Speaking of confusion, I think Deedat has got confused here because to create evil or send an evil spirit is not the opposite of confusion. The opposite to not being a cause of confusion is to be a cause of confusion.

 

Firstly on the subject of confusion. It is impossible for the true God to be confused. This is because He is all knowing, all wise, and eternal. This means nothing can take Him by surprise and He always knows the absolute best action to take all of the time.

 

Now to the context of 1 Corinthians 14:33, because the meaning of this sentence is found in the context. Here Paul is speaking about church order in their services. He is giving examples of how the church service should take place. We see in the context that the Corinthians had a tendency to fall into chaos in their church services and Paul is saying not only that it should not happen but also that if you allow God to lead you (through the Holy Spirit) then this won’t happen because God is not a God of confusion or chaos.

 

Regarding Isaiah 45:7 Deedat has gone with the KJV version which uses the word evil while other translations into English use words such as sending disaster or sending calamity. The New Living Translation which is more of a paraphrase version translates it as I send good times and bad times which is an interesting way of putting it. All the different versions are fine translations so there is no problem with Deedat using the KJV on this occasion. The issue here is that we Christians have never said that God can not bring bad things on people in his judgement. He did with Sodom and Gomorrah. He did it with the Jews because of their refusal to repent and turn away from idol worship and he will do it with everyone in the end of the ages when he judges mankind. Some will sadly go into eternal judgement and some will be spared because they trusted in the Lord Jesus.

 

What does 1 Samuel 16:14 mean? Evil spirits do exist – that is angels that have rebelled against God and become doers of evil (Satan is one of these and is their leader). These evil spirits hate God and hate his followers. They want to wipe out every believer who believes in the heavenly Father and His Son, from the face of the earth. The only thing that stops them from achieving this is God does not allow it. What God will allow is these evil spirits to make problems for mankind for two purposes. One is with the aim of bringing evil upon the lost sinners with the objective of making them turn away from their chosen path and cause them to call upon God for mercy and forgiveness. The other purpose is in the life of believers. God allows them to harass us as part of his greater plan to refine us and to teach us to trust him at all time. It is important to note that not all bad things that happen to us are brought on us are caused by evil spirits. We can bring bad things on ourselves by our own behaviour. If you bang your head on a brick wall it is going to hurt and you only have yourself to blame. Also God can send his angels in judgement to mankind as well – but this is not what happens in this example because the term used is an evil spirit.

The question that fascinates me is that evil spirits will allow themselves to be used this way. They must realise that they are serving God’s purposes and when it is against believers then it will always be turned into good in the end. I guess it is just their nature that they can’t help themselves from doing evil, even when they know it will rebound on them.

 

The last verse in this section from 2nd Thessalonians (2 Thess 2:11) is again not a problem, especially in the full context of the passage. It is speaking of the coming of the anti-Christ and how the world will deliberately choose to follow him. Looking at the passage with more detail we read;

“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”

The message is straight forward. Choose to deliberately to reject God and in this incident choose the lawless one then God will harden your heart to bring judgement upon you. It is similar to what he did with Pharaoh when he wouldn’t let the Israelites leave Egypt. Regardless of how many judgements were brought upon him, he always had the courage of heart to go against God because as it says “But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go”. In the end he lost his first born son and his army.

 

So as we see in these three passages, there is no confusion on God’s part. He knew exactly what he was or is doing.