Satan is creating “Deniers” in Christianity, Ep 2-15

Welcome back!  I am your host Dawn Simmons and this episode of Conquering Our Unseen Enemies is a little different format.  We are going to be talking about “deniers”.  I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute.  First let me give you a little background on how these shows come together so you understand why we are talking about this today which is Easter or Resurrection Day, or this week, which I would say is Resurrection Week.  Then we are also going to talk about the Garden Tomb where Jesus was laid after the crucifixion.  I was just there and want to share a bit about my experience there.

So this week, as with every week, I ask the Lord, what do you want me to talk about for the podcast this week.  He gives me direction and drives the direction of the podcast.  At the end of last year, He had a whole series about 7 demons He wanted me to discuss.  He has a direction and the last few weeks our discussion has been leading to what we are going to discuss today, and He chose those topics because today is Easter, today is the day he rose out of the tomb.  As a believer, it is one of the most important days of our lives and none of us were even here for it.  Today matters.  Without today, nothing would matter. 

So now let’s get on to the topic of the day, “deniers”.  What is the Lord talking about here.  When He gave me that answer, I have to admit, “deniers” is not even a word I use so I wrote it and immediately looked at it, like that word doesn’t look right. Is it misspelled?  It’s just a weird word and I felt like it broke some rules of grammar that I didn’t know, but once I got past my right brained thinking I looked at it again for the heart of what He was telling me.  He was asking me to take some time and open my eyes a bit to see the “deniers” that are denying Him of what He did for us.  Those who deny the Truth of who He is and what He did here.  Those who deny the truth of the gospel.  Now those folks are everywhere, truly it’s not hard to see.  What He was asking me to do however, was specifically listen to the “deniers” in body of Christ.  Now this isn’t about judgment, it’s about understanding where we stand in the depth of where He stood, where He hung, where He laid and where He rose and walked again. 

I’m going to share with you some words I wrote down the day He spoke to me.  My original plan was to pay attention over a period of days, but what I am going to share actually was done within an hour.  I’ll also share a conversation I had and we’ll talk a little bit about how to handle these types of words when you are in the middle of it.  It may not happen often for you, but I want you to be equipped when it does because make no mistake about it, it is the spirit of the antichrist talking among the body of Christ.  The reason we need to talk about this address it is found in Matthew 7:21, Jesus tells us this: Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?”  Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you.  Away from me, you evildoers!” Here Jesus is telling us the reality of what is going to happen when that time comes and when He sifts, I don’t plan to be chaff, I am wheat and I want you to be wheat too. 

So we are going to go over 7 things that were said pretty immediately after the Lord said, go listen.

1.     “Angels don't communicate with us today or appear to us today, we can no longer see them”

Well this isn’t true because I have seen them, I am sure many of you have seen them.  There are thousands of stories of people, credible people who have had encounters with angels.  While this may not seen harmful, at the root of this comment is the prevalent belief that when the Bible was finished, so were all the supernatural happenings in the world.  As if because we have the Bible, there is no need for the Angels to do anything.  We cannot allow this errant thinking into our minds because it would not explain what we read in the Book of Revelation. So again, satan is trying to make us think that the kingdom of God is done, there is no movement today and that is a lie also called a denial of Truth.

2.     Demons are not involved in situations where mental health or health issues are present. 

Well we have talked about this several times in the podcast as we have discussed specific demons.  This was said by a woman and unfortunately I didn’t write down my exact response.  It actually occurred about an hour before the Lord gave me my direction so I didn’t think to write it down, but I can tell you I told her something along the lines of Jesus gave us specific examples where he cast our demons from people who had mental health issues and health issues.  If Jesus says the reason for it was demons, then demons are involved in mental health and health issues.  We cannot sit here today and say otherwise, that is denying what Jesus did here and is written countless times in the Bible, to do so is to call Jesus a liar and I will not allow that or participate in that.  If we hear someone say that and tacitly allow it, without speaking up then we are in essence agreeing with it.  So we are not trying to argue but we have to speak the truth in a situation.  We are the Truth in His name. 

3.     The Bible – edited, books left out, men have edited it,

Now this statement is actually true, but what he is saying for the reasons he is saying it is a lie and a denial of Truth.  The Bible is edited.  Most people don’t realize that there was set criteria used to determine which books were included in the Bible.  One of the issues that persists today is confusion over what should or shouldn’t be included in the Bible.  We know the Bible is God Breathed to those who wrote it and for some the fact that there are books that were previously included or excluded angers them and so they don’t want to believe any of it.  That is pure nonsense and an excuse to avoid being accountable and living in sin.  The people who seem to get the most upset by it and use it to justify turning their back on Christianity don’t know anything about the part of the bible that is included.  The criteria used was based on a number of things but a few of the things that matter are taking into consideration what the established beliefs the first century Christians held and what was accepted by them as true.  The reason for that is because the first century Christians were there in the beginning when Paul and the Apostles and Jesus were among them and able to guide them and teach them.  The date was also important.  To be included in the Bible, the book had to be written within a time period that was while the church was being established.  So you would not include something from the second century in the Bible because the first century Christians would not have included it in their teachings.  Another thing that was considered was the author.  Even if the author was first century, it what he wrote was what he heard from a guy, who heard it from a guy, who heard it from a guy, it didn’t get in the Bible.  You had to have a relationship that could be verified to those who were the original teachers of Christianity.  So tangential authors, excluded.  The thinking was they did not want any teachings that were not known to be included in the original church teachings.  Are there some in there that should be, yes, we know there are some letters of Paul’s that were lost because he mentions it, but if the Lord allowed it to be lost, then He must not have needed it and whatever it addressed must be covered elsewhere for us. Moving on.

4.     Claiming to be a Christian but also claiming not to know Jesus because He is not God, there are other ways to God.

This one came up a lot.  I am sure you hear that as well.  There is only one way to God.  We can’t skirt around that.  We aren’t trying to argue with anyone, but we should know why we believe that and be able to quote the scripture.  So the easiest one is in John 14:6. “ Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” Anyone saying otherwise is speaking a lie which is a denial of Truth.

5.     I don't believe people go to hell. If everyone is loved then it doesn't matter.  hell is just a scary story

This garbage statement hits on 2 lies.  The first, if everyone is loved then it doesn’t matter.  Well, God is love, yes, but He is also Holy and God will not love that which is evil.  We have free choice and people use it every day to be unholy.  I am not talking about being perfect, but I am talking about being righteous for Christ.  The second part of that is an attack on the Word of God. So clearly you can see in both of these statements, this person is not a true Christian but has instead created a form of self-religion to fit his purposes.  He will be left outside the gate if he does not accept the truth.

6.     You don't have to repent to anyone, just stop doing whatever it is you were doing

So this is a subtle way of denying the Truth.  I say subtle because they are trying to acknowledge that a change in behavior is needed, so it counterfeits the truth by making us think “oh yeah, we should stop such and such, but the way satan uses this man, he calls himself a Christian, just to be clear, is to then say but you don’t need to repent.  Now let’s think about this. So we are going to problem solve here using the Bible but not referencing a scripture.  This is a way you can look at a situation and come to the correct conclusion if you don’t have a Bible available and don’t know the scripture.  Here is how we solve that, who taught repentance in the Bible.  To be fair repent is in the Bible several times old and new, but who spent their whole ministry teaching repentance and then baptizing people? John the Baptist, right?  John the Baptist had a purpose in his life, teach people repentance to prepare the Way for Jesus.  John the Baptist baptized Jesus.  So if Jesus went to John the Baptist and was baptized by Him, it stands to reason, Jesus endorsed John’s teaching so repentance must be required.  Not to mention it an overall teaching of the bible both old and new testament.  So if you can’t quote a scripture but you are put on the spot, answer that way.   

7.     Never felt God's presence, never had a single prayer answered, never got healed of anything, never heard his voice at all, hypocrisy of churches, unloving Christians, abuse of churches, bible full of contradictions and absurdities, is just fiction  I question was why did God not do more to help them believe, why did God not show up more, do more)

Let me put this in context for you.  This person was talking about how every time he tries to evangelize this is what he hears in response.  He spoke about one guy in particular who gave him this as a response to why he walked away from the church.  Again I see this as an excuse to live in sin rather than seek the Truth of the Lord.  When someone speaks in absolutes, that is a red flag.  When someone pushes everything back on God, “it’s God’s fault” that is a red flag.  One thing I want to point out here.  When the excuse of: hypocrisy of churches, abuse of churches is used we need to think about that.  Satan is the one who has corrupted our churches for sure.  We cannot deny that.  To then have an argument to not go because it is corrupted is Satan making truth out of a situation he corrupted.  When there is truth imbedded into what someone says, the rest of what they say will be considered acceptable as truth because a part is true.  See how the Christian who is trying to evangelize is then left questioning why did God not do more, why did God not show up more for this guy.  That is lunacy.  The Christian allowed the enemy to deny the Truth and he just accepted the lies of the non-believer.  We have to be stronger than that.  We shouldn’t be evangelizing if we don’t even know God ourselves.  You are setting yourself up to be deceived.  That’s like me going out to people and telling them “man, have you completed an Iron man? No? on man, you gotta do it, it will change your life.  The training is intense but once you get it down the race itself is a breeze.”  Ok, I don’t do Iron mans, I will never do an Iron man, know nothing about what it takes to compete in one.  So I have no business recruiting other people to run an iron man when I don’t know what I am talking about.  New believers do this a lot and sometimes they are the only ones who do this. But they end up getting skewered by people like this guy because they are not grounded in the Word yet and don’t know how to respond or handle a situation like this.  We all should evangelize, but we need to be honest in the situation and if you are in over your head, say, hey, I don’t know how to answer what you are saying, but I can find someone who can and I’ll be back to with them to talk to you.  Don’t walk away dismayed yourself because you allowed someone else to rob you of the little truth you had.

Ok, now I want to tell you about a conversation I had this week.  All of these stories I’m discussing were with people who call themselves Christian just to make sure you understand context.  So the initiator of this conversation calls herself a Christian but does not believe in Jesus and stated she does not believe in the crucifixion or the resurrection.  So we are not talking about someone who is Jewish just to be clear.  She is a “Christian” and is spreading the message of God is love and he loves everyone and the initial comment she made was we need to respect everyone because religion is a personal thing and it is intertwined with culture and family.  We can all learn from each other and grow in understanding no matter what we believe.  I’m not sure what happened for her to say that, I was late in the conversation, but the first response I heard was a guy questioning her about where she derived her New Age, Satanic doctrine.  I was a little shocked at how blunt he was, but I was interested to hear her response.  His point was, hey you are saying something to Christians essentially telling us to quiet down the truth and he was calling her on it, so I have to commend him on that.  He was clear, direct and said why he was saying that to her. As you can imagine, it didn’t go over well but that’s where truth was revealed.  What came out of her mouth after that was all the satanic beliefs she was carrying.  Because she got upset, the words coming out of her were satanic and she was twisting the Bible and saying there are other ways to God, the Bible is not the only source of truth and much worse I don’t want to repeat.  You get the idea without me having to speak what she was saying.  Once she was denying that Jesus died on the cross another woman very calmly and very clearly explained the crucifixion and the resurrection to her.  However, let’s call her Jane, I should have done that earlier. But Jane dismissed this well laid out explanation from this woman and called her a legalist and told her to stop spreading her lies essentially.  That’s where I stepped in and said that what this woman said was truth, not legalism and left it at that.  Which of course meant that she was now turned at me.  I don’t mind that, some people don’t want to get involved, but we have to support truth and our brothers and sisters but without attacking Jane.  So then Jane tells me with attitude, “yeah sure, your truth in the Bible’s truth”. I’m not sure what that meant but I just responded, “not sure why you are giving me attitude but yes my truth is in the Bible’s truth.  That should not bother you”. Then she tells me that this is what is wrong with the world today, she wasn’t trying to give me an attitude.  I responded telling her that the issue has nothing to do with the world, but it was her attitude and the way she chose to use her words.  I was prepared to tell her the conversation was over at that point, but instead, she chose to apologize.  I was a little shocked.  She carried on with attitude with others but I left the conversation.

We have to speak the truth when we are hearing otherwise.  We will be held accountable for what we do or don’t do for the Kingdom.  We don’t need to argue.  I don’t have to convince anyone of anything.  We have to get over wanting to win the argument.  We may not be the one chosen to bring that person to the truth of Jesus, we may be one of the other farmers there to plant the seed or water the seed or trim out some weeds or other pests.  It may be for someone else to harvest.  So speak the truth of Jesus but don’t argue, don’t get upset and don’t behave in a way Jesus would look at you and say, that wasn’t necessary.  That’s not My way.  What happened in the Garden of Gethsemane when Peter cut off the ear of the guard there to arrest Jesus.  Jesus didn’t celebrate with Peter, no, he chastised him.  We need to not let everyone walk over us, but stand up and speak the truth.  If it is accepted then great, if it is not, you did what is required of you and let the Lord handle the rest. 

Alright now I want to switch gears a bit and talk to you about the garden Tomb.  I was just there in February and it was amazing.  Now this is the tomb that is widely believed to be the tomb owned by Nicodemis where Jesus was laid to rest.  Of course, there is another huge tourist attraction that claims to be the place and I went there too, but this is the garden tomb not far from skull hill where the crucifixion took place.  While it is also a very busy tourist attraction we were able to experience it twice actually and I really want to share that with you.  The first time we went we were with a lot of people, there are tour groups in and out and it’s crowded and you have limited time because they want to make sure everyone gets a chance to see and experience everything, which is great, but at the same time not so great if you want to have a moment and experience the experience!  So the first day there was good, but I admit I walked away disappointed at being so ushered and rushed in the tomb.  You get 7 seconds in the tomb and you have to get out so everyone gets their turn.  Not exactly spiritual.  Again, totally understand, it’s exciting to see so many people coming from all over the world just to be there for their 7 seconds.  Most people were fine with 7 seconds, it truly is an empty tomb so there isn’t anything to see, thankfully.  Skull hill, same thing, it is not what you expect as it is part of the modern city due to the bus depot being there where the crucifixion took place.  It wasn’t on top of the hill like you see in all the depictions.  Anyhow, we left, got in the bus and as we were driving away, realized my husband had lost his cell phone.  When you are in a foreign country, the last thing you want to do is lose your cell phone.  However, if you are going to lose it, a great place to lose it is at the Garden Tomb.  We have no idea where we lost it, but we do know that it was turned in before we even knew we lost it.  It was turned in and sitting there while we were still there buying our souvenirs.  So when we called, we were so relieved and planned to go back the next morning to get it.  The greatest thing that could have happened to us was to lose that phone because we went back the next morning when they opened and because it was early, there was no one else there but the employees.  We were able to spend an hour at skull hill, just sitting there imagining it, seeing it after reading about it so many times, it was so peaceful and yet obnoxiously loud because it is a bus depot.  It felt dismissed.  I was able to journal there and enjoy the time in a way that was impossible the day before.  From skull hill to the garden tomb is a short walk through a garden area.  At the tomb, we had another hour of peace and had the tomb all to ourselves.  I was able to go in and sit, spend as much time in there as I wanted.  You could feel the Holy Spirit there throughout our time.  When I first walked into the tomb, you could feel the Holy Spirit and as I stepped inside, my right knee buckled.  My knees don’t buckle.  I could feel a presence there, and I was so appreciative of Him, and you couldn’t help but wonder what happened in that cave over that 3 days or however many hours.  He was in there and then he arose, there had to have been such celebration, waiting, joy, tears, how did He feel waking up in there knowing He completed it.  Was he groggy at first, was he sore, so many questions.  If you want to see the tomb and experience what I am talking about here, we have a video up on the YouTube Channel.  We weren’t ready to start posting from the Israel trip, but the Lord said to put this video together for Resurrection Sunday.  So the youTube channel is Life Journey with Dawn Simmons.  We focus on Biblical places on our trips and bring it all back to share with people so others can go too even if it’s only through our lens. 

Thank you guys for listening and for all the emails.  I appreciate it.  We are not following our regular format today, so I am going to end here. 

Have a great week, remember Him and speak the Truth. 

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