The fact is, you said there were two facts that you went after.
And what were they again?
First one, did Jesus claim to be the Son of God?
And then secondly, did He back that up by returning from the dead?
Ankerberg.
All right.
How did you go about it?
Hitchcock.
Well, the first thing I did, John, I thought, well, a good historian probably
wants to go to the earliest sources.
And so I thought, well, what's the earliest biography of Jesus?
It's the Gospel of Mark, which most people believe was the first of the Gospels
written.
It was based on the eyewitness account of the apostle Peter.
So I open it up, and the first thing I notice is that Jesus, the most common way
He refers to Himself is not as the Son of God.
It's as the Son of Man.
So I said, well, case closed.
He never claimed to be the Son of God.
He's just saying, I'm the Son of Man.
I'm just like you and everybody else.
That's what I thought.
And then I delved deeper.
And what I found out is that when Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man,
He wasn't just claiming humanity.
He was claiming so much more than that.
Because what He was doing was applying to Himself the description of the Son of Man
that's found in the Bible, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament,
in Daniel chapter 7.
And if you look there, what you find are divine qualities to the Son of Man.
That is, He comes to judge all of humankind.
He has sovereignty, complete sovereignty and power.
He is worshipped by all people.
Only God is worshipped.
His kingdom will last forever.
I mean, these qualities that you read in Daniel chapter 7 are divine.
And so what Jesus is doing is applying that to Himself and saying, I am more than
just a man.
I am the Son of Man.
And so all of a sudden I'm like, whoa, okay, wait a minute, maybe there's
more.
One of my favorite examples of what He said, and this gets missed by a lot of
folks, I think, in Mark chapter 6, is where Jesus is walking on the water.
Everybody knows that story.
And most Bibles translate His words as saying, fear not, it is I.
But actually, I delve deeper, and what you find in the original Greek in which the
New Testament is written, what Jesus actually said was, fear not, I am.
But what is I am?
That is the way that God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus.
And so all of a sudden He's making another claim.
And then it becomes even more overt in His trial before Caiaphas, the high priest,
where you just ask Him point blank, are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed
One?
And the first two words out of Jesus' mouth are, I am.
Ankerberg.
Yeah, we need to slow that down.
Are you the Christ?
That's the Messiah, okay?
Are you the Son of the Blessed One?
They wouldn't say God because they just didn't do that in the Jewish culture.
The fact is, but that's what it meant.
Are you the Son of God as well?
Double header, He says, I am.
And then He adds something that goes even worse than that.
He does.
He says, and you will see me on the right hand of the Mighty One and coming in the
clouds of heaven.
That's coming in judgment.
That's coming to judge humankind.
Which is ironic, John, when you think about it, because in effect He was saying
to Caiaphas, oh, excuse me, you think you're trying me?
Quite the opposite is true here.
And so how does Caiaphas respond when Jesus, and by the way, that is a reference
to Daniel chapter 7.
He's applying that Son of Man to Himself.
And so how does Caiaphas understand what He says?
He declares blasphemy.
Why?
Because Jesus is claiming to be God.
It was clear to him, and it's clear as you read through the biographies of Jesus,
how this theme just repeats itself.
In John chapter 10, verse 30, Jesus says, I and the Father are one.
And the word in Greek for one there means one in essence.
And so how does the audience understand what Jesus is saying?
They pick up stones to kill Him.
Why?
Because they say, you, being a mere man, claim to be God.
They understood perfectly what He was saying, and they were going to kill Him
for it.
So I mean, I walked away from this, John, saying, wait a minute, Jesus at
least clearly made the claim that He is the Son of God.
That's clear.
Now, the next question is, did He back it up?
Because anybody, I could claim I'm the Son of God.
The question is, does He have any credentials to back it up?
And it's remarkable, John, this is back in the earliest records we have about Jesus.
This is not some legend that developed in the century or so after He died,
which is what I thought.
The idea that He was God, that He was claiming to be more than just a human
being, I thought this was stuff of legend and mythology that developed a long time
later.
We go back to the earliest records about Jesus.
From the get-go, He's making these extraordinary claims.
He's telling parables about the wicked tenants.
And the message of that parable that He tells is that He is the Son of God who was
sent and killed as a result.
Ankerbergsen Yeah, I like John A.T.
Robinson, the guy that helped start the Death of God movement and is redating the
Gospels.
He put this thing we're talking about, the Gospel of Mark, as early as 40.
Now, I'm saying, I'm not sure I agree with that, but the fact that it's at 40,
that's 10 years off the time Jesus in His resurrection.
I'm saying 10 years, man, these accounts that we're talking about of Jesus saying
these things are on the newsstands in Jerusalem.
And so you've got really solid evidence that Jesus claimed to be God.
Now when that struck into your mind, what did it do to you?
Ankerberg Yeah, and by the way, we even have earlier stuff than that
because we've got creeds of the early church that go back, which had this
annoying tendency as I looked at them to affirm that Jesus is the, you know,
the face of the invisible God, and it reaffirmed that He is divine.
And these are beliefs that go back even before Mark was written.
And...
Ankerberg I'm just saying, how did it hit you when you started, when this started to
dawn on you?
Ankerberg Well, first of all, I was surprised because again, I thought this
was going to take a couple of days for me to deal with and I'd be done with it.
But the more I looked at it, I thought, wait a minute, Son of Man, He's making a
divine claim.
Look at these parables He would tell that would position Himself in an extraordinary
manner superior to all human beings.
He is clearly, clearly saying something that is dramatic, that is powerful.
And the audience that He's talking to understood it that way.
You know, we can read it today and say, well, how do you get this?
But look at how the people reacted of His day.
They wanted to kill Him because He's