Beasts of Daniel 2 and 7, Part 1

I got back from vacation and I sat down and it's that time of year, halfway through the year that I sat down and began to work out what I want to give as sermons in Bible studies over the next year. I went through the list.

Many people have given me ideas at the last quarterly planning meeting. I think I received six or eight ideas from people there. A number of people have emailed me ideas for sermons. I had this list of sermons of ideas of things that people said they would like to hear.

I started to plug in what I've already started. I still have five, maybe six sermons to give on holiness. I have a couple sermons I sent on Pentecost that would be giving two sermons on the spirit of the age. We've talked about secular humanism and some of the things, the New Age movement that are affecting people. Unfortunately, even affecting God's people at times in a wrong way. I started to plug in those sermons and plug in other ideas that people had. Plus, we haven't finished the minor prophets of the Bible studies yet.

We still have two Bible studies to do with that. So I started to plug all those things in. But there was something that came up a number of times in the request for people. That is, I've given two sermons over the last year and a half that were prophetic sermons.

One was on Babylon and one was on the Tribulation. In which case, I went through some information about the statue of Daniel 2, the vision of Daniel 7, the division of Daniel 8. I mentioned briefly the prophecies of Daniel 11. I went through all of Revelation 13 and Revelation 17. There were a number of people who just said it was information overload. We got all this information, but how do you sort that out? Which beast goes where and who is this? I thought maybe what I'd do also, between now and the end of the year, is give some sermons of Bible studies breaking down into very simple concepts.

The beasts and visions of Daniel 2 and 7 and 8 and how they apply to the book of Revelation. In doing so, we'll be covering a lot of information that most of you know in one form or another. Hopefully, they'll be able to fill in the details. It takes a real time to go through each vision instead of just mixing them together, getting through them quickly, reading them and saying, okay, this applies here or this is connected here.

Let's look at each one in great detail. In fact, that's what we'll do for services here today and that's what we're going to do for the Bible studies also. We'll be going through Daniel 2 for the sermon and Daniel 7 for the Bible study. Between now and the end of the year, we'll get through the rest of Daniel 8 and we'll go through the beasts of Revelation. We'll still take probably four or five sermons of Bible studies, but we'll add those into the mix and what we're going to be doing over the next six months. Of course, Daniel 2 is probably the most analyzed and talked about prophecies of the Old Testament.

What is amazing is how many different interpretations there are of Daniel 2 when Daniel 2 is actually a very obvious Scripture. Remember, we use our obvious Scriptures as our templates, especially prophetically. They're the templates we build off of. Daniel 2 is one of the most important templates in all the Old Testament because it gives us a view of history, a prophetic view of what was going to happen historically from that point that goes down through history and ends with the return of Jesus Christ.

What's real important about this is that three quarters of what is given in this prophecy has already taken place, which gives us the ability to see how it's playing out. That's why this is such an important template.

Once again, this isn't new information. We're starting with the simple. Well, yes, we're starting with the simple because we're starting with the template. We're starting with the foundation that you build a lot of other prophecies on. In fact, it's Daniel 2 that gives us the basis for understanding Revelation 13 and Revelation 17. If we didn't have Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, I would have no idea how to interpret Revelation 13 and 17.

We just have to make up things. So remember, what we do is we try to find a continuity between the Old and New Testament. Of course, we have to ask ourselves, who was Daniel? Who was he? He comes along in history. Daniel was from the upper class of Israelite society, possibly a royal family. You say, well, why do we know that? Why would you say that? Because it doesn't say that directly in the Scripture.

It has to do with why he ends up in Babylon. The Babylonians invaded Judah at 605. There had been a group of prophets telling them to repent. When we went through the minor prophets, we went through some of the prophets that were telling them to repent. The Babylonians invaded, but they did not conquer the country or did not destroy the country. What they did was they took the royal children back to Babylon.

There was a reason for that. The whole idea of the Babylonian society was, we take your brightest and your youngest. We take your best, and we take them away from you, and we take them and we retrain them and send them back. They then convert you to be Babylonians. When we are able to put together the timeline of Daniel's life, we find out that he was very early in the Babylonian system because he goes with Nebuchadnezzar.

It was Nebuchadnezzar who led that first invasion. He took all the brightest and the best of the Israelite children back to Babylon with him. Probably he was a young teenager. The speculation is he could have been anywhere from 13 to 16, somewhere near 14 or 15, but he was a young teenager when this happened. Nebuchadnezzar also sacked much of the temple. He did take everything, but he took a lot of the wealth of the temple back.

Daniel would spend the rest of his life, basically, in Babylon. Even after some of the Jews were coming home, Daniel stayed there and also with the Persians under the Persian rule. We have this Daniel 2. We have a statue. What it is is a dream that Nebuchadnezzar has. Let's look at Daniel 2, verse 1.

For many of you, you know this almost by heart. We know what this statue is. Let's look at how it gets set up here. What happens to set this whole thing up? The second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, so we know this is very early on. We know this is right around 605, 604 BC. This is very early. We know what Nebuchadnezzar reigns. Once again, now we know what Daniel is there. Also realize Daniel is a kid. If you think of what Daniel is, what, 35 years old here. We see Daniel as this old man that walks in.

Daniel is a teenager at this point. He's a very young person. He's taken there to be brainwashed by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. Then a king gave commandments to all the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. So they came and stood before the king. If you know anything about Babylonian history, remember we did go through almost two years ago a sermon on Babylon in history and prophecy.

What was Babylon like at this time? It was an amazing place. It was the richest, most exciting place on the earth. It was an amazing place, but they were also an incredibly superstitious people. The king said to them, I've had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to know the dream. Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, O king live forever, tell your service the dream, and we will give you the interpretation.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, My decision is firm. If you do not make known the dream to me and its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces, and your house shall be made in a heap. So Nebuchadnezzar said, No, no, no, no, I figured you guys out. I will tell you my dream, and you will all make up something. So if you're really supernatural, and really the gods speak through you, tell me what the dream was. They can give you an interpretation. Well, they couldn't do that. If you read through here, Chapter 2, he begins to actually kill them.

So it comes to Daniel, and Daniel says, Well, let me ask God. So now Daniel is brought before the king. So let's go to verse 26. Verse 26 here. So we see that one night Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that was troubled. The king threatened to kill his advisors, and Daniel asked the king for some time. So we see these things have happened. Verse 26 says, The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Are you able to make known to me?

In other words, that's his Babylonian name. Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen in its interpretation? Daniel answered, As the presence of the king, it said, The secret which the king has demanded, the wise man, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to you. Of course they can't tell this to you, because they don't have the real power of God.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets and has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed were these. As for you, O king, thoughts came into 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 it will be.

But as for me, the secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than any living. But for our sakes who make known the interpretations of the king, that you may know the thoughts of your heart. So you, O king, were watching behold a great image. This great image whose splendor was excellent stood before you, and its form was awesome. This image had was a fine gold at the chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet laid partly of iron and partly of clay.

And while you watched, the stone was cut out without hands and struck the image of its feet of ironed clay and broke them in pieces. He goes on, he says, that the iron of the clay, the bronze of the silver, and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. And we carried them away so that no trace was found.

And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. And Nebuchadnezzar sits there dumbfounded. Dumbfounded, because that's exactly the dream he had. Now you've got to understand, could you imagine having a dream? Though you and I have dreams, most dreams don't make a lot of sense, right? And there's reasons for that, the way the brain works, the way it creates dreams.

But you know, if you've ever had a terrifying dream, somebody just frightened you, and you can't sleep. And the next, you know, a couple days later, some guy shows up and says, oh yeah, here's your dream, and describes it in infinite detail. Well, at that point, you're going to listen to this person. And so he tells him that you had a dream, and his dream was simply a statue. And this statue had a head of gold, chest of silver, belly and thighs were bronze, the legs remained of iron, with feet that were mixed iron and clay.

And so here we have the prophetic vision that he tells him. Now, we know that in verse 36, he begins to give you an interpretation. So let's look at verse 36 and look at the interpretation. This is a dream.

We now tell you the interpretations of it before the King. You, O King, are a king of kings, for the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength and glory. And wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of heaven, He has given them to your hand, and has made you ruler over all of them. You are the head of gold. But after you shall rise another kingdom, a superior to yours, then another, a third kingdom of bronze shall rule the earth, and the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron.

Now we have an interpretation given specifically to him. Now, he doesn't give him the names of kingdoms 2, 3 and 4, but we do know specifically who kingdom 1 was. Right? The first kingdom is Nebuchadnezzar's. The first kingdom is Babylon. Now, what we have to do at this point is look back historically and say, what happened to Babylon? Can we know what the next three kingdoms were, and how that applies to what we see at the end here where the stone hits this image at the feet and crushes it, and then the stone fills the whole earth.

So we have to say what happened, and that is answered historically. This large rock strikes the feet, and of course it collapses. So he interprets it, and he tries to get it to the end. The result is, of course, that Daniel becomes a very important person in Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom. I mean, a guy who tells you your dreams, you don't want him as an enemy. So he makes him an important person in the government, and he would spend the rest of his life, Daniel would, as an important person in the Babylonian government and eventually in the Persian government.

So the statue, the head represents Nebuchadnezzar, and it must represent Babylon. So let's look at Babylon just briefly. We're going to just briefly look at this, not in the detail we did, of course, two years ago when we just looked at the whole history of Babylon.

The Babylon was a major empire, a major empire from 626 to 539 B.C. Now, when we look at the area that Babylon rolled over, if you see this, of course, this is Greece, this is Italy, this is North Africa, this is Egypt. Basically the area that they controlled was here, which is modern-day Iraq and Iran, and of course Israel, this part which is in Al-Sadi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. This was the Babylonian Empire.

It was by far the smallest of the empires that we're going to look at. What is important is that it was the beginning of Western empires. Now, Egypt had had an empire, but Egypt never really controlled its empire. Egypt had existed before Babylon, but it never really controlled it. It conquered people, it took taxes from people, and it never really reigned over its empire. It was just, you pay us taxes and we'll come back and conquer you, which is basically what the Assyrians did. The Babylonians were the first attempt to say, okay, we have an empire, and we basically rule over everybody.

We have a connection with all the peoples that we have conquered. So we have the very first attempt to actually have a ruling empire. Now, as we're going to go through these four empires, understand how each one leads to the next one is important in understanding the fourth one. So we have about 600 years before Jesus, we have the Babylonian Empire.

It was incredibly wealthy. It controlled the entire Middle East and was eventually defeated in 539 BC. You're sort of a timeline to Babylon, but we won't go through that. Now, they were destroyed and conquered by Persia. Persia was to the east of Babylon, and Persia was a large country of itself. It was never conquered by Babylon. But there was another group of people there known as the Beans or Chaldeans. Those two groups of people merged together to produce a singular power.

And in doing so, they were greater than Babylon. It's interesting when we look at the Persian Empire, how large it is. I want you to remember how large this is. Because this afternoon, when we go through Daniel 7, the size of this is important in understanding Daniel 7. As you can see, this dwarfs the Babylonian Empire. They take all of what is modern-day Turkey. They take Libya, way out here in this part of Africa. Then they have their empire, which stretched way over into what is modern-day India.

So you realize just the size of the Persian Empire. They conquered peoples, the Babylonians, that even though we're there. You have to remember, when we talk about these empires, and they conquered the world, that didn't mean they conquered the whole world. It means that they conquered the world that they knew. Nobody even knew China existed at this point. And yet we know there were very large civilizations in China and Japan and other places at this time. But the Bible is always written around, of course, the concepts of around what happens around Jerusalem.

And so this is what's recorded in the Bible. So when they talk about the whole world, it doesn't mean the whole world. It means the known world of their time, of their day, in relationship to who they were. So the means of the Persians are a very fascinating empire. And someday I'd like to go through a whole history of the means of the Persians, maybe a Bible study of that, because their empire united the most diverse group of people imaginable.

And it kept them together because everybody made money. Everybody made money under the means of the Persians because there was this free enterprise. There was this free trade all over the place. And as long as you did what the means of the Persians said, then there was peace. And as long as there was peace, caravans could go back and forth. As long as caravans went back and forth, people made money. Now what's interesting is how Darius took Babylon. We did talk about that when we gave the Babylonian history of prophecy back, I guess in almost two years ago. But it is interesting because he drained the Euphrates River because he was laying seeds of Babylon, the city of Babylon, and he couldn't take it.

And they had enough provisions to last for years. And they were having a big party. And he drained the river, went underneath the gates on the muddy riverbed, and took it in one night. Because the soldiers were drunk, they were having a big party. And of course you read about that in Daniel chapter 5. We won't go there, but you know the story of Daniel chapter 5. They're having a big party, they're drinking, and suddenly the king sees a hand right into the wall. Your days are numbered, basically, is what it says.

And it says, that night, in Daniel 5, it says, that night Babylon fell. But we know what happened that night from the Greek historian Herodotus. They drained out the Euphrates up river so they couldn't tell what they were doing. They then came right underneath, and they fell in one night. Daniel found himself, suddenly from being part of one government, he was now an advisor in a different government.

So if we look at Daniel chapter 2, if one empire is followed by the other, historically you can't get any more exact than this. You can't get any more exact than this empire being conquered by another empire. So we come to the conclusion, of course, that the chest of silver are the Persians. Now, they would actually gain control of three empires. Now, I want you to remember this for those of you who stay over for the Bible study, because this is important in understanding Daniel 7.

They took over the Babylonian Empire, the Egyptian Empire, and the Libyan Empire. Now, to tie this in just briefly to some of the things we've been going through in the Minor Prophets. In the Minor Prophets, we've been going through how Ezra, Nehemiah, Joshua, and Zerubbabel returned for the Babylonian captivity 70 years after Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Jerusalem. They came back, and they began to rebuild Jerusalem, and then rebuild the temple. That happened because of Cyrus, King Cyrus of Persia. Now, we talked about that, too, in those Bible studies.

We talked about the decree that he issued. See that little round thing down here? They found numbers of those. Written on here, it's like a rock, but it's sort of like a scroll. You just turn it over and you read it as you roll it.

Written on here in ancient Persian is a decree by Cyrus that sent people back to their homelands, because the Babylonians, when they went through, if you didn't do what they wanted, they just came in, killed off your army, enslaved everybody, and moved them to another part of the empire. By rooting people up, they figured they wouldn't have to mess with them again.

The Persians were the exact opposite. If we put people back in their homelands, where they developed their own culture and their own religions, they'll be so happy. They'll follow us no matter what. It actually worked pretty good until they came up against the Greeks. The Greeks weren't going to be conquered by the Persians under any circumstance.

What we have here is that that's a picture of one of the actual decrees that we actually have that have survived through history from Cyrus. Now, the Persians, of course, then paid. They talk about God's hand. When we go through the Minor Prophets, we showed it was God's hand. It was because of God that they were able to go back with Ezra, Nehemiah. Nehemiah ended up being the cup-bearer of the king.

He tells the king he wants to go back and rebuild his homeland, and the king sends him back and sends him the money to do it. Also, what Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple was sent back, and he was able to rebuild the temple, Serababel's temple. Serababel's temple was not much of a temple compared to Solomon's, but it was the beginning, the re-establishment of the people of God, back into the land.

What's really interesting is when you get into King Artaxerxes, and you get into Esther. We won't have time to go through Esther. But the whole thing that happened with Nehemiah, Ezra, Joshua, Zerababel, and then Esther, all those things took place during this time period where the Jews were under Persian rule. Not Babylonian rule, but Persian rule. So the chest and arms made of silver represents the kingdom of the Beed and the Persians. Silver of lesser value. Actually, they were a much larger empire than the Babylonians, but they never had the majesty that the Babylonians had. Of course, eventually Persia would face its own demise. This is actually predicted in Daniel 8.

We're not going to have time to go through Daniel 8 today, but Daniel 8 predicts what was going to happen to Persia, and Persia is mentioned by name. But there's another country that's mentioned by name. I'm going to go through this timeline, and that is Greece. Of course, everybody's heard of the Spartans who fought the Persians. Three hundred Spartans fought a billion Persians. Well, that's not exactly true.

There were other Greeks with them at the time, but there were at least. The numbers go from anywhere from 100,000 to half a billion Persians, and about 300 Spartans and maybe 700 other Greeks fought them and were defeated. But of course, then at the Battle of Marathon, they came back and the Greeks won, and they defeated the Persians. It was the fall of the Persian Empire.

Greece suddenly out of nowhere. I say suddenly out of nowhere because that explains some of what we're going to talk about when we get to Daniel 7. The Greek Empire, as you will see, not only took over what the Persians had, but it went farther this way into modern-day India. Alexander the Great, once Persia was destroyed, he decided to keep pushing east.

Alexander the Great was in his early 30s, and he kept pushing and pushing and pushing until his men finally revolted. He had a very small Greek army, 30 to 50,000 men. They had to realize 30 to 50,000 people, most cities, the biggest cities of the day, didn't have 30 to 50,000 people. And he kept marching them farther and farther east, and the farther they went, guess what they found? More and more people. They kept thinking they were going to get to the end of the world. They had no idea India existed.

They had no idea, as they kept going east, that there were thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of more people. And no matter how many armies they defeated, there were more people. And there were animals like elephants and tigers. They finally, the Greeks, said, we're not going any farther, and they decided to return. But what you have is the total destruction of the Persian Empire. You know, there are a lot of ruins of the Persian Empire in Turkey, and Iraq and Iran especially. Most people just never get to go see them, because they're in Iraq and Iran. But it is amazing how many ruins, you know, we look at the Roman ruins, the Greek ruins. There are entire cities, ruins, and with statues and buildings of the Persian Empire. It's just nobody from the west ever gets to go see them. But they are there.

So, Alexander the Great conquered the Kingdom of Persia and went as far as the Indus River in India. Now, this is very, very important. Alexander the Great spread Greek culture.

When we get to the first century, and we get to the fourth Kingdom, the fourth Kingdom is an amalgamation of the first three. And the one thing that the fourth Kingdom had was Greek culture, Greek language. Greek culture and Greek language was spread all over that map that I showed you up there. It had a profound effect on the early church. It had a profound effect on Judaism. So, when we talk about Hellenization, that's Greek culture. Hellenizing. They were the Hellenes or the Greeks. So, after his death, Alexander the Great's death, his empire is divided into four parts. And it ends up with these four parts. Egypt, Syria, Macedonia, and Pergamum. The important ones to understand in this list are the Ptolemies who conquered Egypt and the Seleucids who took Syria, because they will also show up in Daniel later. The Ptolemies ruled Egypt for a long, long time. You've all heard of Cleopatra, right? Cleopatra was there when Julius Caesar showed up, which is a long time after this. He's talking about 44 BC. This is 23 BC.

Cleopatra was not Egyptian. She was Greek. The Greeks had been ruling Egypt from this time to the time when the Romans came into it. But what's also important to understand is that for 150 years, the Jews, now the Jews had come back out of Persia, right?

And they had come back into Judea. They had rebuilt Jerusalem. They rebuilt the temple. The book of Malachi, God is chastising them, but we have the book of Malachi, and we don't have anything more written in the Bible until the first century AD. We have 400 years where we don't know what happened biblically. We do know what happened historically, and that is the Greek Ptolemies in the south and the Greek Seleucids in the north fought each other for 150 years. And guess where their battleground was? What is between Syria and Egypt? Think about it.

The land of Israel. And so they fought over Israel back and forth and back and forth for 150 years.

In fact, it's interesting. There are all kinds of... they find them all the time when they do excavations in Israel. They find all kinds of Greek coins. Some are Ptolemy, some are Seleucid. This was Antiochus IV, which is Antiochus Epiphanes, and he calls himself God Manifest.

You can see a coin here. It's just a picture of a coin. If you can read the Greek here, he calls himself God, the Manifest God. He's a very important man in history because in 167 BC, we know this from 1 and 2nd Maccabees, in 167 BC, he marched into Jerusalem and set up a statue of Jesus in the temple. He also forbid Sabbath keeping, circumcision, and you had to eat pork. You had to eat it. Anyone caught with the Torah was killed.

He tried to destroy Judaism. What happened was that the Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus, revolted in 164 BC and threw out the Greeks. He threw out the Greeks. Now, the Jews celebrate that today, every year, in Hanukkah. The Hanukkah isn't in the Bible because Hanukkah was not something that happened when the Bible was written. It was happened before. It was an event that happened before 400 BC, 180 BC. It happened when the Jews overthrew the Greeks. For a short period of time there, they were free. For a few generations, they were free again. The Maccabean set up a system of government, and Judah had freedom again.

So we're back to the statue. The rebellion of Thais, the native bronze, represent the kingdom of Greece. It ruled over the whole known world, of course, of lesser value. Although their culture would have a greater effect on history than either the Persians or the Babylonian cultures. The Persian culture, in many ways, was Asian. It was more like Indian culture.

It's one of the reasons why the Greeks despised it, because they saw it as inferior culture. So one of the things the Greeks said is, wherever we go, we have to get rid of the Persian culture, we have to create Greek culture. And that's what they tried to do. Eventually, Greece, of course, would be conquered by another kingdom. What we see prophesied in Daniel chapter 2, happens step by step by step exactly like it said it would. Now, there's part of Daniel chapter 2 that hasn't happened. So let's look at then what happens next. We have a Greek culture spread all over what had been the first two empires and expanded.

So, by the way, what we do have is, in Daniel, Babylon, Persia, and Greece are all mentioned by name. The fourth one is not mentioned by name. With Babylon mentioned in Daniel 2, we have Persia and Greece mentioned in Daniel 8, but we don't have the fourth one. But we don't know, historically, that Greek was conquered by another empire. Let's go through this timeline quickly, and that was, of course, Rome. And so, we have concluded that if all this is consistent, we have four empires that are Rome. We now can say that we have Rome, conquered Greece, and we have Rome exist at the time of the first century when Jesus comes. This is why, by the way, Josephus told people, and remember, Josephus was a first century Jewish writer, that Rome was the fourth beast or the fourth part of this statue. That's why there was so much of an expectation of the Messiah. Because you read Matthew, and people were expecting the Messiah to come. Well, Matthew, Mark, Luke, they all talk about how they were expecting the Messiah to come. When Jesus went into Jerusalem right before his crucifixion, thousands of people came out, right? And welcomed him in. Why did they do that?

They believed they were living, and rightly so, at the time of the fourth beast. What happens at the time of the fourth beast? The rock comes and destroys it. They thought that was going to be fulfilled. They thought Jesus was going to do it. So, if they understand, they saw and understood a lot of this prophecy. They didn't understand that other things had to be fulfilled first.

Now, Rome, on the other hand, becomes a huge, bigger than the other empires, but I want you to notice something. It expands this way. It takes all of North Africa and expands up into what is France and Germany up here. It's actually way up into here, France and Germany. Greece, all Turkey, all of Babylon, but notice something. Rome never took the core of the Persian Empire. It just kept costing too much to try to take it.

So, they never took the core of this empire. Which is very interesting. Rome developed what we call Western civilization on a Greek model, not a Persian model, because Greece had already spread all through this area. The main language all through the area was Greek.

The main language of merchandise that you can buy and get selling was Greek.

The main language of schooling and intelligentsia was Greek. And so, what you have here, in fact, this is one of the great proofs of how dominant it was. In the 3rd century BC, the Jews, not the Greeks, the Jews translate the Bible, what we call the Old Testament, into Greek, the Septuagint. The only time that they actually set down and translated, officially translated up until that time, the Bible would be anything but Hebrew. Why would they do that? Because that was the language that connected everybody in this empire. So, it's important to understand, by them not taking Persia, Persia Prime, Persia Proper, by not taking Persia, what we have is a Western civilization form that pulls away from any kind of Eastern roots. And so, you have a religion that's different than India.

Music, art that's different than India in that area of the world.

So, here we have this fourth beast. Now, I'm going to jump ahead. Now, in 37 BC, Herod the Great comes along. You've read him. He's in the Bible. And he refurbishes the temple so that when Jesus comes along, and Peter, and James, and John, and Mary, and they walk to the temple, that's not Zerubbabel's temple. It's Zerubbabel's temple that has been totally refurbished. And it's larger than Zerubbabel's temple. It's nicer. It's richer. He really spent a lot of money and time rebuilding the temple. So, Jesus aboard around 4 BC, around 6 AD, Herod dies. And so, Judea comes under a Roman governor. We have Jesus Christ crucified Judea, of course by Pontius Pilate, around 31 AD. At 70 AD, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the temple. And over time, the Roman Empire begins to weaken.

And officially, the Roman Empire falls in 476. So, let's go back to the statue.

The legs were made of iron, and the feet were a mixture of both iron and clay. They remember it's described as this horrible mixture of iron and clay. Iron is incredibly strong. Clay, of course, is weak. What you have in the Roman Empire is they could never do what they really wanted to do. Now, this is real important to understand when we get to the Feast of Revelation, which will be a couple of months, but we'll get to them. Because Rome lasted longer by far than any of the empires. But it had a fatal flaw.

Now, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't make everybody Roman.

They always had to fight incursions from the outside and rebellions from the inside.

They never had peace. They never could create peace. The Persian Empire spent decades in peace where there were no attempts to overthrow the Persian Empire internally, except by the Greeks.

They never conquered Greece, but there were Greek colonies they conquered, and the Greek colonies kept trying to overthrow them. I know history can be a little bit boring, but I really want to get to the point where there were so many questions about beasts.

I figure four or five Bible studies and sermons on beasts will get you through all the beasts that you ever want to know. But if you're really going to understand it, you have to understand it in detail. You have to understand it in detail. And it makes sense then. Revelation makes sense.

It all helps us really begin to make sense of today's world. We look at today's world, and it is so confusing. But we begin to make sense of it when we understand there's a historical context that leads to this. In this context, it goes clear back to Nebuchadnezzar. It goes clear back to Nebuchadnezzar. So we have this mixture. Role ruled by sheer force. That's how they kept it going. You know, if you wanted to live under the Roman system, things were good. They had free enterprise, free trade. You could cross borders any place you wanted, and you could trade. If you wanted to live under the Roman system, you could do very well. And they let you be at peace. But if you didn't like the Roman system, you were in real trouble real quickly because the Romans would use a hammer. They would use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Okay? The Roman viewpoint was a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. So there was always this strength, but always this weakness. The weakness was, we can't make everybody love us. They really wanted everybody to become Roman, and they couldn't get it to happen. The legs of ours suggest that this kingdom would be strong, and the iron would break, smash, and crush things. Of course, exactly what happened.

But it would always be a divided kingdom. Always be a divided kingdom.

What's important to understand, of course, is that when we said that the Roman Empire fell in 476, it actually didn't. The Western Empire fell in 476, but it had split into two empires. It's very interesting that in this part of the statue, there are two legs. The Roman Empire split into east and west. The Eastern Empire, ruled out of Constantinople, did not fall until the 1400s. The 1400s. The Ottoman Turks finally destroyed the Eastern Empire. The Western Empire, on the other hand, fell in 476, but every couple hundred years, someone tried to recreate the Roman Empire.

There were multiple attempts over and over to recreate it. Nobody could do it. You mind nobody could do it? Because people started to see themselves as French, and German, and Italian, and Scandinavian, and they didn't want to all be Roman. So there were multiple attempts to do it. See, if Charlemagne tried to do it, you have Charles the Hammer tried to do it, you have the Holy Roman Empire, which is amazing because it was neither Holy nor Roman. It was a group of dozens and dozens of German states that all decided to sort of get along. They fought each other all the time, too, but sort of get along and call themselves the Holy Roman Empire.

Napoleon tried to do it. When you get down to what Hitler and Mussolini were trying to do, they were trying to recreate the Roman Empire.

There's been this constant attempt inside Europe to recreate this idea of Pax Romana, this idea that you could bring Roman peace to the world through this idea of intellectual enlightenment. Rome was all about this intellectual enlightenment. So, the Roman Empire really didn't go away, but it was in two parts. Today, those two parts basically exist. They still exist. You have Eastern Europe with Poland and Ukraine, Romania, Hungary. Those were all parts of the Roman Empire at one time, or at least fought with them, or tried to be taken over by them. And you have Western Europe.

Western Europe keeps trying to unite. The EU will survive. It's the attempt to unite and recreate what basically is the Roman Empire.

So, what we have is, though, this is very important, that these two branches of the empire exist at the time of the coming of the Kingdom of God. And that's what's real important in this prophecy. Because it's not just a matter of looking back and saying, okay, it prophesies four kingdoms, and four kingdoms have happened historically. But we know that the two legs keep going on. Now, they're a mess. They don't really quite gel together. I mean, at the end, the feet are just clay and iron mixed together. At the beginning, it's solid iron. But at the bottom, it's just clay and iron mixed together. It can't really come together. And it's still sort of in two parts. But this gives us a reference point to prophetic prophecy in relationship to Jerusalem. Remember, all this prophecy is always a relationship to Jerusalem.

You know, this has nothing to do with the English Empire. This has nothing to do with other empires that have come and gone throughout history. The Hittites. This only has to do with this relationship to Jerusalem and the relationship to the end time. So we have the everlasting Kingdom. We read about that. This stone that's not that's cut out without human hands.

And the stone then comes, and it hits the statue.

We read about that earlier. It hits the statue, destroying the statue, bringing it down.

And there's ten toes. Now, that's real important to remember, too. So what you remember over the next five... I'll bring up these things as we go on these sermons. Like I said, we will have to get back to the holiness sermons for the next couple of weeks. But we'll get back to this. And as we do, things to remember that at the end, the split Kingdom doesn't really work.

There's iron in it. There's a lot of power in it. And yet, there's a weakness in it.

Also, that there's ten toes, which he says in the explanation, there are ten kingdoms.

The rest of the statue broke into pieces, and what remained was carried away in the wind.

Let's go back and read what it says here in verse 41 of Daniel 2. Where as 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, that is, you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. 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. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they shall beagle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. It's the problem the Roman Empire had from the whole beginning. Eventually, Germans wanted to be Germans, and Gauls wanted to be Gauls, and Scots wanted to be Scots, and Angles wanted to be Angles and Saxons wanted to be Saxons. And, you know, Norsemen wanted to be Norsemen, the Vikings. They didn't want to be Roman.

And they could only make the Roman by force. And in the days of these kings, in the days of these kings, the ten toes are ten kings. Real important to understand. It's in their day. Now, there are attempts to say that this fourth kingdom was Greece by some interpreters. It doesn't make sense. It's in the days of these kings, or there's attempts to say that all this has been fulfilled.

It hasn't all been fulfilled. In the days of the revived Roman Empire, an attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire, and it will have the strength of ancient Rome, and it'll have the problems of ancient Rome.

In that day, you will have ten kings. And in the days of the ten kings, the god ahead will set up a kingdom which will 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. And as much as you saw, the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands. The broken pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, the gold, the great god has made known to the king, have it condenser, what will come to pass after this.

And so here we have now how this prophecy reaches way down into the end times.

And this becomes our template. Now, I didn't say anything today that you all don't know, probably, and many of you are saying, oh, this is the baby stuff. This is the baby stuff of prophecy.

What this is is the template. You don't really understand the other beasts and other visions, unless you have a starting point in which to interpret.

So here we see it. The days of these kings. So the Roman Empire, in some form, must exist at the end, and it will have the strength and weaknesses of the original Roman Empire. You know what one of the weaknesses of the original Roman Empire? I don't think the end Roman Empire will have this problem. But they had no common currency. So everybody coined their own coins.

So they had massive inflation. They couldn't figure out why.

There were no economic concepts, so they did not understand inflation. I mean, if every little town makes bronze coins, and a pair of sandals costs five bronze coins, but everybody has 50 bronze coins in their pockets, guess what merchants are going to do?

Ah, it costs you 10 bronze coins, because your labor is going to ask for more. And so everything got more and more expensive, and they couldn't figure out why.

It's because every little town in the province made their own coins.

There was a weakness they didn't even know they had, and they had a huge economic weakness in the midst of all this wealth. So this group, when this comes together, will have the strength and weaknesses of the old Roman Empire. They will have military power.

They will have military power. But it's at this time that we have the kingdom of God that's on this earth. It still represents God's eternal kingdom.

That's what we're looking forward to. That's the whole purpose of this vision that God gave at Nebuchadnezzar was, I'm in charge of this, and in the end, I take control. You and I can live in such panic, and that's why it is important that we understand, you know, when we get to Revelation 13 to Revelation 17, we understand what is ahead, but we don't live in trepidation and anxiety and fear of what is ahead. I mean, we do have some anxiety. You can't help but have some. They cause why? Because all these prophecies are given so that we will know what's happening, and so that we will know that God is in charge.

I think God will take care of us. It's going to be hard. It's not going to always be easy.

So God, or Daniel told, or God told through Daniel, how this kingdom will be set up and will endure forever. After lunch, we'll come back, and we will simply go through. So we have now Daniel 2.

We'll go through Daniel 7, and then we should actually have time for questions.

So Daniel 2, Daniel 7, and then in a month or two months, we'll start going through Daniel 8, and we'll go into Revelation 13 and start looking at the beast of Revelation 13.