The Puzzle Palace

 

We love to solve puzzles. I’m aching to finish the jigsaw puzzle on my table, but all those blue sky pieces look alike. I will get it done, because I’m not going to let it beat me.

For most of us, End-Times Bible prophecy is a lot like that jigsaw puzzle. We’re determined to solve it. And that’s a real problem, because prophecy isn’t about solving puzzles. If we handle it that way, we’ll come up with crazy answers. Pat Robertson thought the Great Tribulation would come in 1982 when Russia was going to invade Israel. Hal Lindsay said that Jesus would return in 1988 in his best seller The Late Great Planet Earth.(1) Grant R. Jeffrey declared that Jesus would return “around the year 2000” in Armageddon: Appointment with Destiny.

Another popular activity is figuring out who “the Antichrist” is. Some scholars have picked the Roman Emperor Nero, while other names from Adolph Hitler to Ellen Gould White or Ronald Wilson Reagan have found their way onto the web. Fictional characters like Nicolae Carpathia from the Left Behind novels can’t be missed, either.

All this speculation draws us away from the point of prophecy. The NIV puts it this way: Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants, the prophets (Amos 3:7). In other words, God’s plan of salvation is what’s important. So our job isn’t to figure out some divine Rubik’s Cube. We need to listen to the plan of salvation, and to obey God’s directions (Rev 1:3). We can’t obey a puzzle.

If this sounds like what I said in the last chapter, you’re right. God’s covenant is the context of Daniel. It’s His way of saving us, and that’s His mission. He isn’t willing to lose any of us (2 Pet 3:9), so He goes out of His way to help us come to Him. For some people, the incredible love of the Cross is the only story they need. For others, there are details He fills in through history. And for the rest of us, God gives us prophecy to show how His battle with Satan is progressing. And that’s a real war.

Before I go on, let me warn you that what you’re about to read might not sound like anything you’ve heard before. So before you throw this book away, take the time to carefully see if what I’m saying matches what the Bible says. Read the passages I cite. If they don’t say what I say they say, then you can use the book for firewood.

 

God’s War with Satan

Satan started out as the highest created being in heaven. God said he was “the anointed cherub that covered . . . on the holy mountain of God” (Ezek 28:14). In short, his position was right next to Yahweh Himself. He saw God’s holiness and perfection so there wasn’t any reason for him to rebel, but he did anyway. “Iniquity was found in him” (Ezek 28:15). That doesn’t make sense. So how could it happen?

God created a universe full of perfect beings. They were made for loving companionship (cf. 1 John 4:8–16). And this raises a problem for God. Love is a choice. In order to love, we have to be able to not love. If we can’t choose to not love, then we’re robots, and can’t be loving companions. Now mix lots of time and lots of beings, and eventually somebody will probably choose to not love.

Satan rebelled.(2) He wanted to be the big kahuna so he’d be worshiped like God (Ezek 28:6; Isa 14:13–14).(3) He convinced a lot of the others to rebel with him by slandering God (Rev 12:7–9).(4) This created a serious problem for God. What could He do?

The obvious choice would be to squash the revolt. But that wouldn’t very helpful, since it would make everybody else wonder what God was hiding. It might even make the revolt worse. The others might be too afraid not to obey. In either case, God’s loving universe would go up in smoke.

God’s only viable option was to let Satan try to prove his case. So He quarantined Satan and the others to this earth. Here Satan has continued his evil ways by calling God a liar (Gen 3:4–5), corrupt (Job 1:9–11), and arbitrary (Zech 3:1–5).

Eventually everybody will be solidly lined up either for or against God. When no one is left to convince, Satan’s demonstration will be over. Then we will examine the evidence and see if Satan’s claims are true.(5) But until everybody has made a permanent choice for one side or the other, the drama of sin has to go on.

Along the way, God’s not about to leave His people without help. He sent prophets to show us how the war’s going. Their writings give us mileposts in the cosmic war. Fulfilled prophecies give us faith that the rest of them will be fulfilled. Jesus said, “I am telling you what will happen, so when it has happened, you will believe” (John 13:19; 14:29).

 

Prophecy Central

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is the center of all end-times prophecy. It’s simple and direct. And because all scripture is true, every other prophecy will fit into the story it tells. Let me say this different way. If any interpretation of any end-times prophecy disagrees with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, we have to reject it. It’s just that simple.

We already went through the drama of the dream and Daniel’s blessing from God, so let’s cut to the chase.

 

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. (2:31–33)

 

There was a good reason God didn’t let Nebuchadnezzar remember the dream. The Chaldean mystics had rules for interpreting dreams, and one of them was that dreams about statues were about kingdoms. He didn’t want them to take any glory for themselves. So He set things up where only His chosen servants would be able to satisfy the king, and this would bring glory to Him. Daniel made this clear.

 

There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the latter days. This mystery has not been revealed to me for any wisdom residing in me, but to make the interpretation known to you. (2:28, 30)

 

This was the dream; now we shall 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. (2:36–38)

 

Let’s remember one thing here. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t literally rule over every inhabited part of the world. His kingdom had real limits in every direction. Daniel’s language is synecdoche. God was referring to Nebuchadnezzar as the most important human ruler at the time. He ruled over all of the world that was important from a Jewish perspective. We also need to remember that his authority was designed to protect the Jews so God could bring them back to Judea at the end of their captivity. God wasn’t about to let His reputation be ruined by letting them disappear the way the northern tribes did.

Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t literally the head of gold. Babylon was. But in the Middle Eastern mind, the king was the kingdom. Daniel’s language was simply the natural way for him to express this.(6)

After you there will arise another kingdom, inferior to you (2:39a). Babylon wasn’t going to last forever. In 539 BC, the Medo-Persian confederation conquered Babylon (5:28). Even though Medo-Persia ruled over more territory than Babylon, it lacked Babylon’s splendor.

After Medo-Persia, there will be a third kingdom of bronze that will rule over all the earth (2:39b). This is the same synecdoche we heard in the last verse. And again, Greece didn’t rule over the whole world. It didn’t control Rome or India, but we know Alexander the Great knew about both of them.

The iron kingdom is next. It brings us to a couple of patterns that are very important in understanding Daniel’s prophecies. First, the metals go downhill from gold to silver to bronze to iron and finally to iron mixed with potter’s clay. This shows that man’s kingdoms go downhill as well. We think that Western civilization is pretty advanced, and from a technological viewpoint, it is. But at the same time, from God’s viewpoint, it’s pretty rotten. We may think that the Romans were pretty bad. They had incredibly brutal entertainments in the Coliseum where Christians were used as torches or fed to wild animals. But most people were very aware of personal honor and shame.

Later on, the age of reason elevated man above God. Each person became his own god. Today truth isn’t absolute, but is based on each person’s opinion.(7) This completely removes the need for anyone to answer to a higher power, since each person is his own highest authority. Even in the excesses of Rome, this didn’t happen. They worshipped “so-called gods” (1 Cor 8:5), and many later emperors were nominally Christian.

The second pattern follows the first. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream focused on politics at first. But, at the end, when man’s kingdoms deteriorate completely, God’s stone kingdom takes over. The political focus morphs into a spiritual one. As we go through the four revelations,(8) each time the focus will start on politics. Then it will become spiritual. Also, each successive revelation will become spiritual sooner and more deeply than the one before. The pattern looks like this.

 

 

 

This is extremely important. Daniel 2 is almost completely political. Daniel 7 starts focusing on a spiritual player, the little horn. Then Daniel 8 uses sacrificial animals to lead to the little horn again. This time he attacks God’s sanctuary in heaven.

When we get to Daniel 11, it starts out political like all the others. But it uses geographic language from start to finish, leading a lot of interpreters to take it in a literal, geopolitical sense. When we get there, you’ll see how that language is telling a spiritual story as we get toward the end of the revelation. But for the moment, you’ll have to take my word on it.(9)

 

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. (2:40)

 

            The Roman Empire was brutal. It devoured its neighbors, making them pay taxes to support the next conquest. Sometimes, the next target simply asked Rome for an alliance so they wouldn’t have to fight. The Jews did that in 161 BC, but it didn’t take long for them to regret it.(10) By the time Jesus began His ministry most Jews wanted nothing more than to get rid of the Romans.
            Like all the other kingdoms, Rome couldn’t last forever.

 

And in that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom. (2:41a)

 

            Translation is important here. The Aramaic verb rendered “will be” is better translated “will become.” “Will be” is OK, but doesn’t show as clearly that Rome would start unified and then fall apart. It separated into Eastern and Western parts in the fourth century. Around a century later it broke up into a number of smaller parts, exactly as God said.(11)

 

It will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. And 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. (2:41b–42)

 

            This picture doesn’t tell us the exact number of kingdoms, because it doesn’t say that each toe is either iron or potter’s clay. All it says is they’re a mix. The imagery could be as few as ten or as many as twenty or more. And that’s what came after the fall of Rome. Europe and North Africa were filled with warring kingdoms. As time passed, the total number went up and down.
            God didn’t stop here. He looked ahead to a common practice: political intermarriage.

 

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. (2:43)

 

Throughout history, various rulers have tried to use marriage to create alliances. This practice reached a peak in the Middle Ages.(12) But it never worked.
            We need to stop here for a moment to look at one very popular viewpoint. In this view, there is a “reconstituted Roman Empire” made up of ten kingdoms.(13) So far, every step in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream revealed decay. First we saw one kingdom follow another. Then we saw Rome fall apart. But we never see man unify anything. So a view that proposes reunification of Rome isn’t coming from the Bible. The Roman Empire fragmented, and will never be put back together.(14)
           
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. (2:34–35)

 

This was the vision. Notice that the stone crushed the whole statue at the same time. As we’ll see in a minute, this is extremely important.

 

And 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. (2:44–45)

 

Notice that this happens in the days of those kings. Which kings? The kings ruling over the multiple fragments of the Roman Empire. But, “Wait!” you say. “We don’t have kingdoms now. We have republics and so on.” And you’re right.

Daniel didn’t know about any form of government other than a kingdom. So God used language he’d understand. “Kingdom” just means a sovereign political unit. The actual form of government doesn’t matter. We’re living in the days of those kings. Because those kings are in the last part of the statue, we’re living in the last days of earth’s history.

The statue represented all of man’s governments over all time from Daniel’s day on. By our usual way of thinking the four major kingdoms, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome are ancient history. How can the stone crush all of them if some of them don’t exist anymore?
            When Medo-Persia conquered Babylon, it didn’t destroy Babylon, it absorbed it. The same happened with Greece and Rome. Most of our words come from Greek and Latin, while much of our culture comes from them as well. The Greeks invented democracy. Our legal system owes a lot to the Jews. The Romans developed our republican form of government, and so on. We are not new people. We are the descendants of all those that went before — personally, culturally, and politically.
            When the stone crushes every part of the statue at once, every part of man’s civilization will be destroyed at once. The Aramaic is emphatic. Crushing is a violent act that happens quickly. When man’s things are crushed, God will set up His eternal kingdom.(15) Nothing of man will remain since every part of the statue became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. God’s kingdom will fill the whole earth.
            Let’s recap. Babylon was the first of four major kingdoms, followed by Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Rome fragmented, never to be unified again. That’s where we are. Finally, at the end of time, God will sweep away all of man’s things at once. He will establish His kingdom on earth that will never end. Nothing of man’s rule will ever be found.
            Any view of prophecy that teaches anything other than this isn’t from the Bible. Rome will not re-unify so the “Antichrist” can rule a ten-nation confederacy. God’s kingdom won’t slowly grow to take over the world. The drama of sin will end with a bang, and God’s the one who will make it happen.