To elwill:
Allow me to respond to your points one by one…
First, you again run away from the intellectual dishonesty in claiming Jesus never said He was God. You jump again, pointing to passages where Christ gives credit to the Father to something. Aside from the fact that’s misunderstanding the roles of the Trinity, you’re again ignoring the passages wherein Christ gives Himself power that only God can have, and credits Himself something only God could. You’re simply picking and choosing scripture while ignoring the focus of the argument. I’m sorry - to argue Christ never said He was God while at the same time admitting Christ never said He was prophet or messenger but claiming that proves your point is to be intellectually dishonest and is further proof of eisegesis.
Second, in response to the quotation of John 8:58, you ask “is ‘i am’ a name or present tense?” With all due respect, I’ve explained that
ad nauseum so that even a five-year old can understand. You have been given all the facts before you, now it is your God-given duty to respond. To respond with more questions is, I think every one can see, is to avoid giving a response to what you know deep down is true.
Third, you respond to Christ’s statement regarding Himself in John 6 with: “maybe he meant his divine massage and teaching and wisdom.” That’s a common tactic by some Muslim apologists to put the words “his message” in there…but the text never does that. Christ never says “My message came down from heaven,” He says in the text “I came down from heaven.” While it is true He was born in the Virgin Mary’s womb, that was how the Eternal Word entered into creation (John 1:1-5, 14). Again, what prophet would ever speak in such a way as Christ does there?
Fourth, in response to Christ’s reference to Himself as the resurrection, you, quite frankly, blow a gasket. And I think you know why - because you can’t argue with it. Christ isn’t saying, “belief in me as a prophet,” nor “belief in my message.” He is quite literally saying, “
I am the resurrection.” Again, Jews like Martha would have believed this to be something only associated with God, and Christ here associates it with Himself. Therefore, to throw out a bunch of questions, jump to other passages, and declare “it’s not clear for me!” is simply blustering because deep down you know the truth and are trying to conceal it.
Fifth, you say that you have no problem Jesus was a great prophet, but you seem unable to understand that
no great prophet ever claimed the power to forgive sins. Even your own prophet Mohammad taught a doa wherein it is said that only God had the power to forgive sins. Therefore when you say you have no problem that Christ has authority, you seem to forget that this authority (which He claims for Himself) is something that only God had. Either the Pharisees were right and Christ was blaspheming against God, or Christ had good reason to say what He did because as fully man and fully God He had the power to forgive sins.
Sixth, you say that I quoted a verse of Jesus praying to God - but therein you show basically that you covering your eyes and ears and ignoring everything we’re saying. Let’s review the passage again:
“Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” [John 17:5; NASB]
Again, Christ is asking the Father to glorify Him with Himself, and with the glory which Christ had with the Father
before the world was. Name me one prophet which not only asked for equal glory with God, but claimed to have had that glory before the world even existed. I think you will find none, because if a mere prophet had ever said such a thing, he would have been a great blasphemer.
Seventh…well, when you suddenly use caps, punctuation and perfect English I can tell you are merely copying and pasting from a website. I really wish you’d give
the original source credit rather than trying to pass it off as your own (especially since I didn’t mention Matt 28:17 at all, which gives it away). As it stands, your argument says “check Strong’s concordance!” and gives a link. You should have probably checked the link first, however, because do you know what the first word in Strong’s concordance on the link supplied is?
worship.
The word you refer to is only the root word, and from there come the various different forms, all of which mean worship. And those forms, often said in reference to God (Rev 11:16), are also said in reference to Christ (Matt 14:33). Yet the only people to refuse such worship are Peter, the angel, and generally people we know weren’t God. Either Christ was like Satan and enjoyed basking in the worship meant for God, or He accepted worshiped meant for God because, as the Incarnate Word, He was fully God and deserved such worship.
Also, I’m curious if you’ve looked into Christ’s quotation of Daniel yet, and what your thoughts on it are.
My point, to answer Flower’s question now, is that (1) it’s totally uncool to ignore one’s own ugly history, and (2) it’s totally uncool to selectively quote the Koran in the same way that atheists selectively quote the Bible.
