"I'm trying here to prevent anyone from 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 one thing we must not say.
A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said
would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic, on the level of which He was a poached egg,
or else He would be the devil of Hell.
You must make your choice: Either this Man is and was the Son of God,
or else 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 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."
This quote, by C.S Lewis, raises an important question:
Who was Jesus?
Was He a liar, a lunatic, or was He the LORD?
There is so much evidence
that may be used to find the true identity of Jesus.
This evidence convinces, without a shadow of a doubt,
the existence of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
So, was Jesus a liar?
We can see, through the scriptures, that Jesus knew who He really was.
Throughout Jesus's life,  we see that He claimed to be the Son of God.
John 5:18 says that this is why the Jews were seeking to kill Him:
Because, not only was He breaking the Sabbath,
according to them, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
Now, if He had claimed this, with no proof, He could've been charged with blasphemy.
That would not have been good for him, as it would've ended in his death.
But He doesn't just claim that He is God.
He used signs and miracles to convince people that He was in fact the Messiah.
Even the Jews couldn't deny that He had some sort of miraculous power.
They just called Him a sorcerer, that led much of Israel astray in later documents.
But John 10:30 says that Jesus is one with the Father.
Looking at this evidence, it is easy to conclude that He was not a liar.
So, if He wasn't a liar, perhaps He was a lunatic.
Let's look at Jesus's mental state when He claims to be God.
Was He insane, or was He actually God incarnate?
Many people who are insane can still act
normal while collecting huge crowds of followers.
So how does one know that Jesus wasn't one of these people?
Well, when looking at the insane, we often see that they are
emotionally imbalanced,
have fits of anger, depression, or anxiety.
But when we look at Jesus, we don't see any of this.
We see Him weeping at Lazarus' death,
which is completely normal, because anyone weeps when someone close to them dies.
John 11:34-35 says:
"He said, 'Where have you laid him?' They said to Him, 'Lord, come and see.' Jesus wept."
Jesus was also faced with persecution of the Pharisees,
and He stood strong through it.
Even while being flogged and hung on the cross, He didn't break down.
Looking at this evidence, we can see that Jesus was definitely not a lunatic.
So Jesus wasn't a liar or a lunatic.
So was He actually the LORD? We can look at the evidence
to see if a match can be made between Jesus and God.
Looking at Jesus, we need to find some sort of connection
between Him and God.
Jesus did miracles, such as raising Lazarus from the dead, and feeding 5,000
with only five loaves of bread and two fish.
He was also found sinless, which is definitely an attribute of God.
Another thing that He did was live in mortal perfection.
He did nothing that anyone could convict Him of wrongdoing with.
He even had the power to forgive sin!
Luke 7:82 says: "And He said to her, 'Your sins are forgiven you.'"
The even that greatest proves that Jesus is the Son of God
was His resurrection.
He was crucified, and in the time of 3 days was resurrected.
These all point to Jesus being the Son of God!
If that weren't enough,
We can also look to the messianic prophecies found in the Old Testament.
Such prophecies included that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem,
be exiled into Egypt, be crucified,
no bones broken at His death, and last, but not least,
He would be raised from the dead.
One of the other major prophecies is found in
Psalm 118:22-24.
This says: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
This is the LORD's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the LORD has made. Let us rejoice, and be glad in it."
This is saying that the Jews would reject the Messiah's teaching,
which the Jews did with the word of Jesus.
The evidence is conviction that Jesus is not a liar,
nor is He insane, but there is a match between Jesus and God.
The evidence proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus is, in fact, Messiah and LORD.
The only way to be saved is to trust in Him.
We must know His word, and obey His laws.
