The Second Cyrus and his court eunuchs.
By Robert Conner ~ L ately we are informed by some of America’s leading Evangelical High Muckety-Mucks that Donald John Trump is literally the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Not, as you might logically expect, the Whore of Babylon or the Beast of Revelation bearing blasphemous names, but Cyrus the Great, the Persian monarch who established a policy of repatriation following his conquest of the Babylonians. Deutero-Isaiah calls Cyrus Yahweh’s anointed and the books of Ezra and 2 Chronicles claim the tribal god of Israel impelled Cyrus to release captive Jews, although an authentic reflection of ancient Persian belief, the Cyrus Cylinder, proclaims the god Marduk as the source of Cyrus’ inspiration. Just as ancient Jewish scribes rewrote Persian history to suit their theopolitical ends, modern evangelicals, busy as ever putting the “mental” in fundamentalist, have predictably glommed onto Old Testament prophecy. Lance Wellnau, a prophet and “leadership coach” who hails from Dallas,...