Denial is a powerful weapon. It shifts the burden of proof to the other person. When confronted with the denial of biblical truths, the believer may not see the road that God has laid out for him. In the end times, the attack on God’s truth has noticeably increased. Yeshua warned His church of it.
The Denial of the Son
The first is the most widespread denial. It is the denial of the Messiah, of who He is and what He came for. Remove Yeshua from God’s Word, and one’s faith in the God of the Bible will fall apart.
According to 1John 4:3, every spirit that does not confess that Yeshua the Messiah has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. That Yeshua has come in the flesh means that He is not human like us, but that He is from above. The Prophet Micah prophesied that Yeshua would be born in Bethlehem but that His origins are from eternity, from everlasting (Micah 5:2). Only God is from eternity and from everlasting. Whoever denies this truth is an antichrist. The word “anti” means “instead of” or “against.” Those who deny Messiah are against Him. They want to replace Him. They invent all kinds of theories to diminish Him. Some say He is an angel. Others say He is a man who became God. This is a great blasphemy. Others try to belittle Yeshua by putting the Holy Spirit before Him or a powerful woman next to Him. Again others do not want to offend and speak of Him as “a good man,” someone who is not like the others, who is better than others, but it does not mean they believe in Him or that they consider Him as God.
In 2 Peter 2:1, Peter warned: But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. False teachers deny both the person and the work of the Messiah. While they may say nice things about Yeshua, they fail to confess Him as God and as the one and only Savior.
The Denial of the Word of God
The second denial of the end times pertains to the Word of God. The rejection of sound doctrine is a consequence of the first denial: Deny Yeshua, and the person will slowly move away from the Scriptures. A case history is Israel. In John 5:46, Yeshua told His people, If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. Here, Moses stands for the Tanach, the Hebrew Scriptures. Since Messiah’s first coming, rabbinism had to move out of the Scriptures and develop a new religion, for they did not believe in Yeshua. Another case history is the church. For the last 2,000 years, the church has been following the same route as Israel and will eventually ask Yeshua to leave (Rev. 3:14-22).
There are many verses in the New Testament that speak of this form of denial. For example, 1 Timothy 4:1-2 states: Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. According to this passage, the origin of any false teaching is demons. Just as the serpent said in the Garden of Eden, “Did God really say…” (Gen. 3:1), so it is today. The sheep are really in trouble when the shepherd starts speaking kindly of the wolf. This is when anti-biblical truth is adopted in a congregation. The doctrines of demons alienate believers from their God. Their conscience is seared with a hot iron. The Greek word for “seared,” kauteriazo, is the origin of the English word “cauterized.” It means “to sear with a branding iron,” “to deaden one’s spirit.” Farmers brand their cattle to indicate ownership. This is a way these demons claim one’s soul.
The Denial of the Faith
The third denial is the denial of the faith. Once one removes God and His Word, faith will fly away.
What is faith? Faith is saying “Amen” to God. It is the eye of spiritual sight by means of which we see God. It is the divine evidence and conviction of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). It is God-given. Paul warned in 1 Timothy 4:1 that in the latter days, some will depart from the faith. The Greek word for “depart,” apostēsontai, is of the same root as the term “apostasy,” which itself speaks of a divorcing. One divorces God, after knowing of Him.
This third denial is a growing plague, and today, we see many prominent people in Christianity who depart from the faith and are vocal about it.[1]
The Denial of Morals
The next denial naturally flows out of the three previous denials. It is the denial of morals, meaning the departure from what the Bible says is right and good. Some even go so far as to reversing morality: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isa. 5:20)
In Luke 17:26-30, Yeshua prophesied that in the end times immorality would compare to the one that existed during the time of the flood and at the time of Sodom:
26And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
What where the conditions at the time of the flood? In Genesis 6:13, God provided the reason for the flood: The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. The Hebrew word for “violence” is ḥāmās. It expresses more than physical violence. It is used for the hatred of man as when one gives a false testimony or as when someone transgresses God’s law and commits immoral acts. The Hebrew word for “destroy,” shachath, is repeated four times in the context of this verse. Once it is found in Genesis 6:11, twice in verse 12, and once here in verse13. The point is that as man keeps on corrupting himself, there comes a time when God must remove His restraining power and leave man to his corruption.
As for the sin of Sodom, nowadays, man is absolutely free to do what he wants, but Yeshua is very clear on the particular action of the city of Sodom (Gen. 19:4-5): It is a precursor of judgment from God.
Such things, then, are among the denial of what are godly morals. They destroy the Law of God.
The Denial of End Times Prophecies
As an introduction to the fifth denial, one may ask in what condition the world will be when the tribulation begins. The answer is that the world will be in seemingly good shape. In Luke 17:28, Yeshua said that it will be like in the days of Lot. People will be eating and drinking and going about their business. One does not do these things in times of war. These are signs of prosperity, and the description matches a characteristic of Bible history before a tribulation strikes: There are always false teachers telling the people that everything is fine when in reality war is looming on the horizon.
This can be seen in the account of Micah who complained before the Assyrian deportation: If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ that would be just the prophet for this people! (Micah 2:11). At the time when the Assyrians were at the door, the people were so far from God that any good news of prosperity, wine, and beer along with lies intoxicated the people who did not understand the times.
About 150 years later, another calamity was about to strike Judah. But the same type of people were proclaiming peace when there was none. As the Babylonians were at the doors of Jerusalem, God said through Jeremiah: They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly, Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace (Jer. 6:14). They were beating down on people’s souls with lies so that they could not see the truth anymore.
As it was with Noah and Lot and with the Israelites, it is today: For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape (1 Thess. 5:3). The Spirit says that in the end times, there will be those within the church who will speak of peace when there is no peace. This truth leads to the fifth denial of the end times: the denial of end times prophecies.
Today, people think that these prophecies are either gone, fulfilled, or they mean something completely different. Peter predicted that this would happen in 2 Peter 3:3-4: Scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” In the end times, many will mock prophecies that speak of the second coming of the Lord, the rapture, and the Messianic kingdom. Those who mock these prophecies often follow the doctrines of amillennialism or postmillennialism. Both basically teach the same thing: “Peace, peace!” Amillennialism means “no millennium.” The doctrine is held by the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, and by a large and growing segment of Protestantism. Postmillennialists teach that Yeshua will return after the millennium. Neither one of the doctrines teaches that there will be a thousand-year kingdom of Messiah on earth. They believe that Satan is already bound, that we are living in the Messianic Age, and that Messiah reigns through them and they will bring peace on earth.
In order to teach these things, amillennialists and postmillennialists need to take large portions of Scripture, such as the book of Revelation, symbolically. This method of interpretation came into the church right after the departure of the last Jewish teacher, the Apostle John. It began with Origen (A.D. 184-253) who was deemed one of the greatest Christian theologians. But how great was he? He began the allegorical method of Bible interpretation, departing from centuries of properly reading the Scriptures. Then came Augustine (A.D.354-425), who is considered the father of Catholicism and who followed the same allegorical method of hermeneutics. Today, it is the majority view in Christianity.[2]
On a personal note, I have to say that if someone had come to me with this type of thinking and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures when I was an unbeliever, I would probably never have believed that Yeshua was the Messiah. If one part of the Bible may be reinterpreted in this allegorical way, what guarantee is there that Yeshua really was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), that He really would have His hands and feet pierced (Ps. 22:16; Isa. 53:5; Zech. 12:10), or that He really will take away my sins (Isa. 43:25)? If all the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures were fulfilled literally, why are they changing today?
Those who believe in amillennialism or postmillennialism often also believe that they are the new Israel. Unfortunately, often these same people take on an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic position, as the two-thousand-year history of the church shows. With this, we come of the sixth denial of the end times.
The Denial of Israel
Augustine, with his new allegorical method of interpreting the Scriptures, was relatively nice toward the Jews. He taught that they should be allowed to live among Christians because their wretched circumstances were an evidence of the truthfulness of the Old Testament prophecies. He added that they should always be humiliated.[3] His position was relatively nice compared to what others said and did before and after him, but it was a clear departure from the inspired words of Paul who had continual sorrows for Israel for he understood their plight and even said, For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Messiah for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh (Rom. 9:3). Who in Christianity today speaks similar words?
After Augustine came many other theologians, one of whom was Martin Luther, “the Father of the Reformation.” Luther did not hide his hatred of the Jewish people. His words greatly influenced Hitler and Nazism. The prominent Nazi Julius Streicher argued during his trial in Nuremberg after World War II that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther.[4]
In Zechariah 12:3, God proclaimed that He will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. In a sense, they already are in Jerusalem! They have sent their religious representatives with each claiming ownership of God’s city and denying Israel. Jerusalem is the only city in the world where some 15 different Christian communities live next to each other, all claiming it for themselves. There are over 160 churches and 117 Christian institutions in Jerusalem. Many of these representatives of Christendom think they are in the millennium, and many of them express a dislike of the Jewish people.[5]
The Believer’s Responsibility
How can the believer protect himself or herself from falling into the trap of these six denials? Second Timothy was Paul’s last letter, and in this epistle, he gave his best advice to the church. He began his last chapter, his last words by expressing his great desire to see Timothy—and by application all believers—to succeed and keep strong until the coming of the Lord: I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Messiah Yeshua, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom. Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching (2 Tim. 4:1-2). Paul made a solemn declaration in matters of extraordinary importance and appealed to God and His Son. After reminding the believers that the Messiah will judge all things at the end, he gave a command consisting of several points.
The believer is to preach the Word, declare it, announce it, make known what God has written in His book. The Greek word for “preach” is kēryxon. Some believe that the term is borrowed from the Sanskrit word karu, which means “to sing.” This translation would be very appropriate because the Word of God is like a song of benediction. Every of its facets has the aim of bringing us closer to God. So Paul’s command is “Go and sing the Word of God to the world!” The believer is called to sing God’s Word through his actions, his words, his prayer, his thoughts.
Paul continued by stating that the believer do this in season and out of season. On the surface, this phrase could be read in two ways: “Preach the Word whether you feel inclined to preach or not” or “Preach the Word whether people want to hear it or not.” This does not mean that the believer is to constantly proclaim the Scriptures without any regard to the situation, like a machine repeating verses. Rather, it means that the believer is to always be ready to proclaim the precious Word of God at all times, and this readiness requires work and discipline.
Reading the Bible, praying, and attending worship services and Bible studies and prayer meetings is not a matter of feeling. It should be part of our everyday life for it is a commandment of the Law of the Messiah. Prayer is not meant to happen only when one feels like praying or when a need arises, prayer is the believer’s sanctification oxygen. So, while being ready in season and out of season does not mean that one is to preach the Word without consideration of the circumstances, it does mean that whatever the time, whatever the people, we ought to sing God’s mighty Word throughout all our being. There is really no “season” for the Word of God. Yeshua said that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mt.4:4). There is no particular season for bread. There is no particular season for eating. Just so, the believer is to be ready to present God’s good news of redemption at all times because time is short, and Yeshua is coming soon.
This article was first published in Ariel Magazine Winter 2020, Vol. 1, Number 37. It is republished on this website with permission from the publisher and copyrights owner: Ariel Ministries USA, San Antonio, TX. All rights reserved.
[1] An example of this phenomenon is the story of Marty Sampson, a worship artist of the band Hillsong, who renounced his faith in 2019.
[2] For a thorough explanation and analysis of the history of these false doctrines, see: Andrew D. Robinson, Israel Betrayed – Volume 1: The History of Replacement Theology (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2019).
[3] See: Robinson, Israel Betrayed, pp. 5-6.
[4] For more information, see: William Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), p. 271-272.
[5] For an analysis of modern Christian anti-Semitism and what is going on in Israel, see: Paul R. Wilkinson, Israel Betrayed – Volume 2: The Rise of Christian Palestinianism (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2019).