Was Jesus who He said He was or was He a liar or a lunatic?
Some acknowledge Jesus as a historical figure and say he was a great man or a prophet, but not God in the flesh. This is not possible.
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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God’. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the 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 worse.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis, was a professor at Cambridge University
Is Jesus Christ God?
Jesus claimed to be God. He did not leave any other options. His claim to be must be either true or false. If Jesus claims are true, you must either accept or reject His lordship. We have provided on this website evidence that the Bible is true. If the Bible is true, then Jesus claims are true. After reading the information on this website, you have a choice what you do with the evidence. You can decide to reject it, or you can accept it and receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Not convinced Jesus is God? Let’s look at the other options.
Was Jesus a Liar?
If, when Jesus made His claims He knew that He was not God, then He was lying. This means He was also a hypocrite because He told others to be honest. He had to also be demonic because He told others to trust Him for their eternal destiny. He would also have to be a fool because it was His claims to being God that led to His crucifixion.
With the above information, how can people say that Jesus was a great moral man, a great teacher, a prophet, an example for all to follow? Yet, listen to what J.S. Mill, a philosopher, skeptic, and antagonist of Christianity has to say about Jesus:
About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight in the very first rank of men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed on earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching upon this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity…
Quote from Vernon C. Grounds. The Reason for Our Hope.
So what is true? Is Jesus a liar or Lord? Or maybe He was a lunatic.
Was Jesus a Lunatic?
Maybe Jesus though He was God, but mistaken. He could just be sincerely wrong. For someone to think He is God and to tell others to trust in Him for eternal life cannot be some kind of innocent fantasy. Jesus would have to be a lunatic.
Listen to what Even Channing, a Unitarian writer, says about the lunatic theory:
Quote from Phillip Schaff. The Person of Christ.
The charge of an extravagant, self-deluding enthusiasm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. Where can we find the traces of it in the history? Do we detect them in the claim of authority of His precepts? In the mild, practical and beneficent spirit of His religion; in the simplicity of the language with which He unfolds His high powers and the sublime truths of religion; or in the good sense, the knowledge of human nature. Point me, if you can, to one vehement, passionate expression of His religious feelings.
If Jesus is not Lord, is not a Liar, is not a Lunatic, maybe He did not exist in the first place.
Did Jesus Never Exist?
If you explore this website at all you will see there is plenty of evidence to show the validity of the Bible, thus Jesus did exist. But as a skeptic, you still do not believe in the Bible. So how about the Encyclopedia Britannica? Here is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica concerning the testimony of the many independent secular accounts of Jesus of Nazareth:
These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.
