INTERPRETATION OF THE DREAM.

A strange dream it was. You find it in verses 31-35 of Daniel chapter 2. And according to verse 28, this has something to do with “the latter days”, WITH OUR TIME. It concerns you and me! “Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. …” That was it. It all came back to the king’s mind. Can’t you hear him saying, “That’s it! That’s it!” Exactly as he had seen it in the dream, Daniel was describing it. This image had a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, sides of brass, legs of iron. And the feet were a mixture of iron and clay.

Then: “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”

What could it mean? The king was immediately interested in this glittering head of gold. What was Daniel saying? “Thou, O king, art a king of kings: … Thou art this head of gold.”

If only Daniel had stopped there. Any clever politician would have. But Daniel was interpreting the dream exactly as the God of heaven had given it. “And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, …” Nebuchadnezzar was the undisputed ruler of the world that he knew. But his golden empire was not to continue. It was to be succeeded by another – one inferior to Babylon.

This was the blow that cut into the king’s deepest emotions. This was the revelation that led him, a little later, to erect out on the plain a great image ALL of gold – in which his golden empire was represented as never to be succeeded by another. How worthless, however, are the dreams or the golden images of men when God has spoken! Images and music and fanfare will never cause the God of heaven to bow any more than the three faithful Hebrews out there on the plain! Read the story in Daniel chapter three.

Daniel spoke now of “…, another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: …”

History was writing itself in advance. Babylon was soon to fall, to be succeeded by the kingdom of the Medes and Persians. You remember how Cyrus took the city on the night of the handwriting on the wall. Then came Alexander the Great, a third world ruler. Here was the man who wept because there was no more worlds to conquer. Here was another dictator whose dreams worked out – because the moving span of world history had not yet bumped up against those seven words of prophecy that changed it all.

Then came Rome, the iron kingdom. Four world kingdoms, one after another. Only four. And after them,

“… whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; …And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.”

Four kingdoms, then divisions: breaking down. History tells us that what God said is true. History has followed its blue-print of divine prediction. Rome was divided. In fact, it was divided into ten kingdoms, just as there were ten toes on the feet of the image. These have become the nations of Europe today

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 852