The Council of Nicaea & The Deity of Christ

Constantine and the Turning Point for Christianity in the Roman Empire

So this is definitely a turning point in the Roman Empire. Christianity was persecuted up until now, but because of Constantine, Christianity is going to be tolerated and then the emperor after him makes it the official religion of the empire.

A lot of people think that this was a great thing. Some people think it's a bad thing because up until this point, if you were professing to be a Christian, I mean, you were probably the real deal because it could get you persecuted.

But now all of a sudden, the emperor says he's a Christian. Now it's the fashionable thing to do. So without question, many false converts came into the church at this time. So continuing in the book, Forerunners of the Faith, we're in lesson number five.

This is called Defending the Deity of Christ. So everyone sees this, lesson number five. So this is gonna cover Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea. So this is around the year 300 to 400, the events that we're gonna be looking at are in this century.

And the key passage that we're gonna start out with is John chapter one, verses one through three. So go ahead and turn there. John chapter one, one through three. I'm gonna read it out of the New King James Version.

I noticed they used a different version here in the book. So I sort of prefer the New King James rendering. We'll give you a moment to find it. But yeah, the events that are in this fourth century, the Edict of Milan was 312.

325 is the Council of Nicaea. So most people are aware of the Council of Nicaea. That's when they looked at and voted on the matter of the deity of Christ. But some people take that and kind of twist the meaning of what was actually happening.

The church didn't decide on the deity of Christ. The church believed that all along, but a false teacher named Arius started teaching contrary. So the church council got together to formulate an official statement on the deity of Christ.

So that was the Council of Nicaea. And Athanasius, he became a bishop in the year 336. But yeah, we're looking at the deity of Christ. So John chapter one, one through three, the Apostle John writes, "'In the beginning was the Word, "'and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

"'He was in the beginning with God, "'and all things were made through him. "'And without him, nothing was made that was made.'". And if you just skip down to verse 14, it says, "'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, "'and we beheld his glory, "'the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, "'full of grace and truth.'".

So clearly we see that the Word is a title for who?

Christ.

Jesus. So if you just substitute the word Jesus, it would say, in the beginning was Jesus, or in the beginning was Christ, and Christ was with God, and Christ was God, right? So there's really no more clear verse than that, that Christ is, he's not only with God, part of God, part of the Godhead, the Trinity, but he is divine, he is God.

The Edict of Milan, Constantine, and the Rise of Nicene Christianity

Okay, so number one says, "'Major turning point under the Emperor Diocletian, "'Christians in the Roman Empire were intensely persecuted. "'For 250 years, going back to the time of Nero, "'believers in the Roman world faced intermittent waves "'of governmental persecution, "'but that was about to change.

"'After Diocletian's reign ended in 305, "'a power struggle ensued within the Roman Empire. "'Several years later, Constantine I,' "'or as he's known, Constantine the Great, "'controlled or gained control of the Western Roman Empire "'by defeating Maximian and his son Maxentius in 312.'".

Okay, so Maximian was in 310 and his son Maxentius in 312. "'Prior to the battle with Maxentius, "'Constantine claimed to see a vision "'in which he was told to conquer in the sign of the cross. "'As a result of that experience, "'Constantine professed to become a Christian.'".

I think most of you have probably heard this, right? Does this sound familiar? Constantine claims he saw a vision of the cross. Of course, people, there's a lot of people who don't believe that. I have to admit, I'm skeptical that he actually saw a cross, but that's his claim.

And he did profess, at least, to become a Christian. Although he didn't get baptized until right before his death and he did a lot of pretty wicked things in between,.

You could argue.

So there's a lot of debate and controversy around the Emperor Constantine, but that's the story. So, okay, you're familiar with it. Any questions or comments on that? So what's this title? A Turning Point.

So this is definitely a turning point in the Roman Empire. Christianity was persecuted up until now, but because of Constantine, Christianity is going to be tolerated. And then the emperor after him makes it the official religion of the empire.

So this is in your book. It says, in 313, Constantine and Licinius, the Roman emperor in the east, they issued the Edict of Milan, which brought peace and legal protection to the Christian church. Followers of Jesus who lived in the Roman Empire went from being a persecuted people to a protected class.

Okay, so things changed drastically. A lot of people think that this was a great thing. Some people think it's a bad thing because up until this point, if you were professing to be a Christian, I mean, you were probably the real deal because it could get you persecuted.

But now all of a sudden, the emperor says he's a Christian. Now it's the fashionable thing to do. So without question, many false converts came into the church at this time. I don't think you can debate that, but whether Constantine was truly a Christian or not, this is just recording the history of it.

In 324, okay, that's what you needed to fill in. Did everyone get that date, 324? In 324, Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole ruler of the entire Roman Empire. The next year, this is in my book, in 325, Constantine organized the first general church council since the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

And the council met in a place known as Nicaea. Later, under Theodosius the Great, who reigned from 379 to 395, Nicene Christianity was exclusively made the official religion of the Roman Empire. Okay, so you see that term, Nicene Christianity.

What does that mean? What do you think it means, Nicene Christianity? Okay, and the main thing that came out of the council was what? The Nicene Creed, okay, that is big. But the deity of Christ, of course, the Nicene Creed spoke to the deity of Christ.

So today we have, you could call it Nicene Christianity, would be any church, any part of Christianity that believes in the Trinity. I would argue if there's a church that denies the Trinity, they're not part of Christianity at all, but there are groups that claim to be Christian that deny the Trinity.

Who can name a couple? Groups that claimed, think back to Wednesday night, we had a series called the cults and the occult. And one of the defining marks of a Christian cult is that they deny the Trinity.

So this would be the?

Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jehovah's Witnesses, yep, who else?

Christian Science.

Christian Science would say they believe the Trinity, but their viewpoint of that is not the Orthodox view. But yeah, it would be the Mormons. Jehovah's Witnesses mainly is who we're gonna look at because they accept that Arian view of Christ.

That Christ was sort of, he is the most important creation, but he's not God. So that's the view, but I'm getting ahead of myself with Arius and all the rest. Okay, so Nicene Christianity, this is the acceptance of the Trinity, which the main issue is the deity of Christ.

So Christianity is now tolerated and accepted within the Roman Empire. This moves on to number two, Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea. It says Athanasius lived in the fourth century from around 298 to 373.

He pastored the church in Alexandria, Egypt. The central theological issue in Athanasius' day was what? The deity of Jesus Christ and the closely related doctrine of the Trinity. And again, the two kind of go hand in hand because I'm not aware of any group that affirms the deity of God the Father and the deity of the Son, but they deny the deity of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, I'm not even sure that's a thing. So it really is about Jesus, okay. Just read this paragraph or two in my book. I don't believe it's in yours. It says Athanasius, who's heard of Athanasius? Raise your hand if you've heard of him.

Okay, so he's not all that well-known. Athanasius doggedly defended the deity of Christ. As a result, he was instrumental in keeping the church from falling into serious doctrinal error. Some have called Athanasius the saint of stubbornness.

How would you like that title? In a good way here. Yes, some maybe already have that title, I don't know. The saint of stubbornness because he refused to compromise his defense of the truth. Before becoming the bishop or lead pastor, and that's really what a bishop is.

It's the head pastor, pastor of a church. Before he became the bishop of the church in Alexandria, Athanasius served as a deacon under the leadership of a man named Alexander, one of the elders in the church, a man named Arius began to teach that Christ was a created being who was not eternal and therefore not equal to God the Father.

And of course, this became known as what? Arian is known as, his belief system is called what? Arianism, okay. Now there's the Arianism that the Nazis talked about. That's totally different. Okay, Arianism in this context, I think it might be spelled differently, but Arianism is the viewpoint that Jesus is not God.

He is the greatest of all of God's creation, but he is not God. All right, any verses? Where would they get such an idea? Is there a verse that they use? Remember, every false doctrine or every false teaching, every heresy is based on a verse out of context.

So does anyone? It says that Christ was the first born of all creation. The first born over all creation. So let's turn to Colossians 3 .15. And if you ever do talk to a Jehovah's Witness, you wanna be ready.

If you bring out John 1 .1, of course, you know that they have a Bible translation that actually changes John 1 .1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a God. Of course, then that begs the question, like, well, how many gods are there?

Because they say they believe in one God. So you would think that would be problematic. But if you bring that out, the deity of Christ, they're gonna quote Colossians 1. Did I say three or one? Colossians 1 .15.

Who would like to read Colossians 1 .15? I got a hand. Okay, Mark, go ahead.

He is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all creation.

Okay.

He, that's capital H. So it's a reference to Christ that he is the image of the invisible God. No problem there. But the confusing part for some people is it says he is the first born over all creation.

So on the surface, it sounds like, well, of course, Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, but it sounds like to some, he had a beginning. So we're gonna come back to that in just a moment. But you can stay in Colossians 1 for now.

So yeah, this became known as Arianism. This is what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe, denying the deity of Christ. Also, some Seventh-day Adventists believe in this as well. Not all of them, but some, a sizable group, denying the deity of Christ.

Continuing with the paragraph, it says, Alexander condemned Arius for his heretical views, but Arius repented and said, I'm sorry. And he just was accepted back into the church. You think that's what happened?

Yeah, the thing about heretic, they're pretty stubborn too. They don't wanna, I've never known a heretic to repent. I guess it's possible, but Arius kept teaching this viewpoint. So Alexander condemned Arius for his heretical views, but Arius kept promoting his position.

The controversy resulted in a regional synod held in Egypt in 318 AD, and eventually it led to the Council of Nicaea, involving church leaders throughout the entire Roman Empire. And when was the Council of Nicaea?

What was the year again? Three, 25. The council was called by who? Who was the man that called for the council? Well, it was Constantine who called for it. So the council was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine, and its primary purpose was to resolve this controversy.

Nearly 320 bishops from throughout the Roman Empire, and even some surrounding regions, traveled to Nicaea accompanied by elders and deacons from their churches to participate in the council. They understood the importance of the issue being debated.

Though Athanasius was only a deacon at the time of the council, his views were clearly represented by this man Alexander. Okay, so now we come to this section that you had to fill in. These are some new terms.

I'm sure for most of you, this is something you really don't hear much about. At the council, three primary positions on the deity of Christ were put forward. So this is gonna get a little complicated.

The first viewpoint was what?

The deity of Christ.

Yeah, but in the book, it's asking for a particular view. There's three views.

And it all.

Hetero-ousios.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to pronounce. Hetero-ousios. Okay, is the first one. So if you don't have this in your book, you can write it down. Hetero-ousios is the first one. The next one is homo-ousios.

And then the third one is homoi-ousios. Before I start losing people, thinking this is going over your head, let's just read the definition. So hetero-ousios means of a different substance. This was Arius' view.

As noted above, he taught that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was a created being. Thus, he argued that Jesus was of a different substance or essence from God the Father. And this is where those creeds come in, because the Son proceeds from the Father, is of the same substance.

So the creeds are very important in that regard. On this basis, Arius contended that Christ was not equal in authority or deity with the Father. Put simply, Arius denied that Jesus is God. Teaching instead, he is a creature.

Okay, now does that seem like a big deal to you? This teaching?

Yes.

Okay, this is the biggest deal. Nothing could be bigger than this, because it goes to the heart of the gospel of who Christ was. If Jesus really were an angel, like some people say, like some cults say, how can an angel die on the cross for our sins?

Well, he took on human form. No, we believe that God became flesh and he died on the cross, that Jesus was both truly man, truly God. That's how he can be the bridge between God and men, because he was both.

Well, this is what Arius denied. Okay, so we got that. Heteroousios means of a different substance. So Jesus is not of the same substance as the Father. The next, homousios means of the same substance.

In contrast to Arius, Alexander and Athanasius insisted that Jesus Christ was not a created being. Rather, he is the eternal Son of God who is co-equal to the Father. And because God the Son is eternal, just like the Father, he is of the same substance or essence as the Father.

In other words, Alexander and Athanasius affirmed that Jesus is God, teaching that he is not a creature, but the uncreated creator. Okay, so this is the, what we might call the Orthodox or the biblical view of Christ, that he is God or God in human flesh.

And again, this is the most important issue there is. This and what is the gospel, and it's all tied up together. Very important. And then the next one, homousios. This is sort of like a compromise. This is a middle ground.

So you know how it is. People come together and you have one side who's arguing for one thing. You have the other side who's saying the opposite, and someone's gonna come up with an idea. Well, let's meet halfway in between.

Can we do that? Well, sometimes that's a good thing to meet in between, to get people cooperating, but not on doctrine, and certainly not on doctrine as important as this. So this compromise, let's read it.

Of a similar substance, it says, when the original position of Arius, heterousios, was immediately rejected by the bishops attending the council, a modified version was put forward. It suggested that the son of God was of a similar substance.

So he's not the same, he's not different, but similar substance to the father. Arius and his supporters shifted to this position using the language of similar substance. So Arius was willing to go along with this.

You think Athanasius was willing to go along with it? No way. To minimize, so he went along with it, Arius did, to minimize the differences they said existed between the father and the son. However, Alexander and Athanasius refused to accept this position, because they rightly understood that similar still means different.

So yeah, it's like a halfway in between, but still, you're compromising the deity of Christ, because you're saying he's not of the same substance as God. Okay, so why would this matter? So maybe think of some practical ways why this would matter.

You know, there's somebody, somebody out there who says, oh, what's the big deal, who cares? Can't we just, can't we all just get along? You know, all these churches fighting with each other. All right, Marcus, why does this matter?

Because people would be unable to be saved holding that position, because that would make Jesus himself a liar or a lunatic. And if I could also make a comment, and fast forward all the way till 2023, I'm appreciating more and more the fact that now 14 pastors in our area finally agree on the treatment of heretics.

We should call it the Council of Western Mass.

We did hold something like, actually, in that meeting that we held, which I brought up a week or two ago, Acts chapter 15 was read. Just to start out the meeting, Alan, who led the meeting, he was the moderator, he read from Acts 15, and it was sort of like a miniature council, and only, you know, on a small scale, dealing with something locally.

But yeah, we came together and agreed that when somebody teaches that, well, everybody's God, or Jesus isn't God, or some other, you know, rank heresy. Like, this is at the utmost importance, and we couldn't figure out why people didn't see it for that, you know, the big deal that it was, but anyways.

People, pastors.

Right, pastors, yeah. Well, I mean, I think they would have said it was serious, but yeah, anyway, not to get into that again, but we did, but it's a good point. I'm glad you raised it, because this is how churches resolve problems.

Now, if you have a very large church, you can come together with the leaders of your church, or whether it's multiple churches in an area, or this is, you know, all throughout the Roman Empire, but this is how it was decided in Acts 15, and that same type of thing, coming together of bishops or pastors, is still being done today, and this is how matters like that should be resolved.

So.

What city did you meet in?

Turner's Falls. We would call it the Council of Turner's Falls, 2023. Okay, but why is this issue important? You shared.

Did I?

I think it's the same as modern day now,.

Where a lot of pastors are preaching.

What people want to hear, and not the word of God, because they want to bring people in.

Yep.

Yeah, and you know, there are, if you take a position, if you take a strong position on anything, there's gonna be people who disagree, and people don't like the fighting, and the back and forth, so if you just kind of ignore doctrine, eventually you're gonna get to a place where people just don't see the big deal with any of it, so it's a danger.

Is there another hand of why this matters practically?

Okay.

All right, well, let's continue then. Okay, so after weeks of discussion, the Council of Nicaea overwhelmingly affirmed the homoousios position, declaring their belief that the Son of God is of the same substance as God the Father.

God the Son is co-eternal, co-essential, and co-equal with God the Father. One interesting tradition suggests that a bishop, you'll find this interesting, okay? Is this in your book? Okay, you heard me starting to read it, so it's not.

So here's a tradition that suggests that a bishop named Nicholas of Myra, who lived from 270 to 343, so this bishop, Nicholas, attended the council, and he was incensed by Arius's denial of the deity of Christ.

So Nicholas got up during the proceedings, he faced Arius, and instead of challenging him verbally, he slapped him right across the face. Okay, technically, he shouldn't have done that. You know, the Bible says a pastor or a bishop shouldn't be a striker or a brawler, so technically, probably not the right thing to do, but over time, Nicholas became known as what?

Saint Nicholas. People admired him for this, apparently. He became known as Saint Nicholas, and eventually, Santa Claus. Though the modern distortions of...

Oh, oh, oh!

Though the modern distortions of Santa Claus distract and detract from the worship of Jesus, it is remarkable to note that the original Saint Nicholas was a fervent defender of Christ's deity. So next time you see or hear about Santa Claus, you're just not gonna be able to get that image out of your mind.

Where Saint...

Who did he slap?

Arius.

Did Arius turn the other cheek?

Yeah, I don't know, it didn't say.

Yeah.

And he was chastising someone for being naughty.

Yeah, Arius was definitely on the naughty list. Yeah, whether or not... Did this actually happen? Well, it says it's a tradition. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but I don't know. Who liked that? I liked it.

Hey, Arius deserved... Again, he probably shouldn't have done it if he did, but we'll give him a pass, how about that?

Okay.

For discussion, what does it mean that God the Son is coeternal with God the Father? Read John 1, one through three, which we already did. How do these verses relate to what happened at the Council of Nicaea?

Okay, so in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. What does it mean that God the Son is coeternal with the Father? Well, it means that Jesus doesn't have a beginning. Now, Jesus, the human being, was born 2 ,000 years ago in Bethlehem, we got that.

But remember, Jesus, there is the man, but the divine Son of God has no beginning, right? He has no beginning, he was never created, because before he was born in Bethlehem, you see him showing up and talking to Abraham in the book of Genesis.

You see him showing up and talking to Joshua as the commander of the Lord's army. He appears as the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, things we call a Christophany. So we believe that Jesus has no beginning in the sense of his deity, okay.

Any questions on that? Comments, we'll take a comment.

We often think from the first verse in the Bible, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But in Colossians, it states that Jesus created all things. So God willed it, God spoke it into being, but apparently creation, I'm talking about, but apparently Jesus, God the Son, was the one who actually did it.

Great, yeah, I've heard illustrations, like God the Father was the architect, Jesus was the contractor, and the Holy Spirit was the, you know, I don't know. Yeah, there's probably, so you probably run into problems with those types of, yes, Erin.

Right.

I don't, yeah, it's just, he is the word.

Yeah, he is the word, and all things were created by him. God spoke, and Christ is the word. Yeah, very interesting.

Oh, but in Genesis 2, God is referred to as more than one.

Right.

Because we. Yep.

Yep, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Elohim, the word for God, is plural, so yep. Okay, so let's move on to number three. We looked at, number one, a major turning point. Number two, Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea.

Scripture and the Deity of Christ

Number three, the starting place is what? Biblical authority. Okay, so the Council of Nicaea, although most Christians would recognize that as what they decided, it was true, was accurate, we do abide by this, but the council is not the authority.

What is the authority? Scripture is the authority. And of course, this is the difference between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestants and Evangelicals and Bible believers, because the Catholic Church says the Bible and tradition and the church magisterium, you know, and the pope, they're all equal authorities, and we say, no, God's word is the sole authority.

So the starting place, biblical authority. Why did the Christian leaders who gathered at Nicaea overwhelmingly affirm the doctrine of Christ's deity? Their primary starting point was the scriptures. And they saw this truth clearly taught in God's word.

And again, John 1 ,1 is maybe the most clear. We're gonna go over, if we have time, we'll do it next week, if we don't, all the other verses that speak about the deity of Christ. Along those lines, this is in my book, along those lines, the fourth century church leader, Gregory of Nyssa, a younger contemporary of Athanasius, he explained in his conflict with the Arians that scripture alone must be the determiner of such things.

No council and no church tradition would suffice. Do we agree with that? We agree with that? I agree with that. Gregory of Nyssa, here's what he said, okay? So he lived from 335 to 395, this is in your book.

Here's what he said when, excuse me, what then is our reply that is to the Arians? We do not think that it is right to make their prevailing custom, the law and rule of sound doctrine. For if custom or tradition is to avail for proof of soundness, we too surely may advance our prevailing custom.

And if they reject this, we are surely not bound to follow theirs. Let the inspired scripture then be our umpire. And the vote of truth will surely be given to those whose dogmas are found to agree with the divine words, okay?

So it's all about what the scripture teaches. And of course, you know, if somebody, I'm assuming you guys are used to it by now, but if somebody were to listen to me or to a Bible believing pastor for the first time, someone who's from another faith tradition, like we're constantly going over the same, what does the Bible say?

You know, the scripture says, thus saith the Lord. Okay, we need to compare it against scripture. It's always going back to scripture because take that away, take God's word away, and what do you have?

You have opinions and everyone's got an opinion, okay? Okay, so in the same way, we must look to God's word as the authoritative basis for what we believe. Christian leaders of the first few centuries of church history similarly examined the scriptures to see if these things were so.

Who else did that? Okay, you have the claim, Arius made one claim, Athanasius, Alexander made another claim. How do we decide? Go to the scriptures. Who did that in the Bible? They were called noble? The Bereans, right.

Acts chapter 17, verse 11 says that the Bereans, they were more noble than those from Thessalonica.

Why?

Because they searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. So that's what we wanna do. All right, in this next section, the truth of Jesus's deity permeates the scriptures. Here are 10 lines of evidence that affirm the doctrine of Christ's deity with corresponding biblical reference.

So I'm just gonna read through what you had to fill in and you can just make sure, you can either fill it in or make sure it matches what you have and then we'll go back and read through it. So number one, these are evidences, proof of Christ's deity.

Number one, divine prophecy. Number two, divine existence. Number three, the divine name. Number four, divine authority. Number five, divine power. Number six, divine ownership. Number seven, divine exaltation.

Number eight, divine titles. Number nine, divine unity. And then number 10, divine affirmation. And if that was too quick, we're gonna go over them right now. So number one, divine prophecy. In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would be what?

He would be called the mighty God. He would also be called the everlasting father, prince of peace. This is Isaiah 9, verse six, and also Matthew 1, 23. So another way of saying that, even in the Old Testament, with speaking of Christ, the God's anointed, the Messiah, he is called God in the Old Testament.

So we see that. Any questions on that? That's pretty clear. Now, you need to watch out for, again, those who would twist the scripture and they would respond by saying, well, isn't there, that was it, Psalm 86?

That says, Jesus said, ye are gods. So everyone's a god. There's some people who try to say that. This is part of the word of faith. There's the charismatic movement, and then there's a slice of that called word of faith, like Benny Hinn and the Kenneth Copelands, where they claim that we are all little gods, so that everyone is a god.

So what they do is they pull Christ down and they elevate man, and they try to get Jesus and us at the same level. That's why they think that they can work miracles, because whatever Jesus did, you can do because you're a god, too.

I mean, that's the heresy that they teach. But no, there's only one God, right? You can't have multiple gods, otherwise you've left true Christianity. So Jesus is called God in the Old Testament. Number two, divine existence.

Jesus explained that he was with the Father in eternity past, before the world began. And we're not gonna go and look up all these passages, but John 17, verse five, John 1, 1 and 2, 6, 62, 823, 1628.

But Jesus was with the Father in eternity past. Okay, so what does that mean? He was alive, he existed before Bethlehem, all right. Number three, the divine name. By calling himself I Am, in John 8, 58, Jesus identifies himself as who?

Yahweh, or the older way of saying that is Jehovah, but Jesus takes that sacred name of God given to Moses at the burning bush and he applies it to himself. He says that about himself, I Am, before Abraham was, I Am.

And what did the Jews do immediately after that? They picked up, what? Yeah, they picked up stones to stone him because they knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying that he's Yahweh, he is Jehovah.

Okay, so there's the divine name. Number four, divine authority. Jesus claimed authority over what? The Sabbath day, and he said, I am Lord of the Sabbath. And over the, he also claimed divine authority over the destiny of men.

Jesus made it all about himself. Whether or not a person is saved or lost, whether they go to heaven or not, it's all about whether or not you believe in me, right? Now, if he's not God, how would that make sense?

So.

John 14, he says, you believe in God, believe also in me.

Right.

Now, we all know people in life who they make everything all about them. But Jesus, he's the one person who is justified by making everything about him. Number five, divine power. Jesus not only claimed divine authority, he exercised divine power.

With nothing more than a word, he dominated demons, subdued nature, and eradicated disease. He repeatedly exhibited the power to do what only God can do. Now, you could, if this was the only thing, you could argue that, well, prophets in time past, they were able to do some of these miracles.

So, if it were just one thing, okay, maybe that wouldn't be enough evidence to determine Christ is divine. But we just have evidence piled upon evidence, piled upon more evidence. Any questions on that one, divine power?

He exercised power and authority that only God had, right? Number six, divine ownership. In keeping with his divine prerogative, Jesus claimed possessions, or claimed possession of that which belongs to God alone.

And I had never really picked up on this, so I think this is really helpful, but in Matthew 13, 41, he asserted that God's angels were what? His angels. And that God's chosen were his chosen, Matthew 24, 30 and 31.

Jesus also claimed that God's kingdom is his kingdom, Matthew 13, 41, 16, 28, and Luke 1, 33. Next, divine exaltation. The Old Testament forbids the worship of anyone, but God alone. Now, did Jesus receive worship?

Yeah, he did.

And you remember in the book of Revelation, when John encounters the angel and he bows in front of the angel, and the angel says, get up, don't worship me, worship God. Well, guess what? People were bowing and worshiping Jesus multiple times that happened.