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[0:00] We would return to the book of Daniel, and we are examining this great image that King Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream that obviously gave him cause for great anxiety.

[0:15] And we will not belabor the point. I think we've already adequately dealt with the fact that he made the demand of all of the so-called experts in his cabinet that they be able to reveal to him not only the interpretation of the dream, but the dream itself.

[0:34] And, of course, the Chaldeans, the soothsayers, the astrologers, and so on, the so-called intelligentsia in the Babylonian kingdom, protested to the king, and they said, Why, nobody has ever made a request like that. You tell us the dream, and we will give you the interpretation thereof.

[0:56] And old Nebuchadnezzar was not to be swayed, and he said, If you guys are really legitimate, and you are able to tell me the meaning of the dream, you ought to be able to tell me what it was I dreamed.

[1:14] And they were shaking in their boots because he pronounced a death sentence upon them, and upon all of those who functioned in that capacity. And the word came to Daniel, and Daniel took the matter to the Lord and prayed about it.

[1:31] And God revealed to Daniel what the meaning of the dream was and what the dream was itself. And when the king was advised that there was a young man of the Hebrews who could not only interpret the dream but tell him what the dream was, Nebuchadnezzar as much as said, Well, bring him on. I want to talk to him.

[1:52] And when Daniel came into the presence of the king, he began relating to him exactly what it was that Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed. And I'm sure that as we begin here in Daniel chapter 2, and beginning with verse 20, Daniel answered, I'm in chapter 2 and verse 20, Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision, and Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

[2:26] And he went in to the king, and in verse 24, we are told that therefore Daniel went in unto Ariok, who of course was the king's trusted agent, whom the king had ordained to destroy the men of Babylon.

[2:42] He went and said thus unto him, Destroy not the wise men of Babylon. By the way, you know this was an act of real kindness on the part of Daniel.

[2:55] I mean, he could have said, All of those other guys are a bunch of phonies. Go ahead and kill them. He could have done that. But obviously, out of a respect for life, he finds the milk of human kindness within him.

[3:14] And you know, Daniel is coming from a worldview. Daniel has a personal worldview about creation, about the God of creation, about the sanctity of life.

[3:29] And it doesn't just have to be the life of those who agree with you, or the life of those who are on your side. But obviously, Daniel had a respect for life as the fact that God gave it, and it should be preserved whenever possible.

[3:46] And he issues a plea on behalf of all of those who were scheduled for execution. And he says, Tell the king. He doesn't have to go through with that. And, Destroy not the wise men of Babylon.

[4:02] Bring me in before the king, and I will show unto the king the interpretation. Then Ariok, and in verse 25, Ariok brought in Daniel before the king in haste.

[4:16] Obviously, the clock was ticking and the time of execution was drawing nigh. And he said thus unto him, I have found a man of the captives of Judah that will make known unto the king the interpretation.

[4:32] The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar. You remember, that's the name that Daniel's name was changed to by the Babylonians, along with his three Hebrew friends, whose names became Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

[4:52] And, he says, He will make known to you the interpretation. And Daniel answered in verse 27, in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king has demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers show unto the king, but, it's a beautiful word of contrast, conjunction of contrast, but, there is a God in heaven that reveals secrets and makes known unto the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.

[5:27] Thy dream and the visions of thy head upon thy bed are these. Mark, he points out that in heaven is really important because the Nebuchadnezzar gods and the gods of Abednego were earthly gods.

[5:42] Oh yeah. So he wanted to make it very clear that this is not an ordinary earthly god, this is a god of heaven. This is not a god you can see, bow down, worship, and this kind of thing, like an image.

[5:55] And then he starts in verse 29, As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came unto thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass afterward?

[6:06] And he that reveals secrets makes known to thee what shall come to pass. But as for me, Daniel is saying, As for myself, this secret is not revealed to me for my wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall make known in the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.

[6:37] Thou, O king, sawest, and behold, a great image. This great image whose brightness was excellent stood before thee, and the form thereof was terrible.

[6:56] This image's head was a fine gold. I can just see this old king sitting there on his throne stroking his beard, listening to what this young upstart from the land of Israel is saying.

[7:11] And when he talks about image as a head of gold, I can see old Nebuchadnezzar's eyes widening and he's saying, yeah, yeah, it did.

[7:25] It did. Now he's really fascinated. He's telling himself, is this kid onto something here? What is this? That's exactly what I saw.

[7:38] This head of gold and his breast and his arms of silver. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

[7:51] And his thighs of brass. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron, and part of clay.

[8:05] Yeah, that's exactly what I saw. Had no idea what it meant. Thou sawest till the stone was cut out without hands.

[8:20] Picture, if you will, in this vision, this huge mountain, this mound of stone, and out of this whole mountain, a portion is coming out.

[8:38] And it is a large stone that comes out of the mountain which smoked the image upon his feet.

[8:49] So picture this, if you will. This image that Joe's put together here just envisioned the head of gold, the breast and the arms of silver, the thighs of brass, legs of iron, and the feet consisting of ten toes made of a mixture of iron and clay.

[9:13] And what's the most significant thing about iron and clay? They don't hold together very good. Yeah. It doesn't mix. They don't mix. It's easily separated because iron is an ore.

[9:25] It's a metal. Clay is earth. How in the world are you going to bind those two together? You can't with any kind of permanence. It's just going to be very fragile.

[9:38] And the least thing that smashes the iron and clay is just going to crumble it. And it will separate the iron from the clay. And that's the point that's being made here.

[9:50] This iron, well, let me go back here. The gold, Daniel is going to go on and say, the gold represents you, your majesty, Nebuchadnezzar.

[10:04] The gold is Babylon. And the silver, the breast and the arms is going to represent the Medes and the Persians.

[10:15] And you can see why there are two. The Medes for one, the Persians for the other. They are going to eventually become the enemy of the Babylonians.

[10:28] So, what we've got here is a historical succession of kingdoms, of powers, that are going to dominate on the world stage long before they actually occur.

[10:43] Well, one is actually already underway. And that's Nebuchadnezzar. That's already in place. As of the time Daniel is speaking to the king Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon is already the world power.

[10:57] And they were the ones, of course, who defeated the Israelites, carried them into captivity. Now the Jews are captives. They're in the land of Babylon under the jurisdiction of Nebuchadnezzar.

[11:09] And what Daniel is going to reveal is the time is coming, O king, when you'll no longer be on the scene. You are going to be displaced by another.

[11:23] And that will be the Medes and the Persians. Now we'll see that when we come to Daniel chapter 5. Remember the writing on the wall? Many, many, tekel, uparsim, the kingdom has been weighed and found wanting.

[11:37] And the Medes and the Persians will be at the door, while the Babylonians are having this drunken orgy and party, and everybody's liquored up, and the Medes and the Persians come in and take over the kingdom.

[11:53] And that is going to last for a number of years, and then that is going to give way to another. And that will be represented by the brass.

[12:07] And this is going to involve none other than the Greeks. And the Grecian empire, the head of which will be Alexander the Great. And we know from history that this incredibly brilliant young general, who succeeded in conquering the whole world as it was known at that time, I guess you could say the whole Mediterranean basin, died at the ripe old age of 32 or 33 from alcoholism, they say.

[12:37] And that Grecian kingdom is eventually going to be replaced, by the iron, and the iron will be Rome.

[12:50] So we've got a succession of four kingdoms here, only one of which even exists at the time Daniel is revealing this prophecy.

[13:03] So all of that which is to come is looking hundreds of years into the future. In fact, we may say that Daniel is approximately 500 years before the birth of Christ.

[13:26] Now, when Christ is born, we know who's in the driver's seat earth-wise, it's the Romans, Caesar Augustus and his crowd. And they are here, they are the iron.

[13:37] So this is all a prophetic picture that we are looking at here. And as Daniel goes on to explain what's taking place, more time, you're going to find something very ironic.

[13:51] It looks like a contradiction. These means are going to take over Babylonians, but Daniel says they're weaker than you. How can that be? Weaker than you, it's going to happen.

[14:03] But how could they do that? Well, he meant politically they were weaker than this single head king, than two countries together.

[14:16] But militarily they were stronger. They were stronger. They defeated them, but it seems like a contradiction in there. You're going to read that here in a minute. That's interesting. And you can see the descent from the ultimate kind of metal down to the cheapest or the most inferior.

[14:36] And that's exactly what is being portrayed here. But the stronger metal. The metals got stronger than when the metal got stronger because the weapons got stronger, but the political part, the values that people had, the morals and everything went down, down, down, down.

[14:50] Right. Stronger in one way, weaker in another. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we're back in Daniel chapter two. And verse 33, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

[15:09] thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands. Now that indicates a supernatural origin because no one is going to be up on this mountain chiseling out a big stone.

[15:27] It's just cut out mysteriously without any intermediary seemingly to do it. But we know this is a picture of God himself who is casting out this stone.

[15:42] And it talks about the stone was cut out without hands which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay and break them to pieces.

[15:56] So you can understand how when this stone comes out and smashes the feet it just brings to an end the whole concept of this image and everything it stands for.

[16:14] So he is looking well ahead and by the way this is where the phrase has come from and seems to be persistent that involves what we call a revival of the old Roman empire.

[16:30] Because in the book of the revelation which we studied in some detail months ago at Grace we see that these ten toes these ten toes are representative of ten different areas that are going to exist on the globe during the time of the Antichrist and they will be under the jurisdiction and power of the Antichrist who will be the world leader at that time.

[17:01] And they are represented by those ten toes geographically and we'll see more about that later. So let's move on if we may in chapter two here.

[17:13] This is the dream and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. you O king are a king of kings for the God of heaven has given thee a kingdom power and strength and glory.

[17:36] Now I'm sure that Nebuchadnezzar thought that it was all of his own doing. But it is God who orchestrates in the affairs of men. He brings down kingdoms and he raises up kingdoms and he does whatsoever is his good pleasure.

[17:53] You O king are a king of kings for the God of heaven has given thee a kingdom power and strength and glory and wheresoever the children of men dwell the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven has he given unto thine hand and hath made thee ruler over them all.

[18:14] You are this head of gold. I can see this old boy's chest puffing up now and he says well that's logical. I'd be the most important.

[18:25] I would be the head. I would be the brains. I would be the gold. This guy's got an ego. And by the way his ego is going to get him in big big trouble later on.

[18:38] He's going to strut around the walls of Babylon which were considerable. We are told that the walls of Babylon that surrounded the whole city were so wide that you could drive two chariots abreast around the walls.

[18:56] That's how thick those walls were. And one night he is going to be strutting around Babylon looking over his conquest and his accomplishment and saying is this not great Babylon that I have built and God says okay that's enough and the man is reduced to a temporary state of insanity where he begins crawling around on the ground and eating grass like an animal and believe it or not he's going to survive that and eventually come to his senses and by the way fellas when you get to heaven you can look for Nebuchadnezzar he's going to be there he comes to the realization that it is only the God of heaven who is the supreme lord and it will be quite a breakthrough for him and he will regain his sanity and to a certain extent be restored so in verse 39 then and after thee because you're not going to be here forever after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee that will be the silver and another third kingdom of brass you see kingdoms come and kingdoms go which shall bear rule over all the earth and the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron for as much as iron breaks in pieces and subdues all things in other words iron in a way iron is stronger than gold and stronger than silver it's less valuable but it's stronger in so far as its strength is concerned and verse 41 and whereas thou sawest the feet and toes of the feet part of part of potter's clay part of potter's clay and part of potter's clay and part of iron the kingdom shall be divided but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron part of clay so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken the strength will be in the iron the brokenness will be from the clay and verse 44 and in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom in the days of what kings in the days of the kings of the ten toes that has never occurred that has never yet taken place so Daniel is looking way far ahead beyond that present beyond what we know as the

[22:16] Roman Empire as it existed at the birth of Christ in the opening of the New Testament he is looking far beyond that and what Daniel is looking to is the end time that's why this is prophetic and it is so accurate that it actually led some of the scholars to conclude that Daniel could not possibly have known this well we would agree there's no way Daniel could have known it except God revealed it to him but their explanation is that Daniel is writing historically not prophetically but that's complete nonsense because in the first place it has been disproven and the early age of Daniel has been sustained and vindicated and not only that but the the end game of which Daniel is speaking here still hasn't occurred still is not a reality this stone this stone that is cut out of the mountain without hands that's going to crush the ten toes who is that stone that stone is Jesus

[23:23] Christ and when he comes he is going to decimate those ten kingdoms that exist and are under the control of the antichrist during this time of great tribulation and that is looking much further ahead in fact it is looking so far ahead it still hasn't happened and that's exactly the point that is being made here that the kingdoms are going to be they are going to rise up and they are going to be deposed but when the time comes for those ten kingdoms to be dealt with and the ten toes by this stone that is cut out of the mountain without hands that kingdom will know no end that kingdom will endure forever this fellas is the worldwide kingdom that Jesus Christ is going to establish when he comes this is the kingdom that is spoken of in what is so often referred to as the

[24:26] Lord's prayer thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven that is when that will be realized at that time but to now today of course it never has yeah Joe 1.2 to substantiate the validity of Daniel back here doing this was down here in this period of iron during Rome when Jesus was born Jesus walked the earth back here Jesus at this time in history referred to Daniel the prophet it's in the Bible he referred to him back here as the prophet and so he had it couldn't be just some storyteller telling all this history Jesus referred to him back there okay thank you all right and we are in verse 46 then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and worship Daniel now this is a rather predictable reaction from a from a pagan like

[25:32] Nebuchadnezzar was and by the way this falling upon the face this is the biblical posture for prayer you don't hardly see anybody doing it anymore except Muslims and when they bow in prayer in their mosque you know they get down on their knees and they put their face put their forehead down on the floor which in most cases is a bunch of Persian rugs like in the mosque but that is the biblical posture and that's what the scriptures mean when it says they fall on their face and that's the it is a picture of obeisance it's a picture of honor it's a picture of submission and when you bow and put your face on the ground like that someone has said that what will you do when you actually see in person the

[26:32] Lord Jesus Christ what will you do and when you think about it there's only one proper response and that is on your face on your face and you bow before him nobody I don't think is going to walk up to him stick out their hand and shake hands and I'm glad to meet you you just get on your face get on your knees and that's exactly what Nebuchadnezzar is doing here but of course he's doing it to Daniel and he doesn't understand what is involved at all the king answered and said unto Daniel of a truth it is that your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a reveal of secrets see you could reveal this secret then the king made Daniel a great man gave him obviously a huge promotion gave him many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief of the governors over all the wise men of

[27:35] Babylon well I'll say one thing we have to give Nebuchadnezzar credit for having sense enough to know that he was in over his head with what he was doing but this young man Daniel has got a connection with a God that is above and beyond any of the gods that we've ever known anything about and Daniel requested of the king and he set Shadrach Meshach and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon but Daniel sat in the gate of the king and old Nebuchadnezzar is saying to Daniel when he promotes him what can I do what do you need what do you want and Daniel says well I do have three friends and they would be invaluable if you put them in a position of authority and power in the government and Nebuchadnezzar says you got them okay we'll do that and this this is this is this is quite a story quite an account and it is going to be absolutely breathtaking how this unfolds into the future and how these various things are literally going to come to life and we'll see that as it unfolds but

[28:53] I think for now we can consider that chapter finished any comments or questions anybody else Joe yeah it's interesting that Nebuchadnezzar you think was what he just saw that he would have made the God of heaven his God right there but he didn't he still kept his earthly God but you think about how God works God at this time is a prophetic time his covenant with Abraham he was just working with the Jewish people the Israelite people that's only he was concerned he was a god to them only that time he had a plan for later on after the kingdom come in that then the Gentiles which Nebuchadnezzar was a Gentile that's when it would happen that you will be one to me God wasn't really after him to be his God at that time right and so he didn't even follow that up to try to make it so it is so so believable the Bible because of the way things work out in the way that history this is in the history books right here it is so accurate that its veracity is simply undeniable and you can look at secular history you don't have to look at the

[30:10]  Bible the Bible gives us the record but any reputable encyclopedia including the Americana and Britannica both include details about these kingdoms and their historicity and who is in charge etc so not that they are needed to verify the Bible but the Bible does verify them so thank you all for being here guys enjoy your breakfast and the day ahead