At what point in His ministry did Jesus let people know He was presenting Himself as God?
A viewer asks at what point in Jesus's public ministry the people at large understood He was presenting Himself as God.
Answer
He tried to hold this back as much as possible, so this is another one of those contingencies. Jesus knew as a man that if He started proclaiming everywhere He went, I am God, He would lose His life very quickly, because He had enemies right away, Pharisees, Sadducees, Romans. So it is very subtle how Jesus introduces Himself as God; most of it comes at the end of the gospels, before He is crucified, when He now wants to let it out to agitate the Pharisees and Sadducees so that they try to kill Him. For most of His ministry He is in Galilee, north, where the Pharisees and Sadducees have only some people; most of them are in Jerusalem, and Jesus stays away from Jerusalem practically His whole ministry. Then at the very end He says we must go to Jerusalem where the Son of Man must die, and He goes on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee to avoid the Pharisees, crosses the Jordan, and comes to Jerusalem, knowing He has about a week to live. All He has to do is say I am God in front of them and it is over, blasphemy, and that is more or less what He does when He gets there. So there are two levels in the New Testament at once: on one level these men are doing something evil in killing Him, and on the other level, when Peter tries to stop Him, Jesus says get behind Me, Satan, because I want to go to the cross, this is your salvation.