Key Verse: "In the time of those kings, 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."
Daniel 2:44
There are two amazing observations about this prophecy that
make it different from all other prophecies about the coming Messiah. The first
amazing thing is that this prophecy was based on a dream from a king who was
not from Israel, but was an enemy. Secondly, this prophesy was recorded in
Aramaic, which was the common trade language of Daniel's day. All the rest of the Old Testament was written
in Hebrew. This prophecy was not just
meant to encourage the children of Israel, but to warn the world that God is
still in ultimate control.
In this passage, the people of Israel are still in exile. Daniel is in exile with them as a servant of
the king, Nebuchadnezzar. Through this
dream, and its interpretation, we are given an overview of just what will take
place on the world stage before God will finally act and establish His kingdom
through the coming of Messiah.
I suppose that this could be seen as similar to the visit
that God had with Abraham a year before Isaac was born in which God let Abraham
know how much longer he would have to wait before the promise that He had made
would be fulfilled. While God does not give actual dates and times here, he
does lay out how many more kingdoms will rise and fall before He will intervene
and begin to bring about Israel's redemption.
Since we are looking at Scripture as a series of road signs pointing
to Messiah, it is interesting to note that here God has laid out four
succeeding historical landmarks to watch for in a sequence of four kingdoms that
controlled the land of Israel starting with Nebuchadnezzar’s as the head of gold.
In the five hundred years between the time
Nebuchadnezzar had this dream and the birth of Christ, we see by looking back
that there have indeed been only four kingdoms.
The gold one is Babylon. The silver
is the Persian Empire. The bronze is the
Greek empire lead by Alexander the Great.
The fourth is the Roman Empire that dominated the world at the time of
Christ’s birth.
Interesting too to note that the Roman Empire started out
very strong and consolidated as the legs of iron, but by the time Christ was
born the Empire was so extended and subdivided that it was beginning to weaken
as the feet of clay. At the end of the
dream, the rock that becomes a mountain and conquers everything is of course
the Church of Christ with Jesus as Lord of all.
The significance is that man’s kingdoms and efforts to rule with power
corrupted by the sinful nature always crumble and come to an end. But the kingdom of God will never end and never
fail. It is growing today. Nothing can stop it. Once it is fully established when Christ Jesus
returns, there will never be another war.
How slowly God has laid His foundation. He began with a promise in Genesis 3 that the
serpent would be dealt with. He took the
time to select a man for His purposes. Through
that man, He created a family and then a nation of people who would know His
ways and look forward to having His promises fulfilled. God has been faithful even when His people
were not. He has never forgotten His
purpose, to conquer death and redeem the world. It is drawing closer to the time when God will
appear. Great and marvelous are His
deeds!
Hymn: "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus"
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