Daniel 2

Today we're going to take a break from the 10 Commandments, the Bible study we've been going through basic doctrine. We're going to do something a little different. I'm going to use this sermon and Bible study to talk about prophetic templates a lot. Remember when I went through the proto-evangelium? I went through how Genesis 3.15 is a template for all prophecy. We start there and it gives us a template for all prophecy because we realize we got kicked out of Eden and God then had a plan to bring us back. That's the center of all prophecy. Another great template for prophecy is Daniel chapter 2. Daniel chapter 2 is probably one of the most talked about prophecies in the entire Old Testament. I'm going to go through material today. For all the people, the prophecy boss, there's not going to be anything new for you today. I have nothing new to give you about Daniel chapter 2. But it gives us a template that in the Bible study I'm going to show you how you can apply that template to explain another prophecy. In other words, this gives us explanations because I could go through Daniel 7, I could go through Revelation 13, and I would have no understanding of what those prophecies mean except for Daniel 2. I wouldn't know what Daniel 7 meant. I didn't have Daniel 2. I wouldn't know what Revelation 13 would be if it wasn't for Daniel 2. So this gives us the template in which we're understanding this worldview of prophecies. And this is about the time of Daniel. And what had happened here is for many centuries, after Judah and Israel separated, God had sent prophet after prophet to Judah to tell them to repent. I think many centuries. That goes back to the time when they were one nation. And so he sends a prophet after prophet. Israel is finally destroyed. And over the course of these hundreds of years, Judah has these sort of revivals, but they don't last long. And then they go back. Every time they go back, they get more and more and he prayed. And God sends to them Jeremiah, and Jeremiah says, this is it. There's no more chances. This is it. You either repent or God's got to send Babylon. And then he finally says, God is sending Babylon. And Babylon was a rising power at the time. They probably thought, that's sort of ridiculous. You know, that Babylon's going to come down and somehow be able to defeat us. We forget Judah was a major power in the Middle East at the time. But Babylon did show up.

And so we have that Babylon actually invaded Judah three times. Between around 1605 to 586 BC. All dates can be off by a couple years, but these are pretty close. Because it's hard to pinpoint exact dates of certain events. But we know it's around 605 that Nebuchadnezzar shows up.

So, who is Daniel? I wonder if I can get that little slide show, resume slide show thing out of there.

Oh, it is possible. You think out loud? Something happens. I mean, who is Daniel?

I watch all these kids because I think out loud all the time. So I walk around talking to myself. I wonder if that could be done. And I ask myself questions constantly. And then I answer them. Sometimes they do. Okay, so Daniel pops up here. Who is Daniel? I just like doing that.

He was of the upper class of his real life society, possibly from a royal family. Now, why do we say that?

Babylon's rise of power was very quick. They were in a constant warfare with the Assyrian Empire. And the Babylonian Empire came and went, as the Assyrians came and went. These two empires, which straddled the Tigris, Euphrates rivers, the Assyrians were the north, the Babylonians of the south. And when the father of Nebuchadnezzar came into power and conquered the Assyrians, they became a power overnight. And what the Babylonians did is they seized all the resources of the Assyrian Empire, and the first thing they did was they went around conquering people. Now, when I say conquer people, the Babylonians, you have to sort of think of them like the Mafia. Okay? They showed up with an army, and they defeated your army. And then they said, We will leave you alone as long as you pay us taxes. Protection money. If you don't pay us protection money, we'll come back. So people are going to show up on a regular basis, or you're supposed to show up in Babylon on a regular basis, and bring your tribute. And if we ever go to war, you have to send troops to help us. Otherwise, we basically leave you alone. But they also did something else. And they did this in 605 when they took Judah. They would take the best and brightest of a society and take them back to Babylon to convert them into becoming Babylonians. The reason why is that they would take very young people. Daniel was a teenager at this point when he goes.

So Daniel was a teenager. And he goes there, and he and others, to be converted into Babylonian society so that they could do two things. One, to become advisors to the king. He was trying to accept all the best and brightest young people from around the empire, bring them in, and make them loyal to him. And two, you could always send them back and what would they do? They would convince the next generation to become Babylonians.

So you can't convince the old people to become Babylonians, but you can convince the young people and then you send them back. So Daniel is taken, kidnapped, in his first invasion. Nebuchadnezzar also took some of the sacred objects and vessels from the temple. So this is all of his temple. He takes some of those and they are mentioned throughout the book of Daniel. And Daniel ends up spending his whole life there. For most of his life, he ends up in the Persian Empire, too.

You know, it's a lot of years between here, this point where he goes with them at 605, and he ends up in the lion's den. He's a teenager when he's shipped off. At the beginning of Daniel, you're reading the story of a teenager. When you get to the lion's den, he's an old man. He's an old man at that point. So this stands about seven years of time that he is there, and there's no record that he ever went back.

Even when the Persians started to allow the Jews to go back, he stayed. And he was there in Babylon, eventually in Persia, and he became an advisor to the king. Now, let's go to, then, Daniel chapter 2. What we have here is that Nebuchadnezzar has agreed to trouble him. We're going to read some of this in just a minute. And this is very interesting because the king threatens to kill his advisor. Let's go there. Daniel chapter 2. Daniel chapter 2. Now, remember, he's gathered together all the advisors, soothsayers, sorcerers, priests from every religion across the Middle East. The Babylonians were very, like most, pagan for the day. They were very superstitious people.

So he gathers these people together, and he brings them into his court, and that way, he can inquire of all the gods. As we go through the book of Judges, you hear me say this all the time, remember, these people never denied Yahweh. They believed in all the gods. So you want an advisor from every god. Because if you have to go to that land, that's the god of the land. So he brought them in, there's advisors. Look at verse 1 now. Let's read part of this to set up the story.

The Babylonians spoke to the king in Aramaic.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, My decision is firm. If you do not make no of the dream to me in its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made in ash heap. However, if you tell the dream in its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts, rewards, and great honor. Therefore, tell me the dream in its interpretation. He said, you know, I've been fooled by you guys long enough. I'm lucky you changed the dream, unless you make something up. If you really have supernatural power, tell me the dream, and then tell me what it means.

Verse 7, the answer to get it said, let the king tell us the dream, and we'll give you an interpretation. Okay, you gotta tell us the dream. We don't know what went on inside your head. The king answered and said, I know for certain that you would gain time because you see that my decision is firm. If you do not make no of the dream to me, there is only one decree for you. For you have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the time has changed. Therefore, tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can give me its interpretation. And they said, nobody could do that. Nobody can tell you the dream. Verse 12, for this reason the king was angry and very furious, and gave the command to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. So the king went out, and they began killing the wise men, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them. Now, Daniel, a king there, just sent to Babylon, is now being faced with being killed. Because he's there as an advisor to learn Babylonian society, but also to advise. And it's like, okay, I'm fed up with all you advisors, I'm going to kill all of you. So, now, Daniel goes to God. So, Daniel, if you read the story here, Daniel goes to the king, asked a little time, king gives it to him. Which all the other, by the way, all the soothsayers and sorcerers and priests were very happy because he stopped killing them. So, Daniel, he gives them a hero here, and he revealed to him the dream in its meeting. Now, let's go to verse 26 of Daniel 2. I should close my Bible here. Daniel 2. And let's look at the dream itself. You all know this dream. This is of well-known passage. Maybe one of the most well-known prophecies of all the Bible, along with Matthew 24. So, let's start in verse 26. The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Veltashazzar in Aramaic, Are you able to make known to me the dream, which I have seen in its interpretation? Daniel answered in the presence of the king, the secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets and is 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 to your mind while you were on your bed about what would come to pass after this. He also revealed secrets as made known to you what will be. So then he says, But he's revealed to me now what is in your dream. Verse 31. You, O king, were watching, and behold a great image. This great image, whose splendor with excellence stood before you, and its form was awesome. This image, head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and clay. And 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. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, the gold were crushed together, and they came like chaff from the summer of Threshing Corps. And the wind carried them away, so that no trace of them was found. And the stone was struck, the image that struck the image, they gave a great mouth to fill the whole earth. And Ebechandeser says, yes, that's exactly my dream. So now, he was very attentive to what Daniel would tell him. So here we have. We have a statue, it has four sections. The head was gold, the chest was silver, the belly and thighs were bronze, the legs were made of iron, and the feet were ironed and mixed with clay.

And of course, the stone comes and strikes it, and when it does, it collapses, and this mountain fills the whole earth. So we have the rest of it then, this rock strikes it, and Daniel now tells Dennica Neser the dream, and he interprets it. The result was that he becomes a secondary ruler in all of Babylon.

Daniel becomes very, very important now in the Babylonian Empire. Now, if you read through the rest of this, what you find is that he tells him the interpretation of the dream. I'm not going to read all of it, but I'm going to go through what he told him.

He said, this first head of gold represents a kingdom, and it is your kingdom. Now, this is very important because we have a starting point for interpretation, and it is clear. The starting point is absolutely clear.

What the problem is with whether it's doctrine or prophecy or anything, where you start determines where you end up. So we don't have immediately exact explanations of the rest of the prophecy, but we have a starting point. The starting point will determine how we determine the rest of the prophecy. So the starting point is you.

Babylon is the head of gold. Now, Babylon, of course, for the rest of the history of Babylon, Daniel would be there and lived through the rest. This Babylonian Empire, which was one of the new version of the way it came along, this was actually very short. If you look, it only lasted from 626 to 539.

That lasted 100 years. So this version of Babylon didn't last very long, but of course Daniel was there for most of it. Well, we know, okay, so 600 years before Jesus, Babylon, which is in modern-day Iraq today, okay? Modern-day Iraq is where Babylon was. And this is why there is in the Protestant world a more and more of a belief that the Arabs and Islam is the great beast power of Revelation.

When we look at Daniel 2, we'll be able to know that's not true. Okay, that's very important because this is becoming a widespread belief, and it's beginning to unite Christian groups together for survival because Christianity is being attacked. And the Muslims are the ones doing it, therefore the Muslims are the great beast of Revelation. Which is interesting because there's other prophecies that show that basically that's got to happen for the beast power to come up. The beast forms because it's being attacked, but that's for another time. There was a kingdom that ruled with Daniel.

Eventually he was defeated by Persia. Now this is very important because in Daniel 2, now there's other places that tell us it's going to be Persia. We know it's Persia for one reason because Daniel is alive and Persia shows up. So we know, he said, a second kingdom will come after you.

Daniel tells us what the second kingdom was. How do we know? Because Daniel was there when they showed up and defeated Babylon. So we know the first two steps of what goes on in this five-step process of Daniel 2. Now I want you to look at... Can you see that pointer? Can you see it in the back? Babylon, compared to the other empires, was actually very small. Can you see the Tigris of these two lines that represent the Tigris of Euphrates Rivers? Can you see that in the back?

I don't know if you can see that. The Tigris of Euphrates Rivers. And of course you have Iraq is here today. Iran is over here. By the way, if you talk to an Iranian, they will tell you, I am not Arab.

They will get very, very offended if you call an Iranian an Arab. They are Persian. And that's because this was the seat of the ancient Persian Empire. Babylon, the Assyrians were up here. And like I said, the Babylonians and the Assyrians fought fought fought. Their culture was very similar. They even had some of the same gods, language, and so on. So there was a lot of similarity between the two. And eventually, you know, Nebuchadnezzar's dad defeated the Assyrians, and now they had an empire. It didn't take them long to take on the areas up here and to sweep down through this area, to take Judah, take all the Arab nations around here, and to take Egypt.

I am losing your power on this. You'd have an extra battery, do you? What's interesting is that Kim and I were in France back after the feast. We went to the Louvre. And to go through the Louvre and to go to the room where they have walls from ancient Nineveh.

And the walls from ancient Nineveh and the carvings from ancient Assyria are almost exactly like the carvings from Babylon. You could see the similarities in the culture. So you could see that the empire is not huge, but it was the first attempt to create a real empire. Now, the Egyptians tried to build an empire, but the Egyptians, they really didn't try to administer an empire. They would just show up and loot, take off everything, and go back home.

The Babylonians would leave governors or leave people there, leave small garrisons. They didn't try to administer it, but they tried to say, you all must adhere to Babylonian rule, and you must pay his tribute. Now, we know then that during the time of Daniel, the Persians show up, and the Persians conquered Babylon. Now, let's look for a minute at the Persian Empire.

Do you notice how much bigger it is? This is because, and sometimes this is called the empire of the beads of the Persians. There's a reason why. These two peoples decided to sort of combine into one nation.

And when they did, they had an economic and military power that was enormous. So, the Persians come over here, and they take Babylon. They go clear up here and take the Hittites. They come down here, they take Egypt. They go clear over here and take Libya. So, this is a much larger empire, as they try to expand out. Now, unlike the Babylonians, the Persians are very interesting.

And there is a give you some of this information. When we go through the Bible study, it's important. When we get to the Bible study, it's important. They decided they were going to administer this. So, wherever they went, they set up satraps. Provinces with a governor in charge. They actually set up a world government. It was incredibly cumbersome, but it promoted free trade. Babylon didn't necessarily promote free trade as much as they were the mafia. They showed up to protection money.

These guys actually tried to create an empire where there was free trade across here. And they did it by setting up governments. Little provinces all over the place with satraps in charge. The other problem they had was with Greece.

Greece just... you know, little old Greece up here. The problem with Greece is they spent most of the time fighting each other. They were city-states without a central government, and they just fought each other all the time. That's what they did for fun. Every summer they would march out and say, okay, we're going to Sparta. We're going to fight the Salonika this summer.

And they'd go have a battle. Now, they wouldn't wipe each other out. They would say, okay, when it got to a certain amount of slaughter, they all went home. Then the Athenians would take on the Corinthians. Then the Corinthians would take on the Spartans. That's all they did, was they fought. Well, what happened was Greece had some colonies over here, because they were setting up colonies all over the place, trying to set up trade colonies. They had some colonies over here, and those colonies decided to... I keep forgetting. I turn away from the mic. Those colonies decided to revolt against the Persian Empire.

And, of course, as soon as the Persians showed up, they said, oh, great brothers, come help us. Well, the Greeks, not really understanding the size of this empire, came up and helped them. So guess what the Persians did? Now, the Persians' army was very interesting, because what they did is they took the best soldiers from every place they conquered and made them part of their army.

So it was a giant army of special forces. Nobody could defeat them. I mean, they had the best archers, the best cavalry. Wherever they conquered, they said, okay, these guys are your best soldiers. They're now in our army. And it was huge. Some estimate that it was a million men army, which is even bigger by today's standard.

It was just huge. The Greeks, on the other hand, had a small one, but they had created a new way of fighting, the phalanx.

And because of that, the Greeks, or the Persians, didn't have an answer to it.

So, you know, you hear the Spartans, you know, in the Monopoly, well, they were more than three. The three other Spartans get all the glory. There were other Greeks there that died, by the way. They just don't get all the glory, because the Spartans tend to control history.

And Marathon, and Salamis, and these battles where they defeated this huge army. And the Persians couldn't figure out how they did this. And they did it because they came up with a tank they'd not have been, basically. And they would get that thing moving, and once it was hard to stop, once it started, especially since the spears were 20 feet long, and they would get moving, and all the shields were locked, and you'd get 5,000 men moving forward. And once they got to a run, you couldn't stop it. You didn't want to be a guy in the middle of the phalanx that fell down, because it just ran over you. You got killed by the guy with you, because it just moved. And it would hit a wall of people and just keep moving. Anyway, that's enough about Greek military tactics. So what we have then is, in 5th 30 IBC, Darius the V, for me, took Babylon without a fight. Now, this is really, really interesting in history, because it's recorded in Daniel. Let's go to Daniel 5. Daniel 5, verse 1. Remember, this is many, many years after Daniel 2. This was many, many years later.

This is many, many years later.

They saw what appeared to be a handwriting. Now, some of the kids can tell. What did it say? The kids know. It's the only Aramaic that most people know. The loose translation is, you have been weighed, and you've come up short, and you will be judged. That's not a literal translation, but they do what it meant.

So now there's this, it says that, in the rest of chapter 5, that the Persians came in and destroyed them that night. Now, that alone seems to be all we have about this story, but it's not. There's a Greek historian, Herodotus, who wrote hundreds of years later. Now, Herodotus traveled the world and tried to write a story about every place he went, give you the history.

The problem is, legend, history, stories, travel log, he mixes all this stuff together. It's hard to tell sometimes what's real and what's not. Real and what's legend or story with Herodotus. But it's the only history we have for much of the ancient world. What Herodotus said was the Persians had showed up. Now, this is interesting because he writes this, you know, not knowing the Bible. The Persians show up, they surround Babylon. The walls of Babylon were so high, so thick, that there was not, at that time, any siege technology that could bring it down.

And actually, the Babylonians had come out, there did a battle, the Babylonians retreated, and now they're surrounded by the Persians. The Babylonians have food in there for years. Plus, they can grow food in there because the Euphrates River flows right through the middle of the city. And there's iron gates, so you can't get through the river. They can lift it for boats to come through, but they shut the iron gates.

So, according to Herodotus, what the Persians did was they built a reservoir out of where the Babylonians could see it. And then one night, knocked down the walls and rerouted the Euphrates, so that the water went down so much that the Persian soldiers went under the gates. And according to Herodotus, they walked in and took the city hardly without a fight because everybody was having a big party.

And the leaders did not know they were there until they showed up at their party, which is sort of what Daniel says. So Herodotus' story ties right in with the Bible. But they drained the Euphrates, went under the gates, because the question was, how could Daniel's story be true when they were the greatest military fortress in the world? Well, Herodotus said they simply rerouted the Euphrates. That's been done before. Those are numerous times in history.

In fact, Grant in the Civil War was able to get some of his troops up to Mississippi by rerouting the Mississippi and going around Vicksburg. So it's not the only time people rerouted a river for military reasons. So what we have is that Daniel's five, and you can read the rest of Daniel's five. It gives all the details of how the Persians show up.

Now Daniel is left alive, and Daniel becomes advisor in the Persian Empire. So what happens is, not long after this, within about a year, Judah now is taken captive by the Persians. The Persians go clear down into Egypt and Libya. Now here's what's really interesting. King Cyrus comes along. He's a Persian king. Now, when the Babylonians, when you didn't pay tribute, the third time they came, they simply destroyed your nation. They took all the people and they moved them. And since everybody kept trying to rebel, by the time the Persians take the Babylonian Empire, all the people that were in the Babylonian Empire, except maybe the Egyptians, the Egyptians, had moved around.

They moved all over the place. Now there's a reason for that. If you move the people away from their homeland, they lose their culture, they lose their gods, they lose their ability to fight. So the third time the Babylonians came into Judah, they took them off. That's where Jeremiah, there's a sad place in Jeremiah where he's walking through the ruins of Jerusalem. And he says, where's hardly anybody left? They carted them off. So Cyrus comes along and says, you know what?

I want everybody to like us Persians. So we're going to send everybody home. And see this little cylinder down here? That actually tore the United States recently. I wanted to go see it, but I didn't have a chance to go see it. That is a cylinder that is from the time of Cyrus, a decree, basically telling everybody, if you want to go home, we'll help you get back home. So it says he did that in the Bible. We actually have a cylinder from the time of Cyrus, all credible archeologists, every one of them says, yep, this is from the time of Cyrus, and yes, this is what he said.

He told everybody to go home. And he even helped some of them go home. Because this way, they had a different way of idea of running an empire. We want everybody to have their own religions, their own culture, and we'll hold you together by being under our governors, who have all this free trade. And so, it was just a different way than what the Babylonians thought. So we have this decree, which you can read about the decree he gave the Jews in Ezra. Here's what he says to them in Ezra 6a.

Moreover, I hereby decree that you are to do for these elders of the Jews in the construction of the South of God. Their expenses are to be fully paid out of the royal treasury for the revenues of France-Uprides, so that the work will not stop. What we have, of course, is the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, we get the story of how the Jews, who have been taken into captivity by the Babylonians, are sent back by the Persians.

So Ezra and Nehemiah tells us that story, and how they were sent back and actually had help from the Persians to begin to reconstruct the temple. And so we have the Rebebel Temple. Also, the Persians sent back all the vessels to Solomon's Temple that had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar. This is the second of those empires. Here's what you know, just from 457, we're jumping way ahead now in the history of Persia. We have Ezra sent in 444 to 430, Nehemiah is sent as the satrap.

He's the governor of Judah. So he's now sent as the Persian satrap, the governor to be in charge of Judah. He's not an independent king. He's the governor established by Persia. So Nehemiah was a satrap of Persia to rule over. Now, there is an event that happened about 20 to 30 years before this, before Ezra. Anyone know what that is? Esther. There was an attempt in the capital of Persia to destroy all the Jews in the capital. And the reason it didn't happen is that God had planted Esther inside the Persian household.

She was the wife of the king. So Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, tell this period. So they go into captivity. 70 years later, they're coming out. And those three books tell us about what happened. So now we have, once again, the chest was made of silver, represented the kingdom of Medo-Persia. The only way we know that is because he said, a kingdom will come after you.

You are the first kingdom. And a kingdom will come after you. And there was a kingdom that came after them. And they conquered all that was Babylon, absorbed Babylon into their kingdom, and they became the second kingdom.

It's silver. It symbolizes a lesser quality. But it was actually a much greater empire in terms of the number of people in the area that it ruled. Now, we say, okay, what do we do next? Well, we have to look what happened to Persia. Persia is now destroyed. And we don't see this is all history. This is all provable history. Nothing I'm giving you a speculation. Everybody would agree to this. In your high school or college classes, if you took a class on ancient history, everybody knows this is true. Now we have Greece. Greece shows up and decides, under Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great comes along and he unites the Grecian Empire. All the war in Grecian states, he brings together, well, not all of them, because some of them actually refuse to follow him. And he said, okay, now I have all the armies of Greece combined. What am I going to do? Oh, I'll go conquer the Perziber. And that's exactly what he did. Only took him a couple of years, even though he had a small army. The Greeks or the Persians never came up with a solution to the phalanx. They just could not. No, they...the Romans did immediately. Oh, we'll just attack you from the rear. You can't turn him around. That's the problem with that. You could turn the thing around. And they didn't last long against the Romans. Now, look at the size of the Greek Empire. But you need to understand something. This never really was the Empire. Because the Greeks come out of here, out of Macedonia, where Philip was the father of Alexander the Great. And they come along, and they come in here, and they conquer all this, but not really. Because they don't set up a government. And what happened is, Alexander the Great gets his army clear over here, through the Persia, and is into India. And the army says, and some estimates that there are only 30,000 of them, because of the little army. And the army says, it goes on forever. Because every place they went, there were more villages. Every place they went, there were more cities. Every place they went, there were more armies. And they finally said, we just want to go home. But what are we doing? And what happened was, every place that they conquered, they would leave a Greek or two behind. And you couldn't really rule. I mean, how do you rule with a couple of guys? So what they did, as they convinced everybody, or tried to, that Greek culture was better. So what they tried to do was create a new global culture. The Persians tried to create a new global economy. They never tried that. What they tried to do was create a global culture. So every place they went, within years, you know what you start to see? Even where the Greeks leave. Greek architecture, Greek art, Greek language. Okay, people said, well, you know, they came up, they, 30,000 of them conquered this, they must be better. So they started to absorb this Greek culture. And they spread it every place they went. So, Algernon the Great conquered and came up Persia, which is far as the Indus River did you? And he Hellenized. Hellenization, or Hellenized, just means Greek. Hellene is, means Greeks. So the Greeks, they were now, they created this culture and spread it throughout.

Alexandria, Egypt became the greatest center of Greek culture in the world, even more than Athens. When Julius Caesar conquered Egypt, the greatest library in the world was in Alexandria, Egypt. He all heard of Cleopatra, right? Queen of Egypt? She was an Egyptian. She was Greek. When the Romans showed up, guess who still ruled Greek? We'll get to that. Greek, or Egypt. The Greeks. So, the problem is, without an organized empire, he was just a general. They kept conquering and conquering and conquering. When he died, there was nothing to hold a con... together. So the Greek empire, up to that point, lasted a couple years. So it immediately fragmented. It fragmented and he ended up with four different generals fighting for about 40 years. And so you have Egypt controlled by the Ptolemies, Syria by the Seleucids, Macedonia, and Pergamum. Macedonia, of course, is important because that's the Greek homeland itself.

But these other two groups here, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, are very important. Now, remember I said that Cleopatra was a Greek. The Greeks ruled Egypt up to the time of Rome.

So for almost 300 years, the rulers of Greece... and so Greek became... or Egypt was Greeks.

The rulers... or the culture of Egypt became this very... this mixture of ancient Egyptian culture and Greek culture.

As they were ruled over by these Greeks. And that's why the Romans found such...

They actually found a common bond with the rulers of Egypt. Egypt also was the breadbasket of the world. We don't think of that now. But it actually was the breadbasket. It would be like the Ukraine or the center of the United States today. It was that much of a breadbasket. The area around the Nile was much wider. They've done aerial... or satellite photographs of Egypt today. And you can go up for miles beyond the Nile River. Outwards just sand. And underneath there are thousands of cities. Thousands of cities.

So Egypt was huge compared to today as far as its territory. And...

Its wheat fed the world. They produced more wheat than the Romans did in Italy. Which is hard to believe today. But... you know... that's one reason why everybody wanted Egypt.

These Ptolemies and Seleucids are very important. Because for over 150 years, they fought over control of Judah.

Write this down. It'll be on the test later.

So you have this third empire. The Jews get to go home. Not all of them went home, by the way. That's why you have the Asper. They're just scattered throughout... ...throughout the Persian Empire. And scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Because many of them did go home. They just went all over the place. And the King mentioned all over the Empire. But some of them did go home. But it wasn't even a majority. They went back to Judah. They went back to Judah. They settled in. They're doing fine. The Persians let them alone.

And then the Greeks come along. And they're right in the middle. Now you think of the Greek rulers in Syria. They were Syrias. And they were Egyptists. And what's in between them?

And they spent 150 years fighting over who's going to be the top dog. And so when the armies marched south or marched north, guess where they always met?

So Judah was the battleground for the Greeks for 150 years.

And Tychus IV, which is actually... This man is... or Tychus Epiphanes... ...is actually prophesied in the book of Daniel. Well, that's another story.

He came along and told them they had to give up the worship of God. By the way, this is a coin down here, a picture of a coin that has a Tychus Epiphanes face on it.

And what's interesting is they have just great hordes of coins in the Middle East from the Greeks.

Especially in Israel today. Every time they dig up some archaeological site, when they get to this period, guess what's there? Coins. And some of them are from the Seleucids and some of them are from the Follites, depending on who happened to be controlling them at the time.

So he desecrates the temple, and in response, a Jewish priest named Judas Maccabeus revolts. If you have a Catholic Bible, there will be two books called 1 and 2 Maccabeus. 1 and 2 Maccabeus are not inspired, but they do tell us what happened during this revolt. Because they are historical books. They were actually written during this time. So what we have is we understand what happened because of 1 and 2 Maccabeus. And they overthrew the Greeks. And they said, no more!

The Ptolemies and the Seleucids can't fight over our country anymore. And they actually won. They took the temple back, picked out the Greeks, and neither the Seleucids nor the Ptolemies attacked them ever again. And this is celebrated every year at Hanukkah. Now, you know what Hanukkah is. It's a celebration when they threw the Greeks out, and God gave them the land back. This is the time period where the Pharisees formed. Do you know why the Pharisees formed? Their motto was, never again. Never again will we not obey God. That's why they were so strict.

Never again will God send us into captivity. So we will uphold everything God says to the instant greed. Because we will never again go into captivity. So the Pharisees formed around this time, as well as other groups. So we're back to the statue. The belly and thigh, Veda bronze, represent the kingdom of Greece. Now, we can also go, by the way, to Daniel chapter 8 and figure out the Persia and Greece of the next two.

So we could take Daniel 2 and Daniel 8. The problem is, Daniel 2, Daniel 7, or Daniel 8. Do not tell us the name of the fourth kingdom. So what is the fourth kingdom? There's only one winded up. If these are in chronological order, what happened to Greece? Eventually Greece would be conquered by another kingdom. And that's where Rome comes along. Rome came along and conquered Greece. So are you all with me so far?

I said there's nothing to do here. But it's important because this is a worldview. And it's one reason why we don't believe Islam is the fourth or the great beast of the revelation. It's because we start here with our prophetic interpretations. A little bit of Roman history. 63 BC. All of a sudden the Jews were fighting. They kept the Greeks out all those years. Pompey shows up at the feast of Judah. But they have an interesting relationship, by the way, between the Jews and the Romans at the beginning.

Both Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar gave the Jews special privileges. The reason why was Julius Caesar was in a battle and he was losing. And right at the point where he would have got defeated, a Jewish army showed up and fought on his side. So he sort of liked the Jews. And Augustus Caesar gave the special privileges, too. So 44 BC, Julius Caesar assassinated Octavian and Mark Anthony defeat Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi. Okay, so now we know this is just a little brief history. Roman Empire is now formed. Because before this point they were Republic.

They were run by a Senate. But after this point, Octavian becomes Augustus. He changes the name to Augustus. He becomes the first Roman Emperor. Now, he's the first Roman Emperor. At 37 BC, he appoints Herod, who becomes known as Herod the Great, as the King of Judea.

And he's doing his reign that Herod the Great began to refurbish the temple. Now we have Herod's temple, which is a rebuilding of the Zarebabel's Temple. Jesus is born somewhere between 6 to 4 BC. And it's 6 AD Judea becomes a Roman province ruled by a governor. There's a reason why. Herod the Great died, and Herod the Great had four provinces, and they couldn't control the Jews.

So they finally said, okay, you have to have a Roman governor. You know what comes with a Roman governor? A Roman legion. 5,000 troops. So now they had their heel on Judea because they kept rebuilding. They kept causing trouble. Jesus Christ, of course, was crucified by Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea. And three days later, he was resurrected.

7 AD Judea, the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple. I'm just going through this quickly because this gives you an overview, a feeling of what we're talking about here. This is very important right here. The Muslims today claim that Solomon never built a temple, that that is a fabrication of Jewish people who just made it up.

Now, not only do we have the ruins of the temple there, which they claim, okay, that's not really what it was, but we also have this. Titus was the general who destroyed Jerusalem at 7 AD. He became emperor, and he built a giant. It's still there today. I've seen it.

I stood under and looked at it. How many of you have ever seen Titus's arch? The arch has all these reliefs, carvings in them, of all the conquering he did. And guess what's on there? The Roman legions taking away all the vessels, the lamps, and everything from the Jewish temple. It's all there.

So, just a few years after the Jewish temple was destroyed, the Romans honored their destruction of the Jewish temple. So, the Islamic argument that the Bible is wrong and that the Jews are wrong, either Christians are wrong, pagan Romans even glorified what happened. I mean, historically, this is not an arguable point. It's the problem with radical Islam. They actually take all of history and say it's made up and throw it out. They literally say all history was made up by Christians and Jews. So, nothing in history is true. So then they can go back and rewrite history or whatever they want, and they brainwash millions of people in the building. Over time, the Roman Empire, we can do the conflict within its borders. Here's what the Romans tried to do. The Romans took another view of empire, and that was the Roman way is best. So, when we come in and we conquer you, we don't want to change your religion. We don't even want to change our culture. We just want to take Roman culture and share it with you, which was basically Greek culture. They never got over the fact that they absorbed Greek culture. So, they took Greek culture in, and now every place they went, there were little pockets of Greek culture, because the Greeks had been in every part of them. So, what did they do? They said, this is the best culture. So, they created a culture, but they let everybody have a certain amount of autonomy. It's one of the reasons why they fell was massive inflation, because everybody, where every place you went, every little town made its own coins. Because the empire made its own coins, and every province made its own coins, and every country, because they didn't destroy all countries, you can be a country, just be part of our big happy family here. And so, everybody made their own coins until there were so many coins, it caused inflation. There was no economic concepts of inflation, so this is part of the reason the empire fell. They had massive inflation, they couldn't figure out why. Prices kept going up and up and up, and yet they had lots of guards, because they kept making more coins. The whole point of the Roman Empire is, what did they do? Free trade, because eventually all taxes flow into Rome.

It's the biggest city in the world, a million people. It's by far the biggest city in the world. And the most power. And all taxes flow into Rome. They loved free trade. Come on, everybody, trade! Have good business! Wherever the Romans went, they built roads, they put in a postal system, they set up a stable government, they taught you how to build good buildings, and aqueductity, the Roman engineering, was incredible. Running water, they brought running water to the world. Indoor toilets, if you were rich enough to have one. They brought all this to the world, and they couldn't figure out why, or give you all this, why did you just accept us? And when you didn't, it was all controlled by the might of the legions. For hundreds of years, the Roman legions were the best trained, best equipped soldiers in the world. And they were brutal. And when you finally got, you think of this in the book of Acts, where there's one point where the governor gets up because the people are rioting against the Christians, and they say, stop this, because if you don't, the Romans will show up. They said an legion, and a Roman governor here, said, we don't want to live under a legion. So let's just stop, because the one thing the Romans wanted was rule of law. That was rule of law. But rule of law. No riots, no demonstrations, Roman peace, Pax Robota, Roman peace, brought upon everything, free trade, everybody get along, and even don't will kill you. So the Roman Empire fell a fourth to 76, but not really. Or even say not really, because it's split in two, and the Eastern Empire lived for years. Now remember, the fourth of these empires does what? Ends up in two legs. The Roman Empire ended up in two legs. The Eastern Empire, the Byzantium, was, of course, rolled out of Constantinople until the 1400s. It lasted until the 1400s, and there's been numerous attempts to keep recreating the Roman Empire in the West. Nobody's just been able to do it for very long, mainly because there are people that just won't mingle together.

Which is exactly what the prophecy said. Okay, so we're back to the statue. We have the legs here, ironed in clay, and at the end, you know, it's such a mixture that it really, it has strength in it, but there's always conflict within it.

So it's strong, but it's weak at the same time.

Now it would be divided, which we know the Roman Empire ended up being divided.

It would be a mixture of people. Now here's what's important in this. The Roman Empire, we could say, fell. In the 1400s, the Eastern half fell, and there is the Roman Empire today.

And so this is where the argument begins. Okay, Islam is the beast of Revelation.

If I don't have Daniel 2, I have no idea what Revelation 13 means. I have not. So if you say, forget Daniel 2 and ask me what Revelation 13 says, I'll say, I don't know.

And some of the Adventists say the beast of Revelation 13 is the United States.

Some people say it's communism. Some people say it's Islam.

But here's what's important. And when we go through the Bible study, we'll go through Daniel 7 and use this to interpret Daniel 7.

This everlasting kingdom comes from God, strikes this, and the interpretation of Daniel 2, we didn't read, but we're just going through basically what he said. What happens here is that in the time of this fourth kingdom, fourth kingdom, not a fifth kingdom, at a time of this fourth kingdom, at a time when it split up into ten different kings and not totally united, God says his kingdom to the serve.

Okay? So this rock comes and smashes it, which Daniel 2 explains. When he explains it, he says, this is God's kingdom coming to the serve.

The stone was cut, not by human hands, it struck the statue of the feet, breaks through the pieces, the rest of the statue breaks.

Then the stone that struck the statue becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth. It still represents God's eternal kingdom.

Now, here's what's important to this. It is still the fourth kingdom. It is still the fourth kingdom. It has to be some revival of what was the Roman Empire. It can't be China. Some people say it was China and Russia combined. It can't be.

Now, part of Russia can be part of this kingdom. You know how I know that? Because part of Russia, parts of it, the fringes of it, were part of the Roman Empire.

It could be peoples that moved out of the Roman Empire. The United States very easily could be conquered by them or absorbed by them.

It could be peoples all around the Middle East. It can't be China. It can't be Russia. It can't be centered. It can't be Islam.

There's only one way to be Islam. If Islam conquers, the Roman Empire. Well, it used to be the Roman Empire.

So if you see all of Europe become Muslim, then you can have that argument. But according to the Scripture, you're not going to let that happen.

They're going to fight to keep that from happening. And that's why looking at what's happening in the Middle East right now is very important because we're going to have a time here where we're going to see this part of the kingdom, once again, form. And when it does, it's going to be strong but not strong. It's never going to really come together. But there's going to be a strength to it. And it's at the time of this that God's kingdom set on the earth.

So Daniel 2 tells us that. So now we have our template for our worldview. That's why this is important.

We're not wondering where this beast is going to come from. It's going to come from what used to be the Roman Empire.

In a further attempt to recreate the Roman Empire, which has happened over and over and over again. And it's been done violently. Hitler tried to reunite Europe.

You have before that, time after time, Napoleon tried to reunite Europe.

As people tried to recreate this Pax Romana to bring Europe together so it has power. It's a superpower.

The EU is going to be an attempt to do that, but it is working. It is going to fail miserably.

European Union isn't going to last. Not in the present form. It can't.

As everybody tries to recreate this time period where they have a super power. A collective super power.

So that gets us through what I wanted to cover in the sermon today.

Like I said, nothing new, but it shows why Daniel 2 is so important.

What we'll do with the Bible study is we'll use this and lay Daniel 7 on top of it. And what we do, we'll be able to understand Daniel 7.