Bible Prophecy Part 5: Dreamscape

This is a story about a peculiar dream that is interpreted in Daniel chapter 2. It plays an important role in not only understanding prophecy past but also prophecy future. This is not an extensive study of the subject of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream but it will give a decent foundation for future Biblical prophecy discussions that require this information to be somewhat understood.

BECOMING KING OF BABYLON
Nebuchadnezzar II was the eldest son of Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon from 626-605 B.C who severed Babylon from its dependence on Assyria and laid Nineveh to waste. According to Berossus, a Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer, Nebuchadnezzar II married Amytis of Media, the daughter or granddaughter of Cyaxares, king of the Medes. As crown prince, he led his father’s army against Pharaoh Necho and the Egyptians at Carchemish and defeated them, establishing Babylon as the strongest nation in the ancient Near East. Egypt and its vassals, including Judah, became vassals of Babylon with this victory. Following the victory in Carchemish in 605 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar invaded the land of Judah, taking some captives to Babylon, including Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (Daniel 1:1-3). Toward the end of that year Nabopolassar died leaving Nebuchadnezzar to succeed him as the King of Babylon.

DREAMSCAPE
In the second year of his reign as King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that perplexed him and he saw an opportunity to put the advisors, men whom he inherited from his father, to the test. He called them in and asked them to interpret the dream. They asked him to describe it and he refused. He asked them to prove their worth by not only interpreting the dream but he demanded, on pain of death, to also tell him what the dream was as well. They panicked and explained that no king had ever required both the dream and its interpretation – they said it was humanly impossible! So he became very angry and sentenced everyone in the kingdom with the job description of magician, astrologer, sorcerer and Chaldean to death. Daniel and his friends, unfortunately, fell within one of those categories and were scheduled for execution, even though they were not at the meeting.

Daniel asked the captain of the king’s guard, Arioch, why the king had decided to do something so drastic. The captain then proceeded to explain what had happened during the meeting. Daniel went to the king and asked if he could take a little time to go and find out what the dream was so that he could give the king the answers he had been looking for. Nebuchadnezzar agreed to his proposal. That night, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah went to the Lord in prayer, petitioning to be given understanding of the king’s vision and God complied.

The next morning, Daniel carefully gave credit to God for the explanation of the king’s dream, reiterating that no one on Earth would have the ability to do what he had asked to be done but there was a God in Heaven Who could. He then proceeded to tell him the dream and accompanied it with the interpretation.

The Context

As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. Daniel 2:29

The context of the dream, Daniel reveals, is prophetic in nature and it was given to Nebuchadnezzar by God.

The Dream

³¹ “You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome.
³² This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze,
³³ its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay
³⁴ You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.
³⁵ 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

God had shown the king that his kingdom was the first in a series of four gentile kingdoms that would rule the world during a time that would later be known as the Gentile Dominion. The statue is composed of several precious metals varying in strength and value. The statue’s head is made of gold which represented Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom of Babylon. After him, there would be another kingdom represented by the statue’s chest and arms of silver. The belly and thighs of brass or bronze represented the next kingdom. Finally, to complete the statue, the legs were made of iron and the feet made of iron mired with clay. Ultimately a stone, cut without hands, struck the statue and destroyed it as if had never existed, then expanded to form a great mountain that covered the entire Earth.

The Interpretation

³⁷ You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory;
³⁸ and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold.
³⁹ But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth.
⁴⁰ 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.
⁴¹ Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with miry clay.
⁴² 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.
⁴³ As you saw iron mixed with miry clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay.
⁴⁴ And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
⁴⁵ Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.
Daniel 2:37-45

As inhabitants of this current age, we have an advantage over King Nebuchadnezzar because we have the historical record of the empires that followed his kingdom of Babylon, which Daniel says is represented by gold. In 539 B.C., the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty, which is represented by the arms and chest of silver. Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon) defeated the Persian armies at Granicus (334 B.C.), followed by Issus (333 B.C.), and lastly at Gaugamela (331 B.C.), which led to an establishment of the ancient Greek empire, represented by the belly and thighs of brass. The Greek empire was eventually overtaken by the Roman Empire (168 B.C.) represented by the iron of the statue but Rome was never really conquered. It fragmented gradually through corruption and transformed from a political kingdom into a religious power. The iron mired with clay represents a coming empire that some believe will appear in our lifetime. Some scholars have labeled it as Rome II. It will be a struggling reformation and attempted reassertion of power which will resemble the Rome of the past.

Below is a graphical representation of the dream as Nebuchadnezzar may have seen it with the breakdown of the empires and their corresponding place on the statue.

In verse 2:44, Daniel explains that there will be a fifth and lasting empire that will subdue all others as if they had never existed at all. That last empire is represented by the rock that will expand into a mountain, encompassing the entire planet, crushing the Gentile Dominion. This empire is that of Jesus Christ and it will last forever.

Conclusion of Part 5
For years, Bible scholars have been watching for the formation of a new European confederacy resembling the last empire of iron mixed with clay. The formal establishment of a European Union was accomplished in 1993 with the enforcement of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the union and led to the creation of the single European currency known as the euro. This new union sent the watchful scholars into the stratosphere with speculation and excitement. Since then, they have kept a constant eye on developments coming from Europe and on December 13, 2007 another step in the process of a fully realized constitutional confederation took place with the signing of the Lisbon Treaty.

On December 1, 2009, the Lisbon Treaty went into force and was hailed by the European Union as the start of a new era with hopes of becoming a stronger player on the world stage. The agreement aimed to make the EU decision-making a much smoother process and has seen the creation of a long-term president and powerful foreign policy chief. At the time of the enforcement of the treaty, Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister whose country held the rotating EU presidency until the end of that year, said: “A new era of European co-operation beings today … today the EU is a force to be reckoned with, both economically and politically.”

As the European Union grows stronger, the individual nations who have signed the treaty lose more and more of their national sovereignty. Opponents of the Lisbon Treaty, such as former Danish Member of the European Parliament Jens-Peter Bonde, argued that it would centralize the EU and weaken democracy by ‘moving power away’ from national electorates. Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician and leader of the Party for Freedom, stated in his speech at the Annual Lecture at the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome that the EU has fallen into, “the hands of a multiculturalist elite who by undermining national sovereignty destroy the capacity of the peoples of Europe to democratically decide their own future.” The advancement of a multicultural agenda in Europe undermining the national sovereignty of the nations involved in this treaty mirrors the iron mixed with miry clay mentioned in verses 41-43. This lends credence to the speculation that the new dominating gentile kingdom will be some form of the European Union.

This chapter in Daniel is a cornerstone of Biblical prophecy that has helped to build a tower of evidence for a coming world kingdom, which will eventually be dominated by the one known as the Son of Perdition. As it was said in verse 45 of this chapter of Daniel, “The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure” and history has well defined the kingdoms mentioned in King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

More information is given to Daniel in chapter 7 regarding these kingdoms but that is beyond the scope of this post. We will get into this information in further discussions on Biblical prophecy in the near future. Until then however, continue to be diligent in study and keep His glory in your focus.

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