07: World News & Prophecy - Daniel 4:1-27

[Darris McNeely] We have progressed in our time through the book of Daniel 4. I think we're moving rather quickly through a lot of this material in the class this year. There's a great deal of material in Daniel and pathways and avenues, some might call rabbit holes that we can go down into on many different topics. We will start down a few here in this class and then double back to go even further into certain material here. But we have come to Chapter 4. And Chapter 4 is a unique chapter, not only of the book of Daniel but of the entire Bible. And that's because it is the only section of Scripture, the whole Bible, Old and New Testament composed under the authority and by, if you will, a pagan ruler, Nebuchadnezzar.

We have other quotes, particularly in the book of Esther, the King Artaxerxes there. No, that's not Artaxerxes, Ahasuerus is the king there who was actually in history known as Xerxes. They'll be talking and be quoting but this is different. This is largely a book or a chapter penned by him, and in it, we see a king that we've already been introduced to in his interaction with Daniel in Chapters 1 through 3. And he's been introduced to the God of Daniel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Bible, the true God. And it's different. And he is a multi-pagan, god-worshipping, goddess-worshipping Babylonian, and yet he has come to an intellectual appreciation or conviction of the sovereignty of the God of Daniel, you know, we could say, the one true God intellectually.

That is different from, let's say, a true conversion experience. You know, Daniel interpreted the dream. He threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego into the fiery furnace. He saw a fourth person, one like the Son of God in there or like the gods, a divine figure. And they survived. That was a dramatic witness. But that's a far cry from total complete submission to God. And, now, in this chapter, we're going to see something that is even deeper. He is going to have an encounter with God, and that's what he's writing about. As he opens it up at verse 1.

Daniel 4:1-3 He says, "Nebuchadnezzar the king, to all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth, peace be multiplied to you. I thought it good to declare the signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me. And how great are His signs and how mighty His wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom."

Now, keep in mind, he has been introduced to the overall concept of that kingdom by the vision that he had, the dream that he had, and Daniel's interpretation of that stone cut without hands striking the image on his feet and the 10 toes. We talked about that, in general, last time without going into all the detail which we will in later chapters. But this has introduced him to this kingdom that as it says, will fill the entire earth and will last forever. This fifth kingdom, the Kingdom of God, that grows will never end. So when he says in verse 3 here of Chapter 4.

Daniel 4:3 "His kingdom," the kingdom of God, "is an everlasting kingdom and His dominion is from generation to generation," he sees that.

He has been told that. He intellectually accepts that. And that is what is important here to understand. Daniel's interpretation has introduced Him to the all-powerful, wise God who can reveal the mysteries and knows the course of history. And that I think is important to keep in mind. And, again, with the experience in Chapter 3 of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, he learned that this same God is the God of nature as well as history and can, by His power, override the will of even himself who was a pretty powerful king, but also suspend through a miracle the natural forces of the world. The three men were not consumed in the fire. They weren't even singed.

And I believe in miracles. Do you? Well, that is a dramatic miracle. And Nebuchadnezzar is being exposed to that. So, again, he can't get away from it. But, now, in this chapter that he recounts, he's also going to recount a personal humiliation that God visits upon him because of his pride and his arrogance and what he was and is. And this is what he's writing to the nations. And this is in itself a remarkable thing that this powerful king is writing this to the nations and explaining that what he has been involved with here, what he is, is a... How shall I put this? He's admitting that he's been humbled. And keeping in mind that this section of Daniel is written in the Aramaic, a language by which all the nations and peoples can understand, he's broadcasting to them. He's putting out his story.

And it is a factual recounting. We can look at it even as a witness. But we're going to also have to admit that it will fall far short of what we would biblically describe as a conversion. That is a complete repentance and acknowledgment of God. And as we see in the New Testament, through baptism, one receives the Holy Spirit and becomes a new person in a relationship with God. Nebuchadnezzar didn't get that. He didn't go that far. But when you look at someone like Nebuchadnezzar, think about this. Because God's plan of salvation is so merciful and all-encompassing and all-inclusive that every individual who has ever lived and never bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and known the full plan and purpose of God will have the chance to know that.

We can know that Nebuchadnezzar will be a part of that what is called the second resurrection in the book of Revelation 20. And He will come up with the dead, small and great, remember. We haven't read that yet in our studies. But there is a period after the 1,000-year reign of Christ when the dead, small and great, will stand and the books will be open to them. Nebuchadnezzar will be a part of that. And Nebuchadnezzar will have an opportunity to learn and to understand. Will he be further ahead than some others in that because of what he has experienced and what we find here in Daniel? I think it's reasonable to conclude, if not infer from that, that that's where he will be. That will have not been lost.

And, again, of all the kings of ancient history, he is the only one who has a chapter that he penned in Holy Scripture preserved through the ages. And so in thinking about this, you've got to keep the long view. We have to keep the age-long view that only God's plan shows us and the holy days do that. This is the beauty of understanding the festivals that God put into the Scriptures, yes, gave to Israel, but gave to Israel for the sake of all mankind. And as we see them unfolded and explained through the Scriptures, both in the history of Israel, in the time of Jesus and the apostles, and in the prophetic Scriptures that show that in the latter days, at the time of the fall festivals, the Feast of Tabernacles, people will go up to Jerusalem, and they will learn the way of God. We see this overarching purpose that God has, and that's the view into which we have to insert all of these events, in fact, all of history, all of history.

When you understand God's purpose as outlined by the annual festivals, the holy days, as we call them within the Church, then you begin to understand history as it has never been revealed. When I was 12 years old and I began attending the Church of God with my mother, and I was a little bit too young to sit on the floor and play with crayons, and Etch A Sketch was the big thing in those days, all right? We didn't have smartphones. We had these things called Etch A Sketch. And I so wanted an Etch A Sketch. And I just wanted to sit and doodle with that thing. Well, my mom wouldn't buy me an Etch A Sketch. She put a Bible in my hand, and she made me sit in the chair. How terrible. How cruel was my mother.

And so I listened. Then after a while, I started...you know, she gave me a notebook, and I started taking notes. And one of the very first things that really began to click in my mind was the holy days, the festivals. And this was largely...this first experience that I remember was at the Feast of Tabernacles, and it just opened my mind. And I accepted it, I believed it, and it made sense. And I could see it in Scripture. And being a student of history, even at that time, with what I knew, it made sense and helped me to plug in the history that I knew.

And through the years as I've continued to study history, it's the holy days, it's the plan of God, it's the knowledge and the purpose that God is working out where prophecy fits in that makes it all come alive and the whole world to light up. That comes as a result of a calling from God. Now, Nebuchadnezzar couldn't fit all of that into his mind at that time, but he could fit in the one idea that there was a God, Daniel's God, and He could do things that no other God that he knew about could do. And he had firsthand experience. And that's what we're seeing here. And so, again, plug that in. Keep that in mind as we look at this particular story. So let's go on to verse 4.

Daniel 4:4-7 He says, "I, King Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in my house and flourishing in my palace. I saw a dream..." So he's got another dream, all right? "...the dream, which made me afraid, and the thoughts on my bed and the visions of my head troubled me." So we're kind of right back to Chapter 2 and the reaction that he had. "Therefore, I issued a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. The magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. But at last, Daniel came before me. His name is Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god. In him is the Spirit of the Holy God. And I told the dream before him, saying, 'Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the Spirit of the Holy God is in you and no secret troubles you, explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen and its interpretation.'"

And so we have now this set up with Nebuchadnezzar. Now, let's pause just for a moment and try to put this in a little bit of a timeline. As historians have pieced together the story flow of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar and what we know from the Babylonian Chronicle, this dream probably took place in the year 583 BC. So we're a few years beyond where we were in the beginning of the book of Daniel, in 605 BC. We've come forward, what, 20 more, 22 years or so. We're beyond that period, about 583 BC, that this dream takes place here. So keep that in mind. He sees this dream, and where else do we want to go here? Probably no later than the 34th year of his reign. So he's been around for quite a while, and he has done quite a bit in terms of building up the city of Babylon, setting on the throne of God. You see through some of these images here, the depiction of what he...you know, a rendition of what he could have looked like. We didn't take this from any known sources there, but he has built up the city of Babylon to this particular point.

And I want to make a comment about verse 8 here, about Daniel, "In him is the spirit of the Holy God." Different translations will put this a little different. Some will put the holy gods, little G. All right? Your New King James will put God here. I think the New English Bible, NET, translates to gods. Some of the commentators are back and forth on this, but there seems to be a consensus that this particular phrase should be translated in the plural, gods, with a little G, as he is looking at it and defining it as this message goes out to the nations. Regardless, we could...you know, because of his testimony about the God of Daniel, we can understand that, even beyond that, that's the true meaning. What he understood, what he's trying to convey is probably the most important thing is that, in Daniel, there is a spirit, a divine spirit, working within him as in no other person. That, I think, is the big takeaway here in Chapter 4 and in Chapter 5, when we read about the queen mother coming in and saying essentially the same thing about Daniel, "in him is the spirit of the gods," that, in Daniel, there is something recognized that is different.

And whether it's just the ingrained paganism that they have that prevents them from fully addressing it because they live within this multi-deity environment, culture, they can acknowledge on one hand while at the same time old habits die hard. You know, even today, people can...religious people, and I've noticed this, people think about, you know, you don't go to heaven when you die, but then at death sometimes people slip into the language that where they may know the truth, they kind of get a little bit foggy. And especially in perhaps the earlier days of conversion, that happens. I guess my point of what I'm making here is that they recognize within Daniel something that is beyond them and beyond the power of their gods, something unique. And so going on in verse 10.

Daniel 4:10 He said, "These were the visions of my head while on my bed." Now, he is going to begin to explain this. So let's go ahead and just begin to read through it here. It's pretty well straightforward. He said, "I was looking, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth." So this is different from the dream of Chapter 2. He sees this large tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. “The tree grew and became strong. Its height reached to the heavens, and it could be seen to the ends of the earth.” All right, so it's a tree so big that it could be seen to the ends of the earth. “And it is in the midst of the earth,” it says here in verse 10, which positions it within the dream and the mind of Nebuchadnezzar and his image of who he is, what his city is, and what his empire is as in the midst of the earth.

And that's an important concept to keep in mind because there are ancient texts and treatises. There have been some known from the ancient world, and even before the time of Nebuchadnezzar, there have been identified writings particularly about the city of Babylon, the city of Babylon as a link between heaven and the underworld, that the city of Babylon is a figurative, religiously, spiritually, or in actual fact, this link between the heavens and the underworld. And it's looked to in that way and positioned kind of in the midst or not just the earth, according to some of these ancient ideas, but in the midst of the entire cosmos or universe, Babylon being in the midst of everything.

And there's a biblical logic behind that because, again, you go back to Genesis and the beginnings of Babel with Nimrod and the building of this tower of Babel that was to stretch where? To the heavens, to the heavens. And God coming down and saying, "Look, if they keep this up, they're going to be like us." And God confuses the languages, the tongues at that time, and they're scattered throughout the earth. That's where at Babel, which becomes Babylon, the same geographic spot, this idea of mankind coming together in a city. The idea of a city in the ancient world is an interesting concept as well to keep in mind and understand something as you position it against the Bible.

With Babylon, we see after the flood the beginning of men gathering together in cities. And you begin to read about Babylon, Nineveh, the great city of the Assyrian Empire, and while not always mentioned, although in some cases, Persepolis of the Persian Empire, later Rome, and then these not only great cities of these empires of the Bible, but also urban development as a whole, this becomes a central feature of human culture. But it begins in Babel.

Now, you contrast that with what we see as God works with His servants. Let's just take Abraham. You've been studying about Abraham recently. Abraham did what in Genesis 12? God tells him, "Leave your home. Go to a place I will show you." Where does He take him? Out into the country of what is today Israel. It's undeveloped. There's no big city there. And Abraham becomes a herder, as you read through the story of Abraham in the book of Genesis. And he moves his flocks around, and he has tents. Yeah, there's a lot of people, but there's not a city. That's my point. Same with Isaac, the same with Jacob, as you progress through just the book of Genesis.

Cities then later develop with human civilization, and God's servants come into contact with Him where Daniel's right in Babylon. But when you study and look at it from a biblical point of view, God does His work with His people outside the urban environment in some of these foundational stories. It doesn't preclude Him working with, like, an Esther or a Daniel within a city or anyone of us today. But as you kind of in a broad sense look at it biblically, these great cities take on the antithetical view toward God as opposed to what God is doing through His people. And, ultimately, as they even become a nation, even in the earliest as you will go through Joshua and Judges, you will see that the tribes are more scattered, small. You don't read about big cities.

You might read about a Bethlehem in the story of Ruth, but Bethlehem at that time is not a big urban city. Later, Jerusalem becomes the capital of King David and Solomon, and it gets built up. But then you also begin to read about some of the problems that are associated with that through the story of Israel. My point is that cities, as humans develop urban landscapes, connected with them are things that are not always conducive to worshiping God. And keep that in mind as we progress a little bit further into this mind of Nebuchadnezzar as he talks about what he builds with Babylon in this area and what it then becomes and what it is looked at. Because as we see here, it is in the midst of the earth and even already the idea that Babylon is this central city, dare I say, occupying Middle-earth. Does that relate to us a little bit better there? That makes the connection between heaven and the underworld. And that can help us at least appreciate what's going through his mind and as he looks at it and then also what is developing here in Babylon. Now, the tree grows strong. Its height reaches to the heavens.

Daniel 4:12 Says, "Its leaves were lovely, its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it. The birds of the heavens dwelt in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it."

So, again, in poetic language here, being described, there's activity, there's economic activity, agricultural activity. A flourishing culture is developing here under this tree, which is a representative of something else.

Daniel 4:13-14 "I saw in the visions of my head while on my bed, and there was a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven. He cried aloud, and he said thus, 'Chop down the tree, cut off its branches, strip off its leaves, and scatter its fruit. Let the beast get out from under it and the birds from its branches.'" All right?

A watcher comes down, a holy one, coming down from heaven. And so here's a divine being, and it is an angel or a divine being that pronounces judgment on this tree by cutting it down, stripping everything away from it. And the term here for this angel is a different term as used in the Scripture. It means watchman. It means watchman. And it comes from a verb meaning to be wakeful. Now, you remember at the beginning of our discussions in Daniel, we talked about the importance of watching, as Christ said, and watching our world, watching our spiritual lives. But watching and being aware, to pray always, and that concept comes out in Christ's statements. Here is an angel that is described as holy from heaven, but a watcher.

Now, this kind of conjures up kind of a large or let's say very powerful, perhaps prominent divine being. Let's just go ahead and use the term of angel to put it within that classification. It is the only biblical occurrence of this particular word as it is translated here. It is found in other extra-biblical writings, particularly in the Qumran writings of the Genesis Apocryphon, which is a technical term for a scroll they found, the Qumran scrolls, in the caves down near the Dead Sea that have been cataloged, where an angel like this is mentioned in those scrolls. But what we would determine from this or infer is that this could be a particular class of angels that has some type of involvement in executing the judgment of God within mankind by either a pronouncement or an actual fact.

Now, when we get into Revelation, we're going to see the work of these powerful angelic beings in the pouring out of plagues upon the earth and pronouncements that are made. That becomes very colorful, very dramatic throughout the book of Revelation. And so it could be an angel of that particular class, let's say prominence, purpose. You know, what we do know about angels in the Bible, that there are angels that seemed...we know angels by names, Gabriel and Michael being two of the good angels, Lucifer having been the name of Satan before his fall. Those three are named. We have no other named angels in the Bible. But we also see distinctions in certain roles that angels might play, and this is one of them. And the result is the cutting down of this tree and the scattering of the birds and the beasts that were dependent upon it, meaning, let's say, other peoples and nations that were plugged into the system that the tree represented. And as we read on, it says…

Daniel 4:15 Says, the angel says, "Nevertheless, leave the stump and the roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze in the tender grass of the field. Let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let him graze with the beasts."

We're moving just a little bit further there. So there's something to be done with the stump in that it is bound with a band of iron and bronze. Stump is allowed to remain, and the roots are allowed to remain in the earth. We might imagine it something a little bit like this, this particular picture of a tree that has been cut down. And we've all probably, you know, either in our own homes or you go out in the country, go through the woods, you'll see where a tree has been cut down, and, you know, we see a common sight like that. And some very often, as in the case of this one, though the tree is gone, there's still life there.

And in this particular picture, you see something growing up out of it, you know, a part of what was the tree. And you will see that as a common occurrence, you know, of nature, the idea of cutting down something. I didn't have something right next to my house that a couple of years ago, it was a rose of Sharon bush. And it just got so big and so nasty, and I got tired of cleaning it up, so I cut it off a couple of years ago, cut it down. But I didn't dig out the roots. It was just too much work. Well, the other day I looked at it, and they're coming back up. And the last thing I wanted is a rose of Sharon bush right there. It's a nice bush in its own way. We used to have a bunch of them out here. I think they're gone too. They put out a nice flower, but then that flower falls all over the patio, and just you got to clean it up.

But I had to cut...the life that is still there, that rose of Sharon that I cut down two years ago still has life in the roots. And that's an important feature here of what is being described with this tree that is cut down. It's clamped. There's a case put around it of iron and bronze to keep a shoot coming out. But that doesn't mean that the life is extinguished in the extensive root system that is there. And we'll come back to that, not in this class, but probably next week, and we'll talk about what that could mean, a possibility of what we're being told here as we go through this story here as it is told and as it is explained.

So let me go back here to this. All right. Now, it says, the latter part of verse 15.

Daniel 4:15-16 "Let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let him graze with the beasts on the grass of the earth." And this, we're going to see, is actually referring to Nebuchadnezzar. "Let his heart be changed from that of a man. Let it be given the heart of a beast, and let seven times pass over him."

So this passage here in verse 16 and 17, latter part of verse 15 and 16, is describing something that we'll interpret, but also possibly a little bit further implications into our modern world. But it is describing what is going to happen to Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel 4:17 Says, "This decision is by the decree of the watchers and the sentence by the word of the holy ones, in order that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomever He will, and sets over it the lowest of men."

Again, echoes out of Chapter 2 with Daniel, what he said about God, that God rules, He gives it to whoever He will. In other words, kingdoms rise according to God's will and purpose. Kingdoms and nations decline according to God's purpose and will. And He sets over it the lowest of men. Well, man's pretty low to begin with in terms of the hierarchy, I mean, in terms of the creation. We're not spirit. We're not divine. We're flesh and blood. We're below the angels, and, certainly, you know, we're below the family of God. You know, we'll learn through the Bible, our studies here that man's purpose is to become a son of God and the family of God with eternal immortality. But as human beings, we're the lowest. Now, we could say at times even the lowest of the lowest become leaders, kings, presidents, prime ministers. So He sets over it the lowest of men.

Daniel 4:18-19 "This dream I, King Nebuchadnezzar, have seen. Now, you, Belteshazzar, declare its interpretation, since all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known to me the interpretation, but you are able, for the spirit of the Holy God is in you." And so Daniel is set up to explain this dream. So let's just continue forward with that. "Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonished for a time, and his thoughts troubled him. So the king spoke, and he said, 'Belteshazzar, do not let the dream or its interpretation trouble you.' Belteshazzar answered and said, 'My Lord, may the dream concern those who hate you and its interpretation concern your enemies.'"

All right. And so the king wanted Daniel to be assured that he could tell him whatever came to him. We're not told here that Daniel went off and prayed overnight and that God gave him the answers. We are in Chapter 2. We would just infer here that Daniel was able, likely within the time frame that he was there with the king, to give the interpretation and to begin to talk to him. And he starts by saying, "May the dream concern those who hate you." Well, what we could understand from that is it's going...with this tree being chopped down, which we're going to find out it represents the king and Babylon, enemies will come and do that. Enemies will come and do that. And we'll read in Chapter 5 that that enemy is the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great. So let's go on to verse 20.

Daniel 4:20-22 "The tree that you saw, which grew and became strong, whose height reached to the heavens and which could not be seen by all the earth, whose leaves were lovely and its fruit abundant, in which was food for all, under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and in whose branches the birds of the heaven had their home, it is you, oh, king, who have grown and become strong, for your greatness has grown and reaches to the heavens and your dominion to the end of the earth."

And so he identifies Nebuchadnezzar with the tree. And, again, the king personifies the entire empire. So it's Babylon here that we are discussing. Going on in verse 23.

Daniel 4:23-25 "And inasmuch as the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven, saying, 'Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave its stump and roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze in the tender grass of the field. Let it be wet with the dew of heaven. Let him graze with the beasts of the field till seven times pass over him, this is the interpretation, oh, king, and this is the decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king. They shall drive you from men. Your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make you eat grass like oxen. They shall wet you with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over you till you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever He chooses.”

So in this interpretation, we're seeing an example of how the Bible interprets its own symbols. And Daniel is doing that here with the king.

Daniel 4:26-27 "And inasmuch as they gave the command to leave the stump and the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be assured to you after you come to know that Heaven rules. Therefore, oh, king, let my advice be acceptable to you. Break off your sins by being righteous and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity."

Daniel gives him the interpretation of the dream, gives him more information by saying to him that, "You're going to be driven from men. You will live with the animals, and you will eat grass like a cow." And, wow, how do you think Nebuchadnezzar is thinking about that by hearing that said to him? And he's told that, "The kingdom will be assured to you after you come to know that Heaven rules." Now, we would not interpret that as a guarantee of perpetuity of the kingdom, but by what we know from the story in Daniel and from history, the kingdom endured through Nebuchadnezzar's reign and even for a few number of years beyond that into that of his later family. In Chapter 5, we'll find out how that comes to an end. But, ultimately, Babylon will fall, but it endures through his lifetime.

Daniel encourages the king to listen to him, "May my advice be acceptable to you. Repent," which is what break off your sins mean, repent. Here's a little bit of what we will read in the New Testament. Jesus Christ came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, saying, "Repent, the kingdom is at hand. Believe the gospel," in Mark 1. And we find that throughout the preaching of not only the prophets in the Old Testament to repent but in the preaching of the Church. Break off your sins. Stop sinning. Change. Turn and live. Obey God. Be righteous. Start living by God's way. And stop your iniquities or sins by showing mercy to the poor. No doubt, a direct, if you will, finger in the chest to Nebuchadnezzar, stop your iniquity.

Show mercy to the poor. What would that mean? Well, in the ancient world, you have to realize that there was no real middle class. You were either upper class, wealthy, at the top, favored by the king, part of the elite, that could have been a religious caste of priests and others, but it was a very small group. And then there was the rest. No middle class like you and I are part of and familiar with. No suburbia, poor. When we read in Exodus about the children of Israel in Egypt and their slavery, that was the lot of not only slaves but even those that may have been Egyptians, they weren't wealthy. They had what we call a hand-to-mouth subsistence life. If the crop failed, they were in trouble.

There wasn't a social net of social security or welfare under people in the ancient world to get them through a tough time. If the poor fell into even worse poverty, they died unless someone came along and showed mercy to them. That's why you see so much emphasis in the law that God gave to Israel through Moses to take care of people. Leave the corners of your field when you're harvesting. Let the poor come in what they call gleaning. Let them harvest the corners, and that's theirs. And God had a very definite form of social welfare that was meant to work, not to grind in poverty and let it extend generationally, but to help people get by and get another opportunity to go better at it. That's the whole system that God incorporates through the Jubilee.

But largely in a culture like Babylon or Egypt or Syria, there's the elite and everybody else. And Daniel is saying to Nebuchadnezzar, "Show mercy. Create a better culture here in Babylon to take care of the people in the streets, in the hovels, those who are building this." And you look at this particular picture here, that I have on the screen, of one of the central gates going into the city of Babylon, what is called the Ishtar Gate, or a picture like this that is another computer-generated idea of what Babylon looked like, it was a large city, a lot of buildings. You see temples, ziggurats, bridges, huge walls, tremendous culture that was a part of Babylon.

How was that built? It was built by people who were slaves or working at very, very menial wages. That was the only way a city like that in the ancient world could have been built, a pyramid in Egypt or a city like Babylon. Did Nebuchadnezzar listen? No, he didn't. When we see that, and you see... I think just we'll end on this particular note here for this class. Through Daniel, God's giving Nebuchadnezzar a chance to lengthen your prosperity. Babylon prospered and it extended beyond the life of Nebuchadnezzar, but it didn't last long. In fact, Babylon falls in the year 539, all right?

So if Nebuchadnezzar has the dream in 583, you know, less than 50 years later, the empire would collapse to the Persians. The city will go on, but it will no longer be Nebuchadnezzar's or his, you know, it's considered his prosperity. That empire, that dynasty comes to an end. He didn't learn the lesson. So when we pick this up in the next session, we'll finish out this chapter, we'll talk about what he had to go through, and then talk also about what the city of Babylon was like and some of the lessons that we can draw from that.