Occasionally, I read of efforts being made to unite the key world religions, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. That is, to form a world religion, take the best from each one, and then unite that into one big world religion. What I find unbelievable is that the suggestion is accepted and comes from within, some within the Christian religion. It's a good idea, they say. My first reaction is, you have to be out of your mind. There's no way in the world that this can be done. I don't think it should even be thought about, it should even be attempted. For what are we supposed to do with Jesus Christ, because he's going to be the obstacle for Christianity to be absorbed into the other religions. And all agree, Jesus Christ becomes the obstacle. Not too long ago, I looked at the religious section in the Houston Chronicle. Came across an article that was entitled, The Gospel Truth. Then underneath that was this caption, Will Christians Accept a revolutionary portrait of Jesus. Maybe Jesus is going to be the problem, the sticking point for us to be absorbed into all the other world religions. Now this article is primarily about a man named John Crossman who was a professor of religion at DePaul University and a former Roman Catholic priest. He's at the head of a movement to reassess the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and to see if they're true. And according to him, they're not. That is, Jesus is not all Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John says He is to be. And goes on to say that if Jesus wasn't the person described by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then who was He? pardon the crossman, he was just a mortal man. He was born as any other man, no Gorgonborough. He did not perform miracles, thus no Lazarus, no Lowe's and Fishers and no Lepers. He did not undergo a resurrection, thus no Easter. And after his death on the cross, he was probably eaten by wild dogs. Now, this man heads up what's going to become known as the Jesus Seminar, which is now nine years old, and it's a collection of self-appointed, self-avowed, self-accepted biblical scholars. I say they're intellectual fools, but anyway, that's what they call them in the article, scholars who get together twice a year to debate the truthfulness of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. At the recent meeting they studied all the sayings of Christ, and we're dealing with those now in this series, but just the question part of the series deals with those sayings of questions. But they took all the sayings, which in some Bibles is printed in red, and they considered the 1,500 sayings of Christ and came to the conclusion that 82% of that which Jesus is supposed to have said, He never said. They even said you need to throw out the entire book of John. Don't even put that one in your Bible, because that does not even belong there. Now, Crossman makes this comment about those who respond to his teachings and his ideas. He says, I get lots of letters from people saying, thank you, Mr. Crossman. After reading your book, I no longer have to park my brains outside the church. Of course, implying that anybody with any sense would know that he's right, that the things we say about Jesus are absurd. They could never happen. They're impossible. Now, following this article, I want to look at the 14th question that Jesus asked in the book of Luke. Of course, they would say he never even asked it. But I say he did. You can take my word for it. I say, I'm a great scholar. I'm a well, well, well-renowned, known biblical scholar. I'm the greatest scholar in all the world. You say you're not. Well, I can say I am. I just appointed myself that and gave myself that title. Now, I am a greater scholar than Crossman. I am qualified. Well, my word's as good as his, you know. Anyway, that's what I say. I can get my wife to agree with me, that's two. I can get my children to agree with me, that's three more. I mean, I can get some people to follow me and say, hey, he's a great scholar. So I'll just challenge Crossman this morning in this area of scholarship. I went to school. I got some degrees. I mean, nothing, but I'm a great scholar. So I'll give you my scholarship against their scholarship. So let's go to the question that Jesus now asks, which is our fourteenth question. He said to his disciples, Who do you say I am? Whom do you say I am? Now when considering Christianity as your choice of religions that you can choose from, I think this is the key question. This is the great question. What can Jesus do for me, Buddha can? What can Jesus do for me that nobody else can do? Why should I follow Jesus Christ rather than some other person and their philosophy of life and death? The Hindu says, why should I follow Jesus? I am not going to allow some self-appointed group of scholars to tell me what part of the Bible I should and should not believe and which is right and which is wrong. I'm not going to accept it. For in the first place, everything involved in Christianity's connection with Jesus Christ is based on faith. Faith based on the record we have about Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And if you believe what the Gospels say, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if you believe what the Gospels say about Jesus, then I think you're wise. If you don't believe them, then I think you're a fool. If you don't believe them, then you can make Jesus out to be any kind of person you want Him to be. He's a nobody. I wouldn't want to follow Him. He's just a nobody. Now, not believing he says certain things can really make a difference with what you decide about him, what you decide to do with him, how you decide to think about him. Who do you say I am? For instance, John 3, 16 through 18, 36, for God so loved the world, do you believe that? That He gave His only begotten Son, you believe that? That whoso believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That makes Christ required for that eternal life. You believe that? They don't. The Crossman group don't. The scholars don't. For God sent not His Son to the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believes on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. He that believes on the Son has everlasting life, and he that does not believe on the Son shall not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. I would say the wrath of God abides on all ye so-called sellers. Now such statements that I just read to you from the book of John, which they have thrown out of their Bible, make it very crucial as to what you do with Jesus Christ in your life. Who do you say Jesus is? The Bible says He is your only hope for salvation. He is your only hope for eternal life. He is your only chance. Now, I believe that by faith. The Bible is correct. Now, before Jesus asks His disciples this question, He had already done some things which would normally influence their answer. In other words, during the time that he had spent with them, he had revealed that he was a little bit unique. He was unlike other men in many ways. He was doing things that nobody had ever done prior to him, and nobody has ever been able to do since him. That ought to raise some kind of curious questions. He healed countless numbers of people. Blinded eyes were opened, deaf ears were made to hear, the cripples were made to walk, not one or two, but I mean hundreds and probably thousands. He cast demons out of people out of command. He fed 5,000 on several occasions by reproducing a few loaves and fishes. He raised the dead three times. He was able to read minds and read thoughts. He knew a past history of people he had never met. Remember when they were in the storm, and the waves came up, and the wind came up, and Jesus just spoke a word and stilled the storm, and stilled the wind, and the water calmed down? How many of you can do that? Have you ever seen anybody can do that? We all run from a hurricane. Jesus goes out there and says, oh, hurricane stops. And it stops. I mean, who can control nature like that? Well, anyway, after he had stilled the storm and the water was calm, the disciples looked at each other and asked this question among themselves, Who is this man? Well, that's the test question that Jesus is asking now. Who is this man? So Jesus knew they were going to have to come up with some kind of answer. They asked the question, Who are you? Now he's asking the same question to them. Who do you say I am? Do you boys have an answer yet? And, of course, he wanted them to come up with the correct answer. That's important. It wasn't too long ago, and they asked that question, who is this man? Now, if you had seen all the things that they had seen, heard all the things they had heard, what would you answer him? If he asked you, who do you say I am? If you had seen everything they had seen, why he looked like other men, he wore the same kind of clothes as other men, He walked and talked just like other people do. Ate the same food. Slept just like everybody else. I mean, what would be your answer? Who do you say I am? He was a man, but he was doing a lot of things a man can't do. Would you entertain the idea at all? Would it even come to your imagination that maybe this man, maybe this man is God? Could it be possible that this man, he's doing things only God can do. He's doing things that no other man could ever do. Would you entertain the idea that this man, because of what you see he could do, that this man might be more than man? That he might also be God? And so he asked the question of his disciples after they had been given quite a bit of schooling information. He says, now, test question, who do you say I am? It was Peter who came up with the answer first. And Peter answered him and said, you are the Christ of God. You are the Christ of God. Now, Christ is not a name. Christ is a title. The word Christ really means Messiah. Now, what Peter concluded was that, yes, this is a man of God, and yes, you are the one that has been promised. You are that Messiah. And, of course, as a Messiah, they would expect that he could do things that other people had not done, but not on the par level that Jesus was doing them. God had chosen and anointed this one as He had chosen and anointed other ones for a special task. But Peter said, this man outpaces Samson. I mean, this man outperforms Elisha. This man outperforms David, and they were all anointed. I mean, I've never seen anybody do what this man did as an anointed servant of God. Now the disciples had started to follow Jesus just thinking that he was that anointed Messiah that would deliver the nation Israel from their captive Roman enemies. Because the word Messiah just means the anointed one. And all the prophets and all the priests and all the kings were anointed and assigned a various position and anointed with the ability to carry out certain functions, whatever their anointing was. But Jesus was not like these other fellows. He seemed to have an anointing that was far superior to any anointing that they had ever read about or heard about in the past history. So they said, Jesus is the Messiah. We don't question He's been anointed. I mean, but the anointing, He's God. Boy, this amazes us. And so when Jesus asked His disciples who they thought He was, I think Peter inspired, or God inspired, the mind of Peter to come up with the correct answer. Read the same answer in Matthew's Gospel instead of Luke's. Chapter 16, verse 15 and 17, Jesus asked the question, Who do you say I am? And Peter answered, Thou art Christ. Notice in this one, though, what it says, Thou art Christ, the Son. the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you, but my Father which is in heaven. Now, when you speak of Jesus as being the Son of God, you are saying Jesus is divine. He, too, was God. The term Son denotes equality. It does not no origin of existence. It's a term of relationship. And so Peter, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, came to the conclusion that this anointed Messiah standing before them was God. He was not just a man anointed with some ability, but this man was anointed God's Son. Now, this was no new idea. It was clearly foretold in the Old Testament by numbers of prophecies, but it similarly was a truth overlooked or just people could not believe it or it was misunderstood. Jeremiah 23, 5 through 6, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. Now that's the kind of Messiah they were looking for. In his days, Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely. And this is the name whereby he shall be called. He shall be called the Lord. He shall be called the Lord. That's a divine term, folks. I don't call myself a Lord. I'm not the Lord. In Isaiah 7.14, you are familiar with this one, Jesus said in the prophecy, I shall give you a sign, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. And in the New Testament counterpart of that of course is Matthew 1.23. Behold, a virgin, the angel said, shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. And that name means God is with us. Not God is in him, but God is with us. He was the God of heaven who was with us. Isaiah 42, God makes it clear, I will never give my glory to anyone else, because then I'd make them gone. I am the Lord, and my glory will I not give to another. Isaiah 42a. Before that, he says, O behold, my servant, my elect, my anointed, he shall come. and he shall bring forth judgment even to the Gentiles. And when he comes, he will open the blind eyes and bring out the prisoners from prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I am the Lord. This is my name, and my glory will I not give to another." After Jesus was identified by Peter as being the Lord, the anointed Messiah, God with us. In other words, Peter, by God's help, gives Jesus glory only belonging to God. And God said, I will not give my glory to anybody else. It was the Father, Jesus said, who gave Peter the idea to put two and two together, and this person was the Lord. The Father was saying, it's alright to give this Jesus Christ divine glory. And yet he said in Isaiah, I will not give my glory to another. And yet the father tells Peter, you go ahead and give my glory to this boy, to this man, because this man is God, the Son. And so Peter put two and two together because he had a little help from the father himself. Not long after that, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with Him up on the mountain, you know, the Mount of Transfiguration. And there His radiance, His beauty, His light, His brightness, His godliness, His divinity shone through His humanity outside His flesh and lit the whole place up like a spotlight. Well now, Again, the Father was giving His glory, for He is called the Light. He was giving His glory to His Son. So once again, we have the same confirmation. Well, and the only prayer we have with Jesus is in John 17. Of course, the foolish scholars throw out the whole book of John, but I don't. I keep every word. But as He was praying, He says this. Father, ours come, glorify thy Son. Glorify thou me, and with thy own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world ever existed." That's a strange conversation, isn't it? Before the world was made, God, you and I had glory together. We shared the same glory. Why? Because He's God the Son. God the Father and God the Son. Jesus said, I am my Father one. That's a divine statement, folks. I can't say I am like God the Father. I am equal to God the Father. I'm not. And in verse 24, chapter 17, Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me. But God said, I will not share my glory with anybody but God. But he shares it with Jesus. Why? Because he's God's son. God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit make up God. For you love me, he says, before the foundation of the world. Jesus claimed a deity. He informs Peter when Peter makes the explanation, you are Christ, the Son of God. He says in verse 17, you're right, Peter, of Matthew 16. Jesus said to Peter, Blessed art thou, Peter. My Father has revealed this to you. It's the truth. You hit the nail on the head. You got it right. You finally got something right, Peter. You got this one right. But he had to get it right by getting help. Getting help. I want to turn to something that I read to you by that crossman in that newspaper article. the last comment he makes. I get lots of letters from people saying, thank you, after reading your book, I no longer have to park my brains outside the church. For anybody with brains knows that what is said about Christ is impossible. It can't happen. Yes, if you are not anointed and you are not God, you are right, it can happen. No miracle birth, no miracles, no resurrection. Of course, if you are not God, those things can't happen. Is that the kind of Christ that you want? One that can't do any more than a rocket scientist, that can't do any more than a physician, that can't do any more than anybody else? I mean, is that the kind of God you want? The kind of Messiah you want? The kind of anointed person you want? Is that what you want? Who is Jesus? I don't think they ought to even put Him on the same list with other so-called great men. Not even at the top of the list. He belongs in the list all by Himself. The list of those who are divine. There's only one. He's unique. The one and only. He is God. Come down to earth. Who do you say I am? I tell you, He's God. By His life, His miracles, His death, His burial, His resurrection, He proves that He is unique. And that also He is able to give you salvation from death, grave, and hell. I don't want a Christ who can't walk on water. If He can't even handle that, I don't want it. I don't want a Christ who can't arise from the dead. I'm going down one of these days. I want up. I want somebody who shows me they can get up out of the grave. I don't want a Christ who can't arise from the dead. I don't want a Christ who can't heal the sick, who can't still the storms, who can't do anything more than some ordinary man who has a Ph.D. or a D.D. or whatever kind of D's you want. I don't want a Christ who can't save me from hell. So if I can't believe Christ is God, the Mighty One who did all the Bible says about Him, and what He says about Himself is true, I don't want him. I don't need him. I can't use him because he can't help me. I have no need for this kind of Jesus Christ presented by this biblical scholar group led by Crossman. I don't need that kind of Christ. He's totally worthless. But if you can believe the Bible to count by faith, then Christ is very important. I mean, He is the only one I know of, I've ever heard of, who can do things that I need to have done for me. And so I join the ranks of those who say no other name given among men besides Jesus Christ can save us. And if Jesus Christ is God, folks, then you better listen to Him. You better hear what He has to say. Now then, but you better make Him your Lord and you better make Him your Savior. You can go to your grave believing nothing, or believing that everything he says is wrong, and believing that some other religion is as good as Christianity. Or you can go believing Jesus Christ is all He said He is, and that He can be your Lord and Savior. If Jesus is God, you better let Him be your Savior. And you better let Him be your God and your Lord. You better listen to Him. He may be able to deliver you from the prison of darkness and hell. You can go to your grave believing nothing, or believing one religion is as good as another, or believing that Jesus Christ is the only way, the only hope, the only person, exactly as the New Testament and the Bible says. And He can give you salvation. Who is Jesus Christ? In my opinion, He is God, He is Lord, and He can be your Savior. if you'll let Him and give your life to Him.