The Disaster of Denial

From this writer’s standpoint, the preaching I have heard from a number of leaders in the Church boarders on denial or a complete misunderstanding of the truth of the current situation in America, let alone the rest of the world.

The current watered-down version of the Bible that is being preached denies that the Lord has the license to move in judgment.  Either that or they don’t believe that the term judgment Biblical or necessary in the preparation of His Bride, the Church.  The soft-toned approach refuses to use a word that has become abhorrent to the Christian masses because their leaders never speak of it.  For fear of man, fighting under the guise of keeping unity, many leaders will not use a word they believe is archaic and meaningless, having lost their appetite for the truth.

But this is but a symptom among Church leaders who have wandered away from listening to the Holy Spirit, falling back on words of peace from the Bible that say we need not fear, preaching peace when there is no peace.  They preach half of the truth regarding salvation; it is true enough that Jesus paid the price for our sins, making a way for us to be part of His kingdom and more, to be a kingdom of kings and priests unto our God.  This is the safe side of the line where if this is the message, no one can throw stones because of our heresy.  “Jesus is risen, He is alive.  The stone is rolled away!”, was faithfully proclaimed over this past weekend.  No doubt the horrible price that Jesus payed for our salvation initiated emotions that are good and proper for Christians to have when we remember the cost for our redemption.

But this is not enough.  The Holy Spirit was sent to sanctify us and establish the character of Christ in us.  When we committed our lives to Jesus, we gave license to the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of Jesus) to bring whatever change is required to conform us to the image of Jesus.  That includes guiding us along a path of suffering and discipline.  Now we have struck it!  We’ve hit another nerve of the Church that despises the “discipline” word and its close cousin, disciple.  The great substitution in Biblical doctrine has been for the word coach.  Coaching is far tamer than disciple, because it allows us to enter the humanistic fantasy that Christianity is more like a sport than anything else. 

The term coaching helps us because we cannot fathom or tolerate the notion that the Holy Spirit should have to crucify anything in us.  No, the denial doctrine has made the Holy Spirit unnecessary since human coaches keep telling us to do more of what works for us.  To do what the Holy Spirit instructs us to do would mean we would have to be obedient to His absolute truth, rather than have the choice to follow the instructions of a person whose sole interest is to extract another $100/hr. from our wallet.  Rather than being a living sacrifice, Christians have become the coach’s cash cow.

The great crisis that the Church is facing is that we refuse to accept the fact that we are the target of the Lord’s judgment.  With great precision, the Holy Spirit with one stroke hit the economic heart of China in Wuhan, thereby hitting the economic heart of the world.  The ripple effects are still being felt.  Freedoms that we took for granted were lost overnight.  China’s government has rightfully borne the brunt of scathing accusations from the nations of the world for its secrecy, lies and disregard for human life.  But this is but a superficial analysis of the situation, but it suits those who choose to walk in denial concerning the truth of the Lord at work.  The truth is that judgment is not made in China.

I direct your attention to the much quoted and beloved verses of II Chronicles 7:14, but now I must include verse 13 –

13 If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, 14 and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:13–14, NASB95)

We have forgotten that vs 14 is preceded by the fact that the Lord is the one bringing judgment, not the devil.

Today’s Christian has been fed only part of the message of the Bible, believing that it is all encompassing, but nothing could be further from the truth.  The message that “God is love” is foundational to the Gospel and is unquestionably true.  The heart of the Lord is clearly expressed in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in Him will have everlasting life.  To this I say, “Yes and Amen!  Blessed be the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!”

But this does not negate Peter’s teaching that it is time for judgment to begin in the household of God (I Peter 4:17).  The Bible teaches that the Lord can, will and does dispense judgment and is thoroughly capable to secure that which He sends it forth to do – to bring forth righteousness in His Church; that means you and me.  But it is a double-headed arrow isn’t it?  For judgment is sent into the earth to warn the godless sinner who believes that he must submit to no one other than himself.

The indictment from Heaven is lengthy for the Church.  The bottom-line is that the Church does not want the Lord.  We claim we are followers of Jesus who have submitted to our coaches in the game of life, yet we deny the One who is the truth, the Holy Spirit.  Jesus proclaimed that He is the way, the truth and the life and yet the Church denies that truth.  The denial comes in the form of refusing to give room to the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Jesus.  We have bought the devil’s camouflaged lie that the truth revealed by the Spirit of Jesus is no longer necessary.  We have the Scriptures and we have our coaches!  Jesus said – 

John 5:39–40 (NASB95)  ³⁹ You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; ⁴⁰ and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

The ongoing decision we have made to resist the Holy Spirit, based upon our hard-heartedness, has cost us more than we can possibly comprehend.  The Church has chosen hatred for the Holy Spirit where Jesus said in John 19:27, “But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him saying to them, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’”  The end of this decision leaves the King no choice in Luke 19:27 – “But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.”  This is not a coaching session; this is judgment. 

Our sin of denying the power of the Holy Spirit today, coupled with restricting Him unlimited access to His people so that He can flow through them to a lost and dying world is so grave that it merits nothing less than the judgment Jesus pronounced against those in Jerusalem -

 “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. “For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”” (Luke 19:41–44, NASB95)

We commit the same sin in each of our services and have done so for decades!  Restricting the move of the Spirit, actively standing in His way, resisting and grieving the Holy Spirit for so long that our rebellion and disobedience demands action from the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.  What a rebellious and wicked people we have become, and yet we have the audacity to stand and point our crooked finger back to those in Jerusalem saying, “You deserved everything Jesus said would come!”, not recognizing that we have done the same thing repeatedly, habitually, systematically and intentionally.  We stand without excuse and our guilt has now reached Heaven.  As a result, the hand of the Lord has lifted off the nation; I speak this by the Spirit.

If the fact of judgment is denied, then the Lord has no alternative but to release more of it.  Leviticus 26 outlines five phases of judgment, each worse the previous stage.  Neither the Church nor the world graduated from this being a possible consequence of hatred of the Holy Spirit.  The love of the Father is exemplified where He says that if we are obedient, He will turn toward us (Lev 26:9), make His dwelling among us and His soul would not reject us (vs 11), and that He would walk among us (vs 13).  He is the prize for our obedience born out of wanting Him.

In stark contrast, the penalties of disobedience are dispensed with wave upon wave of judgment in Leviticus 26:14-39.  The first phase is more than simply instructional – it is happening.  Make no mistake, the Bible makes it clear that judgments of the type we are currently experiencing in the form of Covid-19, are not from the devil.  The Bible repeats the phrase, “I (the Lord) will…”, throughout this chapter, so we dare not preach that the devil is coming against us in this hour.  The Bible is clear enough with the beginning of the first judgment phase in Leviticus 26:16 – 

I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up.

Instructional for us today is to note the undeniable similarities between, “sudden terror, consumption and fever”, and Covid-19.  Consumption, a common term for tuberculosis (TB), attacks the lungs, as does Covid-19.  Commonalities between TB and Covid-19 include being asymptomatic, both are infectious (the first being bacterial in origin and the later resulting from a virus), fever, cough, shortness of breath/difficulty breathing, tiredness and aches.  Both can kill.  The other symptoms are not identical, but their similarities are striking, pointing to the warning that this type of disease is of the type described in the above verse. 

What is graver yet, is to read the long list of ever-increasing judgments that await us if we as the Church do not turn.  Our destruction is in sight, yet we deny the iceberg that is dead-ahead as we cruise in the U.S.S. Church.  We are doomed if we will not yield to the Master.  The prophet Balaam was spared judgment by listening to a donkey, but we will not listen to the word of the Lord set forth in the Scripture we claim to follow.

I would submit, that what we have for denied for too is now undeniable.  The unthinkable has become our reality.  More disaster is ahead if we do not preach and teach the truth of judgment that has come to our nation and to the world.  The time is short!  The Lord is righteous and holy and He has demonstrated that He will not tolerate the rebellious or the wicked, especially those in His house.  Ask Ananias and Sapphira or any one of a number of people in the Bible set forth as a warning to people such as we are. 

We must learn from Adam and Eve, Cain, those lost in the flood during the ministry of Noah, the architects of the tower of Babel, Pharaoh who took Sarai as his wife, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses who struck the rock twice instead of speaking to it, Nadab and Abihu who decided to casually adlib, Korah, Dathan, Abiram along with 250 men of renown who presumed to lead, ten leaders who brought a bad report of the land the Lord had promised, Aaron, Saul, David, those exiled to Babylon, and other countless examples set forth in the Bible.  I would be remiss not to mention Paul who calls out Hymenaeus and Alexander who he delivered to Satan (I Tim 1:20), demonstrating the harsh realities of judgment in the early Church – a far cry from being benched by a coach!  May the Church be warned, the Lord does not play games like His Church!

The core example establishing the Lord’s righteous judgment is that He poured out His judgment upon Jesus Christ –

“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” (Isaiah 53:4–6, NASB95)

The prophet goes on to say, “By oppression and judgment He was taken away.” (Isaiah 53:8a) But it is the Lord, our risen Savior, who spoke to the churches in Revelation 2-3.  Woven through these passages we find warnings of judgment if changes are not made, including the taking of their candlestand, in the case of church at Ephesus, and the spewing out of His mouth in the case of the church of Laodicea.  I will leave it to the reader to read the indictments against the other churches, the church of Philadelphia being the exception.  I would submit that we are not the exception.

Judgment is a cause for us to feel shame, yet I dare say we have yet to blush.  However, in all this there is still time.  All we must do is to reject our denial of the truth.  We must embrace and confess the truth of our sin against the Lord.  Only then can we be spared from His great judgments.

“‘If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me— I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies—or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land.” (Leviticus 26:40–42, NASB95)

Having celebrated the resurrection of Jesus, we dare not spit in His face by denying our allegiance to His Holy Spirit and heeding His warnings.  If we do not change our course, we will perish.

Mark Biteler