Some say that when Jesus claimed to be God, he knew that he wasn't and was lying to deliberately deceive his followers which means that he was evil for knowingly leading people astray and deceiving his followers with false hopes of eternal salvation.

 

However, this view of Jesus as a schemer and deceiver doesn't fit with the rest of the evidence in the New Testament where we see a man who lived with integrity and whose attitudes and actions were unselfish.  His teachings have inspired people through the centuries to live more loving, caring and better lives and his character was consistently pure and balanced.

 

Jesus also fulfilled over 300 prophecies about his life, spoken by various people over a period of 500 years.  It could be suggested that, if he was a clever conman, he could have planned to fulfil these prophecies but that would have been extremely difficult as some of them he could have no control over such as the place of his birth and the place of his burial.

 

Finally, Jesus' claims resulted in his crucifixion, a long and painful death caused by his body being nailed to a cross until he died.  Would anyone really be prepared to die in this way for a lie?  The reason Jesus chose to die in this way was because he knew that he was truly the Christ, the Son of the living God.