Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20110116.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Daniel: Hope And Direction In A Troublesome World
C. Aligning With God's Plan For World History For Eternal Blessing
(Daniel 2:31-45)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    We who trust in Christ face a world of great economic, political and social unrest, making it difficult from our human view to grasp the meaning of current history, let alone know how to respond well to it:

    (1) On January 8, 2011 in Tucson, Arizona, Democratic U. S. Representative, Gabrielle Giffords was gunned down along with six other people The cover story of the January 10, 2011 USA TODAY reported issues like Arizona's immigration policy, health care, the mortgage crisis, Wall Street bailouts with the resulting fury by many has created an atmosphere that caused a man to shoot these people.

    Adding a haunting note to this tragedy is news that one victim, Christina Green, a nine-year old girl born hours after the September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorist attacks (Ibid., p. 6a, Judy Keen, "Six lives that ended too soon"), "was a student council member at her school" who went to see Giffords "because of her interest in government . . ." (Ibid.)

    Thus, though a deranged man with no coherent political intent did the shooting, this story still combined a wide swath of unsettling issues: (a) the issue of our nation's immigration problem, (b) the health care bill that many allege is socialistic and (c) vastly increases taxes, (d) the economic and political fallout of the government's bailouts of Wall Street firms, (e) deep ideological divisions in our nation (f) and in the world as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were recalled!

    (g) Adding to this unrest is the battle between left and right ideological wings over who is to blame for the crime: the left charges the right with fueling a climate that tips unstable folk "over the edge" to kill officials, while the right blames the left for "never letting a crisis go to waste" in making false charges about the right when it was a deranged man, not an ideological conservative, who did the crime!

    (2) Such unrest in turn permeates today's entire world:

    (a) The same paper ran a story of the recently enhanced number of U. S. service-members who have been killed or wounded by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan. (Ibid., p. 2A)

    (b) Another story told of China's threat in building a stealth fighter and a ballistic missile that could destroy U. S. carriers 2,000 miles out at sea, Ibid.

    Thus, we ask, "In view of the world's vast patchwork of struggles, does God offer any insight into what is going on, and how we as believers are to respond productively to it?!"

    Need: "In view of the many unsettling issues in our world, does God offer insight for our times, and how we are to respond to it all?!"

  1. The Daniel 2 prophetic dream that God gave king Nebuchadnezzar was designed to encourage and direct the oppressed people of God:
    1. Due to her sin, Judah was about to be punished by being taken into Babylonian Captivity for seventy years, Jeremiah 2:8; 1:14-16; 25:11.
    2. Daniel had already been captured with a few other young Hebrews, so as a devout believer, he needed encouraging insight. (Daniel 1:1,3,6)
    3. Thus, God equipped him to understand prophetic dreams (Dan. 1:17) and gave Babylon's king a dream about the future (Daniel 2:1, 29). (1) This way, Daniel could use his interpretation gift to explain the king's dream, (2) resulting in his being elevated in power for Israel's good in her coming captivity (Bib. Know. Com., O. T., p. 1337), and (3) godly Hebrews would be encouraged, knowing the Daniel 2 dream ended with the rise of Israel's eternal world Kingdom, Daniel 2:44!
  2. The dream explains Gentile history relative to Israel from Daniel to Christ's reign, offering priceless insight and guidance for believers in all of those ages: [We interpret the dream in the dispensational, premillennial perspective, supporting this effort in our conclusion]:
    1. Daniel said the dream was of a great image of a man with its head of pure gold, its breast and arms of silver, its trunk and thighs of brass, its legs of iron and its feet a mixture of iron and clay, Dan. 2:31-33.
    2. A stone cut out without hands came and struck the image at its feet, shattering the whole image to dust. The wind then carried it all away, and the stone grew to a mountain that filled the world, Dan. 2:34-36a.
    3. Daniel explained this dream predicted future events where Gentile kingdoms would arise to rule the earth (relative to Israel) until God set up His own kingdom to replace man's failing reigns, Dan. 2:36b-45:
      1. The first kingdom, the gold head, was Babylon, Daniel 2:36b-38.
      2. After Babylon would arise an empire inferior to Babylon like silver is inferior to gold (Daniel 2:39a), and this empire was that of the Medes and Persians, Ryrie St. Bible, KJV , 1978, ftn. to Dan. 2:39.
      3. After the Medes and Persians, a third kingdom inferior to them like bronze is inferior in value to silver, the kingdom of Greece, would arise to rule that part of the world around Israel, Daniel 3:39b; Ibid.
      4. Last, a fourth kingdom inferior to Greece, that of Rome, would arise in Israel's world, Daniel 2:40a; Ibid., ftn. to Daniel 2:40.
      5. Daniel explained the mix of iron and clay in the feet foretold the fourth kingdom would in time become (a) internally divided (Dan. 2:41a), (b) making it partly strong and partly weak (Dan. 2:41b-42) (c) as it would embody disunited people groups (Daniel 2:43).
      6. This illustrates how Rome eventually became divided and weaker with a diversity of peoples (Ibid., B. K. C., O. T., p. 1335) mainly as Rome practiced imperialism: it tried to control foreign nations for its benefit without the cost of fully absorbing them, leading to international unrest, and later dominant nations copied this practice even in competing with one another (E. M. Burns, West. Civ., 1963, p. 242-244)! So, Rome's Daniel 2:43 unsettled patchwork of peoples and ideologies has thus been copied worldwide, with the added fuel of rivaling ideologies and forces among various nations!
      7. Daniel 2:42, 44 with 7:24 and Revelation 17:12 show the image's ten toes are ten kings of ten kingdoms that will comprise a revived Roman Empire at Christ's return after the Revelation 4:1 rapture!
      8. Thus, as in the rest of the Old Testament, the Church is not named in the Daniel 2 dream (cf. Eph. 3:3-6): it describes only the Roman Empire of Jesus' day and its revived form at His Second Coming!
      9. After the Church is raptured and then the 7-year Great Tribulation occurs, God will send Christ, the Rock, to invade and destroy the Roman Empire and to establish God's everlasting Kingdom and reign of Christ over Israel's empire over the world, Daniel 2:44-45.
    4. Accordingly, the dream offers timeless insight and direction to God's people from Daniel's era on down to Christ's reign (as follows):
      1. We must expect a steady, worldwide decline in man's welfare, especially as we live under the impact of the iron-and-clay-mix, a world of disunited peoples under rival nations and ideologies!
      2. However, since Christ at His return will establish God's reign of blessing, believers from Daniel to Christ's Kingdom must commit themselves to do God's will for their lives, 1 John 2:15-17!
Application: May we react to unsettling world events by (1) trusting in Christ as Savior to become subjects in His future Kingdom, John 1:11-12. (2) Then, as we see man's welfare declin e, it should spur us to lean all the more on the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16) for the will and the power to perform God's assignments for us! (Phil. 2:12-13)

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

 Amillennialism that interprets prophecy nonliterally and leaves the Church inheriting the promises of Abraham to the Hebrew people claims the Kingdom of God in Daniel 2 was the Church that Jesus set up at His first coming. (Ibid., Bible Know. Com., O. T., p. 1336; John F. Walvoord, The Blessed Hope and the Tribulation, 1976, p. 12)

Thus, they would not have an encouraging answer for the world problems of today, and one form of amillennialism, postmillenialism, may suggest a "reconstructionist" solution, implying that Christian try to subdue the world's institutions to the Church! (Ibid., Walvoord, p. 13-14; Renald E. Showers, "An Evaluation of Christian Reconstructionism," Israel My Glory, April/May 1991, p. 22-25)

Amillennialists support their view of the Daniel 2 dream in claiming among other things that Christ came to earth in the days of the Roman Empire, and that Rome fell into the hands of ten kingdoms, Ibid., Bible Know. Com., O. T., p. 1336.

However, these claims are countered by the facts: (a) When Christ came, He did not destroy the Roman Empire as Daniel 2:34-35 predicts. Indeed, Jesus told Pontius Pilate that this was not His intention at that time, John 18:36. (b) Also, in Christ's first coming, the Roman Empire was not composed of ten kingdoms, but it will be so in the coming Great Tribulation Period, Revelation 17:12; Ibid. (c) The Church in our era is not supposed to replace the secular kingdoms of the world, but rather to be subject to them (Romans 13:1-8) in great contrast to Christ's Messianic Kingdom that will supplant the world's secular kingdoms (Revelation 11:15; 19:11-20:4).

Thus, interpreting Bible prophecy with the "normal" method of interpretation, using the literal, grammatical, historical method versus the nonliteral, allegorical method that leads to the amillennial or the posttribulational views (Ibid., Walvoord, p. 12-13), we find the dream of Daniel 2 predicts world events where Israel is related to Gentile rule from Daniel's era down to Christ's Second Coming after the seven-year Great Tribulation Period.



May we as dispensational premillennialists then respond to unnerving events in the world NOT by becoming frustrated, fearful or militant as the amillennial view might promote, but by being motivated to serve Christ in promoting His future Kingdom!