Daniel Message 9

Interpretation of the Dreams – Daniel 2:29-43

We are in the section of Daniel dealing with Daniel’s career in Gentile politics. Remember that the book of Daniel is primarily a wisdom book and secondarily a book on prophecy. Wisdom means knowledge and skill in the details of living and Daniel was primarily written for the believer who must live in the kingdom of man before the kingdom of God is established, the kingdom of man being that social organization that fallen man always wants to construct, the artificial unity. Since the tower of Babel men have always tried to fulfill the Genesis 1:26-28 mandate that he must subdue the earth. It is a collective mandate; it will not be fulfilled by individuals but by the human race and as a race corporately. And men try, because they are made in God’s image, to fulfill this. Yet because they are also fallen, as well as being made in God’s image, they always rebel at conquering it and subduing it for the Lord so they want to conquer and subdue it for ourselves.

That is the origin of the kingdom of man; basically the sinful motive to bend and twist the creation mandate in an apostate direction and therefore erect various versions of the pre-Babel kingdom, such as Greece, Rome, etc. We’ve had many situations of little kingdom of man that have existed in history and before Jesus returns we will undoubtedly see the kingdom of man sprout in a form which history has never seen or dreamed of yet. The kingdom of man is a very, very great enemy; it’s the organization, the moral organization of society is basically what it is, so that when as believers we live in that kind of a situation the pressure is always on to bend with it; like a big wind storm, when it blows you kind of want to bend with it.

Chapter 2 deals with the crisis of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream; Daniel faces a crisis in practically every chapter of this book. And in Daniel 2 he faces a crisis with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream which about gets him and his friends killed. We have already seen the three steps Daniel used to cope with the situation. In Daniel 2:14-15 he gathered data; he didn’t just say oh, I’ve got a problem, but he examined what the problem was so he could describe it, so he could pray about it. You can’t pray about a problem that you don’t know about. You’ve got to get some data gathered so you can define what it is you’re going to pray about.

We found the second step in verse 16, how Daniel proceeds on the basis that there is a solution, that a solution must exist and therefore he proceeds on the second step with absolute confidence. And that’s what one needs in the middle of a pressure situation. You’ve got to know that some solution exists some place, and that’s just applying 1 Corinthians 10:13, no matter what your pressure is, no matter what your trial is, in your business, home, whatever it is, 1 Corinthians 10:13 rejects the concept that you face something bigger than the assets God has already provided for you to solve the problem; Romans 8:28. Those are the promises that Daniel applied at the second step.

The third step that he used was that he persevered and he persevered until God gave him the solution; he didn’t give up, like so many Christians. After the going gets rough we quit; Daniel was not a quitter; Daniel kept on going until God gave him a solution. True Biblical sovereignty always motivates action; true Biblical sovereignty is never in any way to be confused with fatalism; fatalism kills action. If what’s going to happen is going to happen, that provides you with no impetus whatever to do anything. Biblical sovereignty would ask the question, it may be God’s will to put you at this time at this place to do something. So Biblical sovereignty always motivates; Christians should always be motivated to action, not that they don’t rest but that they also are not inactive either.

Daniel had prepared for this crisis by being loyal in the small things. Now he faces a situation where he and his friends have to pray and pray and pray and persevere in prayer all night until Daniel receives the vision. Now in Daniel 2:19 he’s admitted to the king’s presence, and here begins one of the most amazing visions ever given to the human race; it is a very famous passage. In days when people were well-educated, even the non-Christian, everybody knew the four kingdoms of Daniel. It was a theme in many works of literature, many poems and the words, the fifth monarchy, came to be known as the millennium. People knew what the fifth monarchy was. In Cromwell’s era there was a whole group of men called the Fifth Monarchists, and some of them were a bunch of kooks because they thought they were going to bring in the fifth monarchy instead of God, but nevertheless it shows you how this vision of Daniel 2 has permeated western culture. Milton writes of it, even Hegel designs his whole philosophy around these four visions, though he redefines it, and the final vision for Hegel is Germany. But nevertheless, Hegel got his idea of his kingdoms from Daniel 2. So Daniel 2 is worth knowing, even if you reject it.

Daniel 2:29, “As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed,” now from verse 29 through verse 35 you have the dream; from verses 36-45 you have the interpretation of the dream. Let’s look at the dream, “thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed,” literally the verb is a perfect, an Aramaic perfect, your thoughts have come up, come up out of your subconscious, while you’re upon your bed, and Daniel proceeds now to tell Nebuchadnezzar not only his dream but very important from our point of view, why Nebuchadnezzar dreamed this dream. What was on Nebuchadnezzar’s mind before the dream began?

Nebuchadnezzar, in 603 BC became the most powerful man who ever lived. Two years previously, at 605 BC he had won a great battle at a place called Carchemish. Up in this place, where all the trade routes went over to India, went up into Asia Minor, went down through Palestine into Egypt, the trade routes all coalesced at this place called Carchemish. It was known in the ancient world that whoever controlled Carchemish, basically controlled world trade. So therefore Nebuchadnezzar wanted this and he finally wrenched it away from the Egyptians in 605 BC. Then in 604 BC he came down and conquered this area and in 603 BC finished it off, so that by this time the Babylonian Empire encompasses a vast area, from the Mediterranean on one side all the way to India on the other, basically.

So Nebuchadnezzar at probably 25-30 became a very, very powerful man, but Nebuchadnezzar also was an unbeliever. Nebuchadnezzar had no solution to his basic problem and that is his sin problem, he was separated from God, he had no solution to the vacuum in his heart created by the absence of Jesus Christ. Therefore even though externally he was very rich, very wealthy, very powerful, and in a very enviable position, Nebuchadnezzar on the inside was still empty, he was still lonely, he was still troubled. And so even though he was a great man he was still troubled, just like many men in our society can be very, very troubled personally. You may think of yourself as a peon and yet if you are a Christian you have the solution in the person of Jesus Christ.

“As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter:” that was Nebuchadnezzar’s problem, “what should come to pass hereafter.” In other words, the problem that bothered Nebuchadnezzar was the limitations of his own creature hood. As a creature no matter how powerful he was, he knew he had no control over the future. This awareness has caused people by the millions in our own day to flock to horoscopes, astrological charts and so on, all the other garbage that is sold in place of the Word of God. And this kind of activity is just a manifestation that we are made for eternity; we naturally want to know what is in store for us.

Therefore, this passage is one which witnesses to Nebuchadnezzar’s great need, the need of Ecclesiastes 2:33, that God has shed holem, this word is the word for eternity, and Ecclesiastes 3:11 teaches that every member of the human race possess an awareness of eternity in our hearts, and God has placed that awareness in our heart, we can’t eradicate it, you can try to kill yourself, you can try to drug yourself, you can try all the other various things that are available and you cannot destroy the sense of eternity in your soul. And it’s that sense that gnaws at Nebuchadnezzar. And while in 603 BC he’s the most powerful man, when he goes to bed at night he dreams, and he dreams and dreams about the fact about what if… here I am the most powerful man, I’ve got the whole culture at my fingertips, I can destroy, I can lift up, but the one thing that I can’t do is I can’t deal with my own future, I do not know for sure what is going to happen in the future. Will all my works that I have dedicated myself to last? Will it finally pay off? What’s going to happen in the future? So that was what he was troubled about.

So Daniel continues, “and he that revealeth secrets” this is an Aramaic participle depicting God’s nature; that is because in verse 28 Daniel has already identified the God in heaven as the one who reveals secrets, so at this point Daniel gives a name to God that should click with Nebuchadnezzar, the secret revealer. He calls Him this because Daniel, remember, has just passed three years of education in the Babylonian schools of wisdom, and one of the great things in these Babylonian schools of wisdom was the ability to foretell the future by what would be equivalent to Quija Boards, tea leaves and all the rest of it, same concept here. So Daniel deliberately takes the character of God, the essence of God and puts it against the human viewpoint of his day.

Now this is creating the sharpness, remember before Daniel even started this, verses 27-28 as he walks into the king’s court and the king sits here and here’s this 17 year old boy, it’s just amazing, everybody is probably standing there with their mouths open, a 17 year old kid walks in to Nebuchadnezzar and tells him what’s going to happen, when we have old men here by the dozens who have spent all their life designing the future and they can’t solve the problem. Who’s this Jewish kid that walks in here and starts telling the king what the deal is? So everybody stands around and Daniel does something very smart; before he tells them the dream he turns and he looks at all these people standing around and the substance of verses 27-28 is this: all you people with all your human viewpoint, you are limited by your own creature hood, when it comes to the future you cannot press finite knowledge, you are up against it when it comes to the future, there’s no way to discern the future by human strength alone.

Therefore, Daniel says, there is only one solution and that is my God, not yours, my God. Daniel is an exclusivist; he would be called in the 20^th century, in the day of neutrality, a religious bigot because Daniel believed that only his God had the answer and no one else’s faith was correct, he was right, everyone else was wrong. That’s Biblical exclusivism and it is a sign, not of arrogance, it is humility if the Scriptures are true. God’s Word alone is correct.

So Daniel continues and he says “He that is the secret revealer has made known to thee what shall come to pass. [30] But as for me,” and if you’ll notice how verse 29 begins and verse 30, there’s a contrast, the contrast is in the original, the contrast is preserved in the translation. “As for you, O king,” here’s your problem. Daniel 2:30, “As for me,” this is where I stand. Notice Daniel keeps himself at a distance. This is one of the chokmah principles that you will learn and pick up from Daniel. See, we’re interested not just in the details of prophecy but in these little principles of living in a fallen world. And you’ll notice that even though Daniel is physically there with the people, he’s conversing with them, he’s helping them even so. There is a discreet distance kept between Daniel and those who are the authorities in the kingdom of man. Always there is this discreet distance because Daniel says, “As for you,” here’s your problem king, and “As for me,” and what is the difference. “As for me the secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living [person], but for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.”

In other words, the difference in verse 29 and verse 30 is that in verse 29 the man is a man who is works oriented, and Daniel must point out, “as for you, Nebuchadnezzar, as for you,” you’ve got a problem. “As for you,” you’re sweating it out because you have no answer. Now as for me, I want you to understand something, that I as a grace oriented believer freely acknowledge that my dependency is upon God outside of myself. It’s not dependency on a feeling, it’s not dependency upon my own social status in life or upon the three year course that you just gave me tuition free. It’s not dependent on anything like that, I want you to understand very clearly Nebuchadnezzar, before I go any further on this dream, understand me, this dream and all that is has to do comes from the God of heaven. So there’s this discreetness.

Now in application you’re going to find when you discuss things with non-Christian in various situations that you’re going to have to continually in the conversation say things like this, and it’d be good to practice in this in discussion, that if you accept the Biblical viewpoint, then …dot, dot, dot, dot follows, and always condition everything you tell them, that if the Biblical viewpoint is true, the dot, dot, dot, dot follows. Or you can do it the other way, if the Bible is not true, then dot, dot, dot, dot is the logical conclusion. And that way by always sowing conditions in everything you say you maintain a discreet difference between you and the other person and you don’t allow their thoughts to slurp around like a giant amoeba and absorb the Word of God and blunt it and smear it so the distinction is lost. The distinction is preserved here. “If” the Bible is true, “then;” if the Bible is not true, then this follows. Always sow these into the conversation.

Why was the revelation given, another point, very important in this day when people profess to have all sorts of added revelation? The revelation was revealed not so Daniel might be edified. Every once in a while you’ll come across some charismatic that says well, I believe these are personally edifying. Well, exercise of a spiritual gift is personally edifying but that’s not the main purpose. The main purpose of all of God’s gifts is for service to other people, not service to yourself, and this is why in the charismatic thing with all its emphasis upon my experience it’s basically a very self-centered operation, that God’s given me this gift for my own spiritual titillation, that concept.

Notice here, the revelation was given for service to Nebuchadnezzar, that’s why. It wasn’t given to make Daniel great, though it happened to. The main issue was it was given in order to serve God’s purpose in the outside world, not just in the heart.

Daniel 2:31, the description. As we go through this we’re going to spend two Sundays on the vision in Daniel 2 and as we go through this I want to warn you about a few things on interpreting prophecy. Today we’re going to carefully observe what this thing looks like and then we’re going to develop some observations on how to read this kind of Scripture. When we read prophecy learn to read it as the original person saw it; don’t read it retroactively. You see the problem is that Daniel lived around 530 BC, and we’re down in 1974 and we’re looking all the way back; now we’ve got an advantage that even Daniel didn’t have. We can see all the fulfillments of this vision in history. So we tend to read that back into the prophecy, you see, the prophecy is fulfilled here, the prophecy is fulfilled there, ten toes, two legs and all the rest of it. That is true; Daniel’s prophecy was fulfilled, even beyond his expectations. But let’s carefully distinguish what Daniel saw and what we see later.

Now why is this rule so important? Let’s just as we go through this take it the way Daniel saw it and don’t read history into it, just look at it and observe it, because this is precisely the position we’re in with respect to the Second Advent of Christ. Don’t read the Second Advent prophecies of Christ in the Bible as though you’re going to write a newspaper about every little thing that’s going to happen tomorrow. That is a fast way of getting in trouble with prophecy. People were saying the European Common Market is the Revived Roman Empire. Look, two centuries ago people were saying the Roman Catholic Church was the Revived Roman Empire. Henry Kissinger is the beast or something like this and then four or five decades ago Kaiser Wilhelm was the beast; so this is the danger you have. Prophecy, when it is fulfilled, will be very clearly fulfilled. And we can talk about fulfillment but let’s not read all these things in. Prophecy is fine to use as a framework for stability as Daniel used it.

Now let’s watch and I’ll show you some things that people with do with this thing, and it’s all right as far as fulfilled prophecy goes, but it’s not the emphasis of this text. When you’re studying apocalyptic literature, you follow the interpretation given to you. One of the features of apocalyptic literature is that you will always have a vision, such as in Zechariah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelation, and then you will have an interpretation of the vision. Now we have to discipline ourselves to stay with the interpretation of the vision given there, and not add on our interpretation of the interpretation of the vision. That’s going a third step further; we can speculate, that’s fine, that’s fun to do, but don’t call that the Word of God. Only what’s right here is the Word of God, the rest of it is interesting, but it’s not the Word of God.

Daniel 2:31, “Thou, O king, saw,” the word for “see” means to behold in a vision, it is a perfect paraphrastic which means he continually beheld this thing; this is a mood that emphasizes continuity, it means he had a long, long dream, and there was some time in this dream. Whether where it was a case where Nebuchadnezzar was dreaming and dreaming and dreaming, and then slowly this thing kind of just fuzzily appears before him and then gradually as the dream goes on he sees the thing expand and become sharper, like for example, when a projector is focused first the picture is blurry and then it comes into sharp focus, whether that focusing took time we don’t know, but there was a time interval involved here. A time interval, Nebuchadnezzar had a long time to observe the details of this stature or this colossus. The very fact that he observed many details and that Daniel only interprets some of the details should be sufficient reason for going slowly, just taking it easy and going through very slowly. “Thou, O king, were looking, you were seeing or beholding in a vision and lo one great image,” literally, “one great image.” Everybody says this is a man; everybody is sure this is a man, and Daniel too. Well, where does it say it’s a man? Nowhere in this vision does it say it’s a man so don’t jump to conclusions. It’s something that looks like a man and that’s all the vision says, it doesn’t say it’s a man, it just says it’s an image. Presumably it’s a man, it has arms, it has a head and so on, so presumably it is a man, but just be careful about reading things into what the text says.

You saw “this great image,” it’s an immense thing, an immense thing; it frightened Nebuchadnezzar by the very size of this thing. So if you want to visualize in your mind something like this, think of the statue of Lincoln sitting on the chair in Washington Dc, something like that, something big. “This great image whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.”

Now the word “brightness” in verse 31 is the word for “face,” and this is very interesting because he’s saying the facial expression caught Nebuchadnezzar’s attention, and interestingly nowhere else in the vision are we told what precisely it was about the face. But something about the facial expression caught Nebuchadnezzar’s attention. It may be that as Nebuchadnezzar looked at this the face looked very familiar and the longer that Nebuchadnezzar peered at this vision the more he began to see, perhaps himself on the face. But nevertheless, whatever the face was, it was something that caught Nebuchadnezzar’s attention. It was standing before thee, for some time, again it’s a participle, the thing stood there and stood there and stood there, and Nebuchadnezzar probably wished the dream would go away, he wished he could wake up from the dream, wished he could turn it off, but he couldn’t, the dream kept on going and going and going and he couldn’t even turn his head. Maybe you’ve had the experience in a dream where you wanted to turn away and look some place else and you can’t because it’s just there, you’re rooted into the situation, it’s like you’re glued in one place. That’s Nebuchadnezzar. He can’t turn right or left, he just has to sit here and stare at this thing.

“…and the form of it was awesome,” literally. If there’s one thing about the whole statue it’s his awesomeness. There’s also something else about the statue, something that careful interpretation must take note, it is one; the statute is basically one. Now let’s not get too hung up on the four or five kingdoms and all the different kinds of metals and the arms toes, ears, nose, eyes and legs, all these different things, just at the very first when the image is introduced it’s specifically said to be single, unified. So however we interpret the kingdoms they must be interpreted in such a way that they’re basically all one. I’ll show you the importance of this when it’s destroyed. The kingdoms somehow are all the same thing. So we don’t know what the same thing is but when you interpret prophecy like this, it should be the word “one” in verse 31, when you see the word “one” you put a little question mark, what is that. That should draw your attention to the fact that when we get through we ought to be able to answer that question; what is the unity of the statute.

Daniel 2:32, “This image’s head was of fine gold,” now notice here the number of verses devoted to the various parts of the statue. If you look at verse 32 you can count how many areas of metal you see in verse 32; you see gold, you see silver, and you see brass or bronze. So there are three compressed in one verse. Verse 33 deals with the iron part; and verse 34-35 deal with the stone. Now, use those verses to again help you interpret. Where is the emphasis in this vision? The emphasis isn’t on the first and the second and the third kingdoms, is it. It’s on the fourth, and particularly the fifth. So that should tell us when we interpret this vision there’s something noteworthy about the fifth kingdom, that’s the one that should be emphasized, and the first three just kind of go by.

Daniel 2:32-33, “This image’s head was of fine gold, his chest [breast] and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, [33] His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” Now what’s happening here? The metals, what about those metals? What do you notice happens as each metal is introduced? Several things, obviously each metal is less expensive than the other one, it’s cheapened as it goes on down till finally you meet iron mixed with clay, and so there’s something about a cheapened quality. Yet with the cheapened quality what is also true of those metals? They get stronger, until they become so strong that in the last part it’s not clay, the word is terra cotta, it’s pottery, brittle. So the metals go from soft gold, which is a relatively soft metal, until they harden up to iron, until they get so hard as pottery itself and becomes brittle and smashes. So we have two things, we have a decline in value, we have an increase in the hardness, in the brittleness of the statue. The specific gravity of all these metals drops off as you go through these, the specific gravity of gold is much, much greater than iron, the specific gravity drops off which makes the statue top heavy, so we have all sorts of things in the metallic structure of this thing that are important to notice.

In Daniel 2:34, again we have a participle, it’s paraphrastic, “You kept on looking, until that a stone was cut out without hands,” you kept on viewing, so over and over as the clock ticks Nebuchadnezzar’s dream goes on, Nebuchadnezzar can’t turn to the right, can’t turn to the left, he can’t move, he can’t avoid looking at this thing, it just towers in front of him. And Daniel says Nebuchadnezzar, the night… and he may have dreamed this on many, many nights, you always keep on dreaming this, don’t you Nebuchadnezzar, and you can just see the look, it must be an astounding look on Nebuchadnezzar’s face as his jaw just drops, a 17 year old kid reaching into his mind and telling him exactly what had happened night after night after night in the royal chamber. And he must be astounded. And “you kept on looking, until a stone as cut without hands, and it smashed the [which smote] the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.” And the word “clay” is not soft clay; don’t visualize this as soft clay, putty, play dough, stuff like that. The clay here is pottery, it is brittle, it is not soft.

So the stone cut without hands… cut without hands, now that reminisces in the Old Testament. Cutting without hands was the requirement for the stones that went into the altar. Now why do you suppose the stone is said to be cut without hands? What theological significance does “cut without hands mean?” What is it that’s without hands about the stone and with hands with the statue? Why? The whole statue is handmade, there’s a tremendous contrast at this point; the statute, the gold, gold has to be refined by people; it’s a highly refined substance. It’s an expression of the works of man. Silver has to be refined; steel has to certainly be refined; bronze has to be refined, clay is made by man on the potter’s wheel and then fired, this particular clay, this pottery was fired clay. And if that’s the case the whole statute from top to bottom represents one hand-made operation. And what do we say? There’s something that has to unify this statute; in spite of the diversity of the metals there’s some common theme that runs through the whole thing. What’s the common theme? It’s man-made, the kingdom of man, standing for man, man wants his rule with creation and he’ll organize society on his design, it will always be man’s design, man has the final say over what is and is not possible. Man decrees what shape the society will take, always man-made. So there’s the theme.

And now the stone that comes and smashes it is not hand-made. The stone that comes and smashes it, Daniel apparently is telling Nebuchadnezzar, because later on in verse 45 he says it’s cut out of a mountain, apparently as Nebuchadnezzar looks the stone is actually cut out of a mountainside. The two words in this story are tsur, and tsur is a cliff, like for example on the edge of the Dead Sea, long walled cliff, that’s a tsur, and an eben, like Ebenezer, that kind of thing, ’ezer is helper, eben is stone, this is the stone that marks the Lord’s help, eben is a stone and that’s what’s cut without hands, out of the tsur comes the eben, this stone, apparently, as Nebuchadnezzar watches is suddenly just cut out, sort of like that hand that we’ll see that comes into the palace on that creepy night when Belteshazzar is having his blast, and writes on the wall, the hand that appears from nowhere suddenly writes. And here as he looks at this cliff, suddenly it’s as though you have somebody working in this quarry and he cuts the stone out but he doesn’t see any tools. The stone just suddenly is cut away, and it’s just taken out and smashes against the feet of the statue. Why against the feet? Because that’s the brittle place; and it smashes against the feet.

Now a very interesting observation in verse 35 and something which demands a great deal of attention in interpreting. People are often fond of saying yes, it smashes the fourth kingdom. True, but that’s not all it smashes.

Daniel 2:35, “Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together,” notice the word “together,” obviously the colossus is standing here, the stone impacts from the bottom, it smashes the feet, the colossus just comes down and as the whole thing crumples to the ground it just disintegrates into powder that the wind blows. The pieces are so small that the wind blows it. You have to smash iron into pretty small pieces before you get pieces small enough that can be blown in the wind. That’s how a thorough a job of disintegration happens here in verse 35. And the interesting thing is, we’ve got to explain this in our interpretation. What does it mean that not just the iron and the clay are smashed, but the gold, the silver, and the bronze are also smashed? They are all smashed together, “and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”

So as Nebuchadnezzar stands in tremendous [can’t understand word] and remember what Nebuchadnezzar must have been thinking, remember these dreams aren’t isolated from the man’s own situation in life. If you were Nebuchadnezzar imagine a little bit, be creative, just plug in here with your fantasy for a while. Imagine that you are Nebuchadnezzar, here you are sitting on a pinnacle of power; everything that you have is yours because you made it. The gnawing inside, the sense of eternity, tells you yes, but this isn’t going to last, is it; this is going to wear out, there’s going to be other men come along better than you, even after you die, and take it all over. Nebuchadnezzar, you haven’t built anything that lasts. And then for a man thinking all this, worried about all this night after night after night, just stand there and watch this gigantic colossus, which was a monument to what man can build, suddenly smashed, not by another man, but by nature; smashed by something in nature, and then just whoooo, and you can just see it, the statue crumbles and comes into powder, and the wind blows and then it’s all gone, this tremendous statue, all gone. And again showing Nebuchadnezzar man’s work is like the vapor, James says, your life is here today, gone tomorrow. You need a root outside of yourself in order to live, you can’t just operate from your own assets alone; they’re insufficient.

Now Daniel 2:36, the interpretation, “This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.” As we follow the interpretation notice what elements of the statue Daniel interprets and notice what elements of the statue Daniel refuses to interpret. Daniel is not going to interpret the ears; why the head of gold has two ears; now the two ears mean that there was an east and a west in Babylon and the silver has two arms and it means there’s an east and a west, and there’s two legs and there’s ten toes, and all the rest of it. Now that may be and will be given in Daniel 7 and will come about in history but here it’s not part of the interpretation, there’s only two things that Daniel uses of that statue. When you interpret visions in apocalyptic literature every detail of the vision is not necessarily to be interpreted. Only some things, and here Daniel is using only two parts of this statue; he doesn’t talk once about legs, toes, ears, arms, eyes or anything else, he’s only talking about two things. He’s talking about the sequence, which he interprets as a chronological sequences of succession, and the second thing that Daniel points out is the quality of metal, it’s deteriorating and those are the only two things mentioned here. And that’s what we should do. We can speculate on how it’s fulfilled, but in the Word of God there are only these two things interpreted in this vision.

Daniel 2:37, “Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. [38] And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold.” And it says, [39] “And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee,” there are several things to notice here. The first one is “you are the king of kinds.”

Now, and this is going to be a rule that is followed in the rest of Daniel, it’s followed in Revelation, it’s followed in Zechariah, it’s followed in all these places where you get involved in prophecy. You will have a kingdom represented often by one king of the kingdom, so you may have a kingdom, actually there were six rulers in the Babylonian kingdom; there was Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar’s father, there was Nebuchadnezzar, there was Emel Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, there was Neriglissar who was a son-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar, there was Labasi Marduk, who was the son of Neriglissar and Nabonidus who was a court man who usurped the throne, so there were six men in this kingdom. But at any given point in time there’s only one king that’s there. In the book of Revelation, the five kings that were, and there’s one that is and one is coming, this kind of thing; one kingdom, many kings. But although there were many kings, maybe only one stands out. So just because it talks about one king doesn’t mean that the other kings aren’t included, it’s just that one king now stands for the whole kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar stands for the whole Babylonian kingdom.

Now in verse 38, when it’s talking about “wheresoever the children of men dwell,” God “has given them into your hand,” this is a very, very profound moment of history. And to see just how profound it is, turn to Psalm 89:27. Something has happened in history at this point. In 603 BC world supremacy, we’ll put potential world supremacy was turned over to the Gentiles. Up until 603 BC, as Psalm 89:27 says, “Also I will make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth.” David was to be the king of kings, it was to be his line that was to be the king of kings; it was to be the king’s of Israel that were to be the kings of kings; they were to fill all the earth with the knowledge of the Lord. And so they had potential world supremacy; all during the time of the monarchy they were vested with a potential world supremacy. Just as Jesus offered the kingdom to the people of His day, God offered the kingdom to the kingdoms of that day, and the north and southern kingdom even, could have, theoretically, brought in the millennial kingdom; it was an immediate option open to them had they exercised it. We know they didn’t exercise it but still it was an option to them. They could have gone into the millennial kingdom condition, but they didn’t. So in 603 BC God took away from the Jew that potential, and ever since, until the end of this kingdom, that’s why Daniel 2 is so critical, ever since the Gentiles have had this potential world supremacy.

Now on the way back to Daniel stop at Jeremiah 27:4, God announces the same thing in Jeremiah 27 that he’s doing in Daniel 2. There’s something basic that has shifted in history. Those of you who like to do a study in history and religion and culture, here’s a project for you. Explain why, after 603 BC that almost all the major world religions developed within 100 years. Explain why for hundreds and hundreds of years there were no new developments in religion, just basically had Hinduism and polytheism. Now all of a sudden after 603 BC you have Zoroastrianism, you have the Reforms in China, the [can’t understand word] movement, you have Confucius, you have Buddha, in the West you have Plato and the philosophers. Why does this rash of activity suddenly crop up on every continent of the world within 100 years of the decree of Daniel 2? Is this an accident, or truly has world supremacy slid from the Jew into the hand of the Gentile. This would argue this.

Jeremiah 27:4, “And command them to say unto their masters, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Thus shall ye say unto your masters, [5] I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed right unto Me.” God gives it to whom He pleases, world supremacy. [7] “And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him to serve him. [7] And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son’s son, until the very time of his land come; and then many nations and great kings shall enslave him.” So you have world supremacy shifted into the hands of the Gentiles. What does it mean? Potentially, theoretically, had Nebuchadnezzar exercised his options he could have conquered every place of the known earth. He never exercised it and that shouldn’t disturb us because we don’t exercise all of our potential either. But Nebuchadnezzar had an open mandate for imperialism.

Which brings us up to a very unpopular aspect of Biblical history; from this point forward, through the end of the times of the Gentile, it appears to be the norm for peace in this world for colonialism and imperialism. As much as that offends the western idea of democracy, as much as it offends the western idea of equal rights for all nations, that does not appear to be God’s modus operandi in history. Wherever you have had one nation powerful that has swept the world and conquered people you have always had the most peace. The Pax Romana was when Rome smashed the ancient world and it was because Rome so conquered the world and unified it and brought it under one dictatorial control that the gospel went out. Then you have the British Empire, not being a dictatorship but conquering India, Africa, parts of Central America, conquering the North American continent, and for a while the sun never set on the British Union Jack. And isn’t it interesting that the 19^th century was the precisely the century that British missionary endeavor peaked; it got started and actually peaked. America had the opportunity in 1945, after World War II the entire world was prostrate; had we been thinking Biblically we could have conquered the world. We had the tools at our disposal, we could have said you make peace or we drop the bomb, period. And we would have a tremendous era of peace, but people in 1945 were too sick of fighting the war and didn’t want any more, so they wanted to go home. But as unusual as this approach sounds, the imperial view of history is that which is given in Daniel. There’s no way around it, Daniel was not for balance of power among equal nations; he is for the supremacy of one nation over others.

Now let’s look at the interpretation. Daniel 2:39, “And after thee…” “after thee,” that confirms the fact that Daniel is taking the sequence of metals chronologically. So that fixes one part of our interpretation. We now can be sure that when we read these four metals we’re talking about four eras of history and they are sequential in time, so in the statue time goes from his head to his feet. “After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee,” now the question is, what does inferior mean. Commentators have had all sorts of ideas, inferior by way of government, inferior by way of culture, inferior by way of moral fiber, what is the inferiority mentioned in verse 39? Whatever the inferiority is it’s something connected with the metal, and whatever the inferiority is it continues because all four metals are smashed at the end. So we’re going to hold that, just like we had to hold that “one” great image, and we finally solved it, the one great image is unified by the fact that it’s man-made, now we’ve got another problem. What is the inferiority? Can we pinpoint how these kingdoms are sequentially inferior? At least we can say this, that the statement “inferior” in verse 39 proves that the Biblical philosophy of history is anti-evolutionary. It proves that the human race is not getting better, it’s deteriorating. And this is a Biblical view of history: devolution not evolution. Things are going down, they are not going up.

The kingdom will be “inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.” Now Daniel doesn’t say what the kingdom is, we know now from history what it is, the first one is the Neo-Babylonian empire, the second one is the Medo-Persian Empire, the third one is Greece and the fourth one is Rome. That’s the way it worked out, but Daniel doesn’t say that. The only one identified definitely is the first one. Why? Because the other ones hadn’t existed yet, that’s why. History hadn’t played out yet, so only one is identified.

Now we come in Daniel 2:40 to the fourth kingdom. “And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.” Look at the verse distribution we’ve got. Verses 37-38 deals with the first kingdom. Verse 39 deals with the second and the third kingdom. Verses 40-43 deals with the fourth kingdom. And verses 44-45 deal with the fifth kingdom. Now looking at that verse distribution, which kingdom is the most important as far as Daniel is concerned? The last one. Why is the last kingdom more important as far as Daniel is concerned than the other kingdoms? Because it’s the logical conclusion to the kingdom of man. The fourth kingdom is going to represent the kingdom of man in all his grossness; it’s going to represent the logical conclusion of man’s apostasy from God, and therefore that is the center stage.

Now “strong as iron” is the summary statement, then you see the word “forasmuch” if you have a King James translation. The “forasmuch” is…all these statements, forasmuch and so on, are Daniel’s link between the image and the interpretation. Every time you see one of these you’ll see a cross match. Let me show you the cross match and how it works. The first “forasmuch” in verse 40 introduces the concept of iron, “forasmuch as iron breaks in peaces and subdues all things, and, as iron that breaks all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.” So the “forasmuch” in verse 40 introduces a simple deduction that Daniel is making. He’s saying look, what’s the character of iron? When you have an iron sword against a bronze sword, which one wins? The steel sword always, so it’s stronger [can’t understand word], so therefore he says the fourth kingdom shall break in pieces and smash.

Now Daniel 2:41, “And whereas thou sawest” this is another one of those “wherefores,” “Wherefore you saw the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided;” so that’s the second thing that he’s saying, look at the feet and the toes, they’re made of clay and part of iron. Now there’s something interesting about this statement. When people think of the division in verse 41 they think of the legs, they say oh yeah, it’s divided, two legs—not if you interpret the passage, that’s not the division mentioned here. Where in verse 41 is he talking about the two legs? He’s not talking about the two legs; the duality of the legs isn’t the subject. What is the subject? The mixture of metals is the subject, not the legs. So it’s the mixture of metal, it’s part clay and part iron, that’s what Daniel is looking at. He’s not saying, now let’s see, the guy has two legs, two knees, two shin bones, he’s not looking at that at all, he’s saying look at what it’s made of, that’s the point. What it’s made of is divided, there’s not true cohesiveness in this thing.

And then in verse 41 he draws a conclusion, “but there shall be in it some of the strength of the iron,” literally, there shall be in it some or partly the strength of iron, “forasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with miry clay.” Now the word “miry” introduces a new word. The word “miry clay,” this is where the original languages help and why there is a limit in what you can do in the study of the Word of God apart from a pastor-teacher trained in the original languages. You can have a Bible study but you need someone trained in the original languages to work with this kind of thing and here’s a beautiful example of it. This clay, again, is pottery, it’s hard. But the word for “miry” means soft, soft clay.

Now what’s he saying, why introduce soft clay, he’s been talking about hard clay, hard clay, hard clay, brittle clay, brittle clay, pottery, pottery, pottery, and now he comes, made of soft clay…soft clay meaning that the pottery, it’s hard now but it was made from what was originally soft clay. Why does he bring that up in verse 41? Because again it shows you what is on Daniel’s mind, it’s the impurity of the substance, the weakness of the substance, that’s what’s on his mind. The legs and the toes are not on his mind as pieces of anatomy in verse 41. It’s the material, not the anatomy that’s the point.

In Daniel 2:42, “And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay,” it doesn’t mean five of them were clay and five were iron, it means it was all mixed together, you must have been kind of like pottery with chips of iron in it, this kind of thing, like kind of a mosaic material made out of this thing. “The toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.” He just repeated himself and amplified a little bit. Now verse 43 tells us what is this metal all about. We see the sequence in the statue, we know that it’s chronological succession of four kingdoms, but we still haven’t really pinned down what is the deal on these metals, the metals being inferior to each other. I see that it’s chronological, that’s clear; there shouldn’t be any discussion there. But what does the metal mean? Daniel interprets it here.

Daniel 2:43, “And whereas thou saw iron mixed with miry clay” again, see he’s emphasizing the weakness of the material, “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave [adhere] one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.” Now “they shall mingle themselves” in the King James is unfortunate. In the Aramaic when you want to express a passive voice you use a plural verb in the active plus a “they.” We do this in our English, “they said,” or “I wonder they’re going to do.” Now do you really have somebody in mind when you use the word “they’re going to do something?” Who’s “they?” What you really mean is it’s going to be done, normally in English usage. It’s the same in the Aramaic; “they are going to mingle themselves” isn’t a particular people involved. People go into verse 44, oh I know what that is, those are the ten toes that are going to mingle themselves, all ten are going…. No, that’s not what’s mingling. “They” is an indefinite impersonal plural; it’s just saying it’s going to be done.

Now what is it that’s going to be done? Mingling “with the seed of men,” we can go to a concordance and look up the verbs; it’s not that hard, and go to a place of Scripture where it occurs. Turn to Ezra 9:2 where you have usage of this word, “For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons, so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands, yea, the hand of the princes and rulers has been first in this trespass.” Now what is it in the context? He’s talking about intermarriage; intermarriage with what? It looks like it’s an intermarriage on a racial basis, but we know from the book of Ruth that can’t be because Ruth is a Gentile and she marries a Jew and you have an interracial marriage and it’s not condemned, so it can’t be interracial marriage that’s involved, it must be something even before that that’s involved. The book of Ruth is written to clarify the issue.

So if we use Ruth as a norm of interpretation and we go back and look at all this intermarriage business and the prohibitions of it, we realize why was Ruth as a Gentile woman allowed to intermarry with a Jew? The reason was she confessed the Jew’s God, so the real issue isn’t the race, it is culture. And that’s the reason for the prohibitions against intermarriage in the Old Testament. The Gentiles had an apostate culture and when you take one person who has been raised in an apostate culture and you bring them into a person with a Biblical culture you’re going to have problems in the marriage and it will always tend to the marriage and the children will suffer for it and you’ll have a very weak group of children coming out of that marital union.

So, if that’s the background of this verb, to “mingle the seed,” now if we come back to Daniel we know something about those metals. In verse 43 you saw iron mixed with clay, so we’ve got the fourth kingdom; here’s the head of the statue and we’re down to the feet. There’s the feet, it starts off with iron and gradually as you go down it picks up, the word “feet” in the Hebrew is the leg all the way up to the knee, so what you see there as the foot is the whole part from the knee down and the foot, all this is pottery and iron together. And it’s that that’s under discussion. And he says here’s what it means; the composition of the kingdom has reference to the culture of the kingdom, and it’s going to be characteristic that in the fourth kingdom, when men try to engineer their kingly unity, remember the kingdom of man, unity in God’s world for protection, for security, we are going to try to engineer unity by force because each one of these metals increases in force, by force but the problem is that the culture itself cannot cohere, we’ve got too many diverse elements in the culture and it just won’t adhere, it won’t stick together.

Now the Babylonian culture was very uniform, and we can look back in history and see exactly what Daniel is talking about; the Babylonian was dominated by Marduk, it came to its end, as we’re going to see, largely because Nabonidus was a man who fouled up the religion of Babylon, along with Belshazzar. What was the second kingdom? Medo-Persian Empire, you had two cultures, they never did get together. Cyrus himself, his mother was a Mede, his father was a Persian, the man himself was basically a cultural bastard. Then you go down into the time of the Greeks and you have Alexander conquer the world, he tries to Hellenize it, immediately the man dies and what do we have? Four generals competing, four different spheres, four different cultures; Egypt on the one hand, Syrian on the other hand, Macedonia on the other hand, and Alexander’s empire suffered because it tried to embrace too much of a diverse number of cultures.

And finally Rome, it started off with the iron foot the legion, until finally what happened to the Roman Empire. That’s a solution we’ve got to yet solve in this passage. When does the stone smash the Roman Empire? Does it smash it in 476 BC, is the stone the Church, is the stone Christ, is the stone the Second Advent. Right now we’ve left unanswered when does the stone smash the statue. We’ve introduced several key points. We know now that the kingdoms are sequential in time; we also know that the metals depict the decline and degradation of culture with time. What is the lesson behind the statue that Nebuchadnezzar must learn? It’s what God said in Jeremiah’s day, Jeremiah 27:5, “I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed right unto Me. [6] Now I’ve given these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, all nations will serve him.”