Articles: Trump as Cyrus

Trump as Cyrus

Trump as Cyrus

By Dan Truitt

 

There's  a really interesting story in the Old Testament that richly illustrates how God sometimes uses people who do not necessarily belong to him to further his goals for the human race. The book of Isaiah, chapters 44-45, talks about the restoration of the nation of Israel after its 70-year Babylonian exile, which Yahweh had decreed because of Israel's idolatry. 
For centuries, the prophets delivered Yahweh's pleas to his chosen people to abandon their idolatrous ways or face serious consequences. The Jews refused to listen, and judgment came. They lost everything: their temple was razed, their land was confiscated, and their right to exist as a free and independent people was revoked.
However, in one of the most remarkable passages in the Old Testament, Isaiah, the "prince of prophets," identifies Cyrus II (aka "Cyrus the Great"), creator of the largest empire the world had yet seen, by name 150 years before the prophesied event. He calls Cyrus "my shepherd," "my anointed," and "my servant:"

Thus says the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that makes all things... that frustrates the words of the liars, that turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolish... that says to Jerusalem, thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah (Israel), Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof...that says of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me (excerpts from Isaiah 44:24-45:4).

Though thou hast not known me. Trump is like Cyrus in some ways. He is a canny, powerful, acquisitive, almost hypnotically persuasive figure who has had a golden touch his entire working life. He inherited an empire of his own, in a manner of speaking, but parlayed it into something much larger and greater.
Trump is a person who is obviously poorly versed in scripture ("two Corinthians"), but he is giving America a chance to rebuild herself when many of us considered the country virtually a lost cause. If you care to look at it a certain way, God has used Donald Trump to frustrate the schemes of the liars, and make foolish the wisdom of wise men. To people of faith, God's hand is all over the election of Trump. Donald Trump is in the process of smashing the false verbal taboos of political correctness, of lancing the boil of our grievance culture, and of exposing the tenuousness of a political party that has surrendered over 1,000 state and national level elective offices during the last six years as a stinging rebuke to the extreme leftism of our current president.
My wife and I were watching Trump and Obama at their brief press avail after meeting in the Oval Office for what was supposed to be an informal ten-minute discussion and which turned out to be an hour and a half event. "Obama looks scared," my wife said.
"Of course he looks scared," I said. "He just got exposed. His legacy is in ruins. And now he looks as if he has just been reamed out by the guy he was accusing last week in multiple venues of colluding with the KKK. Look at Trump -- he's looking right through Obama. Trump's a force of nature. Obama's a chicken at heart. He's no match for the guy."
That Obama canceled the traditional photo op with Trump and their wives also told me something had happened in their private meeting not to Obama's liking. You might say, well, they were running late. Fair enough. But if they allowed a short meeting to stretch into a 90-minute showdown, Obama could have tacked on an extra five minutes for a photo op. I think there were two reasons he canceled the photos: one, he was trying to spite Trump. And two, he didn't want to stand next to a guy who is physically a massively larger presence than he is.
Also noteworthy was that Obama wasn't pulling any of that first name monkey business he uses to show disrespect to and assert his dominance over fellow pols, most distressingly in his overseas trips ("Angela," "David," et al.). Thus, "Donald" became "president-elect Trump."
Boy, after eight years of almost nonstop bad news, politics is fun again.
Thank-you Cyrus the Great -- er, Donald the Trump.