Bible Prophecy End Times Study
Here is my first post on my personal end time Bible prophecy study. Ok first some important information to know: With Bible
prophecy you have to place the day for a year principle. Here are some verses
from the Bible that help explain that. Please read the following verses below.
Ezekiel 4:6
– 1 day = 1 year in prophetic
time
Numbers 14:34 –
1 day = 1 year in prophetic time. 42
months = 1,260 days/years.
Revelation 12:14 –
time and times and half a time.3 ½ years.
Revelation 12:6
– One thousand two hundred and sixty days.1,260 days.
Daniel 7:25
– time and times and half a time.3 ½ years.
Daniel 12:7
- time, times, and half a time.3 ½ years.
To Sum up: 3 and 1/2 years = 42 months = 1,260 days
which means 1,260 years in Bible prophetic time.
Lesson 1 – The Four Kingdoms of
Daniel 2
Ok I will cover this first lesson on keeping the focus on
Daniel 2 first....I will dive into Daniel 7 on the next lesson/posting.
For some background the book of Daniel covers Daniels life
and his ministry which bridge the entire seventy-year period of Babylonian
captivity. Daniel 2 starts off with King Nebuchadnezzar's Dream (Daniel
2:1-13), which happens around the year 608 B.C. God then reveals the King's
Dream, but also causes him to forget the dream when he wakes up (Daniel
2:14-23). King Nebuchadnezzar called his magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and
Chaldeans together to tell him the dream. The king makes a decree to kill all
his wise men including Daniel and his companions. Daniel goes to the King and
explains the dream. (Daniel 24-44) which is where we will focus our study
on....mainly on verses 31-45 where the interpretation of the dream takes place.
Daniel 31-45:
31 "You, oh king, were watching; and behold, a great
image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you, and
it's form was awesome!. 32 "This image's head was of fine Gold, it's chest
and arms of silver ,it's belly and thighs of bronze. 33 "it's legs of
iron, it's feet partly of iron and partly of clay". 34 "You watched
while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on it's feet of
iron and clay, and broke them in pieces". 35 “Then the iron, the clay, the
bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff
from the summer threshing floors, the wind carried them away so that no trace
of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth". 36 "This is the dream. Now we will tell
the interpretation of it before the King.37 "You, O King, are a king of
kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and
glory; 38 "and wherever the children of men dwell or the beasts of the
field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made
you ruler over them all - you are this head of gold". 39 "But after
you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third
kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth". 40 “And the
fourth kingdom shall be as strong iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and
shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in
pieces and crush all the others". 41 “Whereas you saw the feet and toes,
partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet
the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with
ceramic clay”. 42 “And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly
of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile”. 43 “ As you
saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but
they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay”. 44
“And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which
shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it
shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand
forever”. 45 “Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain
without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the
silver, and the gold - the great God has made known to the king what will come
to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure”.
Ok so in a little more then 300 words, God sketched out the
next 2,500 years of human history in this dream…..from the time of Babylon to
the end of the worlds history, pretty awesome if you ask me. Now I’m going to
go into each of the sections of the images/kingdoms of the dream in Daniel 2
and showing how the Bible and history match up.
Babylon – The head of Gold
The first of the four kingdoms Nebuchadnezzar saw in his
dream….the one in power in his and Daniel’s time….was represented by the golden
head of the statue. Of course, King Nebuchadnezzar was so certain that his
kingdom would last forever that he later ordered to be built a 90-foot tall
copy of the statue he had seen in his dream. Only instead of the statue being
divided into different kinds of metal, beginning with the gold head that Daniel
said represented Babylon….Nebuchadnezzar ordered that the entire statue be
built of gold, showing his certainty that his kingdom would reign forever
(Daniel Chapter 3). How wrong he was!! Lol. Through Daniel, God warned
Nebuchadnezzar that his unbounded ego would get him into great trouble. But
Nebuchadnezzar would have none of it and in time, just as God had warned, the
king went insane and spent seven years crawling around in the pasture eating
grass with the cows. At the end of that time, Nebuchadnezzar was humbled, and
declared Daniel’s God to be the great and only true God.
Medo Persia – The Chest and Arms of Silver
Just as Daniel prophesied, of course, a time came where the
great kingdom of Babylon ended. Daniel lived to see it happen….the silver
kingdom replacing the gold. On October 13th, 539 B.C the golden
kingdom of Babylon came to an inglorious end. During the reign of Belshazzar,
Nebuchadnezzar’s proud and arrogant grandson, Cyrus the Mede laid siege to
Babylon and overthrew it. The kingdom of Medo-Persia began.
Greece – The Belly and Thighs of Brass
So a new this new superpower ruled the then known world
according to history. But like the golden kingdom of Babylon that went before
it, the reign of Medo-Persia, the silver empire would not last forever. The
young but brilliant according to history Greek general, Alexander the Great
defeated Persia’s Darius the 3rd at the battle of Arbela in 331 B.C.
At 23, Alexander became the ruler over the most extensive empire the world had
known to that time.
Rome – The Legs of Iron
What great empire came next to overthrow Greece? What nation
would then rule during the life of Christ? On June 22nd, 168 B.C at
the battle of Pydna, the empire of Alexander the Great perished, 155 years
after his death. The Roman Empire succeeded the Greeks, thus becoming the
fourth world empire, ruling from 163 B.C to A.D. 476.
Rome was a ruthless nation that ruled with a “rod of iron”.
Her Caesars called themselves Gods and demanded worship and obedience from
everyone. Rome ruled the longest and reached the farthest of all empires. But
Rome, too met and end, but not at the hands of a more powerful kingdom. Just as
Daniel predicted, no other world-wide empire succeeded Rome.
Divison of Rome – The Feet of Iron and Clay
After more then 600 years in power, God accurately
predicted, ancient Rome would not be followed by another world empire but would
disintegrate into smaller kingdoms. Through unparalleled luxury, political
corruption, and moral decay, Rome lost it’s stability and strength. It became
easy prey for tribes of barbarians that began to invade the empire during the 4th
century A.D.
By A.D 476, Rome had divided into ten parts. I will list
them with their today modern counterparts. Alemanni (Germans), Franks (French),
Saxons (English), Visigoths (Spanish), Burgundians (Swiss), Lombards
(Italians), Suevi (Portuguese), and the Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths (These
three now extinct). The current nations of Europe developed from these tribes
of the divided Roman Empire. Some were strong, some weak.
“As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle
with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron
does not mix with clay” (Daniel 2:43). Many world rulers have tried to unite
the nations of Europe, often through royal marriages, mingling themselves “with
the seed of men”. God’s prediction of world empires to the end of time has been
remarkable accurate. No effort to unite the divided kingdoms of old Rome – of
current Europe – can ever succeed. Charlemagne tried and failed. Kaiser Wilhelm
of Germany in 1914 tried and failed. Later, Hilter tried and failed. And today,
efforts continue to bring Europe together, but every such effort fails.
The Great Stone – God’s Eternal Kingdom
Daniel ended his explanation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream with
these words “And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a
kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to
other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it
shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the
mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the
clay, the silver, and the gold – the great God has made known to the king what
will come to pass after this “(Daniel 2:44, 45).
Through this dream of a giant metal image that
Nebuchadnezzar experienced six centuries before the birth of Christ, God
unveiled the course of history to the end of time. All of the kingdoms the king
saw – represented by the gold, the silver, the brass, and the iron – have
passed into history. Where are we living today? In the days of the kings
represented by the ten toes – the nations of Europe today – God will set up
kingdom to end all earthly kingdoms – a kingdom that will last forever. The
only event in the Bible prophecy yet to take place is the second coming of
Jesus Christ and the establishment of His kingdom.
Ok this marks the end of what we need to know in Daniel 2
with this prophecy. Daniel 7 builds on this and you will see that the same
kingdoms are given in vision to Daniel, but just using different images. We
will also learn more about the Divison of Rome and the little horn. Below is an
overall picture of what we studied.
Daniel 2 – The Great
Statue Overall – Daniel 2:31-45
Ruler: King Nebuchadnezzar – Head of Gold – Kingdom: Babylon
(605-539 B.C) – (Daniel 2:38).
Ruler: King Cyrus the Med – Chest/Arms of Silver – Kingdom:
Medo-Persia (539-331 B.C)-(Daniel 5:28).
Ruler: Alexander the Great – Belly & Thighs of Brass –
Kingdom: Greece - (331-168 B.C) - (Daniel
8:21).
Ruler: Roman Empire -
Legs of Iron – Kingdom: Rome – (168 B.C – A.D 476) - (Fact of history)
Ruler: Papal Rome – Feet of Iron & Clay – Kingdom:
Divison of Rome / 10 toes – (A.D 538-1798) – (Fact of history)
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