A Fox News poll taken just before the second anniversary of President Donald Trump’s January 2017 inauguration showed 25 percent of Americans polled believe God wanted Trump elected.
I know I did.
I know I did some serious praying in 2016.
But I’m not really sure it’s even the right question.
If God had wanted Trump elected, there is no doubt in my mind that it would be so. But God is the sovereign ruler of the universe, the Creator, the One without whom all material things would cease to exist. Nothing happens in the world that God doesn’t at least allow to happen.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose,” we’re told in Romans 8:28.
That He sometimes chooses leaders, I would never deny. Did He choose Noah? Yes. Did He choose Abraham? Yes. Did He choose Moses? Yes. Did He choose David? Without question.
But did you know He also chose Nebuchadnezzar for His own purposes – not to mention Cyrus and Darius?
Nebuchadnezzar is an interesting study. He was a tyrant – a brutish, cruel leader of Babylon, which was used by God in the judgment of Judah. At the time of Daniel, the king called his people to worship him, to idolize him. And, as a result, God brought him low to humility – to eat grass like an ox “till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.” (Daniel 5:21)
Yet Nebuchadnezzar actually went on to write several verses of Scripture in Daniel 4, including this one after God restored his senses: “Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” (Daniel 4:37) If I had to guess, I would say Nebuchadnezzar will be judged as righteous in the Kingdom of God.
David is another interesting choice. He had many wives. He committed many heinous sins – from adultery to murder. Yet, without question, he was a man after God’s own heart. With little doubt, because of his contrite heart, we will see David in the Kingdom – with Messiah Jesus sitting in David’s throne.
As it says in Psalm 75:6-7: “For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.”
It is clearly God who ultimately rules the affairs of men.
But does God choose every leader? He does not, according to His Word. Sometimes He clearly allows men to follow their own ways rather than His. In Hosea 8:4, God tells us about one of those times.
“They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off,” He said.
I think many people believe there was something supernatural about the 2016 election because “the world” said it could never happen. All the experts were wrong. How could that be?
It’s times like that you can expect God to act. When it happens, it doesn’t mean we’re entering Eden again. It’s doesn’t mean the Kingdom of God is here. It doesn’t mean Jesus is about to return.
There is only one time you will get to choose the Perfect Leader. That’s when you decide who will be the Lord of your life – and you choose Jesus-Yeshua, the Son of God, the King of kings, the Lord of lords.
