Daniel 2

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=35 BGCOLOR="#000099" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <B>Daniel 2</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id6.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Beast of Revelation">Beast of Revelation</A>   |   <A HREF="id13.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Introduction">Introduction</A>   |   <B>Daniel 2</B>   |   <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Daniel 7">Daniel 7</A>   |   <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Daniel 8">Daniel 8</A>   |   <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Antiochus Epiphanes">Antiochus Epiphanes</A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Daniel 9">Daniel 9</A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Daniel 11 12">Daniel 11 & 12</A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Revelation 13">Revelation 13</A>   |   <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Revelation 17">Revelation 17</A>   |   <A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Revelation 18">Revelation 18</A>   |   <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wrath of the Lamb">Wrath of the Lamb</A>   |   <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Assyrian">The Assyrian</A>   |   <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chart of the Beast">Chart of the Beast</A>   |   <A HREF="id55.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bibliography">Bibliography</A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=445 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>INTRODUCTION</B></div> <bR> <div> "The O.T. is not designed to be a compendium of "ancient history". It is the history of...<God's>...People Israel; and other nations are referred to only as, and in so far as, as they come into connection with Israel" (E. W. Bullinger, <I>Companion Bible</I>, note on Daniel 2:37).</div> <bR> <div> The nation of Israel consisted of twelve tribes and was referred to as the 'house of Israel'. In around 930 BC this nation was divided into two separate kingdoms. This resulted in a ten-tribe division in the north of Palestine, with a two-tribe division in the south. When the two divisions are to be delineated, the northern kingdom is referred to as the 'house of Israel' while the southern kingdom is referred to as the 'house of Judah'. The term 'house of Israel' can also apply to the southern kingdom - Isaiah mentions that there are "two houses of Israel" (Isaiah 8:14). The context generally provides the means of identifying who is being referred to by this term. Therefore the 'house of Israel' may refer to the whole nation of twelve tribes, the ten-tribe northern kingdom, or to the southern kingdom of Judah. (For more information on this subject see <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Verdana" ><A HREF="id12.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="House(s) of Israel">The House(s) of Israel - An Introduction to the Set-subset Concept of the Bible</A></FONT>).</div> <bR> <div> The northern 'house of Israel' was taken into Assyrian captivity basically around 720 BC. This left the southern kingdom of Judah, with its capital Jerusalem, as the only 'house of Israel' in the land.</div> <bR> <div> Daniel was a young man belonging to the southern kingdom of Judah. In around 605 BC Judah became a vassal state of the neo-Babylonian empire ruled by Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar, in the first of three deportation of the people of Judah, took of the young men, which included Daniel, who were "gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand" (Daniel 1:4) to serve in his palace in Babylon with the wise men who attended his court.</div> <bR> <div> It was in this foreign land that Daniel wrote the book attribute to him. The book of Daniel has been divided into various chapters. A number of these chapters build upon each other to provide an overview of events leading up to the return of Jesus Christ to the earth.</div> <bR> <div> <B>A DREAM-IMAGE</B></div> <bR> <div> Nebuchadnezzar in the second year of his reign had a troubling dream. He demanded that the wise men of Babylon give him the interpretation of the dream without them first hearing it. This opened the way for God to reveal to Nebuchadnezzar, through Daniel, "what will be in the latter days" (Daniel 2:28).</div> <bR> <div> "Latter days" or "last days" (cp. Genesis 49:1) has a double meaning or import. It may refer to events that follow on from a given point but its main and ultimate reference is to events, far into the future, which lead up to and surround the return of Jesus Christ. It has been said that one-third of the Bible is prophecy, of which 90 per cent is focused on these "last days."</div> <bR> <div> Daniel related Nebuchadnezzar's dream:</div> <bR> <div> "You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendour was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. This image's head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, and struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:31-35).</div> <bR> <div> Daniel interpreted the dream-image to Nebuchadnezzar's as an overview of what appears to be five successive world-ruling kingdoms. (Later in Daniel 7 we are informed that the fifth kingdom actually comes out of the fourth - being the last manifestation of the fourth kingdom). This final kingdom is to be crushed by Jesus Christ who will then set up an everlasting kingdom which will never be destroyed.</div> <bR> <div> The first kingdom was the neo-Babylonian empire - 629 BC to 539 BC. The second was the Medo-Persian empire - 539-331, the third kingdom was the Greco-Macedonian empire - 331-30 BC, and the fourth was the Roman empire - 31 BC to 476 AD.</div> <bR> <div> We are employing, to prevent confusion, the accepted historical dates of the beginning of these empires. We perhaps should be using the date these political entities took possession of Jerusalem - see below. Rome took possession of Jerusalem (64 BC) before it was an empire. </div> <bR> <div> Looking in detail at the interpretation we are introduced to some important concepts:</div> <bR> <div> (1) <B>You, O king, </B><I><B>are</B></I><B> a king of kings</B> - implies that Nebuchadnezzar was an emperor ruling over an empire. An empire may be defined as a group of countries under the same sovereign power. This appears to imply that the kingdoms to follow are all empires.</div> <bR> <div> (2) <B>and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven, He has given then into you hand, and has made you ruler over them all</B> - implies a world empire.</div> <bR> <div> (3) <B>You are this head of gold</B> - implies that Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was to be the first of these four world ruling empires. It also implies that a kingdom may be represented by its greatest king and that the terms 'king' and 'kingdom' are used interchangeably.</div> <bR> <div> (4) <B>shall rule over all the earth</B> - implies that it is the known world - the  world power as the centre of civilisation and as it includes Jerusalem. Alexander the Great's empire did not include China, nor did the Roman empire rule over the Parthian empire to its east.</div> <bR> <div> (5) <B>the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron</B> - the iron in this kingdom implies a relationship between it and the fourth empire. The primary interpretation of the iron and clay is the empire's internal relationship. The kingdom will be strong but will not have the same cohesive strength of the previous world-empires. "The text clearly implies that this final phrase will be marked by some sort of federation rather than by a powerful single realm" (Gleason L Archer, Jr, <I>Daniel</I>, Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 7, page 47).</div> <bR> <div>  (6) <B>they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another</B> - the secondary aspect to the iron and clay is the kingdom's external relationship. It would appear that the final kingdom will be a great global-reaching empire holding sway over and influencing the whole earth with out necessarily having all nations within its boundaries. Eventually this empire will have a falling out with those nations outside its empire. "Newton...explains the "clay" mixture as the blending of barbarous nations with Rome by intermarriages and alliances, in which there was no stable amalgamation, though the ten kingdoms retained much of Rome's strength. The "mingling with the seed of men" (v.44) seems to refer to Gen 6:2, where the marriages of the seed of godly Seth with the daughters of ungodly Cain are described in similar words; the reference, therefore, seems to be the blending of the Christianized Roman empire with the pagan nations, a deterioration being the result" (A.R Fausset, <I>Daniel</I>, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Volume 2, Part 2, page 393).</div> <bR> <div> The final kingdom, a manifestation of the fourth empire, is a federation of kings (verse 44). In the latter part of their rule a "king of kings" will arise to reign over these kings  - which we will see when we come to Daniel 7 - in a short-lived empire.</div> <bR> <div> Jesus Christ will then return to the earth as the true "KING OF KINGS" (Revelation 19:16) to destroy this final empire and set up a kingdom that shall stand forever and never be destroyed.</div> <bR> <div> <B>INTERREGNUM</B></div> <bR> <div> Beginning with Nebuchadnezzar and ending with the fourth kingdom these four world-powers have had overlordship of Palestine. It has now been over fifteen hundred years since the fall of Rome (476 AD) and the final kingdom of this image has yet to appeared.</div> <bR> <div> Here we are introduced to the prophetic concept of telescoping. J. Barton Payne defines the principle as "The leaping of a prophecy from a near to a far horizon without notice of intervening matter" (<I>Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophec</I>y, page xviii).</div> <bR> <div> In prophetic telescoping two persons, events or subjects are telescoped together because of a close theological connection between them. The telescopic concept is not limited prophecy.</div> <bR> <div> (When we come to the Book of Revelation we will look at another type of telescopic prophecy, which does not involve a telescopic interval. For Future Watch a telescopic prophecy involves two persons, events or subjects described together so that it may not be immediately obvious that it is only one person, event or subject that is described. A Future Watch defined telescopic prophecy may therefore be historical, subsequential and contemporaneous, or a combination of the aforementioned).</div> <bR> <div> So in this prophecy of Daniel the fourth kingdom of the ancient world is telescoped together with its final kingdom - which come out of it in the "last days". The iron of both kingdoms symbolically provides the connection between the two. The last kingdom appears to be immediately successive to the fourth but they are in fact separated by over fifteen hundred years. Through the concept of telescopic prophecy the image of Daniel spans the time from Nebuchadnezzar to Jesus Christ.</div> <bR> <div> <B>SUMMARY</B></div> <bR> <div> "It took the first chief rabbi of British Mandate Palestine, Abraham HaCohen Kook, to argue that a Jewish return to the land could hasten the coming of the Messiah and the final redemption" (The Economist, <I>Israel's settlers</I>, August 13, 2005, p.22).</div> <bR> <div> What qualifies an empire to be a part of this image?</div> <bR> <div> Nebuchadnezzar was not the first king of the neo-Babylonian empire, but he was the head of gold. Why? Nebuchadnezzar was the first king to incorporate the nation of Judah into his empire. Bullinger points out that: "These successive kingdoms are reckoned only as they obtained possession of Jerusalem. They existed before that; and each in turn, was absorbed in the one that succeeded" (<I>Companion Bible</I>, note on Daniel 2:37).</div> <bR> <div> Therefore the requirements for a kingdom to be a part of the image, from looking at the Bible and history, is that:</div> <bR> <div> (1) they were the leading gentile empire of the world; </div> <div> (2) the people of Judah were a vassal people of that empire;</div> <div> (3) they had possession of the city of Jerusalem; and</div> <div> (4) the Jewish sacrificial system was in operation, with a temple, during part of each gentile overlordship.</div> <bR> <div> Eighteen hundred years after Hadrian expelled the Jews from Jerusalem in 135 AD the Jews establish the nation of Israel in 1948. With the coming demise of the United States & Britain the stage is being set for all the above conditions to be fulfilled again.</div> <bR> <div> Just as ancient Israel declined and Babylon rose to power, the relative decline of the United States and Britain (modern-day nations of the northern 'house of Israel') will lead to the rise of Babylon the Great (Revelation 17 & 18) and the treading down of Jerusalem, the Jews, the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic and kindred peoples.</div> <bR> <div> (Earlier we mentioned that the ancient northern 'house of Israel' was taken into Assyrian captivity. According to conventional history they disappeared in the land of their captivity and have therefore been termed "The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel". But according to the Bible these people exist as major players on the world scene in the "last days":</div> <bR> <div> "And Jacob/Israel called unto his sons, and said, "Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you <I>that</I> which shall befall you in <B>the last days</B>..." (Genesis 49:1).</div> <bR> <div> It is important to note that the Bible employs the figure of speech called metonymy to describe the descendants of the patriarch Jacob/Israel in the end-time. J.Barton Payne explains:</div> <bR> <div> "Metonymy identifies the interchange of one noun for another because of an inherent relationship between the two... <B>A pervasive sort of prophetic metonymy occurs early in Scripture in the patriarchal blessings, in which these heroes of Genesis speak repeatedly of the later tribes and nations that will be descendant from them in terms of their individual children at the time</B>" (<I>Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy</I>, page 19).</div> <bR> <div> So while the Bible refers tho these end-time descendants as Israel we have therefore used the designation <B>the Jews, Anglo-Saxon-Celtic and kindred peoples</B> to identify the modern-day descendants of the 'house(s) of Israel'. See also pages 24-25 in this regard.</div> <bR> <div> So, just as God sent the two houses of ancient Israel into subsequent captivities for their national sin, He is going to send the modern-day 'houses of Israel' into one contemporary captivity).</div> <bR> <div> Babylon begins and end this image. The neo-Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold, while the feet of iron and clay are Babylon the Great, the empire of the Antichrist. (The first and last gentile empires to gain possession of Jerusalem). All these separate empires are really four manifestations of the one great God-opposing system whose roots go back even further to the ancient city of Babylon. Babel/Babylon (Genesis 11) gave birth to the first rebellion against God after the flood. She is in a figurative sense the 'mother' of all forms of godless secular and religious systems that have developed ever since. We see this concept in Eve with her being "the mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20).</div> <bR> <div> The Roman empire is the city of Babel/Babylon fully developed, in its most God-opposing manifestation in the ancient world. Babylon the Great is Rome and the ancient city of Babylon fully developed, in their most God-opposing manifestation at the end of the age. As Satan makes his last ditch-attempt to overthrow God in heaven he attempts to destroy on earth God's firstborn-nation, (cp. Exodus 4:22), through Babylon the Great.</div> <bR> <div> The dream-image of Nebuchadnezzar parallels a later dream of Daniel's concerning four beast. This 'beast' vision also "spans the time from the neo-Babylonian empire to the establishment of God's kingdom" (Joyce Baldwin, <I>Daniel</I>, Tyndale Commentaries, page 161). In Daniel 2 we saw that the final kingdom would comprise ten kings here in Daniel 7 we learn more about this empire and the 'king of kings' who will reign over it.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Daniel 7">Next Page</A>            <A HREF="id14_m.htm" TITLE="Daniel 2">Top of Page</A>            <A HREF="id13.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Introduction">Previous Page</A><A HREF="id13.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Introduction"> </A>           <A HREF="id6.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Beast of Revelation">Beast Index</A>            <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Future Watch">Home Page</A></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>