Who Did You Say That I Am?

Jerry Hagee

• Publisher: Elm Hill
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781400329946
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

In John 8: 32 Jesus said, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Then why, do I have doubts about my salvation? What is truth? What does free mean? How can I know for sure that I have salvation? One cannot be free without salvation!

No wonder that many have doubts about salvation. Jesus despised the religious traditions of mankind. He called those who were chained with religion's traditions, hypocrites. He quoted Isaiah's prophecy in Matt 15: 9, "But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." In Vain? With no purpose? Jesus was saying, you worship in folly. He was saying to the religious leaders with their man-made rules and to their followers, you shall in no case enter into the "Kingdom of Heaven".

What is your litmus test to obtain salvation? Have you wondered about the rules and laws that you follow? What do the leaders of your religion demand of you? This book is filled with answers and with freedom. Not from my mere writings, but with clarity from the Holy Spirit emblazoned in the Holy Bible.

The litmus test as a boy growing up in a church was if you did not smoke, drink, cuss, dance, be with girls, play with cards, gamble, play pool, go to bars, break any of the 10 commandments, miss church service; you might go to heaven. I think, I pretty much flunked. Non the less, that was preached from the pulpit.

You will see gratitude for dedicated people who have unbelievable IQ's in science, but you will find that even some truly great intellects fail to see a need for God. The Living God relationship is needed by every living human which does include all of the Intellects and those of us with less evolution.

Included are a few of the personal happenings of my life that are clearly Spiritual. This book reveals only a few of God's actual involvements in spite of my fleeting fellowship with Him. The mathematical probability of each is prodigious.

Why do people say that "God loves us"? If you read carefully, the answer is clear. The definition of grace will be understandable. Faith is explored. Is faith really necessary? How does one know if they have faith?

Do you think you are saved and yet you still sin, occasionally? For some us, maybe more than occasionally. If you do, comfort may be near.

But most importantly, we are going to die. What, then? The book sometimes may have, some troubling details. Our soul will meet up with our new body and this information is more than sparsely included. What is it like in Hell? The answer is clear. It is for sure that it is not one, never-ending, great big party of like-minded individuals. The book touches on what it is like to live in hell. Eternally, to live there.

Do I really exist after I die? Maybe you should get this book. I am as certain as I can be that when you finish reading you will probably think of someone that desperately needs this book.

Chapter 1

We had been called by the hospital to come quickly. They told us he was dying.

He had been a stroke victim for five-plus years. He was paralyzed completely on one side of his body and could not speak. Although he could not speak, he seemed to understand most of the business questions I asked him.

My wife and I arrived to see my mother in the hospital room with Dad.

It was gut-wrenching.

Dad was struggling to breathe.

The nurse entered. I asked her, as I was adjusting his pillow, to make his head more elevated. She said it would make no difference—he was dying. She was kind, understanding, and knowledgeable.

When she left the room, tears were running down my mother’s face as she sat alone in a straight-backed chair across the room. My wife was standing at the foot of my dad’s bed.

I went back to his pillow, cradled his head in my arms, and held him up a little higher so he might breathe more easily.

While I was holding him, he opened his eyes wide, looked right into my eyes, and said, “Jerry,” as if we were going to have a long-desired conversation. It was the first directed word he had spoken in five years. I honestly thought he was going to make his first coherent thought and a sentence, not heard since his stroke and his wretched confinement to mere grunting and silence.

But at that very moment, after saying, “Jerry,” Dad died in my arms.

My mother’s immediate first words were, “No, no, Dwight, it’s too soon. It’s too soon.” She came to him and touched his lifeless body.

Dad was free at last but for us, it was “too soon.”

As I cradled Dad’s head, people in uniforms begin to fill the room. I did not want to see people. I wanted Dad back. Instantly, my mind hears unrecognizable, non-existent human voices say, “God loves you.” What kind of love is this? How can this be love? My Dad just died.

My mind wanted to scream, to the unseen masses speaking in my head. Then a soft gentle hand touched my wrist. She tenderly removed my wrist. It was then, I let Dad’s head lay on the pillow. But, why are these voices saying to me, “God loves you”?

First, we must ask ourselves, what difference does it make if there is a God? Nothing changes. We are born, live awhile, and die.

If God exists, then how come God isn’t fair?

After all, Jesus was not even known until about 2,000-plus years ago.

What about everyone who lived before then? The same type of question is covered in the Old and New Testament. My suggestion: reading both of those would be a good beginning.

Many say, “I have seen nothing that makes me believe God exists and even if He does, what difference does it make? My mother, father, sisters were killed in an automobile wreck.” Others might say something similar: “My two-year-old daughter died from cancer. We prayed our hearts out and cried our eyes out. There was no answer from a god. And you have the nerve to say, ‘God loves us.’ But He let my baby die.”

Tens of thousands of others could repeat a slightly different story, but just as tragic, to every living one of them.

We all have seen very bad things happen to good people. At my age, it would be impossible not to continue to observe very bad things happening to truly nice people. Personally, I have “received” the trite, stale, and worn words that people say at funerals trying to give us comfort. Words that ring hollow. Words such as “They are in a better place.” Person after person follows with similar phrases.

We are the ones left behind with our souls screaming, “Why now, God?”

I am old enough to have had friends and family die. I remember the events of both of my parents’ deaths. I especially remember my dad’s death.

For everything that we as healthy individuals must do, Dad had to have someone do it for him or get him to the place where someone would assist in filling his basic needs. For five years, Dad could not speak; he was also completely paralyzed on one side of his body.

Common sense and experience tell us that no matter where our loved one is lodged, they will not and cannot be tended by someone else with the standards we expect. Especially when our loved ones have an emergency.

Sometimes, even those of us who know God cry, “God, where are you?”

As a side note, every healthy person’s life is most often occupied with their own legitimate issues.

However, at some point during our lives, we will be unable to immediately respond to a loved one’s physical needs. That is when we acknowledge, oftentimes, that our loved one’s physical need is becoming more and more harmful to them. Yes, happening right in front of us. What we should also acknowledge is our own latent observation and lack of caring that exacerbate our loved one’s dire physical needs.

The problem or injury we had previously observed is becoming more damaging. Relying on our emotions and in our angered minds, we lash out. We momentarily believe the issue is a lack of care for our loved one by some caregiver. Then the caregiver becomes the point of our wrath. Our compassion and grief swell inside us, bringing misplaced anger to the wrong person. The entire problem might be that we had previously observed the problem but failed to promptly help. Could it be that we just ignored or failed to respond in a timely manner?

An example of the above belongs to me and it is personal.

One of the times I visited my dad, it was obvious that his fingernails and toenails were well past the need of cutting. For a moment my anger flared. Then another thought was in my head. It seemed to silently say, Jerry, you have visited here many times—why did you not solve this problem earlier? That voice inside me cut me to the quick.

I cut his nails. When I finished, he grinned, grunted, and nodded his head up and down–his only direct form of communication. When I left him that day, the agony in my soul was peaking. As I arrived back at the car, I was overwhelmed. It was a while before I moved.

I said that Dad could not speak and in conversation, he couldn’t. But he could sing every word, mostly in tune, of the great hymns in our church’s song books.

To be totally truthful, when he was frustrated with someone who was trying to “repeat” what he meant by his grunts and head nods, he would let out some cuss words. I felt that no one should have to listen to that. He did not care, nor could he stop it. He occasionally repeated his frustration.

The nurses told me this often happens. My inner reaction was I never heard my dad cuss. I felt they must think that was the way he talked before his stroke.

However, my dad was a no-cussing Christian. They should be told that I never heard him cuss. Yes, I know that a lot of born-again Christians cuss. That doesn’t make me question their salvation. So then I thought, Why do I think I must explain my dad’s actions to them?

So I didn’t.

I am positive we were not the first to believe or say, at the moment of death, that “it is too soon.”

But should I say, “What difference does it make? There is nothing else beyond this life.” Then what is the purpose of man? To try to make someone’s life better? To eat, to drink, to be merry? To do evil? None of it would make sense. This vapor of a man would be, for the most part, useless and hopeless.

After all deaths, some type of funeral occurs. But every time there is a burial, all bodies still rot in the ground, and am I to be okay with that? Is it okay for it to be all that there is? This life is over and that’s it?

I know that is unacceptable and our soul tells us that something is amiss. The Scriptures say, we who are Christians will live forever. Then why must we endure this terrible event? (This will be covered in a later chapter.)

Some may say that they may not have a lot of years left to live. They may think or say, I will live my life in any way that I want, so what!

Well, it seems to me that thoughts and statements like that are probably worth a few comments.

May we search together for some better understanding? Frankly, without knowing anything about you. I can say that by the authority of the Holy Scriptures, regardless of our pasts, God does love us and hungers to give you and me eternal life in Heaven.

One might say, if the scripture is “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” as written in John 14:6 (KJV), then what about all the people since the beginning of humans?

There are Scriptures that specifically answer that question, but that question is not what this book is about. This book is about us and the here and the now and our eternal life. I don’t know why someone would even ask that. We have a great number of more important issues to consider. Like our own eternity. Trust me, at least, for now.

Yes, there were humans on Earth who had never heard of the living God. In fact, at the beginning of human life, it appears they needed a language and knowledge of how to start a fire. (A note to all of you sushi eaters: that is why early humans needed fire. Eating raw fish gets old.)

Then how could Jesus say millions of years later that He was the only way to the Father and to Heaven?

“That could not possibly be fair,” you may think. “Is not God supposed to be fair?”

That will be answered a little later. Let’s just go back in time, for a moment, to the beginning of the Bible.

You may be saying, “I just don’t believe the written pages of the Bible or that God exists. I only believe in things that I can see, touch, smell, hear, taste, and of course, proven science.” For certain, much of science does have correct answers to most of the things that affect each of us. However, if I wanted religion, there is an unbelievable number of different religions from which to pick. Everyone says there are all kinds of different gods other than the God of the Bible. It is widely believed there are many ways to get to a Heaven. Of course, that is assuming there are some Heavens.

My, some have thought a lot about this God thing. Probably as much as thirty intermittent minutes of reading, total. How concise some have been to put the meaning of life and God into such few words. Well said, but it exposes a questionable lack of study. However, since you’re reading this, I think I will try to challenge some of what you may be thinking.

With such strong thoughts to review, we might as well start at the very beginning: Genesis, the first book and on the firs...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2: What Is Intellectual Honesty?
• Chapter 3: Where Are We?
• Chapter 4: What Is God’s Position On Sin?
• Chapter 5: What Happens After Death?
• Chapter 6: What Is Hell Like?
• Chapter 7: What Is Jesus’ Meaning Of Eternity?
• Chapter 8: Why Did God Say He Loved Us?
• Chapter 9: What Is Grace?
• Chapter 10: Jesus Is Alive
• Chapter 11: A Couple Of Incidents
• Chapter 12: Last Days For The Unsaved
• Chapter 13: Reasons For Wrath
• Chapter 14: As It Was “In The Days Of Noah”
• Chapter 15: Who Is Saved?
• Chapter 16: How Shall We Find Faith?
• Chapter 17: Religion Versus Jesus?
• Chapter 18: Another Approach
• Chapter 19: Walking In The Spirit
• Chapter 20: The Believer
• Back cover