BrianT. I will propound my view of arneomai. And what I say I firmly believe is what sound men of the past also understood, albeit they may not have expounded upon the original so much. Lexically if one looks up arneomai it is usually defined as "deny". And I do not deny that its meaning or sense is "deny". But a simple "deny" is unsatisfactory in many instance where the word is used. It had been better if the versions had been more specific. I believe arneomai is often used in the sense of "contradict", and some lexicon gave this as one meaning. When the NT speaks of people who "deny" God or Christ it very rarely, if ever, refers to people who mean like "there is no God", "there is no Messias". That is not the kind of denial arneomai is used to portray in general. The stronger word for "deny", aparneomai, is more likely to portray such denial. In John's first epistle arneomai is set as opposite to "confess", which is homologeô in the Greek. Look at homologeô in that epistle, and learn what the lexicons say about it, and contrast with arneomai, and you should learn what kind of denial is portrayed.
Unlearned men have a simplistic understanding of "confessing Christ" and "denying Christ". In my country most religious professors think "confessing Christ" is the same as verbally utter a catch phrase before men, like say "Jesus is Lord". If they find a person uttering that aloud they say he is confessing Christ and is a "born again" person. What utter stupidity! Even the pope of Rome, the Antichrist with capital A, says "Jesus is Lord", but every judicious person knows he is a chief servant of Satan. Likewise the professors think "denying Christ" is, generally taken, an act of publicly renouncing Christ, like saying, "there never was such a person as Jesus Christ, he is a myth". Such people get stigmatized as "antichrist" by dead professors who are more antichrist themselves albeit they "confess" Christ all the time inasmuch as they are able to repeat the same slogans like "Jesus is Lord", "Jesus is the Christ who became flesh" etc.
Titus 1:16 gives a good definition in brief of what it is to "deny" God. The person referred to there by Paul were not "atheists" or satanists or such like who are openly hostile to the Christian religion. No, the persons spoken of were professors of religion, men who claimed to know God and Christ. But yet Paul says they "deny" Him. How? Answer: by their works they deny God and Christ, being abominable and unto all good works reprobate. These were people who may have said "I am a born again believer in Christ", they claimed to know God. But their profession meant nothing seeing they denied the validity of their profession by their wicked works of disobedience. They did not verbally "deny" God, like satanists and atheists and devil worshippers etc., but by contradicting their own pious sounding profession through worthless works of their own contrivance. This is the plight of the vast majority today who profess Christ. Easy believism and all kinds of similar heresies run rampant. Such men do not openly disavow Christ or God, but by their contradictory works and beliefs etc. they deny Him.
"To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them"
People who profess vital religion but who speak not according to God's word on a continual basis are deniers of God and of Christ, no matter how many thousand times they may have repeated phrases like "Jesus is Lord" etc.
Nida is manifestly a denier of God and Christ. His own Bible contradicting teachings (= heresies) and notions bespeak this fact. The same goes for a host of others linked with DE and modern versions. They are such evident wolves and vultures that there are no need to speak about sheep clothing in their case. The vast majority of the translators of the RSV were manifest Christ-denying heretics, men who denied many teachings of the Bible. Therefore it is not wonder that people in general rejected that perversion as corrupt. God is not mocked. Modernists cannot render God's words aright.
The greatest threat to wolves in sheep clothing is teaching and preaching the word of God under the unction and empowerment of God the Holy Spirit, in the authority of Christ, not as scholars and scribes, but as Christ, who did not teach like others, but He taught with all authority. And if the word of God is additionally taught with precision and minute accurateness there will be little ground left for deceivers to stand on. Mark my words.
Harald
