Who do you say that I am?

Last week I was out surfing one evening with my daughter and another guy was out that I knew from a past job. As we chatted in between waves, I felt compelled to tell him about our church and invite him out to our beach service. At that point he confessed that he was a lay minister of sorts in a religious organization that most conservatives would consider a cult. Immediately, he began to question me about end time prophecy and how I would interpret certain passages in Revelation. I told him that I didn’t really want to get too worked up over millennial prophecy that obviously God intended to be somewhat of a mystery, predicting possibly thousands of years in the future. There are too many things that I know from Scripture that God is clear about right now that I need to be focused on. I believe correct Biblical interpretation requires obedience to what we have been clearly shown, and then God will reveal more wisdom as needed.
But then I asked him, “Who do you say that Jesus Christ is? Do you think He is God?” And his answer was as I suspected. No, Jesus isn’t God, He is a son of God. Their cult believes that Jesus is the brother of Lucifer, and a created being. They ignore John 3:16 that says that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God.
Jesus Himself asked the disciples this same question one day. “Who do men say that I am?” And they replied, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah and some say Jeremiah. In every case, men said that Jesus was a man, a prophet, a good teacher, but still a man. And then Jesus asked His disciples again, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered as the spokesman for the group, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. The King of kings. THE Son of God. And there wasn’t anyone in Israel that did not understand that in human terms, the fullness of the father dwelt in the son. In their world, it was the same position. You remember the Jews had taken up stones to stone Him because He said - God was His Father - making Himself equal with God, in John 5:17,18? And so they are saying - You are equal with God. You are the Messiah...the Savior.
Consider more evidence: John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In that passage it is clear that Jesus is the Word and He was God from the beginning. John 14:7 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father…” Isa 9:6 “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” John 10:30 "I and the Father are one."
I think a lot of people out there can’t seem to see who Jesus really is because they are more interested in what some other person says Jesus is. They are blind, because they have rejected God’s revelation for some human revelation. They have rejected divine revelation in favor of a man’s interpretation. You know, almost every false cult has come about by some man or woman having a vision that supposedly was given by an angel or something, which led them to “discover” a new theology, which then led them to a new set of writings, which then led them to reinterpret the Holy Bible to fit the paradigm of their new theology. And the result is that they become blind to the fact that Jesus is God. They believe Jesus to be a prophet, they believe him to be a great teacher, but they fall short of believing that Jesus is God and so they come short of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Today this is still the most important question that you will ever be asked; who do you say that I am? And then the obvious next question is, What will you do with Him?