distinctive teaching of the Christian faith that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, God in human flesh. And only Jesus claimed to be divine, and only Christianity claims its founder is divine. Moses made no such claim, nor did Buddha, nor Mohammed, nor Lao Tse, nor Confucius, nor any other religious teacher, but only Jesus made that claim. It's also interesting to remember that many people today think that the essence of Christianity is the teaching of Jesus. That is not so. The teaching of Jesus is very, very secondary to Christianity. In fact, you might be surprised to know that if you read the epistles of the Apostle Paul, which make up most of the New Testament, there is almost nothing whatsoever said about the teachings of Jesus. Another remarkable thing is that although we in the ministry are repeatedly told in seminary that we are not to preach ourselves, and a very significant flaw in any minister's preaching is the continual preaching of himself and what he does and his accomplishments and so on, this is considered to be totally out of place in the pulpit. And yet, Jesus Christ, the master preacher, the great exemplar, constantly preached himself. I am the good shepherd. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. I am the door. I, I, I. Christ was always preaching himself, because it is in the person of Christ that our hope of salvation is to be found. I want you to understand something about Jesus Christ. Many people today say that Jesus was a good man. I want to say categorically that that is a lie. Jesus Christ was not a good man. Do you remember when somebody came to him and said, good master, and he said stop right there? Or an old English equivalent. Why callest thou me good? He had just gotten through teaching that all men were sinful. And someone comes and calls him good. Jesus said, why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. So you see, he hung him up on the horns of a dilemma. If Jesus were merely a man, then he was not good, for he had just gotten through teaching that all men were sinful. If Jesus were good, then he was God, because he had just gotten through teaching that there is only one that is good, and that is God. If Jesus is good, he is God. If Jesus is not God, he is not good. C.S. Lewis of Oxford puts that, I think, in very memorable language for us. He says, I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him. Quote, I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claims to be God. That is the one thing we must not say, says C.S. Lewis. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who thinks that 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 he was a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall down on your feet and worship him as the Lord and God. But let us not come up with any of this patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us, and he did not intend to do so. Jesus was either God or he was not a good man. He said that he was the only way to heaven, that all that trusted in him would be everlastingly saved, and that if anybody denied him, that he would be denied before the Father and would be shut out from paradise. Based upon those teachings, countless millions of people suffered the agonies of the arena. They were covered with tar and lighted as torches for Nero's garden. They were placed in sacks with vipers. They were thrown to the lions. They were killed in a thousand different ways that the depravity of man could invent. If Jesus was not all of that, then he was a great demon or an arch deceiver of all times. But the Christian church, in all of its branches, all historic Christian denominations, and I say it that way to merely exclude the cults, but all historic Christian churches have held that Jesus Christ was 100% divine and 100% human. He was God and he was man. He was the Theanthropos, the God-man. I say that all churches, whether Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist or Congregational or Lutheran or Episcopalian or Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other, they have all held that, excepting the cults. And one of the sure signs of a cult is the denial that Jesus Christ is truly God. But, you say, what does the Bible say? For that is our ultimate and final authority. Well, let me share with you some of the scriptural teaching, some of which you may never have noticed before. I hope that here will be some unusual evidences as well as some of the more common. In Matthew 1.23, that the virgin was to bring forth a child whose name was to be called Emmanuel, which is being interpreted God with us. So in the very naming of the babe, he was God with us, God in human form. And in the first chapter, in the first verse of the most popular of all of the Gospels, the Gospel of John, we read, In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, which became flesh and dwelt among us, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. In the beginning was the Word, Christ, and the Word was with God, the Father, and the Word was God. And all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Jesus Christ also said, I and the Father are one. And he said, Before Abraham was, I am, indicating his eternity. In Colossians 2.9, we read, For in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form. And the doubter Thomas, after Christ rose from the dead, when he showed him his pierced hands and side, he fell at his feet and he said, My Lord and my God. O kurios mu kai theos mu, the Lord and God of me. And in Titus 2.13, he is called the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And even the Father himself, in the first chapter of Hebrews, after he has been speaking about the angels, speaks about the Son. And this is what he says. This is what the Father in heaven thinks about Jesus, regardless of what Americans think. This is what the Father says. Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. And in 1 John 5.20, speaking of Jesus Christ, it says, This is the true God and eternal life. So we see that the scriptures very clearly teach that Jesus is God. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Prince of Peace, the Mighty God, the El Gibor. And some other perhaps less widely understood evidence are the fact that in the New Testament, all of the attributes of deity are ascribed to Jesus Christ. Many people miss this. Is the Father eternal? Out of Bethlehem, we are told, there is to come that one, quote, whose goings forth have been from everlasting, from old, even from everlasting, that the babe of Bethlehem is one who is eternally old when he is born. Is the Father omnipresent? Jesus said, Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am. Not I will be, but I am. Jesus is there, demonstrating his omnipresence, one of the attributes of deity. Is the Father immutable, unchangeable, one of the great attributes of deity? The scripture says of Jesus as well, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Is the Father almighty? Creation demands omnipotence, yet the Bible says, All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Not only did he create all things, but he upholds them by the word of his power. By him all things consist. Is the Father the most high judge of all? The scripture says that all judgment is given into the hands of the Son, and that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And so we see that all of the attributes of deity are ascribed to Jesus Christ, except one. And that is the attribute of invisibility. And of course the reason for that is that Jesus Christ came to manifest the Father, and to make him plain, that in him we see the image of the eternal God. So this is a compelling evidence for the deity of Jesus Christ. There is another interesting evidence that most people probably have never seen, and that is that there are repeated scriptures in the Old Testament, which are prophecies of the coming Christ, which are fulfilled in the New Testament by Jesus, but in the Old Testament they are referring to Jehovah. For example, in Isaiah we read, The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. And the word Lord there is the word Lord in all capitals, which in the English version means that the Hebrew word is Yahweh or Jehovah. Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The very same thing which John the Baptist attributed to Jesus when he said in Matthew 3, This is he of whom it was spoken by the prophet Isaiah saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. This is he who Jehovah come into our midst. And another fascinating one, there are a great many, and let me say this, the biblical evidence for the deity of Christ is so voluminous that I do not have time to present to you even one-tenth of the evidence that is there. But one other verse of this sort, in Zechariah 12, we read, That I Jehovah who poureth forth his spirit from the heavens, I Jehovah am he whom they shall look upon and whom they have pierced. And in the New Testament we read, and again in another scripture they said, And they shall look upon him whom they have pierced. And this is referring in the New Testament to Christ. But in the Old Testament it is Jehovah whom they shall look upon whom they have pierced. Who is Jehovah? Jehovah is the triune God. The Father is Jehovah. The Son is Jehovah. The Holy Spirit is Jehovah, the Great I Am. Another evidence often missed is the fact that though the Bible repeatedly says that we are to worship God only and that no mere creature is ever to be worshipped, and the angel, you will recall, jerked John unto his feet and said that he was not to worship an angel for he was a servant like unto him but to worship God, and that to worship any creature is by definition blasphemy. And yet we find that in the scripture Jesus Christ repeatedly over and over and over again received and even blessed the worship of men. We are told that he was worshipped by the Magi, worshipped by the leper, worshipped by the ruler, worshipped by the disciples, worshipped by the woman of Tyre, worshipped by Salome, worshipped by the women and the disciples after the resurrection, worshipped over and over again. And if Jesus were merely a creature, something less than God, he would have been receiving and blessing the blasphemy of men. As he said to Thomas when he fell before him and said, My Lord and my God, Jesus said to him, Blessed art thou. Ah, my friends, Jesus is God. For were he not God, he could not be our Savior. The scripture makes it very plain that no man can redeem his brother. No mere man could pay the penalty for the sins of all of the world. It took an infinite person, the God-man, to do that. No mere man could hear the prayers of his people or answer them. Can you imagine, right this day, there are hundreds of millions of people lifting up their hearts and voices in prayer to Jesus Christ in countless hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of languages. How does he understand all of those? If indeed he had taken a quick course in all of the languages of the world and mastered each one, how does he hear them, millions at one time? He could not answer our prayers, much less hear them, if he were not God. The great pulpiteer Alexander White of Scotland said, The longer I live, the firmer is my faith rooted in the Godhead of my Redeemer. No one short of the Son of God could meet my case. I must have one who is able to save to the uttermost. Yes, my friends, Jesus Christ is God. Even the brilliant Napoleon, who in his days of exile gave himself to studying the Scripture, could conclude, I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no man. Superficial minds may see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. My friend, who do you say that Jesus is? Can you say with Thomas, My Lord and my God, have you come to know him as your divine Redeemer that took upon himself there at Calvary all of the guilt of all of your sins and suffered there at the hands of his own beloved Father the wrath that sin deserves that you and I may be spared and may be taken to Paradise? If you would ever live at that address, which is God's, it will only be when you receive him who is the way, the truth, and the life, and without whom no man will enter into Heaven. Who do you say that Jesus is? Jesus Christ is Lord. He is God. And because of that, we can be assured that he accomplished perfectly the work for which he came, the redemption of the elect throughout the ages. The title of our message is, How I Know Jesus is God. If you would like a copy, write down that title along with our address and phone number. The printed copy contains information which we did not have time for today. And it's available when you write and request the booklet of How I Know Jesus is God. Also, if you would like an audio tape copy of today's program, include a donation of $5 or more and ask for the cassette of How I Know Jesus is God. Our address is Trues that Transform, Box 33, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 33302. When making your gift using the convenience of MasterCard or Visa, you may call any weekday between 8 and 5, Eastern Time, 1-800-229-WORD. Again, specify whether you would like the booklet or the cassette of How I Know Jesus is God. As I said to begin the program, the question of who Jesus is separates Christianity from all man-made religions. Many groups use the name of Jesus, but they refuse to accept that he is God in the way the Bible says he is. The key thing to remember is that as Christians, we are called to witness for the real Jesus to all whom we meet. But many Christians are intimidated when it comes to confronting the cults. That's why we have a book offer today to help you do it effectively. It's titled Coping with the Cults, and it will be sent to those who ask for it when sending a donation of $7 or more. Former Jehovah's Witness, Laurie McGregor, begins with a chapter on how to identify a cult, proceeds through several chapters on specific movements and non-Christian groups, and concludes with a defense of the deity of Christ and how to witness to cultists. As John Ankerberg has said, this is truly a helpful and practical resource, and it's yours when you donate $7 or more to the ongoing ministry of Truths that Transform. Write to Truths that Transform, Box 33, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 333-02, or call toll-free between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, 1-800-229-WORD. The book's title again is Coping with the Cults. Write Truths that Transform, Box 33, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 333-02, or call 1-800-229-9673. Tomorrow, Laurie McGregor is our special guest as we continue on our annual two-week series on the cults. Until then, for James Kennedy, this is Bob Allen. God bless you, and have a wonderful, wonderful day.