Jesus is believed to be a prophet,
I would like to quote for you a small extract from the book “Life of Christ” by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (I would recommend this book to everyone, it is quite large, but every page is priceless).
*"A fourth distinguishing fact about Christ is that He does not fit, as the other world teachers do, into the established category of a good man. Good men do not lie. But if Christ was not all that He said He was, namely, the son of the living God, the Word of God in the flesh, then He was not “just a good man”; then He was a knave, a liar, a charlatan and the greatest deciever who ever lived. If He was not what He said He was, the Christ, the son of God, He was the anti-Christ! If He was only a man, then He was not even a “good” man.
But He was not only a man. He would have us either worship Him as true God and true man. That is the alternative He presents. It may very well be that those who reject Christ completely are closer to Him than those who see Him as a sentimentalist and a vague moral reformer. The ones who reject him have at least decided that if He wins, they lose; the others are afraid to consider him as either winning or losing, because they are not prepared to meet the moral demands which this victory would make on their souls."*
C.S. Lewis also had another good one in his book “Mere Christianity”
*"One part of the claim that tends to slip by unnoticed because we have heard it so many times, is Jesus’ claim to forgive sins; any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comical, we can all understand how a man forgives offenses commited against himself (you tread on my toes and I forgive you). But what should we make of a man, himself untrodden on, who announced he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes? Asinine fatuity is teh kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtably injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the praty chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses.
This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other charecter in history.
Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is ‘humble and meek’ and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last charecteristics we could attribute to some of his sayings.
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 on thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher or prophet. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who say’s 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 mad man 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 at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher or prophet. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." *
Thank you for reading
Josh
