By Christine Darg

Jerusalem Channel

This list is certainly not exhaustive but I’ll mention seven areas where there is great confusion in our world today.

Our God is not the author of confusion but of peace and order. (1 Corinthians 14: 33)

If we know the Word of God in these Last Days, we will not be confounded or confused.

My first point—There is confusion in modern evangelicalism about salvation and holiness. People are asked to raise their hand, walk an aisle, sign a card, pray a prayer and then they’re told they’re Christians no matter how they live for the rest of their lives. Today’s false teachers deny holy living and deny the need for obedience to God’s commands. False teachers say if you’ve prayed the sinner’s prayer who can keep on living with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you can keep doing all sorts of sins and God will overlook it all because “you’re saved.” If we’re truly saved will we not grieve over sin and the lost? How can we not tell people in love about the horrors of Hell. Will the damned not cry out in eternity asking why their Christian friends didn’t warn them?

A believer will sin from time to time because we are part of a fallen race, but a real born again believer will not sin habitually.  Every time you sin, you will be conscious of sin; you will be grieved and ask for forgiveness. Your mind will be set on the Spirit, on things above.

The apostle John stated in 1 John 3: 9 “No one who is born of God makes a practice of sin.” In 2 Corinthians 13: 5 Paul says pointedly, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” The apostle wished the Corinthians to examine carefully their motives and character lest their faith should be insincere or superficial.

To be in the faith implies —

—That we have made an open confession of the Lord Jesus. Paul wished the Corinthians to examine if they had really renounced all dependence on idols, and were putting their trust in God alone, and in Jesus the Messiah whom He sent.

—The phrase “in the faith” means that Christ is actually in you.  You are conscious of communion with Him and his help, restraining against sin.

2. In the world today there is confusion over who is God. Allah the god of Islam is a desert principality and is not the God of Israel or Christians. Although allah is used generically for God in Arabic and other languages, the moon god of Islam is not יהוה the Sovereign Lord of the universe. Every believer ought to know this by now.

3. There is great confusion about the name Palestine and to whom the Holy Land belongs. Maps in many Bibles erroneously label the Land of Israel as Palestine although in the days of Jesus the land was referred to as Israel and Judea. Matthew 2: 1 states that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea. Matthew 2: 20 records that “After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and return to the land of Israel.” In Matthew 10: 23 Jesus said his disciples will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

The name Palestine represents Israel’s ancient enemy the Philistines and was imposed on the Land of Israel by the Romans after the destruction of Jerusalem in order to taunt the Jews and to cover up their legitimate claim to the Land. The name Palestine has been hard to shed. Following the end of World War I, in 1918 the League of Nations mandate for the British administration of the Land of Israel was called Palestine. But it is imperative to understand that Palestine never existed as a country or ethnic group!  In modern times the Arabs living in the region were issued Jordanian birth certificates, not Palestinian birth certificates. And the Arab people of Gaza had Egyptian birth certificates. Both Jews and Arabs were referred to as Palestinians. A flag for the mandated territory of so-called Palestine was designed with a Jewish Star of David.

But after the British mandate was divided into Israel and Transjordan, Yasser Arafat concocted the concept of another Palestinian state, and everybody believed him. Illusion often becomes delusion. This Illusion of Arafat’s of a Palestinian state within the historic Land of Israel—and in addition to Jordan— has caused great confusion and delusion. A “two-state solution” amounts to Hitler’s final solution because a terror state inside the heartland of biblical Judea and Samaria can only mean more October 7s. This terror state would not be legitimate because the primary goal of its occupants would be Israel’s elimination. Granting a state called Palestine full membership at the UN would reward Hamas for murdering, raping and kidnapping civilians, children and babies on October 7. Granting a state called Palestine full membership at the UN would also reward the murderous Iranian regime for its missile barrage against Israel on April 14.  Granting UN rights to so-called Palestine without direct negotiations undermines peace efforts and empowers Iran and its terror proxies to destabilize the region.

4. Gender confusion is rampant. The transgender movement has overtaken religion, culture, education, business and politics in the West. Sexual orientation and gender identity are now privileged above privacy, safety and freedom. Bible believers must resist the temptation to be discouraged and, instead, we must share the Lord’s love and truth as we are wisely led. Some of the greatest investments we can make for the next generation will be teaching our children and grandchildren about God’s design for humanity as being male and female, and living out a biblical view of marriage.

5. Confusion about nationalism and democracy. Western nations have not adequately confronted the growth of militant Islam which is a threat to core values such as freedom of speech, equality for women and the rule of one law for all. Nation states are under attack by those who no longer value national borders and historic culture. The left and the globalists trash Israel and our western nations as colonialist oppressors who must apologize for their existence. They trash Israel as an oppressive usurper when in fact Israel is the only indigenous people of the land and the only democracy in the Middle East which is deeply committed to liberty. Tragically western culture is no longer willing to accept the fact that sometimes there’s simply no alternative but to confront evil until the forces of darkness are crushed by a military victory as in World War II.

Israel’s strong sense of statehood is resented. After the October 7 atrocities, Israelis from all over the world hurried home to fight Hamas. The IDF call-up generated an estimated 150% response. Older Israelis volunteered for combat duty because they knew they were fighting to save the nation. As columnist Melanie Phillips stated, “They loved their nation. They valued their nation. They identified with their nation. They were fighting also to honor the sacrifice made by the generations who’d come before them in previous pograms and slaughters and exterminations. Their identity was rooted in their nation and its history. They knew they were defending civilization against barbarism and Israel will win because it understands itself to be a nation rooted in its own history, a people in its own home.”

Today love of nation is denounced by globalists. Nationalism is being described as bigotry and hatred. In the USA and the UK strong Republican voices and strong Conservative voices are suppressed by people claiming that patriots are intolerant and a threat to democracy. Patriots are silenced, cancelled, defamed as “the far right” because the globalists’ definition of democracy is a society in which only those who agree with them are permitted to speak.

6. Confusion concerning evil.  Commentator Dennis Prager wrote an article entitled :“Why Young Americans Are Not Taught about Evil:” “Most of our schools teach almost nothing of importance, and nothing is more important than the study of good and evil. In the United States today, nearly all schools, from elementary through graduate, concentrate on teaching about racism, sexism, preferred pronouns, homophobia, transphobia, LGBTQIA+, climate change, diversity, equity, inclusiveness and white guilt. In other words, most of our educational institutions, including the most prestigious, do not educate.” It is doubtful that, other than Washington and Jefferson having owned slaves, American students know anything about these men or could name two other Founders.

Furthermore, most of today’s young people know almost nothing about the depths of evil, and they are mostly ignorant of details of the Holocaust. For example, according to a prominent pollster, about half of Americans ages 18-39 cannot identify Auschwitz or any other Nazi death camp in which six million Jews were murdered. Prager said there is every reason to assume that much fewer than half could identify Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China (about 60 million murdered); or Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (about one in every four Cambodians murdered). Instead of fighting real evil like Hamas and the Iranian regime, the Left concoct their own convenient evils: American systemic racism, transphobia, Islamaphobia, capitalism, carbon emissions, supposedly President Trump, and so forth.

7. Confusion about the Second Coming of Jesus and the Rapture. Yet the doctrine of the Rapture IS biblical. Too many believers are saying “there is no Rapture.” I see that exact comment frequently on social media.

Concerning the Rapture we don’t have to be dogmatic. However, despite difference of views, the reality of the Rapture is taught in the Bible, and it encourages us to be ready and to walk worthy of the Lord. Much is made of the fact that the word rapture isn’t found in English bibles but it IS derived from the Latin Vulgate Bible. The Greek word harpazō in the Bible means “caught up,” or raptured.

Seven raptures are described in the Bible starting first with the raptures of Enoch and Elijah, followed by the ascension of Jesus; Philip the evangelist was caught up in the Book of Acts. The rapture of the Church is described by Paul in 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4 and 1 Corinthians Chapter 15. The rapture of the man child is described in Revelation 12 and the rapture of the Two Witnesses in Revelation 11. The doctrine of the Rapture—harpazō, meaning caught up, was described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 51 as a mystery. This mystery was revealed not by theologian John Nelson Darby in the 19th Century but by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. So don’t be confused.

In conclusion today I repeat 1 Corinthians 14: 33—God is not the author of confusion but of peace. A truly born again individual will not live in confusion.

Proverbs 4: 18 teaches, “The path of the righteous is as the dawning light, that shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.”