DANIELS PROPHECY OF THE END TIME KINGDOMS

DANIELS PROPHECY OF THE END TIME KINGDOMS 
I want to revisit my last talk about the Lord’s prayer which says ‘Your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’. In that talk I mentioned prophesies from Daniel and Revelation about the disruption of worldly kingdoms in the end times. I’m discussing today the link between the prayer of ‘Your Kingdom Come’ and visions that Daniel saw concerning the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven in greater measure in the days to come.  

The Book of Daniel is a key book in the unlocking of revelation concerning the prophetic purposes of God, particularly concerning end-time events in the ‘latter days’ and there are other visions of Daniel and Revelation that enlarge upon this basic vision. I want to share these prophesies not as dogma but because I have a conviction about the meaning of these prophesies and their relevance to the days in which we live and my approach will be to let Scripture interpret Scripture – all I can do is submit this approach for your discernment.
Daniel was one of the Jews living in captivity after Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon conquered Jerusalem and took hundreds of thousands of Jews into captivity for seventy years. God gave Daniel favour in the court of the king who found Daniel ‘ten times better’ than all the magicians and astrologers that were in his realm in all matters of wisdom and understanding. We can compare how God gave Joseph and Moses favour with Pharaoh.

In chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar had a dream where he saw a vision of a great statue that had a head of gold and shoulders and arms of silver and an abdomen and thighs of brass and legs of iron and feet and toes of iron and clay. And a stone was cut out from a mountain but not by human hands, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. This vision terrified the king, and he demanded that whoever was chosen to interpret the dream for him had to get it right or he would be killed. and when Daniel heard this, he prayed and asked for guidance and mercy from God and he offered to interpret the dream.

This vision may be one of the most important prophetic visions in the Bible since it lays the foundation for the rest of the book of Daniel and also the Book of Revelation or the apocalypse of John.  This vision also gives an understanding of many other end-time events. Daniel said to the king ‘There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will come to pass in the latter days (ah???rîyt? yom – time of the end) (Daniel 2:28)  and the ‘latter days’ refers to what would happen to Israel and the Church and the world in the end times. This vision depicts the nature of the world kingdoms from Babylon down to the present day and history shows us the dates when these kingdoms ruled. 
Daniel gives the king the interpretation that God showed to him.
Firstly Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold, representing the Babylonian empire from 606 BC according to history(v.12)

Secondly He told the king that the two shoulders and arms of silver represented the cruel double empire of Medo-Persia which would overtake his kingdom (in 536 BC - history)

Thirdly Daniel told the king that the kingdom of the abdomen and thighs of bronze would defeat the Medes and Persians. And history show that this was Greece –Alexander the Great, (331-333 BC)

Fourthly There were two legs of iron which would break in pieces and subdue all the other nations. History show us that this was the Roman Empire which would defeat the kingdom of Greece in 63 BC and rule the entire known world. The significance of the two legs of iron is that the Roman empire would later be divided into the Eastern and Western Empires. And the political and cultural and religious disparity between East and West still remains.

The fifth and final worldly kingdom of the feet and ten toes of a mixture of iron and clay speaks of a ten-nation world power that will emerge at the end of the age. And we read the emergence of that divided and divisive kingdom in Daniel 2:41’And as you saw that the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the fragile clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw the iron mixed with fragile clay, so they will mix with one another in posterity (zera), but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.
The iron in the feet is the expression of the ongoing nature of harsh dictatorial rule that represented the Roman empire in the statue. And the fragile earthly clay represents people. God made Man from the dust of the earth. And that clay speaks of government by the people for the people - democracy. This mixture of dictatorships and democracies mixing together but not holding together is a picture of the fragile nature of our global political and economic community that we see today and have for some years. This ten nation configuration of power is seen in the book of Revelation 17:12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings. 
These kingdom rulers will one day join forces from amongst the global prominent nations in Europe and Asia and Africa and the Middle east and the Americas and Oceana and the South Pacific – down under. It is a remarkable fact of history that there has never been a conventional war between two democracies, but today we see Russia as a dictatorship attacking Ukraine which is a democracy, and we see China threatening Taiwan, a democratic republic, and Israel being attacked by Hamas and other Islamic terrorist entitles. The differences between the ideologies and cultures of these two distinct rules of order will never hold together for long.  

The Scripture says ‘they will mix with one another in posterity  (Hebrew = zera = posterity which means planning together for a forever future. But we know they will not hold together despite the trade agreements and so-called treaties. So that ten toed kingdom is a configuration of ten nations that will plan to rule their world together forever, and this reflects their arrogance or hubris. The word hubris in the original Greek means an ‘insolent presumption towards God’. This is seen in the corrupt and oppressive political and financial power that is becoming rampant in these days. 
 
Then the vision goes on to say that a Great Stone smites the image on the feet (10 toed kingdom). And Daniel says ‘And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever’,
Daniel interprets the great Stone as the Kingdom of Heaven and goes on to say ‘just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold and it shall stand forever. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
I believe that the ’days of those kings’ has already begun and I believe we are living in times of global events that even the media are calling apocalyptic. And who or what is the great stone?
The stone/rock represents Jesus Christ over his faithful people and the rock smites the image of a ten-nation world empire at this end of the age. Jesus said “on this rock I will build my church (Matt 16:18). God’s people will reflect the rule of love and faith and justice of the Kingdom of Heaven, and this stone is cut out of a mountain without human hands. This is in stark contrast to the building of the tower of Babel, where man-made brick (beno – baked gleaming white bricks) is used to build a kingdom that will rule forever and reach to Heaven, just like the 10 toed kingdom. And that kingdom was scattered just as will be the final man-made kingdom that plans to rule forever. 
‘In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed’ . I submit to you that means that at some time and I have no idea when, by the grace of God and through the Holy Spirit the Kingdom of Heaven will begin to be expressed in greater measure in God’s people than ever before in the earth. This will prepare a people who understand what it means to believe and pray ‘Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ they will desire the will of God in their lives more than their own. It is time to be guided by the Holy Spirit to hear what God is saying to his people corporately and individually and to see with eyes of faith what he is doing from Heaven and to be part of that being done in the earth.