Daniel 2 is such a big chapter I don’t know that I can do it justice in one day. Well, I guess I can never do it justice, but one little message out of it hardly seems fit. This chapter deals with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream – he has a dream which keeps him awake and so he calls in all his astrologers and wise men and soothsayers and all that and asks them to tell him his dream. When they can’t he orders all his wise men to death, but Daniel (who is among his wise men) prays to God and God shows him the dream and its interpretation, which he takes to the king, who is amazed and gives him gifts and also sets him as governor of all Babylon (sound familiar? Remember Joseph?)
That’s the outline of the story. The details are very juicy. The actual dream is quite impressive and is one of the key passages for eschatology. We will get to that later.
The first thing we realise is how wise, or shrewd, a man Nebuchadnezzar is. He is having these dreams which are keeping him awake. That means he must be tired, grumpy and irritable. I know I am when I can’t get to sleep. But when he calls all his weird and wacky wise men in to interpret his dream (which he must have taken as having some meaning!) he doesn’t immediately tell them his dream for them to interpret. Instead of acting rashly he gives them a test: he tells them they must both tell him his dream and its interpretation. Well, the wise men are a bit flustered because obviously no one can do this except ‘the gods’ and they don’t live on earth! We find:
‘The Chaldeans answered the king, 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)
You see, these ‘wise men’, or Chaldeans, would have been saying things equivalent to the fact that they could do things like this. They would have assured the king that they could do all types of wonderful things which they probably would have performed by illusion or coincidence. But Nebuchadnezzar is not a complete fool, and he gives them this test under considerable pressure (he promises to cut them in pieces if they do not do what he asks), where they cannot bypass the facts or just make up any interpretation they like. Thus they are flustered and say that no-one can do it! Daniel agrees with them later on:
‘But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.’ (Daniel 2:30)
Daniel is saying that it’s not him who could interpret his dream, but only that God told him what it was, which He did for two reasons – to save Daniel and his friends, and so that Nebuchadnezzar could finally learn what the dream God gave him means. So Daniel agrees that no-one living can interpret the dream. The difference between him and the other ‘wise men’ is that he has a relationship with God, and they don’t have any relationship with their gods, primarily because they don’t exist.
What can we take out of this? (Don’t worry we’ll get onto the actual dream next time hopefully). Well I think sometimes in life (well actually pretty much all the time in life) there are so many voices offering us so many things. They offer fun, excitement, prosperity, success, happiness, wisdom, long-life and anything else we can imagine. And they all seem to live up to their offers. But only when there is no pressure on them. Only when there is no wisdom and shrewdness applied on their behalf. When it comes to the crunch, we see that all their offers are vain, and the only way we have any of these things is through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Nothing on earth will truly give us these things! This is the last excuse of the hopeless forms of fulfilment that permeate our society before we realise that only Jesus Christ can give us these things. Do not be fooled, but be shrewd, even, may I say, like Nebuchadnezzar.
And so we finally come to the actual dream that Nebuchadnezzar has. It is a significant dream for prophecy, and one that most will probably recall. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was of a massive statue, which had a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet and toes iron mixed with clay. After seeing this statue, Nebuchadnezzar saw a great piece of rock cut out from a mountain without hands, and the rock spread and grew till it covered the whole earth.
Then Daniel interprets the dream. He says the head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. Gold characterised this nation as they were rich and supposedly quite beautiful (remembering the hanging gardens of Babylon). The silver chest and arms represented a nation that would come and destroy Babylon after a time. This turned out to be Assyria, who though not as rich as Babylon, was stronger (as silver is stronger than gold). The bronze was meant to be another nation which conquered the world – and this turned out to be Greece, under Alexander the Great. They were stronger than either of the nations before them. However, the next nation was iron. This nation was characterised by iron in that it broke all other elements to pieces:
‘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.’ (Daniel 2:40)
This nation, of course, turned out to be Rome, whom iron characterised very well. They were quite famous for their ‘iron legions’. Also, we see that the two legs, being split into two, characterise the state of Rome, which had the East and West parts later in Rome’s dominion. This is a quite detailed description of human history for the next thousand years or so.
However, now we come to the hard part. The fifth kingdom was said to be iron mixed with clay – with ten toes. Now we know the iron was Rome.
‘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.’(Daniel 2:42)
So we see that the fifth kingdom is some Roman empire that isn’t purely Rome, but mixes in a lot of weaker elements. A lot of people call this the ‘Revived Roman Empire’, and there is a lot of debate as to what it specifically describes. The main thing is that we have not seen this nation truly yet. There hasn’t been a nation where this description easily applies. Thus it must refer to the future. Now why would there be a large gap in between the legs (Rome) and the feet (Revived Roman Empire, in the future)? Well, I can only suggest that with the coming of Christ, in the midst of the Roman Empire, God’s attention shifted from the Jews (whom Daniel is prophesying for specifically), to the Gentiles, or moreover to the church (us!). That is, Jewish history is at a standstill – waiting for God’s attention to be turned back on them. And at that time, this new empire will rise up, seamlessly following the Roman empire.
We must remember that Daniel’s prophecy is primarily for the Jews, it is to his own people. It is not to the church, though we can read and gain much out of it.
The final kingdom is described as God’s kingdom, stretching on forever, and covering the whole earth. This is the day we’re waiting for! We see it was cut out without human hands, because God doesn’t need our human hands to build Himself a kingdom.
All of history has been following the body of this statue. God has been planning and shaping all the major events that we learn about in school, all those things that we are in awe of, all of them were planned way before their time by God, who saw in the future an eternal reign of His son. What a God we have! And we can often hardly believe that He can plan our puny little lives for us! Give it all to Him, and let Him shape it!
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