Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had a dream and like many of the dreams we have he could not remember what it was when he awoke later. He was impressed however, with the importance of the dream and he felt that he HAD to know what it was and what it meant.
Within his kingdom were many magicians, astrologers and Chaldeans (astronomers) who claimed to be in contact with the gods and the spirits of the dead. He called for these prominent wise men; when they had gathered around he explained his request by saying:
“‘I have had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to know the dream.’ Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, ‘O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will give the interpretation.’
“The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, ‘My decision is firm: if you do not make known the dream to me, and its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made an ash heap. However, if you tell the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts, rewards, and great honor. Therefore tell me the dream and its interpretation.’"
“They answered again and said, ‘Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will give its interpretation.’” – Daniel 2:3-7.
When the king accused them of stalling for time they became afraid and said, “’There is not a man on earth who can tell the king’s matter; therefore no king, lord, or ruler has ever asked such things of any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean. It is a difficult thing that the king requests, and there is no other who can tell it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.’” – Daniel 2:10, 11.
Here is where the king became furious. The wise men who stood before him had always claimed to be in touch with not only the gods, but also with the spirits of the dead. Now they were saying that the gods were not among them, so the king decided to have them ALL of the wise men destroyed. Life was cheap back then. They had just proven that they were impostors who had been deceiving him all of his life and it was time for him to clean house.
As the decree was being written for their execution, the king’s guards were sent out to find those who, for whatever reason, were not able to come at the king’s earlier command; that included Daniel and his three friends. The guards were to bring them to the palace and execute them with the rest of the wise men.
Daniel was surprised when he heard about the king’s command and he asked Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, why the king issued such a harsh decree and why it was being carried out so quickly. He knew it was not like the king to do something so hasty. When Arioch told him what had happened Daniel asked to have an audience with the king.
When he was brought into the king’s presence he asked Nebuchadnezzar for a twenty-four hour extension. He promised that by the next day he would tell him the dream and interpret it for him. – Daniel 2:13-16.
The king listened to Daniel’s proposal and agreed. Daniel then went home and told his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego that they needed to pray to the God of Heaven, ask him for mercy and somehow show them what the dream was and what it meant. - Daniel 2:17, 18.
During the night, God gave the same dream to Daniel in a vision and told him what it meant. In thanks to God, Daniel prayed:
“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him. I thank You and praise You, O God of my fathers; You have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of You, for You have made known to us the king’s demand.” – Daniel 2:20-23.
Right here I am going to throw a little wrench into the works...and then remove it again.
Some people believe, in fact I should say I used to believe, that when Daniel went before the king twenty-four hours later the king had been given enough time to cool off and he was beginning to realize that he had made a rather hasty decision to destroy all of his wise men. If it were not for Daniel, asking for the twenty-four hour extension, then the king would now be living within his kingdom with no wise men to give him council, or to help in the running of his government.
It would have been like the President of the United States getting rid of all of his cabinet and the entire congress and senate. Yes, some of you will say, it might not be a bad idea to eliminate some political jobs, but if it were done that way the government would unfortunately grind to a halt and every program in effect throughout the United States would eventually come to a halt as well.
Can you see what the king could have been thinking during the twenty-four hour cooling off period? He could have been thinking that no matter what dream Daniel said he had had the night before, even if it was not the correct one, he would agree that it was correct and then accept its interpretation as fact. He would then be able to save himself from destroying his own government. As unscrupulous as the wise men were they were still needed to run the government.
I have since come to the conclusion that the dream Daniel gave to the king was, in reality, the actual dream the king had dreamt the night before. Maybe the king was ready to jump at anything Daniel proposed; Nebuchadnezzar was not a fool in any sense of the term. However, when Daniel proceeded to tell the king the dream that he had received from God in vision, the king was astounded to find that he did recognize it as the dream he had the night before and he was anxious to find from this man of God what it actually meant.
In the dream Nebuchadnezzar had, he saw an image. The image was made of different metals. The head was made of gold, the chest and arms were made of silver, the belly and thighs were made of brass, the legs were made of iron and the feet were made of iron mixed with clay. As the king was looking at this image a huge stone broke loose from a mountain without anyone touching it and struck the image at its feet. The image collapsed and the stone continued to roll over the entire image until it was ground to powder and the wind blew it away. The stone then grew bigger and bigger until it filled the whole Earth.- Daniel 2:31-35.
Now that we all understand the dream, Daniel is going to interpret it for us. I will let Daniel explain the meaning for you in his own words. He told the king: “You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; 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. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 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. 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. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. 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 kings, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold – the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.” – Daniel 2:37-45.
Here is where a king does something that kings never do and why I believe the king was really stunned by having his dream told to him. He fell prostrate before Daniel and gave him honor. The king told Daniel: “Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret.” – Daniel 2:47. The king then placed Daniel in a high position; he made him second in his kingdom over all of Babylon. He also placed him over all of the wise men. When accepting the position Daniel asked that his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, be placed as administrators over the providence of Babylon, while he remained at the royal court. To this, the king agreed.
In interpreting the dream, Daniel told king Nebuchadnezzar that his kingdom was represented by the head of gold. He then went on to say that after the Babylonian kingdom, another kingdom would arise, one as inferior to his kingdom as silver is inferior to gold.
After the kingdom of silver, another kingdom would arise and would be as inferior to the second kingdom as brass is inferior to silver.
Then the kingdom of brass would be replaced by a kingdom of iron, represented by the legs of the image. Once again, it was as inferior to the third kingdom as iron is inferior to brass.
Next, the kingdom is separated into ten other kingdoms, represented by the ten toes of the image. The final world kingdom would be divided into ten separate kingdoms and would never again become a single world kingdom. They would also be nations that would be mixed in their strengths. Some will be strong; some will be weak, but they will never unite in strength in the same way that it is impossible to make iron strong when it is mixed with clay.
This is a rather devastating blow to those who believe in a one-world government. I am sorry but it will never happen because God is not going to allow it. Since the fall of the Roman Empire there has never been, and there will never be, another world power capable of uniting all nations together into one.
Lastly, a stone is torn loose from a mountain without the use of hands. The stone strikes the statue at the feet, crushes the entire statue into powder and the wind blows the powder away. Then the stone grows and grows until it becomes a mountain that fills the entire Earth.
The empire of Babylon truly was golden in its power and magnificence. Its hanging gardens were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The city (not the empire) of Babylon was begun around 3000 B.C. and by 141 B.C. it was in complete ruins.
Daniel chapter 5 says that Belshazzar, the last ruling king of Babylon, was holding a great feast for a thousand of his lords and that he drank wine with them.
Belshazzar was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar and he became the successor to the throne of Babylon when it was handed down to him by his own father, king Nabonidus, who is said to have been in Lebanon, recuperating from an illness.
In the treasury of the palace there were golden vessels, cups, bowls, etc., that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem when King Nebuchadnezzar overthrew the city and took many of its people captive.
After having drunk enough wine to have lost much of his reason, Belshazzar commanded that the vessels that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem should be brought to the feast and filled with wine so that he and his guests could drink from them.
The vessels were brought in and while drinking from them the partying group “…praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.” – Daniel 5:4. They praised all of the gods except the God of Heaven, to whom the golden vessels belonged to originally. Big mistake.
To the Babylonians, the day of this feast was considered an annual festival that was held in the honor of one of their deities. Some historians say that the day of the feast also marked the official beginning of Belshazzar’s reign; that he had just come from a ceremony where he had not only been crowned king, but had also been given the official status of God.
Mighty heady stuff for a mere mortal, to become a god all of a sudden. I believe it was because of this that Belshazzar decided to defile the vessels of the God of Heaven. He wanted to let everyone know, including the God of Heaven, that he was someone to be reckoned with. As I said, big mistake.
While this feasting continued, a silence suddenly fell over the room when everyone became aware of a hand, only a hand. It had just…appeared…out of nowhere…and with its finger it was writing something on the stone wall of the banquet room.
I would like to remind you of only one other time when a finger wrote on stone; that was when the hand of God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets. For only the second time now, in recorded history, the finger of God was writing a message on stone but it was a message that could not be read or understood by anyone there.
Terror struck the king and his conscience was greatly bothered. Even though he could not read or understand what had been written he knew that it was not a message of peace.
As the prophet Daniel described the king’s “countenance” it is obvious that it would have been difficult for the king to become more terrified than he was. It was said that “the king’s countenance changed and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other.” – Daniel 5:6.
After the hand disappeared, he found his voice and shouted for someone to get his astrologers, fortune-tellers, scientists and priests. When they arrived he told them that whoever could read the handwriting and tell him what it meant would be dressed in royal purple, wear the gold chain of authority around his neck and be third in the line of power in the kingdom after him and his father. None of his wise men however, could read or interpret the writing.
It was about this time that the king’s mother came into the banquet room to see what all the excitement was about. When she found out what was going on she told the king that there was a person in Babylon who could interpret the writing for him.
Belshazzar was no dummy. He, as all kings were at the time, was raised with a complete knowledge of what had happened in the past. The queen mother reminded the king of the Hebrew slave Daniel who had interpreted a dream for his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar. She said, "Inasmuch as an excellent spirit, knowledge, understanding, interpreting dreams, solving riddles, and explaining enigmas were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar, now let Daniel be called, and he will give the interpretation.” - Daniel 5:12.
Daniel was called for and when he arrived the king offered to clothe him in royal purple, hang the gold chain of authority around his neck and give him the third spot in the kingdom if he would tell him the meaning of the writing on the wall.
Daniel told the king that he was not interested in the gifts, but that he would tell the king what the writing meant. He said the words were “Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin.”
Mene: Numbered. It meant that God had numbered the days of the king and his reign and had decided to bring it to an end. The word was written twice to let the king know that it was certain.
Tekel: Weighed. The king had been weighed in the balances and found wanting.
Parsin: Divided. His kingdom would be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.
Because Daniel had translated the meaning of the words the king kept his promise and had Daniel clothed in a purple robe and the gold chain of authority was hung around his neck. He was then promoted to third ruler of the kingdom.
I would imagine that Daniel did not wear the royal robe or gold chain of authority for very long. He was well aware that the kingdom of Babylon would be overthrown that very night; the last thing he would want during that time was to be thought of as someone of royalty.
Historians tell us that the Euphrates River ran under the walls and through the center of the city of Babylon. The Medo-Persian armies captured Babylon, while the city was in the middle of their annual state of drunken celebration, by secretly diverting the waters of the Euphrates River and entering the city by going under the walls where the water once flowed. They then passed through the river gates that had been inadvertently left open during the night of drunken carelessness. So ends the golden kingdom of Babylon.
Medo-Persia, the kingdom that overthrows the Babylonian kingdom, is represented by the chest and arms of silver of the image of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Daniel said that the kingdom after Babylon would be as inferior to Babylon as silver is inferior to gold.
In what way would it be inferior? Surely not in power, because it overcame the Babylonians; not in size, because the territory it took in made it the largest empire in existence up to that time. It was however, inferior in wealth, luxury and magnificence.
After reigning for seven years, Cyrus, king of the Medo-Persian Empire, left the kingdom to his son Cambyses. Eight more kings held the throne after Cambyses with the last one being Darius Codomanus.
If this king had lived at an earlier time, his reign would probably have been the longest and most prosperous. It was his misfortune however, to be the victim of circumstances entirely beyond his control. It was said, “Scarcely was he warm upon the throne before he found his formidable enemy, Alexander the Great, at the head of the Greek soldiers, preparing to dismount him from it.” Greece was going to be the next world kingdom and Darius just happened to be the one in power at the time.
In 331 B.C., the Greeks, against twenty-to-one odds, defeated the Persian army in battle and Alexander became the absolute lord of the entire Persian Empire.
Darius was betrayed and killed by traitors and Alexander found the last of the power of Persia fall into his hands; the kingdom represented by the belly and thighs of brass described in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream had taken the field of history.
If the silver, Persian Empire could not equal the wealth and splendor of the golden, Babylonian Empire then the brass, Grecian Empire was pathetic in comparison to the silver, Persian Empire it had overthrown.
Alexander spent a small amount of time in minor conquests and campaigns, but for the most part, he gave himself up to leisure, lust and drunkenness. He declared himself to be one of the sons of Jupiter and bestowed divine honors upon himself.
After conquering a city, it was said that he would then turn it over to his bloodthirsty and immoral army. There were times when he killed his own favorite friends while he was in a drunken frenzy. Once, at the request of a drunken woman, he gathered those who were with him and they all went out and set fire to the city and the palace of Perepolis. That palace was considered to be the finest in the world. While drinking, he also encouraged the same kind of excess from everyone who was with him. On one occasion, it is said that twenty of his followers died as a result of alcohol toxicity. Alexander himself eventually died the same way when, after spending a long time drinking, he was invited to another party and while there, he twice drank a gallon and a half of alcohol from the Herculean cup. After doing so he fell down with a severe fever and died eleven days later in the year 323 B.C., at the age of 32. There are some historians who will debate with you over the cause of Alexander's death…and they could be right. Whatever the cause of death may be, it is for sure that his character and lifestyle had little to do with any longevity of life.
Eventually, the kingdom that Alexander left behind was divided up by four of his more ambitious generals and they ruled over the Grecian dynasty until the fourth kingdom took its place. The fourth kingdom was described by Daniel as a kingdom of iron. When it came onto the scene it swallowed up the divided empire of Greece.
In order to determine the kingdom that follows Greece, we only have to go to the history books and find that power to be the Roman Empire.
In power, the Romans have been described by historians to be a kingdom ruled with an iron fist that crushed all those who opposed it. The historian Edward Gibbon, in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, described the history of this time of the world with imagery taken from the book of Daniel. He said: "…the images of gold, silver and brass, that might serve to represent the nations or their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome….The Empire of the Romans filled the world. And when that empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. To resist was fatal; and it was impossible to fly."
As iron was superior in strength to any metal at the time and was much stronger than gold, silver or brass, it would seem that such a nation would never lose its grip of world dominance. God however, said it would not continue and since God claims to set up kings and to remove kings (Isaiah 10:13), then the empire of the Romans was to disappear from the scene of history and be split into pieces that would never again form another world kingdom.
You will notice, as you look at human feet, that they might not be made of iron and clay, but they do have five toes to each foot. With two feet being represented in the dream of the vision that makes a total of ten toes; the prophecy of Daniel specifically mentions the toes of the image.
With amazing accuracy, the prophecy was fulfilled to the very toes of the image. The kingdom of the Romans was eventually divided into ten separate kingdoms. The ten toes of the image represent the ten nations that came from the old Roman Empire. They are the: 1. Anglo-Saxons 2. Franks 3. Alamanni 4. Lombards 5. Ostrogoths 6. Heruli 7. Burgundians 8. Visigoths 9. Suevi 10. Vandals
Any history book, going into detail concerning the fall of the Roman Empire and of the nations that succeeded that empire, will prove that the nations I have listed above is accurate.
To go into some of the controversy accompanying this interpretation of history would only detract from the consistency of the prophecy as it has been laid out to this point. There are always critics to any interpretation of prophecy and it usually comes from those powers in life who are affected by that interpretation in a light that is less than flattering. In other words, some people will lie to you and say that the list of nations is wrong because they would not want you to see how they have represented themselves in such a vicious and bloody way in the history of the world. You will see what I mean as we continue on into chapter 7; one of the most comprehensive, prophetic chapters in the book of Daniel.
I would like to finish this review of chapter 2 by focusing your attention on the last part of Nebuchadnezzar's vision; the part where the image is destroyed by a rock that is cut out of a mountain without hands.
Christ, in many places in both the Old and New Testaments, is described as a rock; the Mountain from which this Rock comes from is the Godhead itself. The part that was separated is described as a Rock that strikes the image at its feet and destroys the image completely. It is symbolic of the return of Christ, in the person of Jesus, when he returns to this Earth the second time. At that time, the kingdoms of this world will be destroyed and the only power left standing will be the power of the Rock, as it continues to grow until it fills the entire world.
In Revelation 11:15, as Jesus is preparing to return to this Earth for the second time, an angel announces, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!" - Revelation 11:15.
It is now time to go into Daniel chapter 7. You will see how it continues and parallels the description of world history as described by the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and fleshes that dream/vision out with much more detail. Chapter 7 also makes the interpretations we have outlined so far much more valid and clear with added detail. As we continue you will learn that there is one who knows the end from the beginning. He will prove it to you in those final chapters of Daniel and as we continue on to the most important of all historical characters.