If someone claimed to be the Son of God today…

[Nutcracks]

If someone claimed today all the things that Jesus did/said, would you believe them?

Curious about how people would respond in today’s world.

Which claims specifically?

I’m puzzled because in the bible Jesus kept claiming to be “the son of man” and apart from calling God the equivalent of “daddy” and encouraging everyone else to do the same, I can’t see where he made any claims at all.

Of all the prophets I’ve read about, he seems like a really decent sort, and I can see why people were so taken with him.

According to the gospels he did things rather than said he would do things. Do you mean claims like the end of the world being near?

Lots and lots of people have claimed this in the meantime.

Isn't it time for the next one to be the daughter of god?

Would they be able to turn water into wine?

This was explored in a drama on one of the streamers which I watched a year or so back. Set in America. Trying to recall the name...

There are just 2 people in my personal life / family who I’ve known for a very very long time. Both have different qualities but are just the loveliest kindest people who go above and beyond for others. Both also have a way of somehow managing to contact me and say the exact right things when needed (without knowing if I’m going through a bad time as I’m not much of a talker) they are just very intriguing to me somehow and I feel like if someone said either of them were some kind of higher power I’d think ‘yes, I knew there was something’ 😂

No. We were warned about people claiming to be the Son of God in the Bible. When he returns for real there won't be any doubt!

@Behindthethymes in John 1:1 it's written "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Jesus was the Word, so he is God. Part of the Trinity.
In John 10:30 Jesus states: "I and the Father are one."

Yes, plenty of people would believe.
I was recently deep in a rabbit hole about Warren Jeffs and the FLDS, the dude is in prison for sex offences against children and thousands of people still believe he is the prophet of God!

I was going to say people were a lot more gullible 2000 years ago but with the advent of conspiracy theorists on social media in the last ten years I’m not to sure 😬

Well it's obviously Michael Palin.

Humble, carries a globe around being rather nice.

It would depend where it happened I think. In the US, maybe there’d be a cult following among a section of society. Or they’d be shot. Anywhere else in the world, ignored or sectioned I suspect!

He'll have his work cut out in this world of misinformation.

Well, there would be doubt because a lot of people don’t believe in Jesus or this Christian god. Also John never met Jesus, so it’s Johns musings of what he would like to happen, so
its very unlikely to ever happen. In any case, humanity is now due some brand new religions, with some new prophecies etc.

I'd go and ask to shake their hand 😂

🤣

Yes that's true, so maybe they'll think he's an alien! Especially as he's coming down on the clouds.

What do you mean, John never met Jesus? He's one of the 12 disciples! Also Jesus returning is prophesied in the Old Testament.

Someone at my uni claimed to be the son of God (too many magic mushrooms) and that as such he didn't need to sit his exams.

University response was that as son of God he should be omniscient so sitting exams shouldn't be an issue for him...

All the Abrahamic religions God is the same one. I think even the multi God people are manifestations of the same God ( If yo believe God exists that is) There are just different paths to the same God, and they are seen as the 'wrong' path by the others.

Apologies, I was thinking of Paul.

A man who said the things Jesus said could be considered a lunatic. Who was this random son of a carpenter who had been silent for 30 years before starting his ministry? There were lots of witnesses to his miracles yet plenty of people at the time didn't believe him and when he was gone he left behind only a few hundred followers. His following should have died away yet thousands of years later he has about a billion followers making him one of the most influential people ever. There must have been something real about him but plenty of people in his day either missed it, dismissed it or refused to believe. Faith is hard and takes a massive leap of trust. I don't know if I would have been one of those ones who would have believed to be honest and I would have missed out on something really big.

Anyway just as well he said he's coming back in a blaze of glory so we can't miss it next time around 😁

Yes, it was really thought provoking. If I remember correctly he turned the whole world dark except for a single shaft of light to convince people.

“His following should have died away yet thousands of years later he has about a billion followers making him one of the most influential people ever”.

Today, there are roughly over 2.3 billion practicing Christians, of various denominations. The vast majority of this number, as with any other religions, are born into that religion, and they inherit those religious beliefs from their parents, their family, the community around them etc. In this way, faith in a said religion, is not an informed choice, you just find your self in it, and because it’s never usually questioned, you believe what whatever others tell you is the truth, and most people just accept that, without really thinking about. From birth babies are essentially indoctrinated in those beliefs, and most people have never read the bible, they just listen to what their holy men tell them, and then they go on about their lives. For many, religion is not an informed choice.

I'd say now more than ever religion, Christianity for sure, is an informed choice. Nobody is forced to believe, in our part of the world anyway. That's why you will see numbers dwindling in certain parts of the world.

Christianity is still growing, even where religious practice is not encouraged- see Boston University research on growth of Christianity in China
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/why-is-christianity-growing-in-china/

Generations of people all over the world have also chosen to die to defend their faith rather than reject what they were born into. It's unfair to them to assert they were indoctrinated fools, they could have rejected their beliefs and saved their lives, but they didn't.

I don't really agree with those sentiments. Certainly you can be influenced by your family's religion to start with, but eventually people make their own decisions and may totally go against what they grew up with, marry into another religion and subsequently change their original one, fall into disbelief, etc.

I grew up in a loosely Christian household but didn't really confirm my faith until my twenties when I started reading the Bible properly. Even then I still lapsed for many years till coming back recently. I've learned a lot and keep on learning about my faith every day.

Lots of people claim to be the son of god. They usually end up in and out of psychiatric facilities.

I didn’t say they were “indoctrinated fools”. Don’t put words into people’s mouths.

Yes, there are a lot lot of informed religious conversions , but most children are indeed indoctrinated into their faith, at birth, and most will not question it, as it’s part of the culture around them, which is fine. Maybe when they grow up and really truly start to think about what their religions really means, they may then make truly informed choices, around their faith.

And just to be clear, religions like Christianity (with all its different denominations), are not growing because of conversion (that is through an informed choice) but they are growing because of soaring birth rates and ever increasing populations. So every year, incrementally, millions of more babies are born into Christianity, and this adds to the numbers, in the statistics. But of course, their Christianity was not their choice, it wasn’t an informed choice, they were born into the faith in oppose to finding Jesus for themselves.