JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Then Jesus replied by using His most solemn form of introducing a saying:
"I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am” (Jn 8:58).
Jesus' statement so infuriated the leaders that they immediately "picked up stones to stone
Him" (v. 59).
Why would Jesus' particular saying provoke such a violent response?
Because His saying was blasphemous unless He really was and is God.
It is clear from the saying itself, ". . . before Abraham was born, I am" (v. 58), that Jesus
was claiming to have existed before Abraham was born. It is also obvious from the tense of the
verb ("am") that He was claiming an eternal preexistence. Even such a claim would not be
sufficient enough to warrant stoning. The real reason for their violent reaction is that when Jesus
said "I am," He was using the divine name by which God had revealed himself to Moses at the
burning bush. When Moses had asked God what His name was, He responded:
"I am" or "I am who I am" (Ex 3:13).
Then He continues: "This is what you are to say to the Israelites:
"I am has sent me to you'" (v. 14).
The word "was" or "became" or "came into being" (genesthai) marks the historical point
of time when Abraham came into existence as against the time before Abraham came into being.
Since this word is in the aorist "tense" it sets a point of beginning for the existence of Abraham.
Similarly the present tense of the word "am" (eime) predicates absolute existence for the person
of Jesus, with no point of beginning at all. If Jesus wanted to only say that His existence
antedated the time of Abraham (which would leave open the question of whether Jesus also had a
beginning like that of Abraham, only earlier), He would have used the imperfect "I was"
(eimein).
The Jehovah's Witnesses try to get around this verse (Jn 8:58) by translating it ". . . before
Abraham came into existence, I have been." By translating Jesus' words "I am" to "I have been"
to obscure the fact that Jesus was making a direct claim to being God, the Jehovah's Witnesses
break the very basic rules of Greek grammar. They claim that ego eimi ("I am") should be
translated "I have been" because the verb eimi is in the "perfect indefinite tense." The problem is
that there is no such tense in the Greek language. Rather eimi is the first person singular, present,
active, indicative form of einai, the verb "to be." It must therefore be translated “I am,” not
"I have been." Since 1950, when this fallacious translation and interpretation was pointed out to
the Jehovah's Witnesses, they have discontinued the use of this argument in their New World
Translation.