I Am He John 18:1-9 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

When Jesus Christ said “I am he” those who accosted Him fell backwards. In this study we are going to show that Jesus was speaking the Tetragrammaton that no one else could speak.  The tetragrammaton [gr. for four letters] are the four Hebrew radicals that spell the Lord’s name. This is what caused the men to fall backwards. This is one of the ways that God let us know that Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh.

We see the Lord first disclosing His name by using this phrase when He appeared to Moses in a burning bush on Mt.Sinai (Ex. 3:14) and then again in the Tabernacle (Deut. 32:39). “I am” is an identifying phrase that singles our God out from all other gods that are in the universe (1Cor. 8:5, John 1:18, Isaiah 43:10-11).

We commonly refer to God as God the Father.  We call God the Son the Word (John 1:1. 1John 5:7) or Jesus Christ.  We commonly refer to the third person of the Trinity as the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost.  However, there is one name that inclusively identifies all three persons in the singular. That name is “the Lord” (Isaiah 43:3, Ezek. 20, Acts 10:47-48, Phil. 2:11, 1Cor. 12:3, 2Cor. 3:17).  When you find “the LORD” spelled with all capital letters, it has been translated from the tetragrammaton.

Jesus Christ proclaimed Himself as “I am he” (John 8:24) showing that he is the same God as the “I am” of the Old Testament.  And yet, he made it clear that He was the Son of God (John 8:28, 8:58, and 13:19). Since the Disciples had difficulty understanding this, Jesus repeated it on several different occasions (John 10:30, 1John 5:7).

You may find the truth that Jesus Christ is God Almighty manifest in the flesh a difficult doctrine to grasp or explain.  However, it is not difficult to accept and believe because it is true based on the words of God.