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Matthew 16:16 is perhaps the most prominent answer to this question. Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:16 ESV So, the disciples became convinced by the miracles, the teachings, and the character of Jesus through His ministry that Jesus was the very Son of God. Yet, it wasn't when Jesus died that their ...

There are two ways to read that. Reading it as an arrogant statement is certainly one, but I think it can also be read exactly the opposite way -- as a sign of humility. Not wanting to name himself in a "me, John, I was there see" way, he simply refers to himself based on his identity in relation to Christ. As a Christian I think this is great way to think ...

While the Ba'hai might make such a claim, Nicene Christianity would not. Most Christians have sufficiently fundamental differences with Buddhism over how to live that calling one a disciple of another would not capture the relationship well. Leaving aside radically different notions of the afterlife (Jesus did not believe in reincarnation!), there are ...

Luke 5 (CEV) tells a little more of the story: One day Jesus was standing beside Lake Gennesaret (Galilee) when the crowd pressed in around him to hear God’s word. Jesus saw two boats sitting by the lake. The fishermen had gone ashore and were washing their nets. Jesus boarded one of the boats, the one that belonged to Simon, then asked him to row out a ...

While Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tze, John the Baptist and other ancient teachers came before Him, Jesus was not a disciple of any of them. When Jesus teaches in the Temple courts in John 7, the people are amazed at his teaching, because they realized Jesus had never been a disciple of anyone. Jesus responds to their amazement by asserting that His teaching ...

Why are you assuming a one to one correspondence? The Greek here says "y'all" will judge them. The idea is that collectively you will bear witness against all of Israel. If you need a one to one correspondence, take your pick between Matthais or (my personal bet as the real 12th apostle) Paul. But there's no reason too. One person can judge multiple ...

Well, the Apostle John said: John 21:25 (KJV) And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. So we know that not everything from Jesus' life was recorded. Luke does record an account of Jesus reading ...

Yes - they thought many things, and at various stages in His ministry, differing "circles" of His disciples expressed different things. Of His closest disciples (those we generally associate with the term "disciple", aka The Twelve), Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ first: Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." ...

First I haven't read 'Living Buddha, Living Christ' by Thich Nhat Hanh, so I can't comment on that. Second I skimmed thorugh the article 'Was Jesus a Buddhist?'. I would like to propose a few counterexamples. The article claims that Jesus' time in Kashmir coincides exactly with his 'lost years' in the Gospels, and mentions a king: At the age of ...

It comes from the idea of sanctification. Sanctification is from the Latin sanctificio, which means "set apart". This concept is also reflected in the Bible. John 17:16-17 (NIV) They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. These groups take this (along with other verses) as an indication that ...

From a Christian perspective: It doesn't matter. The one fundamental difference between Christ and all other prominent religious gurus is that Jesus' primary teaching is that He Himself is God. Whatever similarity Christ's teachings then have with any other guru's, far from being incidental, is that they both stem from the Christ Himself, God's Word. The ...

In addition to the great answers here, I would like to answer the "being God" bit. When John wrote his gospel (a long time after Jesus' death and resurrection), he wrote these famous words (John 1:1): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Assuming Affable Geek is right about the Greek, then that would largely explain it. One thing about English, unlike ancient Greek (and many other languages, like Spanish which I know a lot of), is that in English, we use the same word for the second-person singular and second-person plural. In other words, we say "you" whether addressing one person or many. ...

Your definition of a Christian seems a bit arbitrary, but one thing I notice is that the whole thing is based on beliefs. But the word disciple comes from the same root as discipline, which suggests a few things as to its meaning. Discipleship is not about belief, it's about what you do with that belief. Much of the Sermon on the Mount, which lays out ...

Satan is the god of this world, so if you are of this world then you place yourself under Satan. Jesus talked about the wealth we gain in Heaven, and how what we have on Earth is rust, turn to dust, etc, so material wealth to a Christian should be of a very low priority. To get an idea of the importance you can look at the first 4 chapters or so of Acts, ...

I once heard a preacher claim that this was one of the miracles of Jesus. Clearly there's no biblical basis for this, but the idea that a man would drop everything, leave his father's house and family business (possibly putting his family in hardship), and follow someone who just walked up and said "follow me" seems pretty miraculous to me.

An apostle is one sent from God, a disciple is one who studied under God. Decent (albeit imperfect) analogues in the terminology would be Apostle is to Missionary as Disciple is to Student. The 12 disciples included all of the men who studied under Jesus - including Judas. Once Jesus died and rose again, he sent the remaining 11 of them out (obviously ...

Maybe this is what Dan Andrews was trying to ask (I could be wrong), "did the disciples believed Jesus was God ONLY after the resurrection or was it before drawing from the statement in Mathew 16:16 as Narnian was pointing out? To answer that question we would have to know what Peter meant by "Son of God" - there are at least two possibilities: A) Peter ...

I think it will be Matthias who was chosen by the apostles to fill in the place of Judas right after the Lord's ascension in the very beginning of Acts. Number twelve was a vey important number for Jews, hence, it was the very first thing they did after the Lord commanded them to go to Jerusalem and await the infilling with the Holy Spirit.

In order to be a true disciple you must be called. It is the masters role to pick his disciples, call them to follow him and equip them for that role. Mark 1:17 (ESV) And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” Those so called and equipped will go on to do the things @Mason outlined. However just doing those things ...

The answer lies in the history of the gospels. All the New Testament gospels were originally anonymous until attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John later in the second century. The Church Fathers looked for clues that might help them decide who probably wrote each of the gospels. In the case of the fourth gospel, the Church Fathers noticed that it never ...