Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream


Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon from approximately 605 BC until 562 BC.
He is considered as the greatest king of the Babylonian Empire.
He greatly expanded the Babylonian Empire and conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC
Nebuchadnezzar receives attention in the book of Daniel, chapters 1 - 4, appearing as the main character, beside Daniel.

Daniel and his friends were living in exile in the palace of the king Nebuchadnezzar, while the king saw a dream about what kingdoms would arise after his own.
It was a dream of a great statue with a head of gold, arms and chest of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mingled iron and clay.
A great stone, not cut by human hands, fell on the feet of the statue and destroyed it, and the rock became a mountain that filled the whole world.
This was the dream.
Daniel then interpreted as about four successive kingdoms, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar, which will be replaced by the everlasting kingdom of God.

King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream

King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream unlocks the rest of prophesies of the Book of Daniel which unlock the Book of Revelation
Daniel described the dream prophetically and all that he prophesied had not yet come to pass.
We shall look and see what has been already fulfilled and what has not.

The image in the dream of king Nebuchadnezzar represents the world time-line entirely from that time of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to the Second Coming of Christ to establish the eternal Kingdom of God.
The statue is made with four metals.
These metals are regressing or diminishing in value; gold is valuable than silver, silver than brass, brass than iron and iron than clay.
But each succeeding metal is stronger, as each empire was more powerful than the last.
In times of their reign, the four kingdoms ruled the entire civilized world known at the time.
They were powerful, strong, and highest in glory as compared to any other world governments.
All these four kingdoms had a direct bearing to the Nation of Israel.
But finally, a more powerful and everlasting Kingdom will replace all these.

Dream interpreted

 After telling the dream, Daniel goes on to interpret it for the King.
God shows Daniel the identity of the first and last empires. The first is Babylon and the last is the Kingdom of God.
The traditional interpretation of the four kingdoms, shared among Jewish and Christian expositors identifies the kingdoms as the empires of BabylonMedo-PersiaGreece and Rome.
These views have the support of the Jewish Talmud, medieval Jewish commentators, Christian Church FathersJerome, and Calvin.

Now let us start our study of the dream starting from the head of gold.

The head of gold

Daniel 2: 37, 38
37 "You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory;
38 "and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all - you are this head of gold.

Daniel has identified the head of gold as the Babylonian Empire.
The Babylonian Empire came to power in 625 BC after the fall of Assyria.
Babylon continued its reign until 536 BC.
During this period, Babylon was the metropolis of the East and called in the Bible the "city of Gold".
It was made great and world renown by king Nebuchadnezzar.
The Babylonian Empire was an absolute monarchy and the most powerful, strong, superior empire ever was in the world and Nebuchadnezzar was the ruler of the empire thus the head of gold.

But Babylon was captured by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus as predicted by the prophet Daniel, and the Babylonian Empire came to an end in 536 BC.
It is during the reign of King Belshazzar when Babylon Empire was given to the Medes and Persians.

Breast and arms of silver

Daniel 2: 39 "But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours ….

Daniel continued to interpret the dream that after the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire shall rise.
The two arms of silver in the image represents two kingdoms, one arm representing Medes and the other representing the Persians. 
They were not as great as the Empire of Babylon neither in scope nor rulers, and they were a constitutional monarchy not an absolute monarchy as the Babylon Empire.
Medo-Persia controlled a larger territory than did Babylon, so it was certainly not inferior in political or military might.
At its height the Persian Empire was nearly double the size of Babylon.

The Medes and Persians were not as powerful and strong as the Babylon Empire thus being of silver as seeing in the image.
It had problems with internal unity.
Also, each time an emperor died, severe struggles erupted over succession to the throne.
Fortunately, mostly strong and capable rulers won these struggles, especially during its first century, and kept the empire whole for over two hundred years.
Cyrus, was a humane and conciliatory ruler, but was not the same caliber of man as Nebuchadnezzar.

Belly and thighs of brass

Daniel 2: 39 … then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth.

The third part of the statue is made of bronze and represented the Greek empire.
Alexander the Great was the king of the Greek Empire.
In about 333 BC, Alexander the Great defeated Darius and thus conquered the whole Persian Empire.
He conquered almost all important nations of the time, including Asia and northeast Africa when he was about 33 years old.
He is widely considered as one of history's most successful military commanders.
But at the age of 32, in June 323 BC, Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, in Babylon.
In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in the establishment of several states ruled by Alexander's surviving generals and heirs.

Legs of iron

Daniel 2: 40 "And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others.  (NKJV)

The two legs of iron represents the fourth kingdom, the Roman Empire.
The Grecian Empire was overthrown by the Roman Empire.
Two legs because the Roman Empire was split into two in later years: west and east Rome.
The Roman Empire grew so vast that it was no longer feasible to govern all the provinces from the central seat of Rome.
So King Diocletian ordered to split the Roman Empire in two.
The western empire was based in Rome and the eastern empire was based in Byzantium or Constantinople.
However as years went by, a steady decline in power and prestige was happened to Roman Empire.
The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus was deposed by the Germanic king Odoacer on 4 September 476 AD.

Even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Empire continued for another thousand years.
The Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in 1453 AD, renaming it Istanbul and put an end to the Eastern Roman Empire.

Roman Empire is represented by two legs of Iron because it was a brutal empire which crashed every person and government to submission.

Feet part of iron and part of clay

Daniel 2: 41 "Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. (NKJV)

Extending from the legs are feet and toes of iron mixed with clay.
It is a brittle and unstable mixture because it would not bond well.
The Kingdom of God represented by the stone has not yet come in its fullness.
Different political powers are still ruling nations of the world.
The feet represents an age after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire was the last world civil power to rule the world.
The feet shows that after the fall of Rome the world would remain partly broken until the second coming of Christ.

The Roman Empire continues its influence down to the feet of the image which represents the present day.
It is a renewed or resurrected Roman Empire mixed with other kinds of governments.
The resurrected Roman Empire includes different nations, each nation having a ruler or a king.
And in the times of the ten kings a stone cut without hands will smote the image and break it in pieces and consume all kingdoms, governments or empires.
That is, God will establish His kingdom in the days of these kings and these are the times we are in today.

The world history, after the election of the patriarch Abraham is centered on the nation Israel.
The Israel of the time of Jesus was destroyed on 8 September 70 AD by Titus, the son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian.
Millions of Jews of were murdered and the city and the temple were destroyed completely.
Jews ran away to different nation to save their lives.
After that Israel ceased to be a sovereign nation and God’s clock stopped for a long time.
But immediately after the end of Second World War a miracle happened.
Israel was proclaimed as a sovereign nation on 19, 1948 May.

Soon after the proclamation of Israel as a sovereign nation, there occurred the renewal of the Roman Empire.
On 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister made a declaration to bring the coal and steel production of France and West Germany under a common High Authority and to banish the possibility of war.
On that day, six nations come together in the City of Rome.
They formed the Treaty of Rome which triggered off a new resurrected Roman empire.
The six nations were, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Their original plan was to be ten nations.
The Treaty of Rome was followed by some other treaties also.
Thus gradually the idea of a common market for Europe emerged.

Later more nations became the part of the European Common Market forming the complete Big Ten. Greece was the tenth nation.
This union of nations is now called the European Union (EU).
The European Union, which is the ten toes of the image, is an extension of the old Roman Empire, the legs of the image.
The nations in the European Union have an agenda of forming one common market and holding on strongly together but they are struggling.

This part of the statute does not represent any particular kingdoms after the Roman Empire.
It may represent a political situation or governing systems that is a mixture of kingship, theocracy, military power, totalitarianism and democracy.
That is, the feet of iron and clay represents the present day world after the Roman Empire.
The stone that appears from nowhere comes during these kings and it will strike at the feet of the statue, destroying the whole worldly kingdoms.

The Kingdom of God

Let us conclude this study with few more words.
As we have been discussing, King Nebuchadnezzar saw a huge statue, beginning with a head of gold and ending with feet made of iron and clay.
The dream ends with a vision of a stone that fall on the feet of the statue and destroying the whole thing.

The focus of Daniel's interpretation, is not on the first four kingdoms, but the stone that destroys the statute and establishes an eternal Kingdom.

Daniel 2: 44 "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. (NKJV)

The stone will bring an end to all worldly powers, kingdoms and governments and will establish the Kingdom of God that will endure forever.
That is, God will establish His kingdom in the days of these mixed governments.
This part of the dream is not yet fulfilled or in another way the feet of the statue represents our present world.

The stone cut out without hands which struck the image is the second coming of Christ to establish the Kingdom of God.
The stone is the kingdom that will break the world powers and the spirit behind it.

This study is not complete here. This is only the first part of the study.
In the second part we are discussing Daniel’s vision of four Beasts.
So visit our website to read the study notes and our video and audio channels to watch and listen “Daniel’s vision of beasts.”

May God bless you more! Amen!


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