Daniel 2: 31-45
Here is King Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
Your Majesty, in your vision you saw standing before you a giant statue, bright and shining, and terrifying to look at. Its head was made of the finest gold; its chest and arms were made of silver; its waist and hips of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. While you were looking at it, a great stone broke loose from a cliff without anyone touching it, struck the iron and clay feet of the statue, and shattered them. At once the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled and became like the dust on a threshing place in summer. The wind carried it all away, leaving not a trace. But the stone grew to be a mountain that covered the whole Earth.
This was the dream. Now I will tell your Majesty what it means. Your Majesty, you are the greatest of all kings. The God of Heaven has made you emperor and given you power, might, and honor. He has made you ruler of all the inhabited Earth and ruler over all the animals and birds. You are the head of gold.
After you there will be another empire, not as great as yours, and after that a third, an empire of bronze, which will rule the whole Earth.
And then there will be a fourth empire, as strong as iron, which shatters and breaks everything. And just as iron shatters everything, it will shatter and crush all the earlier empires.
You also saw that the feet and the toes were partly clay and partly iron. This means that it will be a divided empire. It will have something of the strength of iron, because there was iron mixed with the clay. The toes--partly iron and partly clay--will mean that part of the empire will be strong and part of it weak. You also saw that the iron was mixed with the clay. This means that the rulers of that empire will will try to unite their families by intermarriage, but they will not be able to, any more than iron can mix with clay.
At that time of those rulers the God of Heaven will establish a kingdom that will never end. It will never be conquered, but will completely destroy all those empires and then last forever. You saw how a stone broke loose from a cliff without anyone touching it and how it struck the statue made of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God is telling your Majesty what will happen in the future. I have told you exactly what you dreamed, and have given you its true meaning.
Wow. God told this ancient king His whole plan of how history will play out in the World from his time all the way to when Jesus returns and sets up His Kingdom.
Has the history of the World played out as this has it?
biblestudytools.com gives this insight:
"The world power in its totality appears as a colossal human form: Babylon the head of gold, Medo-Persia the breast and two arms of silver, Graeco-Macedonia the belly and two thighs of brass, and Rome, with its Germano-Slavonic offshoots, the legs of iron and feet of iron and clay, the fourth still existing."
So World History has played out just as God showed so long ago, before any of it happened yet.
Later in this book, God revealed to Daniel more details of this future history, especially the ten toes and the timing of when things will happen at that time to set up the World for the coming of Messiah, the stone that grows into the World-wide government that will never end.
Since God is our Maker, and the Planner and Designer of everything that exists, He has the wisdom and the power to see that the progression of the history of the World will play out exactly as He planned it. Everything has a purpose, and all the choices of Mankind's "free will" are all incorporated into that time-stream that inexorably carries us continually into the future, day by day.
And we are already at the end of the human governments, with the Roman Empire having split into ten divisions, more or less, repeatedly. Just look at the League of Nations, look at the European Union, look at the United Nations. We are replaying this scene over and over, and one of these "ten kings" governments will be in power at the time of the Coming of Christ our King.
How much longer will He tarry? He is waiting for every person who will come to repentance (II Peter:3:9) to come into His Kingdom, not leaving anyone behind (John 6:39). And when this Gospel, this Good News that God has redeemed us by Jesus' Blood, has been preached in the whole World, and everyone has heard it; then "the end" shall come (Matthew 24:14).
Are you ready to meet Him in the clouds? I trust that I am ready and I look for Him every day. I look at the clouds and am reminded that "He will come with clouds" (Revelation 1:7), and I wonder if they will be the clouds in the sky, Heavenly clouds, or clouds of Glory!
He could be here any day now!
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
