Continued from previous post:
Now we move on to the legs of iron portion of the prophecy: Rome. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that the fourth kingdom would be as strong as iron and would crush and shatter all that came before it. This is a good description of the Roman Empire.
Now we move on to the legs of iron portion of the prophecy: Rome. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that the fourth kingdom would be as strong as iron and would crush and shatter all that came before it. This is a good description of the Roman Empire.
There are debates
as to the exact beginning of the Roman Empire.
This is due to the fact that the rise of Rome seems to be almost
accidental. Rome did not start out with
a conscience plan to conquer other nations and begin its own empire; it
actually started to expand through reactionary events. When it perceived a threat of any kind by an
outside force, Rome would rally the troops and march into battle. In the middle of the second century BCE Rome
squashed a threat from Macedonia and it became the first of the Greek provinces
divided after Alexander’s death to come under the rule of the Roman Empire.
No
two scholars can agree on what exactly caused the end of the Roman Empire, and
that is probably because no one thing is to blame. Some of the theories given for
its fall: an undisciplined army, civil wars, barbarian invasions, over
extension, political infighting, laziness, etc.
What matters to us is the fact that the Roman Empire had collapsed by the end of the fifth century CE and
is no more.
This leads us to
the feet part of the statue where iron is mixed with clay, or where nations are
no longer ruled by one World Empire but are a mixture of strong and weak
nations. Never again would a human world
empire exist. That does not mean people
have stopped trying. Napoleon tried to
create a French Empire but failed, and Hitler tried to create a Third Reich
that would last a thousand years, but he too failed.
People have even
tried to unite countries through marriage. A royal from a one country would marry a another
royal from another country in an attempt to unify, but it always failed. As late as World War I we saw the failure of
these intermarriage attempts in that the Russian, German and British monarchies
were all related but were at war anyway.
God told Daniel there would not be a human world empire after Rome and
no matter how hard people have tried, this prophecy has held true.
The rock that
pulverized the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream smashes first into the feet of
the statue, signifying the establishment of Jesus’ kingdom will occur sometime
after world empires have ceased to exist and the world is divided into
different nations. It is fitting that God
used a rock to signify his kingdom as the Bible has often referred to God as a
Rock of Salvation (Deut. 32:15), an everlasting Rock (Is. 26:4), a Rock, a
fortress and a deliverer (Ps. 18:2), a Rock and a Redeemer (Ps. 19:14), etc.
“’...Is there any God
besides Me?
Or is there any other Rock?
I know of none’ “ Is. 44: 8
This timeline of
world history was so important that God repeated it three times and in each of
them God added a little more detail. In
Daniel Chapter 7, while Daniel was still living under the Babylonian Empire, God
gave him a dream.
