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
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 Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.
These views have
the support of the Jewish Talmud, medieval
Jewish commentators, Christian Church Fathers, Jerome, 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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