“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.”So Daniel answered the megalomanic king Nebuchadnezzar, according to chapter 2.This is some Scripture that CPAC has chosen to ignore, or at least not bothered to read to the end.In truth I was always bothered when Daniel said “Thou art this head of gold”—which seems to be more brass-kissery, if you get my drift, than prophecy.But dear CPAC, the statue of Nebuchadnezzar crumbles when the kingdom of God arrives, unable to stand on its feet of clay and iron.
Image in public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons
I’m not one to tout Daniel as prophecy, but seldom have we seen such things come true so literally.If we turn to the other testament, in a somewhat politically incorrect aphorism a personage of the gospel of Matthew quoth, “they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”Funnily, those who claim to support a “Christian” America have failed to read even the surface of the Good Book.Without the Bible what is fundamentalism?That image in Daniel 2 is considered an idol.After all, when the Trump of antiquity built a statue all were required to fall down before and worship it.Those who didn’t were thrown into the fiery furnace.
The Conservative Political Action Conference has sent shivers down the collective spine of our nation.Even as it was going on I was standing in the rain signing petitions for local Democratic candidates because going inside meant being potentially infected by the Republican disease known as Covid-19.Apparently half-a-million dead is never enough for those who believe in a social darwinism although they claim to base their lives on the book that says all this took a mere seven days.Although Daniel gained great fame and wealth by telling the king what he wanted to hear, during a party a few short chapters later he saw a hand writing on the wall.“And this is the writing that was written, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”And although given a third of Belshazzar’s kingdom that very night it was all lost to Darius.“Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
