Daniel 2.31-45-The Tribulation and the Times of the Gentiles from Man's Perspective
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Sunday September 2, 2007
The Day of the Lord: Daniel 2:31-45-The Tribulation and the Times of the Gentiles from Man’s Perspective
Lesson # 5
Please turn in your Bibles to Daniel 2:31.
This morning we will temporarily suspend our studies in the book of Romans by continuing our series dealing with the prophetic subject called “the Day of the Lord,” which we conduct the first Sunday of every month when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
“The Day of the Lord” is “not” a literal twenty-four period but rather is an extended period of time beginning with God’s dealing with Israel after the rapture at the beginning of the tribulation period and extending through the 2nd Advent and the millennial age unto the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.
Last week we left off studying the events of Daniel’s Seventieth Week, which is also called “the Great Tribulation” period.
This morning we will study the Tribulation Period in relation to the “Times of the Gentiles” since the former will bring an end to the latter and it will also help us to understand the first major event that will take place during the first half of the Tribulation period, namely, the rise of the revived Roman Empire under Antichrist.
In Luke 21:24, the Lord Jesus Christ makes mention of “the times of the Gentiles” in relation to the Tribulation period in His Olivet Discourse.
Luke 21:23-24, “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
“The times of the Gentiles” refers to an extended period of time when the Gentiles are the dominant world powers and Israel is subject to those powers and extends from the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar (586 B.C.) and continues through the Tribulation (Revelation 11:2).
This period of history includes the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the church age and the Tribulation period.
This phrase does not rule out temporary Jewish control of Jerusalem as has occurred in the past during the Maccabean era (164-63 B.C), the first Jewish revolt against Rome (A.D. 66-70), the second Jewish revolt (A.D. 132-135) and now since 1967 and the Six-Day War.
However, this control is only temporary because Revelation 11:1-2 predicts at least another three-and-one-half years of Gentile domination during the last half of Daniel’s Seventieth Week, also known as the Tribulation.
Therefore, any Jewish takeover of the city of David before the Second Advent of Christ must be therefore viewed as a temporary one and does not mean that “the times of the Gentiles” has ended since it can only end with the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, which will forever stop Gentile powers waging war against Israel.
There are two great prophecies that appear in Daniel chapter two and chapter seven, which present to us the prophetic outline of the Gentiles during the Times of the Gentiles.
The prophecy that appears in Daniel chapter two, views the Times of the Gentiles from the perspective of man whereas the prophecy in Daniel chapter seven, views it from God’s perspective.
These two prophecies will also reveal that there will be a revived form of the Roman Empire during the Tribulation period under Antichrist, which will be destroyed by the Second Advent of Jesus Christ.
This morning we will study the prophecy in Daniel chapter two and next month we will study the prophecy that appears in Daniel chapter seven.
In Daniel 2:1-30, we read of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, dreaming dreams and summoning his wise men to interpret these dreams for him who fail to do so, which presented Daniel with an opportunity to interpret the King’s dreams.
Daniel 2:31-35 records Daniel revealing the dreams to the King and this is where will pick up the account.
Daniel 2:31-35, “You, O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
Daniel 2:31-35 provides the content of the dream, which consisted of two objects, an image of a man and a stone cut without hands out of the side of a mountain indicating that it was not human in origin.
Daniel 2:36-39, “This was the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king. You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory and wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold. After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.”
Daniel progressed from the top to the bottom of the image, which represented the passage of time, thus the upper parts portrayed earlier time and the lower parts represented later time.
Daniel states that the head of gold represented both the Babylonian empire and its great king since Orientals regarded kings and their kingdoms synonymously.
In Daniel 2:39, Daniel reveals to the King of Babylon that Medo-Persia and Greece constituted the second and third portions of the statue in his dream.
The Medo-Persians conquered the Babylonians in 539 B.C. and are represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams as the arms of silver representing two distinct nations, namely, Media and Persia that together defeated Babylon.
Although the Medo-Persia Empire lasted over 200 years (539-330 B.C.) longer than the Neo-Babylonian Empire of 87 years (626-539), the Medo-Persian Empire was inferior to it, as silver is compared with gold.
History confirms that the Medo-Persian Em¬pire, and the empire of Alexander which followed, lacked the central authority and fine organization which characterized the Babylonian Em¬pire, thus the Babylonian Empire was greater.
Daniel himself seems to imply that the inferiority of the succeeding empires does not prevent them from wide geographic control, for he specifically states that the “third kingdom” will “rule over all the earth.”
The belly and thighs of bronze of the image represented the third kingdom to arise, which was the Grecian Empire under Alexander the Great who conquered the Medo-Persian Empire between 334 and 330 B.C. and assumed authority over them and their territory as well as the entire earth.
The two thighs of the image represented the division of Alexander’s Kingdom after his death at an early age when four of his generals divided his kingdom but only two of these played important roles in Jewish history.
Daniel 2:40-45, “Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces. In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery. In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
In Daniel 2:40-45, we read where Daniel informs the King that Rome will be the fourth great Gentile power after Greece, which is represented by the image’s two legs of iron and feet and toes of iron and clay.
This fourth kingdom conquered the Greek Empire in 63 B.C. and though the Roman Empire was divided into two legs and culminated in a mixture of iron and clay, it was one empire.
The two legs of iron are an accurate portrayal of the Roman Empire since it ruled extensive areas of both the western and eastern divisions of the world and eventually was divided in A.D. 364 into two political divisions, the Western portion had Rome as its capital and the East had Constantinople as its capital.
The Roman Empire was characterized by its strength, as iron is stronger than bronze (Greece), silver (Medo-Persia) and gold (Babylon) and was thus stronger than all the empires that preceded it.
However, the feet and toes of the image were a mixture of iron and clay, which indicates that there would two distinct stages of existence for the Roman Empire, namely, an earlier stage and a later one.
The mixture of iron and clay speaks of a progressive weakness and deterioration since iron and clay can not be mixed.
If iron and clay are put into a crucible, heated to the melting point and poured into a mold, when the pour has cooled the iron and clay remain separate and the clay can be broken out, which leaves a weak casting.
The Roman Empire was characterized by division (Western and Eastern) and deterioration since it could never unite the people they conquered to form a united empire and so in that sense the people were a “mixture” and were not united.
Just as iron is strong, so the final stage of the Roman Empire will be strong militarily and just as clay is characterized by brittleness, so the final stage of the Roman Empire will be characterized by division.
Different groups of people will unite to form the final stage of the Roman Empire but they will not adhere completely to one another just as iron and clay cannot adhere completely with each other.
Therefore, the final stage of the Roman Empire will consist of a federation of several divisions, which will unite for the sake of military strength but they will not integrate to the extent of losing their ethnic and cultural identities.
The ten toes of the image indicated that the final stage of the Roman Empire will consist of a ten-division federation.
Daniel 7:23-24 signifies that eventually the Roman Empire will consist of a federation of ten divisions with ten equal rulers (See Revelation 17:12).
Since the Roman Empire has never in its history consisted of a ten-division federation with ten equal rulers, we can conclude that this stage of the Empire’s existence will take place in the future during the Tribulation period.
Also, Daniel 2:45 records that “in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom,” i.e. the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, which has never taken place in history but is yet future.
Therefore, sometime in the future, after the rapture of the church, a revived form of the Roman Empire will be established.
The empire collapsed in Western Europe in 476 A.D. but will be brought to life again in the form of a ten-division federation that will ultimately give its allegiance to the Antichrist (Revelation 17).
In Daniel 2:40-44, we can observe that there are several important features concerning the final form of Gentile power: (1) The final form of Gentile power is an outgrowth from and final development of the fourth great empire, Rome, which is represented by the feet and ten toes (Daniel 2:41-42). (2) The final form of this power is marked by division (Daniel 2:41), which is the significance of the emphasis on the ten toes and the clay and the iron. (3) The final form of the Gentile power is marked by a federation of states of that which is weak and that which is strong, autocracy and democracy, the iron and the clay (Daniel 2:42). (4) This final divided condition is not now historical but is prophetic. The “kings” mentioned in Daniel 2:44 do not come into existence until the time when the “stone…cut out of the mountain without hands” appears (Daniel 2:45).
Daniel 2:44-45, “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
Daniel 2:44-25 reveals that the revived Roman Empire will be succeeded by a fifth kingdom, which is represented by the stone that “was cut out of the mountain without hands.”
In Scripture a rock often refers to Jesus Christ, Israel’s Messiah (Psalm 118:22; Isaiah 8:14; 28:16; Matthew 21:33-45; 1 Peter 2:4-8).
There are several features regarding this fifth and final kingdom: (1) It will be set up by the God of heaven and not by man. (2) It will never be destroyed so that no other kingdoms will succeed it. (3) It will end and destroy all Gentile kingdoms portrayed in the image of the dream and will endure forever. (4) It will fill the entire earth indicating that it will rule the earth literally just as the Gentile kingdoms ruled the known earth of their days.
Since the ancient Orientals regarded kings and kingdoms synonymously, the stone of the Nebuchadnezzar’s dream must represent not only the future kingdom of God but also its King who will be the Messiah (Psalm 2:2, 6), the Son of God (Psalm 2:4-12), the Son of Man who comes with the clouds of heaven (Daniel 7:13-14).
The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is that person (Matthew 16:16; 26:63-64) and so therefore, the stone represented the future kingdom of God and Jesus Christ Himself.
So therefore, we can see from this study that the Gentiles will be the dominant world powers and the people of Israel would be subject to those powers for an extended period of time, which has up to the present time and will again be the dominant political condition of the Great Tribulation.
This leads us to the communion service and so therefore, could we have the deacons pass out the communion elements and let us take a few minutes to meditate upon the Lord and prepare ourselves for the Lord’s Supper.
The Lord’s Supper is a commandment given by the Lord Jesus Christ to every church age believer to bring into remembrance His Unique Person and Finished Work on the Cross, both of which serve as the basis for fellowship with God and each other as members of the Body of Christ.
In the communion service, the bread portrays the sinless humanity of Christ, which was sacrificed for us and the wine portrays His spiritual death as our Substitute, both of which serve as the basis for fellowship with God and each other.
Luke 22:14, “When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him.”
Luke 22:15-16, “And He said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’”
Luke 22:17-18, “And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, ‘Take this and share it among yourselves for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.’”
Luke 22:19, “And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’”
Luke 22:20, “And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.’”