How many times was the brass snake placed upon the pole for the Israelites to look upon it to receive healing? what blasphemy did the Israelites fashion from the event of the brass snake? Hundreds of years after Moses made the snake and the Israelites who place faith in the healing, the Israelites were making little copies and offering sacrifices and prayers to their little brass snakes. It was one of the blasphemies Hezekiah had to clean out when he became King of Israel. He even destroy the original, which must have still exist bit which he called merely a lump of brass.
Do you have any clue why Jesus called Nicodemus's attention to that event from so long ago, an event which was without ANY explanation in all of the Jewish scriptures or oral traditions until Jesus explained it to Nicodemus? Do you realize what was the blasphemy the people were committing making little brass snakes and offering prayers to it and sacrifices to it?
My goodness you last sentence is
so Catholic!
Just change the little brass snakes to the icons and statues bowed down to many times a day by adherents to Catholicism
Perhaps God will send Hezekiah back to clear out the darkness again.
Does cement melt?