The Statue in the Book of Daniel

I gave a sermon a while back on the importance of Genesis 3.15. And I had mentioned in that sermon that there are certain templates in the Bible, prophetic templates, that give us the structure of how to look at other prophecy. You know, the problem is with prophecy is if you just pull it out—well, you can do this with anything in the Bible— but if you just pull it out and look at it, to interpret it, you can literally make up anything. And it's part of the problem that happens with interpreting anything in the Bible, especially when we look at prophecy. So it's very important to know, as we talk about doctrine, we talk about context, we talk about continuity between the Old and New Testament. In prophecy, it's we look for templates. And when I talked about Genesis 3.15, I said that was the Proto-Eangelium. In other words, it's the first good news. And really, all prophecies built off the concepts. Human beings were made in the image of God, disobeyed, they're kicked out of Eden, and now God is bringing humanity back through Christ. That's the basis of all prophecy. Now, there's another template that's very, very important if we're going to understand revelation. And that template is actually in Daniel. That's what we're going to look at today. We're going to look at something very simple. If you're a real prophecy buff, you're going to be disappointed because you're not going to learn anything new today.

And I'm making this very simple on purpose. I'm not going through an extreme amount of details because I want to really zero in on understanding the importance of this template. And there is a belief that is sweeping through evangelical Christianity today, a new look at biblical prophecy that's being believed by more and more evangelicals. And we're going to have to see whether we believe that or not, this new teaching about prophecy. Understanding this template will answer the issue that's come up. It will also help us, and I'll show you in the Bible study—I'm going to use this as a template— to explain another part of Daniel. A part of Daniel that if we were honest, if we didn't have this template, we would have no idea what it is. In fact, I can show you from commentaries probably half a dozen explanations for what we're going to go through in the Bible study. But there's only one clear explanation if we say, okay, this is one of our templates. There is no template like this before Daniel. That's why we have to go to Daniel 4. Because what it does is it gives us an understanding from that time of Daniel forward to the return of Jesus Christ. It gives us some benchmarks of certain things that are going to happen. What it tells us about—and we'll look at it in a minute—we start with this dream that Nebuchadnezzar had.

God had gone to Judah for a couple of centuries and said all kinds of prophets saying, please repent, repent, repent. They would have these little revivals and then they'd go back, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse.

The result is that as they got worse and worse and worse, he would pronounce this is going to be a worse punishment, a worse punishment. Finally, they were told that they were going to be taken into captivity. He was not going to protect them, and they were going to be taken by Jeremiah and told him, it's going to be Babylon.

This is where we pick up the story with Daniel. I put this together. I thought some of the younger people were visually-minded, like Daniel popping up out of nowhere.

So Daniel—so who is he? This is a very interesting guy, because he enters into the story as a teenager.

Daniel was taken to Babylon for a very specific reason.

The Babylonians—we think of them as an empire, but think of more of the Mafia.

Their model of empire was just like the Assyrians. What they would do is they would march into an area, march up to the capital. If the army came up, destroy the army, and then say, here's the deal. You pay us tribute. We're going to send people so many times a year. You pay us off, and we won't come and burn your city stuff.

If you didn't do it, they would show up again. Now, what's interesting is if you go through the Bible, you see that Babylon showed up at 605, around 605. All these years can be off by year or two, but it's pretty close historically. They show up at 605, and they tell them, look, we've invaded. We pushed your army aside. We could take you people any time. We might just pay us tribute.

They take some of the vessels from the temple back with them, but they also do something else. They take the brightest of the young people from Judah. There was a reason for that.

So, Daniels from probably an upper-class family, they didn't take kids from lower-class families. They wanted educated, bright people for a very important reason. So, they invade Judea at 605 BC. He's a young teenager at this point. They take him because they would have converted them to Babylonians. If they take all the young people that are the brightest there, it serves two purposes. One, they become advisors to the Babylonian king. Here's how you deal with my people. But also, they can be sent back as a model of, this is why our way is better than yours. So, they're brought there for a very specific reason, because they didn't destroy Jerusalem the first time. They didn't even destroy Jerusalem the second time they invaded. It was the third time when they finally said, you people keep rebelling, you won't pay us protection money. And they destroyed the entire country. So, he took some of the sacred objects. Nebuchadnezzar, of course, was the king at the time and plays real important in this story. And Daniel would spend, as far as we know, the whole rest of his life in exile. During his life, some of the Jews were able to start coming back, but he stayed there. And he actually lived through two empires, which is very fascinating. And it was very important. He was advisor to kings from two separate empires and lived through them. So, he and some other Jews, young Jewish people, were taken into Babylon, where they were attempted to be converted to be Babylonians. Now, the Babylonians didn't try to get the Jews to worship their gods. They had a lot of autonomy. All you had to do was pay up. Pay tribute!

There was really no benefit to being part of the Babylonian empire as another country, except you didn't get beat up. They didn't do anything for the countries they conquered. They just demanded tribute. They didn't supply roads. They didn't, you know. And they would help protect you if you were attacked by somebody else. But, of course, your army was supposed to come join them. And if your army didn't join them, then you were considered in rebounding. So, here we have the story. That brings us up to chapter two. Let's go to chapter two. Debeke Densner has a dream.

You know the dream, most of you, in your chapter two.

Look through this, and then we'll go through the interpretation that Daniel gave him.

Verse one. Now, in the second year of Debeke Densner's reign, Debeke Densner had dreams, and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. Then the king gave the command to call for the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. Now, they were very superstitious people. So, you would bring in people from all different religions. Remember, in the ancient world, it wasn't an argument over whether my God existed and yours didn't. The argument was, my God's bigger than yours. Okay? We conquered your country. What does that prove? My gods are better than your gods. So, you could worship your gods, but you have to accept my God is better. So, there was never an argument. Even under the Romans, there was never an argument that Yahweh of Judea did not exist. I never argued that. Of course, he existed. He just was a weak God. The proof was they conquered him.

So, the Babylonian king is brought in. Every place they conquer, he grabs some priests and some magicians, and he brings them in and says, okay, you keep me in right with all the gods. My gods are the best, but I would have been good with all the gods.

So, they came and stood before the king, and the king said to them, I've had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to know the dream. Then the Chaldean spoke to the king in Aramaic. O king, live forever. Tell your service to 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 in its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made and asheep. However, if you tell me the dream in its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts, rewards, and great honor. Therefore, tell me the dream and the interpretation.

Uh-oh. He's called their bluff. For seven, they answered again and said, let the king tell his servants the dream, and we'll give you the interpretation. You've got to tell us the dream first. 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 known the dream to me, there is only one decree for you, for you have agreed to speak lie and corrupt words before me till the time has changed. Therefore, tell me the dream and I shall know that you will give me the interpretation. So, of course, their argument is, we can't do that.

And his argument is, then you'll die. Now, they go to Daniel. Remember, at this point, Daniel is a teenager living in Babylon, and they're trying to convert him into being a good Babylonian, and they say, could your God answer this? And he says, yes, my God can. He prays, and God tells him the interpretation. Now, Nebuchadnezzar wasn't going to accept the interpretation. Daniel also had to tell him the dream without him telling him. Let's go to verse 26. The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen? And its interpretation. So, his name was Belteshazzar in Babylonian. Daniel answered and said, 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 he is made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days, your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed. And so he tells him, he says to him, What you saw was this giant statue. And his head was gold, his chest was silver, torso was bronze, and the base of it and the legs were iron, and the feet was iron mixed with clay. And this huge rock comes and hits the statue on the feet and it crumbles and falls apart.

And he says, Yeah, that's right. So let's review what Daniel told him.

King is troubled. He's going to kill his advisors.

Daniel asked the king for a little time to be able to interpret the dream. Daniel prayed. God revealed the dream in its meaning. So he came back and said, I can tell you exactly what your dream was. It was explained to me.

Head of gold, chest was silver, belly and thighs were bronze, the legs were made of iron, and the feet were mixed with fiery clay. So this was your dream. Now at this point, Nebuchadnezzar is saying, Wow, it's like he was in my head. He saw what I saw. So I'm going to listen to what he says. Then a large rock struck and destroyed the statue, and it became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. Now, unless God reveals this, there is no way you and I can know what this means. Now we can make up all kinds of stuff on what it means, but he has to show it just like he had to show Daniel what it means. This now becomes a template for understanding not just what God is doing, but world events that lead up to this giant rock, which he explains. Daniel told King Nebuchadnezzar the dream, and he interpreted. The result was that he made him one of the most powerful people in the entire empire, and he's very young at this point. What we have is, he tells him that these four different parts of the statue are four different kingdoms. Four different kingdoms. And then he tells him the first one is you. Now, we didn't go through all this. You can read chapter 2, but I'm just summarizing it. He tells him the first one, the first of these kingdoms is you and the Babylonian kingdom.

Now, we could spend the next hour just talking about Babylon. Babylon is a fascinating kingdom that is as much Eastern culture as Western culture. In fact, more Eastern culture than Western. As we go through these four kingdoms, you're going to see the formation of what we call Western culture. But Babylon didn't start in what we would know. Babylon was an Eastern country, Eastern religion, Eastern ways. So 600 years before Jesus was born, Babylon, which is Iraq today, I mean it's the area of Iraq, the area of Iraq.

So if you say, okay, what was Babylon? And what you will see in the mention of Babylon, of course, throughout the scripture is it's situated on the Tigris-Euphrates River, the rivers that come down together. It was the kingdom that ruled when David lived, and it was destroyed by Persia in 539 BC. Now remember, the events that we started with happened in 605. So between 605 and 539 isn't that long, is it? It's 66 years. So Daniel, though, lived most of his life, goes in as a teenager, and is there when Persia comes and destroys Babylon.

Now I want you to look at this map of the Babylonian Empire. Here's Greece, here's Italy, here's Libya and Egypt. Over here is Iraq, Iran. You get over here, you've got Afghanistan, and right over here is India. This is modern-day Turkey. Now, actually compared to all the other empires that we're looking at, this is the smallest one. But if you could see, I hope you could see it back here, see the two rivers? Can you see the lines of the rivers?

That's the Tigris and the people in the back see those? Okay. Assyria was here. The Babylonian people were here, and they fought each other for centuries. When Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar comes and attacks Judea, it's just because, well, they were winning at that point. They had just conquered Assyria. It's Assyria, and they were just fighting back and forth. Once the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians, they took all their power, their wealth, their troops, and now they had a force to be reckoned with.

And, of course, the first thing they do is they march down here. They take Judah. Well, no, they tried to get him to pay tribute. They just wouldn't do it. All the surrounding Arab nations, and you will see in the Bible all kinds of prophecies and comments that are made in historical information of the relationship between Babylon and all the Arab countries, because they did the same thing.

They came down and said, pay us tribute, or we'll destroy you. And sometimes the Arabs did, sometimes they didn't, and there was all these wars. They eventually marched over here to Egypt. They actually took some of the area up here from the Hittites and pushed the regions of the empire up here. This is, of course, the Fertile Crescent. At the time, it was incredibly rich land and could grow food and was a highly populated area. One of the most highly populated areas of the world, really, at the time.

The Nile River, they know the area that could support food. Growing the food was much larger than it is today. There are cities buried under sand 50 miles away from the Nile. The archaeological sites in Egypt are hundreds that they have never even looked at because they can't get down through the sand to get to them. Egypt was much larger than we think of Egypt now today in terms of what they could do.

Because usually you think of Egypt, most of us, desert. So this was the Babylonian Empire. This was the area, this was the place where Daniel was brought to and his friends. They are followed by the Medio-Persian Empire. This is a very important empire that we don't study much in Western civilization. And part of the reason why is it's Eastern. I mean, the other reason you know the Persian Empire is because you've watched the 300.

How many watched the 300? Come on, be honest. Okay, I haven't. It's a cartoon characterization, really, of the Spartans. But you really wouldn't want to know about Spartan society. It was as perverted as you can get. But we know of them because of their interaction with the Greeks, because Western civilization is Greek. But the Persian Empire, for many, many years, was a very important empire. And it was quite different than the Babylonian Empire.

Totally different approach to how to do things. Daniel lived over into this time. Daniel lived over into this time. Now, if you look at this empire, you see it's a whole lot bigger, okay? Because this is Iran, Iraq, over here into the, really into India, Afghanistan, Pakistan. All these areas were, at least part of it, absorbed into this empire.

They went and found all these tribes and united them together.

And they pushed the empire even farther than the Babylonians did. Clear up into here, taking what we would call Turkey, took the land of the Hittites, and pushed the Greeks, and actually had control of part of the Greeks for a while. The Greeks had, along the coast here, they had all kinds of colonies. And one reason why the Greeks and the Persians ended up finding a war was because the colonies picked a fight with Persia, and then asked the Greeks to come help us. And of course, they were looking at this huge empire, and they're this little group of city-states that spend most of their time fighting each other. The Greek city-states just fought each other all the time. But these colonies picked a fight with Persia, and they ended up having to fight a war with them. It's called the Medo-Persian Empire because, sort of like just the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians, and it gave them this population base, the billionaire empire, off of. This was emerging of two people, the Medes and the Persians. And these two peoples merged together and had a population base and a wealth base that they could build this huge army. But they had a totally different approach to empire than the Babylonians did. And we'll talk about that in a minute. In 539, Darius the Mede took Babylon without a fight. Now, we know some about those activities because of what it says in Daniel, chapter 5. Now, in Daniel chapter 5, it describes that there's this big, this king, one of the Babylonian kings, that's having this big festival. Now, I'm going to tell you what history says about the festival. The problem is, is this is from Herodotus. Herodotus was a Greek historian around hundreds of years later. Herodotus is a sort of historian, travelogue writer, legends. He traveled all over the world, gathering their stories and putting them together as a history. The problem is, he never made a difference between history, legends, stories. Herodotus is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, but he's the only information we have. Babylon itself, the city of Babylon, was so large at the time, largest city in the world, at least as far as we know. I don't know about China, but as far as the western one. And it was created in such a way, the walls were so high and so thick, they could not be breached. Nobody at this time had the kind of equipment it would take to breach those walls. And so the Persians surrounded them, but they could not take the city. The Babylonians came out, fought against them, were defeated, simply retreated back into the city, and they had enough food to last them for years. Plus, the Euphrates River flowed right through the city, so they had constant water. They had no problems. So they were basically having a big party. And that's what we see in Daniel 5. Look at Daniel 5. And this is why Herodotus is given some credibility. Now, Daniel is still alive. This is years later. Remember, this is over 60 years from the time he has a teenager. So he's an old man. Just before this, he was thrown in the lion's den. He was an old man when they threw him in the lion's den. Now, Shazar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in the presence of the thousand. And when he tasted the wine, now Shazar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels, which his father never could desert, and had taken from the temple and had been in Jerusalem. And the king and his lords, his wives, and the concubines, may drink from them. So they brought these in. So they're having a big festival. And you know what happened, and all the kids are taught this in Sabbath school. A hand appeared and wrote on the wall. I know it's always embarrassing for kids, but any kid want to tell us what was on the wall? Anybody remember? Oh, Tom, you're not a kid!

Okay, Tom, what was on the wall? It's basically means, I balanced you... this is a loose translation... I balanced you, and you failed, and judgment is coming. That's not the exact translation, but your exact translation is in chapter 5 here. That's what happens. Now, what happened... I'll just tell the rest of the story. What happened was, down river, down the Rifadeus River, according to Herodotus, the Persians built a lake just where they couldn't see it, and then built a canal.

And then that night, they lifted the gates off the canal and drained the river off. They changed the flow of the river. That's not the only time in history that's been done, where a city has been taken because they diverted the river. And they simply marched under the gates on the riverbed, and they were having a big party. What the Bible says is, they were having a big party, and the Persians marched in. It doesn't tell us how they did it.

Well, Herodotus gives us the only explanation how that could happen. They drained the river, drained the river off, marched under the gates, showed up inside. And according to Herodotus, the King and his people partied for hours, not knowing that the city had been taken, because it took them a long time to conquer the whole city and move inward. Everybody was asleep. A few battles broke out here and there, and they're all drunk. And the Persian general shows up and says, you know, I conquered your city. So Daniel witnesses this. Daniel is part of this. Now, on 530 A.B.C., Mesopotamia and Judah came under Persian rule. In other words, as the Persians now rolled over, they just rolled over the Babylonian Empire. The Persian army kept showing up and saying, we're now the boss. We're now the mafia. But they did something different. The Persians literally tried to administer an empire. They tried to do something different. They set up provinces all over with satraps, governors in charge. And they literally tried to create a centralized government in this huge empire. And so they would take an area and they would train somebody. He would be in charge. He would collect taxes. They would try to have some kind of judicial system. And it was always backed up by the Persian army, which was huge, because every place they conquered, they took the best of their troops and made them part of their army. So they were like the special forces collection of the world. They took everybody's best and made a part of their army.

So the only ones they couldn't do were the Greeks. The Greeks had made up a new way of fighting. That's a whole other story, but that's just fascinating. You know, you have this army that's everybody's special forces. They get defeated by this tiny little army, because they created a new way to fight that nobody could figure out how to beat. So King Cyrus comes along. And I'm jumping through this, because I just this is an overview. Okay, this isn't this isn't I don't want to fill with too many details. King Cyrus comes along. He's mentioned that Ezra and the Amaya. Ezra and the Amaya are part they're the the Jewish leaders that helped bring the Jews back into Judah, because they was it was prophesied they would go into captivity of Babylon for 70 years. Well, then what happens is the Babylon is taken over by the Persians. And what the Persians do is, look, you were separated from your homeland, because that's what when the Babylonians, when they finally came in, they conquered you, they moved you out of the homeland. That way, you broke your ties to the land. It destroyed your culture. It destroyed your religion. You can have your religion, your culture, as long as you pay tribute.

When you didn't pay tribute, we destroy everything you are. They moved people all over the place. These Syrians did the same thing. They just take a million people, or a hundred thousand people, move them here and another hundred thousand, move them in. Whole places of the empire could be vacant for long periods of time, because they just moved everybody out. Well, after a while, people said, okay, we'll pay you tribute. They were also very brutal in the way they treated people. The Persians come along and say, we don't want to do this. We all want you to go home.

We want you to have your culture, your religion. We just want you to be loyal to Persia. And we'll put a satrap in charge of your area, and we'll give you all better lives. And this little thing here, in fact, it was in the United States recently. It was the travel, it traveled through the United States. It is a cylinder from King Cyrus that, if you can read all the writing on it, basically says, I want all the peoples, the Babylonians, moved around to go back home. And so what we have in the Bible is this king that tells all the Jews to go back home. And, you know, all that can't be true.

Well, this cylinder, which is 100% accepted by all archaeologists, is from the time of Cyrus. It wasn't just the Jews he did this with. Go back home and let's all work together. Let's build an empire together. So it was a whole different viewpoint. A whole different viewpoint.

So he issues the decree, and the Jews begin to go back. This is from Ezra here, the actual decree where he said for them to go back, the wording is very similar to the cylinder. Also, the vessels taken by King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon were returned.

Now, not all the Jews went back. This is very important to understand. Not all the Jews went back. But Ezra did take some back. They were by this time scattered over some of the empire. So they're not just in Babylon. They've been scattered in different places. Nehemiah was the governor in the 400s and built the walls, and they began to rebuild the temple. Also, it was just before this time, somewhere around probably the 70s, 480s, that you have a plot in the Persian government to kill the Jews at the Persian capital. That's the story of Esther. Now, that happened a little before Ezra and Nehemiah sent back. But there's a point there where there's actual attempt to kill the Jews that are in the Persian capital, and you read Esther. So, Esther, Nehemiah, Ezra, those are all books about this time period when they were in captivity and how they were going back. So, the chest and arms made of silver represents the kingdom of Medio-Persia. You say, well, how do you come up with that?

There is no other explanation. When you read it, Daniel 3 where he says, Oh, Lord, you are the first kingdom, and a kingdom shall come after you.

And the Babylonian kingdom lasted about a little over 60 years longer, and then the Persians literally showed up and conquered them. So, they're the ones right after them.

Now, you have the Persian Empire. Okay, what comes after that? Well, this gets sort of easy. That's the easy part of it, because they're going to be conquered by another. Greece shows up, and Greece conquers the Persian Empire. Now, the Greek's approach to empire was totally different than the Persians. Now, I want to show you the extent here of the Greek Empire.

It's bigger than the Persian Empire, but not really.

Not really. The Greeks never administered this empire. Okay? What happens is Alexander the Great takes a very small Greek army after a thermopoly, after a marathon, you know, all those defeats of Persia being shoved out of Greece. Time goes by. Alexander the Great finally takes Mesopotamia, which is up here, and unites the Greeks together as one people. Well, not entirely, because even some of the Greeks wouldn't go with him. But he gets an army, he marches across here, and he goes all over the place. And he just destroys every Persian army because of the phalanx. He just destroys every—the Persians can't believe it. They have the special forces of the whole world, and these 30,000 Greeks just keep defeating their army wherever it is.

Wherever they go, they don't really try to set up an empire. They just loom everybody.

So, if the Babylonians were the mafia, this is just—the Greeks were just a gang. It was just a big gang. And they just looted every place they went and said, we'll be back, so you better—you better—you know, so when they showed up, everybody was, oh, good, the Greeks are here, they were really—but they did something else.

Every place they went, they tried to educate people in a Greek way. And what's really strange, Alexander the Great died only after a few years of conquering. He had his army cut over here in India, and they revolted because they had no idea the world was so big. And every place they went, there were more cities. And they said, we're not going to keep doing this. We want to go home. We've conquered more than the world that we knew. We want to go home. We've conquered the whole Persian Empire. They go beyond the Persian Empire. And, of course, he dies over here. And the Greek army goes back. But as they go back, they sort of leave Greeks in charge of every place. They didn't rule by an army. They ruled by culture. They ruled by culture. So, Alexander the Great comes along, conquers Persia, and he spreads Greek culture. What you find immediately, all through the Persian Empire, is Greek being learned, the language. You have Greek art. You have Greek vases. You have Greek architecture, because they see this as a superior culture. And so, now you have the formation of what we know as Western civilization. The Olympic Games, public schools. These are all Greek concepts. And so, you have the formation. You ever notice when you go to Washington, D.C., that all the buildings look like Greek and Roman buildings? What do we have here in Nashville?

So, we actually... our culture is much more Greek than it is anything else.

So, he dies. And now he has an empire that has no real structure.

Just some... okay, you're in charge. Off we go. He'd leave a couple guys in charge of this city and go off. What's amazing is that they were holding it together. I don't know how.

So, his generals fight, and they end up fighting a war for 40 years, and they end up dividing it into four. Now, this is real important in other parts of the Bible, because of these four areas, only two of them really survived for long periods of time. The Ptolemy's who ruled Egypt, and the Seleucids of work who ruled Syria. Tell you how long the Ptolemy's ruled Egypt.

Cleopatra. Y'all know who Cleopatra is, right? The one who was seduced Julius Caesar, you know, that great story. She was Greek. They were still ruling... she wasn't Egyptian, she was Greek. The Greeks were still ruling, but the Romans showed up hundreds of years later. So, they ruled Egypt for hundreds of years and tried to make... they couldn't make Egypt totally Greek. Their culture was too strong, so they mixed them together. Syria and that area was ruled by the Seleucids. They said, okay, what does that have to do with the Bible?

For 150 years now, the Jews are under the Greeks. The Persians let them go home. But now the Greeks come along. Now, you know where Syria is and where Egypt is.

Now, the Greeks fought each other for 150 years. And if you're from Syria, how do you get... think of a map. I'll show you a map in a minute. How do you get from Syria to Egypt? You go to Judah. How do you get from Egypt to Syria? You go through... so guess where they fought? The two Greek armies fought for 150 years, and they just marched back and forth across Judah. They have lots and lots of coins from that time period, and some are Seleucids, some are Ptolemies, depending on who happened to be conquering the Jews at the time.

This is very important in the history of Daniel, but we won't go through that. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV, Antiochus Epiphanes, literally tried to force the Jews to give up their religion. He murdered them. It was horrible. And adopt Greek culture. You have to have a superior culture, and you have to worship Zeus also. By the way, this is a coin from Antiochus Epiphanes from that time period, or a picture of a coin. So, he desecrated the Jewish Temple, and a Jewish priest named Judas Maccabeus. Now, some of you might have an Apocrypha, and you'll notice it has 1st and 2nd Maccabees in it. 1st and 2nd Maccabees is the history of Judas Maccabeus. I know this is a lot of information, but if you can just get enough of it, you'll see where Daniel II is really, really important, and let us understand a history. Remember, we're reading about the Greek Empire. Daniel knew nothing about the Greek Empire. It hadn't happened yet. We're taking history and showing where the prophecy took place. The prophecy happened. We know it happened because we have all this history. The Maccabees defeated them around 164 BC, and this is known as Hanukkah. That's what Hanukkah is. It's the celebration of when the Maccabees defeated the Greeks.

So now we have the bronze part of the statue. The belly and thighs made of bronze represent the Greeks. But the Greeks were conquered. Actually, Persia and Greece are both mentioned in Daniel. Persia and Greece are both mentioned as they're prophesied in Daniel 7 and Daniel 8. They're both prophesied. Daniel lived and saw Persia come, but he doesn't receive the name of the fourth empire. The only reason we know the name of the fourth empire is because somebody conquered the Greeks. Someone finally figured out how to defeat the phalanx.

And that's Rome. The Romans come along and they figure out how to defeat the phalanx. And the Romans conquered Greece. But if you read, I can't remember, it's Lydie or Seneca. One of the Roman writers from the first century BC, first century AD, said that actually Greece had conquered Rome because what Rome did was absorb the Greek culture into theirs. They absorbed the entire Greek culture. And so if you were Roman, an educated person, you actually went and got somebody from Greece to become a slave to come into your home and teach your children. All educated children in Rome were top of Greeks. So the Greeks won anyways, even though they were conquered by the Romans. Now you'll notice the Roman Empire. Notice the shift. Notice that you shift. Remember, this was the Persian Empire. It's all shifted to the west. And different culture forms over here. It becomes less and less Eastern and more and more Western. It's interesting that the Romans never could defeat the peoples who lived in this area. There was lots of wars between the Parthian Empire and the Romans, but they never could take this area. But they did move this way. It was just too big of an empire to take. So they moved this way, took Egypt, Libya.

Why did people fight over Egypt so much? We don't understand today because Egypt is the spurtles it used to be. For 2,000 years, the breadbasket of the world was Egypt. They produced more wheat. They fed all of Europe for 2,000 years with wheat. So now we have this empire, the Roman Empire, and it goes way up here into Gaul, which is France and Germany. This, I guess, is Switzerland here. It goes way up here because no one wanted Switzerland. Let me just notice. So they go up in here and they take France. They take what is Germany, Germania. The Germans just wouldn't give up. They finally figured a way to beat the Germans. They made them soldiers. And now Rome had German soldiers fighting for them. They go over here, they take Spain, which is off here, and they take most of England. They don't take the Scots. They're just too wild and crazy, which we all, if you know Scottish people, that's true. So that's why they built a wall all the way across England. The Scots weren't worth defeating. They just wouldn't give up. So they built a wall across England and keep the Scots and the Irish up there.

So they take England. They take most of France. They take all of what today is France, all of Spain. And this is a huge empire. But they have a totally different approach to empire. Yes, they want tribute, but it's more than that. What the Romans do is they actually build an empire. They build a postal system. They build a road system. There are roads that exist today built by the Romans 2,000 years ago. They build aqueducts so that water flows in the cities. They bring a modern concept that the world had never known before, indoor plumbing.

This was the Romans. This was amazing people, engineering-wise. And the idea was keep your culture, keep your gods. In fact, we'll accept your gods.

You know, when I went to Pompeii, it's amazing. One of the temples that survived is of Isis, which is the Egyptian god. Romans didn't care. Bring your gods. Our gods are better than yours, anyways. You know, it was illegal. Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar made laws, so it was illegal to take a Jew to court on the Sabbath.

The Jews had more protected under the Roman Empire for quite a while, which allowed the church to form, by the way, if they would have been protected, the church could have formed. They lost their protection when they revolted against not only in 70 AD, but 135 AD. They actually tried to overthrow the Roman Empire. The Jews revolted all over the Empire, and the Romans said, that's enough. You don't get any more privileges.

So there was engineering, there was postal system, there was a road system, there was a...

they allowed you to have a certain amount of autonomy as long as it didn't cause problems.

Herod the Great was put in charge of Judea and Galilee and this whole area.

But the Jews kept revolting. So eventually they got a Roman governor. You didn't get a Roman governor if you were good. If you just listen to the Romans, they let you alone, just pay tribute, because here's what Rome was all about. Free trade. Rome created an empire based on free trade.

Let's just trade and we'll protect you. Now, underneath all this is something, though, very ugly. There's only one way to keep this going. People being people, because there's all different peoples. They can't keep them to get along. It was by the the heel of the Roman Legion.

They were the most well-trained, best-equipped soldiers in the world. And for 500 years they ruled. The problem is they had to... violence was the only way they could keep this together. So when Rome wasn't fighting somebody else, because they kept pushing the borders, until they got so big they didn't have enough soldiers to do it.

Anyways, if Rome could do this, it was the biggest city in the world.

And they valued boys over girls. So people let their baby girls die.

They exposed them to the elements and kept the boys, until the boy population got so large you had to do something with them. So for a long time, that is one way they kept their army going. They had so many men. The only way you could get a job is to go into the army.

And when you went in, it wasn't like three years. Like today, it was 20 years. If you tried to get out, you got killed. So there was no easy out. There was no dishonorable discharge. You got... you were in the army for 20 years.

And for a lot of them, that was acceptable. They'd go in as a very young person and then retire. Oh, I'm going to retire in Spain, taking all the loot I gathered along the way.

So it was the legions that kept them together.

37 BC, just a little extra information here. Here the great was appointed king by Octavian. Octavian became the first... the first real emperor. It was his uncle Julius that got killed. But then he became known as Augustus. And it was here that Herod the Great began to refurbish the temple. Jesus is born during this time. This is why some people thought Jesus was the Messiah right away. Why? This is the fourth kingdom of Daniel. Ah, it's the fourth kingdom. The Messiah is going to come and set up the kingdom. So they saw that prophecy. They believed that he had come to do this. They thought he was going to overthrow the Roman Empire. David's going to come and the Roman Empire. Peter says, I got two swords. You think that's enough?

Well, of course. Fire is supposed to come out of his mouth and just slay everybody and Peter will go mop up. That wasn't exactly what was going to happen. He was crucified by Pontius Pilate and resurrected three days and three nights later. 70 AD, the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. This is fascinating if you've never been to Rome. Titus' arch. Titus was the general in his arch commemorating his victories. You will find all these reliefs that show like here they're taking, that's the menorah out of the temple.

See, the Arabs today did claim that the temple never existed.

We get an almost 2,000 year old arch in downtown Rome in the Forum with scenes of them sacking the temple. 2,000 years old. So yeah, there's all kinds of proof that it happened.

It weakened over time and the Roman Empire fell in 476 BC, but that's not entirely true.

The Roman Empire split in two under Constantine in the early 300s because they got too big to tell you. They couldn't administer it. The eastern part that was administered out of Constantinople lasted into the mid-1400s. It lasted for almost 1,000 years after this. And the western empire kept trying to be revived. People kept trying to recreate the western empire, but they could never do it. It never lasted very long. But there were constant attempts to recreate the Roman Empire. They're called the Dark Ages because once the Roman Empire fell, western Europe fell into a time of barbarism that's almost hard to believe. One of the worst times in history, any place in the world, what western Europe went through for almost 1,000 years.

So now we get back to the statue. Legs of iron feet were a mixture of miry clay.

It took violence to keep their empire together because they couldn't get all the peoples always to work together because somebody always wanted their independence. And the Romans couldn't figure out why. They were so superior, why don't you just want us? And some people free trade was wasn't as important as their culture, and they couldn't figure that out. The legs of iron suggested this kingdom would be strong as iron would be very good smash and crush things, but it's mixed with clay. There's a weakness to it.

One of the reasons they collapsed was because of I shouldn't get into this. I'm running out of time.

No, I'll go on. No, I'll tell you.

Free trade, everybody can make coins. Every town can make coins. Every city can make coins. Every province can make coins. And so everybody made their own coins. And then they had inflation because everybody was making coins. They had no concept of control of money supply. That meant nothing. They couldn't figure out why prices kept going up. The reason why is everybody had a pocket full of coins because everybody was making coins. And they actually had inflation because of that's one of the reasons they fell. The kingdom would have to be a mixture of people who would not be united. Now, let's go back to Daniel 2.

Now, it's very important when we look at these two legs and these feet because they last. You can say, well, the Roman Empire fell. But when we look at this Daniel 2, let's look at verse 41. Where as you saw the feet of toes, partly of potter's clay, and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so shall the kingdom be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will beagle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of these kings, a little bit before, he said the ten toes were ten kings. So, we have a prophecy that says, Nebuchadnezzar is starting with you. Then a kingdom is going to come along and supplant you, which, of course, Nebuchadnezzar was dead by then, but the Babylonians fell to the Persians. And the Persians are going to be supplanted by the Greeks. The Greeks are going to be supplanted by the Romans. The Romans collapsed. There is no, quote unquote, Roman Empire today, but this doesn't talk about a fifth empire. It's still talking about the fourth empire. And this empire splits in two. Remember I said that the Roman Empire split in two?

Eastern-Western empires. And then it comes down to a point where there's ten kings, but the people really don't stick together, but there's a lot of strength to it. And in the days of these ten kings, verse 44, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. And it shall break the pieces and consume all those kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Okay. The empires get to the fourth one. The fourth one splits in two. There is some point where that empire exists again, and there are ten kings of all. Now, all you have to do to go through this is read Daniel 2. That's all we're doing today. Read Daniel 2. It is a fourth empire. We know what the fourth empire was. We know it's split into two legs. We know that there is a time when that empire has ten kings. And in the days of those ten kings, God sets up His kingdom on earth. Has God's kingdom been set up on earth yet? prophecy hasn't happened yet.

So we can look back historically and see where all the events of these four empires has occurred except this here and the stone, which is the kingdom of God. So, the stone was cut out by human hands, struck the statue on the feet, and broke them in pieces. The rest of the statue was broken to pieces and that were made was carried away in the wind. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain. And I'm just summarizing what Daniel 2 says. It filled the whole earth. The stone represents God's eternal kingdom. It's more powerful than any other kingdom.

This is a very simple prophecy. You think, wow, that was a lot of time to go through something very simple. And there's a lot more details we can cover. But here's the important part of a template. It's what the foundation you lay other things on. So we can go back to the time of the Babylonian Empire. And, you know, I did in the feast, we went to the Louvre, and we saw some wall. We saw some carvings from the Babylonian Empire and walls from the Assyrian Empire.

And I could stand all day there. In the Persian Empire, there were things they had brought in, huge statues and pillars from the Persian Empire. You know, from the time of Darius, from the time of the people we see about in the Bible. And we're looking at a prophecy that the most of it, 90% of it, has already happened.

Daniel didn't know these things. They happened. We've lived through it. Or not lived through it. Humanities lived through it. We can read about it. And this isn't hidden knowledge. Everything I've told you today is in secular books. The history of Babylon and the history of Persia and Greece and Rome. There are thousands of books and pictures. There are ancient books that they translated into English. You could read the campaigns of Julius Caesar translated into English. You could read the live of Augustus Caesar by Sertodius who wrote, I don't know, less than 100 years after he died.

Have a copy at home if you want to read it. It's in English. I can't read it Latin, so I can't help you with that. But I have an English copy. But what we have is the last 10% hasn't happened. And I said there's something happening in evangelical Christianity. This is what I want to sum up. What we'll do in the Bible study, I'm just going to take this and show you how to use this to explain about 14 verses in Daniel 7. We'll just show you how it fits. But what we know here is that there must be some... I'm not even talking about revelation. If I didn't have revelation, I would know this. There must be some revival, some attempt, some organization that is centered around and resembles and is part of what was the old Roman Empire.

And it has to have 10 kings. But the peoples don't really quite mingle together. It's going to have to be held together through economic power and violence, just like the Romans did.

And that is going to be the time when Christ comes, the son of God's Kingdom.

Now that's a template for all kinds of prophecies, and especially a template for revelation. I would not know what revelation teaches if I did not know Daniel 2. I would have to... I wouldn't even know how to explain it.

Daniel 2 lays that that groundwork for us. Now what's happening in evangelical Christianity is the belief that Islam are these 10 toads. The problem is it can't be. It has to be some form of the Roman Empire. It can't be. Well, I guess it could be. If somehow Islam took over Europe, then it could be. But you see what I mean? Islam itself cannot be this empire, because it's not a fifth empire. It's a fourth empire. So that helps us understand this has to be centered in Europe. It's going to involve other peoples that are probably involved either the destruction or absorption of the United States. It'll be absorbed into its sub- through table topics and we go through discussing world events. We're going to be looking at what's happening in Europe and the Middle East. Daniel 2 tells us to. Daniel 2 tells us to do that. So we'll be going through that. Okay, well, like I said, I know for some of you it's like, oh, I know that that's old hat. But the old hat prophecy buffs, thanks for bearing with it. For others, I hope it opened up some ideas and realization that Daniel 2 does apply a template for our understanding of a lot of prophecy.