Mark 12:26
“But about the dead, that they are raised; haven’t you read in the book of Moses, about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?”
What does Mark 12:26 mean?
Jesus is answering a trick question about resurrection by pointing to something the skeptics already knew: God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, identifying himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The brilliant insight here is about tense. God didn't say "I *was* the God of these men" but rather "I *am* their God," even though all three had been dead for centuries. In God's reality, these ancestors still exist and have a living relationship with him, which tells us something profound about the nature of resurrection and eternal life. Jesus uses their own scripture to show that belief in the afterlife was never strange or foreign to their faith tradition—it was always embedded there, waiting to be noticed.