The Prophecies of Daniel - Part 2

I pray this new study finds everyone doing well and remembering to follow 1 Thes. 5:16 - Be Joyful Always

Well this week’s Bible study focused mainly on chapter 2 in the book of Daniel and utilized some cross references located in chapters 7 & 8 as well. For anyone that is unfamiliar with the book of Daniel, chapter 2 is all about King Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream and the interpretation that Daniel provided to him.

We are in the 2nd year of King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. So Daniel and his 3 friends are still getting used to their new digs in Babylon. And the King has a dream that troubles him. He calls in his magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers to interpret the dream.

By the way, you are getting the Mike Stansbury 2-minute recap version. Just read chapter 2, it won’t take long.

The ‘wise men’ only want to interpret the dream but Nebuchadnezzar wants them all to first tell him what the dream was and then interpret it or face being cut up into pieces. When the can’t, Nebuchadnezzar gives the order to have them all killed. Remember, Daniel and his 3 friends are among the group of wise men. The guards come to kill Daniel and his friends and Daniel asks for some time to come up with the dream. All 4 of them spend the night praying literally for their lives and God reveals the dream to Daniel. Side note: God answers all of our prayers, yes all of them. We need to accept when it’s not the answer we are looking for. He has a plan for good.













So Daniel starts telling Nebuchadnezzar about the statue that he dreamed of, letting him know that he was dreaming of things to come. There was a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. Then a rock that was not cut out by human hands came and smashed the statue on its feet and destroyed the whole statue. The rock then grew into a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel then tells Nebuchadnezzar the interpretation. And it was probably a good move on Daniel’s part to let Nebuchadnezzar know that ‘the God of Heaven given you dominion and power and might and glory’ and Nebuchadnezzar was in fact the head of gold. From some of the information in chapters 7 and 8 we can put 2 and 2 together and learn that the chest and arms of silver was the Medeo-Persian Empire. The belly and thighs of bronze was going to be the Greek Empire. Feel free to cross reference chapters 7 and 8 with some of the history information that I emailed out last week.

Notice that in Daniel 2 the 2nd and the 3rd Kingdoms are passed over very quickly and the majority of the time spent is on the 4th Kingdom. That is the focus of the prophecy. Now the commonly taught principle is that the 4th kingdom, the legs of iron, was the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had an western component that fell to the Huns in 476AD and an eastern component that fell apart from internal strife and simply ceased to exist around the mid 1400’s. It is then commonly taught that the feet of iron mixed with clay is the revived Roman Empire that we will see emerging in the end times. Rome will once again become a place of interest, and who knows, maybe the Roman Catholic Church would play some sort of role as well.

Well, after studying Daniel for several months now, I’ve come to the conclusion that the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay don’t have anything to do whatsoever with the Roman Empire. Rome does not come into play, neither does the European Union. Personally, I don’t think the Roman Empire has anything to do with this chapter as well as any Bible prophecy that is yet to be fulfilled.

Stick with me for a little bit on this one.

Let’s look at the description of this 4th kingdom in Daniel 2:40-43 40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. 41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. 42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

We’ll also look at the description of the 4th kingdom from chapter 7 23 "He gave me this explanation: 'The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it. 24 The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom. After them another king will arise, different from the earlier ones; he will subdue three kings. 25 He will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and the laws. The saints will be handed over to him for a time, times and half a time.
26 " 'But the court will sit, and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever. 27 Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints, the people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.'

To keep it as brief as possible, we can see that the 4th kingdom is the one that is in power when Christ returns to this earth to establish his eternal kingdom. ‘time, times and half a time’ means 3-1/2 years. I am confident Daniel is talking about what we know as the Great Tribulation at the end of which Christ will return and His angels will get rid of Satan. That is the most exact period of time given in the Bible. Even though I know that prophetic gaps and dual meanings exist in scripture, I don’t see one in these verses.

So if this kingdom is the one in power at the end of the age, and Daniel is not told the name of the kingdom because God doesn’t feel that Daniel needs to know the details of the end of the age ( 8 I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, "My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?" 9 He replied, "Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end. – Daniel 12), what better place to look then in the book of the Revelation.

In just a few verses within chapters 17 and 18 I believe that we see the 4th kingdom revealed.
3Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5This title was written on her forehead: MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 6I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.

In verse 12 we see that there will be kings that receive power for one hour and then will be destroyed by the Lamb. Then in chapter 18 we see:

1After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2With a mighty voice he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons
And
9"When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. 10Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: " 'Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!'

There are places in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 51 that talk of Babylon’s sudden destruction at the return of the Jesus so that he can set up his kingdom. After this Babylon will never be inhabited again. That has not been the case thus far in history. Even now as the rebuilding of Babylon proceeds there is a town of about 10,000 that exists there. It is Al Hillal, Iraq.
European resurgence with a European-Israeli conflict at the end of the age? I don’t think so. Europe, just like the United States is flat broke. Neither of us knows it yet. You cut off the supply of oil to the Far East and they would collapse just as quickly as we would, if not faster. If there is supposed to be a global currency at the end of the age…where do you think all the money is? The Middle East. That is where the conflict began and that is where it will end. Babylon is the city of this world. The only city mentioned more frequently in the Bible is Jerusalem. That’s God’s city. And if we know Christ as our personal savior, we will reign with Him in the New Jerusalem.

There were plenty of powerful kingdoms that were not mentioned in Daniel 2. The Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Philistines, just to name a few. For the last 50 years or so the United States has been a pretty powerful nation. They are not mentioned and I don’t see any reason to shoehorn the Romans into the prophecy. The kingdoms mentioned in the statue, I believe got their position on the statue when they controlled one place…Babylon.

I think that we will continue to see Babylon being rebuilt. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the capital of Iraq move to Babylon in the near future. I could also see the UN pulling out of their headquarters in NYC and relocating. How quickly that could happen? Who knows? Who knows if it even will? But I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

Now here is the conclusion: Don’t spend too much time trying to figure out who the 4th kingdom is, because that is not the awesome part of Daniel 2. It’s the “ROCK that cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them… the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and fill the whole earth.”

The end of the chapter tells us that “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.”

In Revelation 11:15 we read: 15The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever."

That’s the kingdom that I’m glad to be a part of. See when you look at the history lesson with the understanding that Daniel was writing decades before the Medes and the Persians came on the scene and centuries before Greece came to power you can get an understanding that God has it all under control from the beginning of time until now. Nations will rise and fall, but God has a plan for it all. Battles will be won and lost, but God has a plan for it all. Things will happen in your own life, and God has a plan for it all. And the best part is that He wrote down His plan for us to know. How cool is that.

Lord willing, next time we will start looking at what I feel is the greatest prophecy in the Bible. In Daniel 9 God reveals the exact day the messiah would come the first time and reveals the conditions surrounding His second coming.

Until next time, God Bless,

The Prophecies of Daniel - Part 1

The Prophecies of Daniel – World Leaders/Empires

1. Nebuchadnezzar II – King of the Babylonian Empire (Significant Dates: 606 BC, 597 BC, 586 BC) – In 606 Neb. first took the city of Jerusalem taking several thousand Israelites with him back to Babylon. In that first group was Daniel, who at the time was just a teenager. After Israel revolted he had to come back a second time and take the city, change the leadership, and take 50,000 back to Babylon as slaves. After another revolt, Neb said enough was enough and in 586 BC he completely destroyed the city, the temple and everything else and brought the remainder of the Israelites back to Babylon. We looked at Jeremiah 25:11-12 to see that even though they were taken into captivity, it would only last 70 years and that Babylon would eventually get what was coming to them.

2. Nabonidus – Last King of Babylon – He was often preoccupied with his hobby which was archeology. As he went on digs for months at a time, he left his son Belshazzar in charge.

3. Belshazzar – Last Prince of Babylon (Significant Date: Oct. 12th, 538 BC) – Critics of the book of Daniel always wondered why, in Daniel 5:29 that it claims that Belshazzar offered Daniel the 3rd place in the kingdom for reading the ‘handwriting on the wall’. If he was king, wouldn’t he offer Daniel the 2nd place in the kingdom. Critics will also claim that Nabonidus was the last known king. This was a hard thing to prove until archeologists discovered the Nebonidus Cylinder which spoke of his travels and his naming Belshazzar ruler in his absence. It turns out that Belshazzar could not offer Daniel 2nd place in his kingdom, because Belshazzar himself was 2nd. So the best that he could do was to offer Daniel the 3rd spot. Belshazzar was in power at the time that Cyrus came to take Babylon.

4. Cyrus the Great – Founded the Media/Persia Empire – He took Babylon and pretty much the rest of the known world. He respected others religious beliefs and practices and you can read at the beginning of the book of Ezra where he lets the Israelites return to build their temple in the land of Judah. Little does he know, that he is just doing God’s will.

5. King Darius – Reigned from 522 – 486 BC – Greatly Expanded the Empire

6. King Artaxerxes I Longimanus– Reigned from 465 – 424 BC – Artaxerxes issued a decree that would allow the Israelites to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. This can be found in Nehemiah 2. Little did this king know what pivotal role that he was playing in God’s grand scheme of things. We’ll look closer into that when we look at Daniel 9.

7. Alexander the Great – Greek Empire – Reigned from 336 – 323 BC – Over a 10 year period Alexander conquered everyone and everything. He swept across the land with such power and speed, there was nothing that could stop him. Alexander captured Babylon in 330 BC. After 10 years of fighting, his military leaders grew weary of war and they asked if they could return home. They had all the money they could ever want. They had gone from Greece, down into Egypt, and east all the way to present day India. He found Babylon so beautiful that he made it his home. History says that when he returned he sat on his bed and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. He died shortly after his return on June 11, 323 BC in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar

8. The 4 Generals: Lysimachus, Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus – Alexander’s Greek Kingdom was divided among his 4 generals. There was no heir at the time of his death. Once the kingdom was divided it is no surprise that there was internal fighting, the majority of which was between the Ptolemic Empire and the Seleucid Empire. They often fought around the area of Israel which is where their two borders met.

9. Seleucid Empire: Seleucus I Nicator, Antiochus I Soter, Antiochus II Theos, Seleucus II Callinicus, Seleucus III Soter, Antiochus III the Great, Seleucus IV Philopator, Antiochus IV Epiphanies…in the Seleucid line comes Antiochus IV, and this was one rotten dude. I won’t get into the whole story right now because it will be revisited when we look at Chapter 9 in Daniel, but after getting stood up by a Roman Legion on his way to fight the Ptolemic Empire again, he took out his anger on the Israelites, the city of Jerusalem and the holy temple. He sacrificed pigs on the alter. He killed all the priests. He erected a statue of himself and made everyone bow to it and worship him as God or face the sword. He gave himself the surname of Epiphanies which means ‘God made manifest’. You can find the story of Antiochus IV and his ultimate defeat in the first and second book of Maccabees. Judas Maccabeus led the revolt. The cleansing of the temple is still celebrated today with the festival of lights, or Hanukkah.