The answer is “Yes.”  Which, thanks to Satan, creates a very serious problem.  Because the Almighty occasionally blesses a sinner or answers a sinner’s prayer, the automatic assumption is that the recipient of God’s kindness is right with Him.  As the Scriptures repeatedly tell us, this is not necessarily true.  In fact, it is rarely true.  The truth is that, in the vast majority of cases in which God blesses or answers a prayer, His grace is extended IN SPITE OF the person’s spiritual state, not BECAUSE OF it.  Having been on both sides of that situation, I can assure the reader that the statement is true.  However, in the instances in which the Lord performed miracles through me everyone involved “knew” beyond a doubt that we were all members in good standing in His church.  However, upon answering God’s call to “come up hither” spiritually by immersing myself in His Word I learned that we were all wrong, as this series will prove.  I thank God for His incredible patience and longsuffering.  Had He not had mercy on me I would still be preaching the company line, healing the sick, casting out demons–ALL THE WHILE AND DISOBEYING HIM AND LEADING OTHERS TO DO THE SAME.  After opening my eyes to His Truth, the Lord repeatedly sent me a single Scriptural quote which would come  from a variety of directions, some of them quite extraordinary.  That passage was: “Unto whom much is given, much is required” (Lk. 12:48).  The first “much” (given) He referred to was extraordinary knowledge of, insight into, belief in and ministry of His Holy Word, which Jesus called Truth in John 17:17).  The second “much” (required) He commanded involved the level of holiness He required of me.  As one can imagine, the second “much” proved to be by far the most difficult to master.

Words spoken by the Lord in ancient times still ring true today.  One statement in particular applies to the subject of this series: “God sends sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust” (Mat. 5:45).  If He did not do so there would be few left alive on planet earth.  The question is: why does He bless those who continue to sin?  Why does He answer sinners’ prayers.  The answer is: because He loves all people and is trying to draw their attention to His Word in which He reveals that great love.  THE HOLY BIBLE IS IN FACT HIS LOVE LETTER TO MANKIND.  Most people are familiar with the  “headline” that states that “Jesus loves you.”  Which is true.  However, Satan has deceived church people into believing that, having performed the required ritual, repeated the required words and taken Jesus as their Savior, they are saved and born again.  That being the case, there is no nothing left to do but stay the course laid out by whatever church they have joined.  What they refuse to believe is that 1) they are not saved and born again and 2) there is much to DO in order to qualify for salvation upon Christ’s return.  This ultimately important additional information is what I call the Scriptural “fine print.”  God’s headlines get man’s attention.  But man must study His fine print to learn what He requires in order to make His headlines have their desired result–their eventual salvation.   Unfortunately, His enemy has blinded the whole of professing Christendom to that vital Truth.

Like the sow that, having been washed, returns to the mire, and the dog that, having been cured, returns to its vomit (2 Pet. 2:22), those whom the Lord has blessed immediately immerse themselves in what caused the problem in the first place–false religion.  The cause is sin that is presented as “normal” by the purveyors of Catholicism/Protestantism.  In 2:22 Peter warns God’s people about false prophets who had infiltrated the Body of Christ and were “secretly” teaching them “damnable heresies” such as the “fact” that that they are already saved by God’s grace.  Jesus warned us about these men who would proclaim that He was indeed the Christ, then (secretly) “deceive many” (Mat. 24:5).  All deception is by its very nature “secret.”  Another of those secret deceptions involves the “fact” that anyone who receives a blessing or answered prayer from on high is a “Christian” in good standing with God.

The recipient of God’s goodness assumes that he/she is right with Him, but is being called to become more religious, to get more “churchified,” to embrace more “religiosity.”  One goes full religious throttle, burying oneself deeper into the religion of one’s Catholic or Protestant sect.  And what is worse, they lead others to do the same.  When a church member receives a miracle from God they automatically want to share the experience with others.  They are asked to bear witness to other churches, which they are anxious to do.  In so doing he/she causes others to believe that they need bore deeper into their church’s theology and do more of it–go to church more often, read more in the Bible, pray more, etc.  Like the muddy sow and the sick dog, these Biblically ignorant souls, once “cleaned and healed,”  return to the mire and vomit that afflicted them earlier and, as a result, never get spiritually clean.  Convinced that they are clean, they stay the course that Satan has laid out for them while pulling others along in their wake.  “Knowing” all they need to know (the headlines), and studying them with ever more intensity, the happy soul walks along the devil’s wide (it’s all good) path straight to destruction (Mat. 7:13,14).  “Ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the Truth (2 Tim. 3:7,8), these misguided souls “resist the Truth and in so doing become reprobate concerning the faith.”  This ruse was first used on Adam and Eve when the Serpent convinced them to listen to him and to reject what God had told them.  The rest is church history.

In order to reveal God’s Truth concerning His use of churched and unchurched sinners, I will present a number of instances in which God blessed or answered the prayer of or used known sinners to get done what He wanted done.  In the first two cases I will describe the men God used were known as vile, Satan-serving sinners of the first degree long before He used them.  Nevertheless, He used them to fulfill His purposes which, ironically, were the opposite of each other.  While studying the following postings, let us be reminded never to put God into a box which houses our particular type of religion.  He has a tendency not to stay there.

In Daniel 4:17 we meet the Lord’s Jewish prophet who, along with the entire Jewish nation, was a captive of the Babylonian Empire.  In this passage we find Daniel telling King Belteshazzar that His (Daniel’s) God alone chooses people, often the “basest (worst)” of the human race, to lead the world’s nations.  Americans, and those of other democratic nations, believe that THEY decide who will lead them by voting them into office.  They do not.  In the first two cases one will ask himself why God “scraped the bottom of the barrel” to come up with these two known sinners who would lead the greatest nation on earth, particularly one that claims to be “One Nation Under God,” which is the same God whom she claims to “Trust?”  These two future presidents were well known for their anti-God, anti-Bible ways.  I speak of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.  Prior to their respective “elections” these men were internationally known to be at the top of a long list of vile, sin-soaked, Satan-serving reprobates.  I will not speak to their current spiritual conditions because I am ignorant of such information.  I do, however, have my opinions, which I will keep to myself.  L.J.