Everything is From Hashem:
Sefer Shmuos V’Sipurim (Chelek 1) relates the following:
After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, many Jews remained there and maintained their Judaism in secret. Anyone who was caught doing this was sentenced to be burned at the stake in the middle of the city.
One time, a minister was caught practicing Judaism in secret. The priests arrested him and sentenced him to be burned. This minister was beloved by the king, and although the trial of Jews was the domain of the priests of the Inquisition, and not the monarchy, the king asked that the burning be postponed for a year so that there would be time to find a replacement for the minister. The priests agreed to this request.
A year later, the king asked to postpone the decree for another month, when the month passed, the king asked to postpone it for another week, and a week later, he asked to postpone it for another day.
When the designated day arrived, it was announced throughout the city that the minister would be burned today. All the townspeople were invited to watch the spectacle. On one side of the street stood all the spectators. On the other side, the pyre was set up where the burning would take place. Suddenly, the earth shook – it was an earthquake! The entire crowd of people began to run away, with many of them getting trampled and killed. The minister managed to escape in the midst of the commotion, and the king covertly helped him escape Spain.
This minister was a thinker and philosopher. He began to investigate whether the miracle that happened to him during the earthquake was a coincidence. He wondered if meteorologically there was supposed to have been an earthquake in that place anyway, and it was just by coincidence that he was about to be burned at the stake at that moment, or whether this earthquake was specially sent by Heaven for him to save him. He decided that if his investigations determined that it was just a coincidence, he would continue to be a Jew only in secret, but if it turned out that the miracle was performed specially for him, then he would practice Judaism out in the open, especially since he was already out of Spain.
During the course of his investigation, he spoke with all the Ashkenazi scholars but he did not tell them that he himself was the minister; rather, he said that this had happened to “someone he knew”. Each of the sages told him that, in their opinion, it was an open miracle, but he was still not satisfied with their words. Then he heard about the Baal Shem Tov Hakadosh and decided to travel to him.
When he came to the Baal Shem Tov’s town and entered his courtyard, he saw a man standing in the courtyard, tending to the horses. This was Rav Wolf Kitzes zy”a, one of the Besht’s leading students. The minister asked where he could the Besht and Rav Wolf led him to the house. As soon as he entered, the Besht said to him, “Shalom to you, Minister So-and-So of Spain.”
The minister was amazed that he knew who he was and he realized that he was in the presence of a holy man.
The Besht then said, “As far as your question, it will be answered by my students who you saw tending to the horses.”
Rav Wolf told him, “Even if it would be true that the earthquake was a natural phenomenon that was decreed during the Six Days of Creation, the fact that you were taken out to be burnt at that exact time and in that exact place so that you could be saved by it is a sign that your salvation was miraculous.”
The minister accepted these words as the truth and he committed to practice Yiddishkeit openly, becoming a talmid of the Besht.
