who could say this?

"For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father." (John 10:17-18 ESV)


Amazing, amazing words!  Who in his right mind could even say such a thing?  Only the One who could do it...

"I believe in the miracle which is at the foundation of the Christian Church because in that case the question does not concern merely the resurrection of a person about whom I know nothing, a mere x or y, but it concerns specifically the resurrection of Jesus; and Jesus was like no person who has ever lived.

"It is unbelievable, I say, that any ordinary man should be raised from the dead, but then Jesus was no ordinary man; in His case the enormous presumption against miracle is reversed; in His case, far from its being inconceivable that He should have been raised, it is inconceivable that He should not have been raised; such a one as He could not possibly have been holden of death.”

(J. Gresham Machen, from What is Faith?)