A Prosperous Nation is not Necessarily Blessed by God

In the time of Sodom and Gomorrah the people were prosperous, they didn't fall because of poverty, they fell because they had placed their trust in wealth and pleasure, leaving no room for God.

Does this sound very familiar? It does to me! So many people have counted themselves as superior because of their wealth or their intellect, they have depended on their outer appearances of accomplishment while their soul dries up on the inside.

Great knowledge does not make a man more spiritual or wiser, often the knowledge is based on personal bias rather than truth, therefore rendering it useless and even foolish.

Those who love to pretend they are intellectual through twisted Scripture and high minded ideas will be led astray into arrogance and self righteousness. The more they flaunt their false intellectualism and twisted wisdom, the more foolish they appear to those who are led by the Holy Spirit. We see a lot of this today, rather than trusting the Bible they twist it to add their own ideas to it, appearing wise they become fools.

These people resist the truth willfully in favor of their elevated status.

Job 21:14
"They say to God, 'Depart from us! We do not even desire the knowledge of Your ways."

Those who are willfully ignorant, arrogantly refusing to listen to God's wisdom, do not want to know truth, they know it but have chosen to deny it.

Those who are willfully ignorant think they are wise. When they are rebuked by the Word of God they rage against those who shared it, while continuing to speak their ignorance. The raging is evidence that they know the truth and hate that someone exposed their lack of wisdom.

One man said to me that a man was not a liar just because he told one lie. The truth is just the opposite, a man cannot tell a lie unless they were already a liar in their heart.

"Light refused increases ignorance." Adrian Rogers

Matthew 13:15
FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.'"

Romans 1:28
"And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,"

Psalm 106:35 "35 But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works."

The nation of Israel mingled with the ungodly nations, that affected everything they do and say. Just as the believers today mingle with ungodly people simply because they are family or because they love to mix with their friends from the neighborhood or work place. It is one thing to spend some time with these people, becoming a witness to them, it is quite another to remain best friends with those who have rejected Christ or who claim to be Christians and reject the Bible as their standard.

Romans 1 clearly shows that when we reject God long enough, at some point He turns us over to our own passions, pleasures and destruction.

Something to think about!