A dying declaration

A dying declaration
“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?  
We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” 
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’” 
Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” 
                                                                                                                   Luke 23:39-43
Here’s something to think about. The above quote from Luke’s gospel tells us not only of the reaction of the two criminals crucified with Jesus but about what Jesus said.
Jesus when faced with death said to the one criminal “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
This was something only God could guarantee. If Jesus was not the Son of God and simply a man why would he say such a thing. Especially as he was about the face death.
Remember Jesus before going to the cross had been whipped unmercifully. Yet he never recanted what he said about himself.
The apostle Paul makes the point,
“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 
Romans 5:7,8.
Jesus was all he said he was the One and Only Son of God.
C. S. Lewis notes,
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 
                                                                                     C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
What do you think?
Please think about it.