The greatest wits, the greatest potentates, the greatest saints, are men, and not gods. There are places today for those that rise so high that they think they are gods – they usually have lovely padded walls and all the people there wear white and have some wonderful pills for you to take. Or occasionally I think they at least work in the Hospitals given the attitude of some docters particularly specialists.

King Nebuchadnezzar in the time of the great prophet Daniel, ruled such a huge empire that he started to think of himself as a god, and those plotting to get rid of Daniel, plotted, schemed and played on that fallacy in his thinking to try to get rid of Daniel. God protected his prophet but the king, was struck with insanity which lasted 7 years:

Nebuchadnezzar was chased from his palace and ate grass like the cows, and his body was wet with dew; his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails were like birds’ claws. – Daniel 4:33

The saying is “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Money and power together can be a lethal combination. Tyre, a Phoenician Island, is not far from the city of Beirut in Lebanon. This island nation/city in ancient times had two good ports one on either side of the island and from the time of King Solomon they were renonwned as the greatest sailors and explorers in the world. They may have roamed a lot further afield than many historians believe. Evidence of their presence has been reportedly found on the coast of Australia and in the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand. Legends survive here of a red-haired white skinned people that the Maori called “The people of the mist”. Evidence of them exists still in archaeological sites and possibly in the DNA of those Maori who can claim a “person of the mist” in their ancestry. It is also suggested that there is some evidence of their presence in South America.

All this meant that Tyre was made rich by the sea and by trade, but as we see in today’s reading the Wealth has gone to the head of it's Prince and he has developed the same insanity as Nebuchadnezzar – claiming himself to be a god. Ezekiel is sent to announce his doom in advance. When a leader starts thinking of himself as a god and beyond the reach of the real God, it’s time for the real God to step in and remind him he is only a man.

Not only leaders can be prone to being corrupted by wealth however. It is all too common a story among everyday people, people strive for wealth and when they achieve it, find in reality it is an empty prize, that doesn’t give the satisfaction it promises. Don’t be fooled, don’t let money, become your god, and don’t let wealth go to your head.

CORONATION OF TUHEITIA, THE MAORI KING, 2006