The Four Kingdoms of Daniel 2

All right, good morning Mr. Ward you'll mind open us up with a word of prayer

Daniel chapter 2 I'm gonna start and read in verse 36 and read to the end of the chapter

And then my plan is we'll walk through the text real quick so that I can try to get through the chapter today, and then we'll

Talk about some historical things and how God used it to develop things. I read into history

This was the dream now we will tell it's interpretation before the King you oh king are the king of kings to whom the

God of heaven has given the kingdom the power and the strength and the glory and wherever the sons of men dwell or the beast of the field or the birds of the sky.

He has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them and you are the head of gold.

After you will rise another kingdom inferior to you and another king to you.

of bronze which will rule over all the earth and then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron and in so much as iron crushes and shatters all things so like iron that breaks into pieces it will crush and break all these into pieces and then that you saw the feet and toes well they were 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 and so much as you saw the iron mixed with common clay and as the toes and the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery so some of the kingdom will be strong and other parts of it will be brittle and that you saw the iron mixed with common clay they will combine with one another and in the seat with the seat of men but they will not adhere to one another even as iron does not combine with pottery and in the days of those

Kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall 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 in as itself shall endure forever and in so much as you have saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands that it will crush the iron and a bronze and the clay and the silver and the gold and the great

God this great God has made known to you King what will take place in the future so the dream is true and it's interpretation trustworthy then

King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and he paid homage to Daniel and he gave orders to present him an offering in the fragrant and of incense and the king answered

Daniel and said surely your God is now the God of gods and the Lord of Kings and the revealer of mysteries since you have been able to reveal the mystery and the king promoted

Daniel and gave him many great gifts and he made him ruler over the providence of Babylon and the chief priest and all the wise men of Babylon and Daniel made a request to the king and he that he would appoint

Shadrach Meshach and Abednego over the administrations of the providence of Babylon while Daniel was in the king's court so last week we begin to see that Daniel was gonna enter he won basically won the approach of or the the heart of King Nebuchadnezzar by telling him the dream and he looked over to Ariok and wouldn't remember what he said to Ariok he said look

Ariok we're not gonna have to whack this guy now I thought I was gonna have to kill this guy any minute because he was not going to be able to tell me the dream now he has told me the dream so then he knew at that point he had won over the heart per se of Nebuchadnezzar that Nebuchadnezzar was now going to listen to him as he gave the interpretation now the first one was the head of gold and he looked at Nebuchadnezzar and said you're the man and I can imagine

Nebuchadnezzar going look at me I am the man and then he goes on and he talks about the

Medo -Persian Empire that will rise he doesn't say Medo -Persian but he says the only one that will come up after you it'll be inferior to you and I think that is what he heard hey there's gonna be someone that's going to come after you but he won't be as good as you and then he he talks about a third kingdom hey just asked last week did anybody have any headings in their

Bible that as a description of the of the kingdoms I just want you to know that even in the

New American Standard where it has the descriptions they don't even tell you the third kingdom that's how sometimes confusing

Bible interpreters still are at odds with one another of who these kingdoms are it's like after all of these years and all the commentaries at least some of them would be settled this one goes from the

Medo -Persian to Rome so you have a third kingdom that will that will be bronze and it will rule over the whole earth and then it says in verse 40 there will be a fourth kingdom it will be strong as iron and so much as it crushes and shatters all things so he says hey there's going to be a fourth kingdom that's going to come and it's going to be strong it's going to be stronger than the others and remember as we're going through this can y 'all see that that's awesome what was the second one come over here so Babylon was gold right right gate what was this what was this one just having y 'all say it to make sure y 'all paying attention not falling back asleep yes

I should probably slide over a little bit so he says Nebuchadnezzar is the man he is the head why did he say he was the the head of all things you remember why was he going to be supreme in his in his kingdom anybody remember unchecked unfettered monarchy hey under the

Babylonian Empire the kings were absolutely unchecked by anyone or anybody whatever he said absolute truth remember

I said you didn't get fired in the Babylonian Empire you got killed if you were a soothsayer a diviner and you didn't do what he wanted you to do what did he say he would do to you he would chop you up in pieces and make your house as a pile of dung you did not get fired you got killed under the

Medo it Persian Empire you would come along and that King would be great but he would be bound by the laws of the

Medes and the Persians so he would he could say something but he could not be able to overturn it once he said it because there was

I'm just an easier way I understand it was somewhat of a constitutional law that bound the king well then you come along to the

Greeks I think this is kind of where we left out the other day you come along to the Greeks and as strong as they were and as vast as the

Empire was it was unstable as water and we'll talk about that in a minute and then when you get to Rome hard as a rock what was that why did we say not only because of here but anybody understand why would they say that was the iron heel of Rome because Rome what good well now they use it was certainly but when hey you had an insurrection that came up what did

Rome go in there and do they stomped it out with their foot they didn't go in there try to make peace the only ones that I can remember in history that they tried to make peace with were the

Jews everybody else they went out there and they crushed him look Rome would march across lands crush it burn it to the ground and then go look at the piece of Rome that's not peace that's absolute destruction and that's what they did now we'll talk about how they had great time of peace and all that when we get there in a minute so these are the these are the kingdoms but when you get to the one with Rome you have one that comes after that which is a stone that's cut without hands and it's gonna come it's gonna come from a mountain it's gonna be a little itty bitty stone and what it does is it comes and it hits this huge Colossus made of these four things like a bowling ball and just shatters it so as he gives

Nebuchadnezzar this interpretation Nebuchadnezzar still he still ain't got it he still hasn't got it that everything that is coming from you and everything afterwards is going to be shattered with a stone that that's not cut without I'm it's cut without hands and comes from somewhere look every one of these was built by what human beings yeah now don't get me wrong it's

God that raised those people up and he dropped but from Nebuchadnezzar's perspective look these these kingdoms are raised up by men and we'll even see that in chapter 4 what does

Nebuchadnezzar do walking on the top of this palace he doesn't say look what God's given me what does he say he said look at me once again he's the man so it gets to where it says that in verse verse 45 in some message you saw that stone just cut without hands coming from that mountain to crush the iron the clay silver the gold and the great

God made known that to the king what will take future he is laying he say look I just let you

God just revealed to you what was gonna take place in the future in the future everything everything that would take place up into the coming of Messiah Messiah's kingdom he made known in this one dream to Nebuchadnezzar I didn't make it known explicitly now some 60 years later in chapter 7

Daniel's gonna have a vision or a dream and that dream is going to basically give him an exposition of each one of these that's why there are commentators and preachers to say you should not use chapter 7 to interpret chapter 2 and I'm saying you're absolutely wrong because they are connected now one was given to a pagan king one was given to a godly man with better information but understand at this point

God is dealing directly with Nebuchadnezzar and as he's dealing directly with Nebuchadnezzar this has not caused

Nebuchadnezzar to understand his inferiority to to God so it says right here and he he said that the great

God had made known to the king what will take place in the future so the dream was true and it's interpretation trustworthy and verse 46 the

Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and Daniel reached over and he dimmed the lights he had the musicians start playing softly and Nebuchadnezzar came forward he signed the card he prayed the prayer no

Nebuchadnezzar the most powerful man in the planet at that time fell on his face before an exiled

Jew does that not seem odd to y 'all he bowed down and worshipped

Daniel he should have bowed down and worshipped God he what did he tell him it's

God that raises up kings and kingdoms not Daniel he says look there's nothing in me God just gave me this information all

I'm doing is relaying it to you and I there's no doubt in my mind at this point that Daniel was going man this is weird this is weird he says uh you present him with offerings and a fragrant of incense now it doesn't say here that Daniel accepted those things as an offering or sacrifice to those pagan guy it doesn't say we don't know

I can certainly say this Daniel probably was pretty uncomfortable at this point I mean here it is some 18 year old young man and this most powerful man on all the planets bowing down on his face before him he says the king answered

Daniel said surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and he is a real revealer of mysteries is that true is that true yes but that doesn't mean you never could have was converted at this moment he's just saying hey you're

God's the God of gods your God was able to do what Marduk and Nebo and all these other

Babylonian pagan gods could not do and what was that reveal mysteries it says then the king promoted

Daniel he gave him many great gifts and he made him ruler over the whole providence of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon so here it is at this point

Daniel like I said being probably 18 years of old probably become second maybe third and command in Babylon Nebuchadnezzar ruled

Babylon for some 43 years this is how close Daniel was to back to Nebuchadnezzar the years of his life and this will play into who took over I know it's somewhat conjecture when we get to chapter 4 when he loses his mind but who runs the kingdom you wonder when he for seven times and times and times and times and times and times loses his mind and he's eating grass and he's growing crazy toenails and all it most likely

Daniel it's because I believe that at this point like I said I think it was last week that Daniel begin to have a love for Nebuchadnezzar why because one he knew that God had revealed stuff to Dan to Nebuchadnezzar that now he was going to be held accountable look the more information you know about God the more accountable you are that's why

I said last week this is strike one for Nebuchadnezzar next chapter will be strike two chapter four lights out lights out so he made him chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon so it also makes

Daniel the the president of the enchanters the wise men all that whole people that he was going to have killed that makes him basically the president of that group and then

Daniel makes a request to the king hey would you do me a favor would you take Shadrach Meshach and Abednego and make them over the administrators over the province of Babylon he did not forget the very ones that helped him pray to God that he would have compassion on his people he said hey it wasn't me these guys to pray and the

God that reveals these mysteries have now given it to me and Daniel did not forget his friends and understand what hey here remember this and we'll back up and we get there next week because of the image they're administrators over the land they're basically doing the

King's bidding doing his orchestrating his policies in in the land and that plays huge into what's going to happen next week when he they bow down to the golden image of which

I believe is Nebuchadnezzar okay so now we're going to see these are instrumental in redemptive history not just because God said so okay here but you know what you had

Nebuchadnezzar first came what actually his dad was but it says at this point he is saying he's the head of this

Empire after then you had some Bible say evil you may remember who this guy was in Babylon and I think so just check him maybe this will help remember who

Jehoiachin was who was he that got taken off and into captivity by who 597 it's this guy here that lets him go you know who this guy's of the

Santa he's in Jesus's genealogy he's he's a he's a Judean or a

Judah King and it's this man that after I think it was 39 years

I think you'd have to go back and look it's in I think it's in Jeremiah he lets him go he sits at the he sits at the

King's table getting choice meats basically an allowance until he's till he's dead no that's

Zedekiah okay he does that too but he does that in 586 okay so evil

Marduk or a male Marduk is the one that releases him but then you have if I remember correctly you have

Negra saw yeah then you have the bonnet us and these are cool y 'all get you can actually see better you remember this guy

Belshazzar who Belshazzar I knew everybody knew he's party handwriting on the wall handwriting on the wall so look at these these are taken what was his what did

God use Nebuchadnezzar for punish them for breaking the covenant exactly what

Jeremiah says in chapter 25 and 27 my servant Nebuchadnezzar is going to do to you what

I told him to do because you broke my covenant he chastened the people of God then after God using him he dies another man comes up shows compassion to the to the

Davidic line which saved him from dying in captivity and then as this man his goes off and his line continues on another guy comes up tries to do a coup to bonnet us then raises him so it was raised up after he dies which is

Belshazzar's dad if you go back and you read how long they're going to be in captivity it says never he will be there for as long as Nebuchadnezzar his son and his grandson that's

Nebuchadnezzar son that's his grandson that's how long the captivity would last and how do we know that this is how long the

Babylonian Empire lasted because right here

Cyrus the

Great comes along while he's having his feast with the implements that were taken from the temple he gets handwriting on the wall meanie -tiki farce old neck whatever it is so something's crazy and he says what is that he comes in he's nobody else can say it but he knows he's always got there's somebody out there that can't answer that who was that person it was

Daniel Daniel comes in he goes oh yeah your kingdom's over he said keep your gifts because your kingdom's not worth anything and it's when

Cyrus the Great comes in who I believe is

Darius the Mede same persons both of them are spoken of in in Daniel and we get there he comes along and the captivity is over what does

Cyrus the Great do now this is how you know this is the redemptive history unfolding through these two in but these four in fact he makes that proclamation that they can all go back he sure does and that happens 539 or 538 there is some debate on how that took place but so now we're going to see how this unfolds through the

Persian Empire you have Cyrus the Great then you have another man that comes along name can be seized yeah can be seized he comes along he continues somewhat of the work of Cyrus okay then you have

Darius the first then you have art of Xerxes no

Xerxes art Xerxes there's third now he makes a proclamation to go back you remember what happens once they get back what do they not do what are they not doing they go back they don't do what

God told them to do you're supposed to go back you're supposed to build the lay the foundations of the the temple remember he tells

Cyrus has prophesied some hundred and fifty years before this that by Isaiah then

I'm gonna raise up my anointed one Cyrus he's gonna send you back into the land he's gonna send you back to Jerusalem and when you go back you're supposed to build the lay the foundation of the temple you're supposed to build the place of God the dwelling place of God and you're supposed to build the city and the wall around it he sends them back to lay the foundations of the house of God they don't do what they're supposed to do so you have the prophets

Haggai and Zechariah that come along and rebuke them for not doing so and then they start continuing them but in the meantime you have some guys that come along that try to hinder that namely probably somebody people we would know be

Sam Ballot and Tobias and all they goes try to hinder that well that comes to where they talk to these two guys here and he says wait a minute

I'm going to have this guy here made a decree for them to build it you're going to continue doing what this guy said do and why because nobody can trump the law of what the

Medes and the Persians am I making sense okay it's too much information too much history it's important because it's right here it's in God's Word this is how things unfolded in history and Daniel is claimed to have been written some 200 years after these events had taken place and Daniel's prophesying it almost 500 years before it took place some of them we get to the end down here they run into some hiccups here too okay our desert sees gives them another decree 445 444 am

I correct somewhere around there actually that should be this way we're going down to go back and do it okay there go back they get in the land they're doing their thing through Nehemiah and Ezra and all of that that's when this takes place right around here okay

Ezra Nehemiah yes yep this would be 480 okay yep 480 this is yeah

Thermopylae when he goes to try to invade Greece remember 300 the movie yeah that's what it is the

Spartans okay that's when this take place he failed this is what scholars in my opinion my studies

I believe that was the party that Esther was having he was having okay when he was fixing to invade

Greece that's what the party he was having and it failed miserably okay that's when this kingdom starts to go downward his campaigns to go in all his wars to increase his

Empire he attacks the people to death to his campaign so then you have another part his son comes along he's having a struggle with this at this time because of the failed thing at the really was failed at Thermopylae and that he tries to invade

Greece with a Macedon that's that is

Alexander the Great's daddy okay failed miserably he at some point tries to do it again he sets up a a through some shady stuff

I should say across the river and in a meeting he had

Philip of Macedon assassinated now you see where we're coming to know we're down here we're down here

Darius the third okay because in Esther the end of Esther we're talking about in the

Esther describes whoever Xerxes that was basically having rule over every the and he did and he did but his kingdom was beginning to fall because of the taxations on the people their their unwillingness to continue going out dude when you're running out of money to pay your fighters what do they do they quit fighting they quit fighting would you say hey and I would even say part of that was

Alexander the Great maybe that might have been part of the downfall when they get to the

Indus River and I wanted to go into India I think part of that was that his guys were so war -torn and we'll get there just a second just let me yeah so yes he did have a vast

Empire yes huge and he was going out and he was trying to conquer but the

Battle of Thermopylae was a groin shot to him I mean it really wasn't oh and they go he's not as bad as he thinks he is remember

Greeks on the rise at that point Greece is on the rise so Darius has filled massive off the wall so I shot right over here

India no no they did not cross the Indus River yeah at least not that I know of am

I correct on that I think so yeah not yet now I think that Rome reaches that direction like they go to there they go actually in order to Britain and Germania and all that but that doesn't happen after Messiah's kingdom comes okay so that leads us to here and I'm gonna tell you that we are not gonna

Philip the Macedon was killed in 336 his son

Alexander is in this place he becomes king like I said last week he has an issue some people don't want him to be king he's very young he goes back to thieves where he's having a problem he kills 6 ,000 basically kills the city leaves one one house up that was his favorite poet he left it up he leaves he goes back he takes the throne and that becomes a superpower world superpower because it's at this point and if I Darius the third's pretty much wiped out done

Medo -Persians over now this doesn't last long remember he can he he conquers the known world from the

Indus River to the Grimace I had a world map to Macedonia okay almost to where you go into Europe per se okay for the the line of Europe he conquers that whole land in 12 years 12 years you understand it too hey 219 years for this kingdom to do that Alexander the

Great does it in 12 years now he gets to the

Indus River he the claim is there just no more land for him to conquer that I don't think the very accurate statement in the sense that there was plenty of lands to conquer his men were so worn torn he just couldn't go any further

I mean these guys for 12 years went through there and butcher and lay waste to anybody that come in their way hey when they took over you talk about fury hatred and love to kill people this is it this is it hey because of what happened at Thermopylae it was inbred into the

Greeks at that point we are going to remove them from history because of what they did now under the providence of God okay this is how things have come about Alexander the

Great comes along he's not here long okay but when he dies it's splinters into for his four generals told to me

Seleucus and Cassander and Lysimachus his four generals he dies there's no heir to his throne he did have a son that probably could have taken the throne he was murdered by one of his generals so he couldn't take it there was a power struggle for who was going to take up Ptolemy takes

Egypt Seleucus takes basically

Babylon area Cassander takes

Greece Lysimachus gets

Asia Minor which would be modern -day

Turkey and phrase which would be modern -day

Bulgaria okay question are you just breathing hard on me no lots of information sorry okay yeah

I was gonna break yes yep yes go ahead it is in modern -day

Iraq yes they're

Persians yes ma 'am yeah so I would say

I could be wrong but my understanding is he actually in the beginning got Syria I didn't want to get into all the because I don't have time to get into 300 years of I wish

I did so these two end up fighting all the time okay these two become basically the strong Ptolemy and Seleucus huge this is very very very important and how we're gonna understand when we get to Daniel 10 11 and 12 because this becomes the king of the south this is the king of the north when it starts going and the king of the south comes down to the king of the north and he sent someone and married her and she marries him and then she kills him and all that is what's going to take place so they're fighting he did have

Syria they're fighting Seleucus takes that land so knowledge he take Babylon he takes

Syria Mesopotamia so now this guy's rising

Seleucus okay these guys actually become kind of insignificant and redemptive history but these two become very important Ptolemy you may know

Ptolemy the second did how do you think we got the Septuagint Ptolemy the second commissioned in the third century to have the

Bible the Old Testament translated into Greek language well why would he had it done in a

Greek language because his predecessor wherever he went he got tired of not being able to talk to people and what did he did he said you're gonna we're gonna make a unified language where wherever I go

I ask somebody a question they gonna answer me in my language and if they don't

Alexander the Great had the Koine Greek language and it went all over his empire you know how huge that is that's huge what do you think they spoke at the time of Christ what do you think of whatever translated the

New Testament language the Testament in it was written in Koine Greek that's huge that's how

God used these men in history Alexander pagan king you better believe it did

God use him yes vast Empire created the Koine Greek language so that this man here one day would say

I'm gonna have that Old Testament Hebrew scriptures translated into the

Greek language so that everybody in the Empire can be able to read it and then this guy in the

Seleucus Empire oh man they become a thorn in their flesh for years for years this guy here would have

Seleucus would have children he would have Antiochus the first the second the third and the person that we will wind up seeing the most of is

Antiochus the fourth and he is an absolute tyrant

I will prove to you from Scripture this is prototypical above the

Antichrist prototypical we don't use that board Antichrist in the

Old Testament what they use is the little horn and if you follow redemptive history it picks up and not only in the little horn raises up in the

Greek Empire the little horn trajectory will pick up and we don't have time to get to Rome today will pick itself up in Rome and then as you get into the

Roman Empire you see that little that that that horn that raises itself up and speaks pompous words against the people of God just like Antiochus would point to a later day when there would be a met one horn that would raise himself up at the end of the age who would be the beast you understand this is how all of this plays out in redemptive history and God revealed these nations rising and falling to who to Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar he gave him a dream who interpreted the dream to Nebuchadnezzar Daniel did now we can might go to Rome for two minutes it says that Rome was was hard as iron right we know that but it said he had some feet and toe problems right okay toe jam they didn't they didn't come together good but the

Emperor the Roman Empire itself and I know there might be some people who disagree with me did not begin with Julius it did not he was part of the triumvirate the triumvirate was three group three men that ruled although they were they did rule in a dictator type way he never rose to the to the name

Emperor the Emperor shit didn't come in until 27 BC with Octavian actually and we probably better known him as Augustus what did

Caesar Augustus do he sure did he made a decree which got

Jesus's bomb where yeah back in Bethlehem so here it is we got another pagan king that comes along and he ends up being in in power to make a decree to get

Jesus's family back in Bethlehem now this is when the

Roman Emperor ship would begin everyone after him would be an emperor okay everyone after there it would be

Caesar Augustus Tiberius Caligula Claudius Nero and then you had cool about here you really have some three nobodies that come along Nero kills himself in 68 the the

Empire goes into absolute turmoil there's in fighting everywhere when

I say everywhere I mean we're talking Romans fighting Romans people power struggle you have a guy that comes up by the name of Galba he's he's not long either then you have

Vitellius he comes up but when

Nero died they wanted this man to be Vespasian everybody know

Vespasian is he is the way he is the one that sent

Titus his son during the Jewish Wars and said go first try to make peace with the

Jews don't don't go in there and desecrate their holy place let's try to make peace well they failed to do so and it was

Vespasian that said okay Titus Titus was his son he becomes general he says all right wipe it out and it was under his order by his son that it was said that once Jerusalem fell that they ran out of crosses to crucify the insurrectionist they said it was some thirty thousand crucified in one day now people argue that amount but they said as far as you could go down the road they were running out of wood to crucify people so they would hold them until those people died so that they could use the wood it was under this room now they said it has some feet and toe problems remember feet and toe problems what happens is with Augustus he then tries to the

Herod's the Hasmonean dynasty all of that and the Hasmonean dynasty came about with a revolt and we'll get to it in chapter 7 with a revolt they tried to mix the two of the

Romans and the Jews together that's how the Herod's come about anybody know that the

Herod's were not heir to be kings over over the Jews they were Edomites they were cut out of the

Covenant but the Rome puts them in power to rule over the people so there was this constant struggle of okay we have the this man who claims to be of Jewish or to be a

Jewish descent and you have this Emperor who are working together and they to try to mesh two things that don't come together like iron and clay and it's brittle and it never works and there's constant fighting

Herod the Great killed everybody that came up against him and if you don't think so when they when

Jesus was going to be born in Bethlehem what do you think Herod the Great tried to do when he heard there was a king that was going to take his throne he tried to kill him and I don't have time to finish

I'm so sorry yes sir well some of them believe he was converted some believe

I don't know yeah I have no idea just like you would that's a that be saying

King James King James was not a believer but he did order the

Bible to be translated into the English language to keep the peace now is that what told him he did

I'm not sure some people believe he was converted I'm not convinced of that but God used him okay

God used him for that mr. Barry will you close us out

Oh that would pretty much start from right there from Artaxerxes to Tiberius yeah they're already back in the land

I didn't have time to get to it but man there's so much what is the grief when the

Greeks come in first I couldn't get into Alexander actually comes in and was going to ransack