Daniel Chapter 2 - An Outline of 2500 Years of World History!

Table of Contents

Daniel chapter two is a prophecy of four empires of world history, and three of these empires, the Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman empire were still in Daniel’s future!

Why do people lose faith? The Bible says in Romans 10:17.

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

If we don’t have faith in the Lord or His Word in the Bible, what does that indicate? A lack of knowledge of the Bible! We are either not reading it, not studying it, or we don’t understand what it really means. That’s the teacher’s job. I’m not a pastor, I’m a teacher, but I think a good pastor is also a teacher. The pastor uses the Word of God to convict you of sin and to help you follow Jesus closer so you can bear fruit for Him, and a teacher may give you insights into the Word of God. Both ministries should inspire faith in the Bible, the written Word of God.

There are prophecies of future events in the Bible, and many of them have been fulfilled. For example, all the prophecies of the coming of Christ have been fulfilled. And many historical events prophesied in the Bible have also been fulfilled! I used to think the reasons that God gave us prophecy in the Bible is so we can know the future, but now I believe the main reason God gave us prophecies is so we can see that the Bible is supernaturally inspired by the Creator of the Universe who has knowledge of the future! History is HIS STORY! And when we see how the words of the prophet of God have been fulfilled hundreds of years later, we KNOW the prophet could not have dreamed it up or that it happened by pure chance, especially so when the prophet tells of multiple events that have all been fulfilled.

The Books of Daniel and Revelation are the main two prophetic Books in the Bible. You can’t understand one without the other.

True prophecy is always fulfilled:

Isaiah 34:16 ¶ Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.

That means the prediction will have its fulfillment.

In Daniel chapter two, King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream but forgets what he dreamt. He asks the wise men of Babylon to tell him his dream so he can know for sure that the interpretation of the dream is correct. Anybody can give an interpretation of something, but is it true? The King knew his wise men might deceive him. They of course could not tell the King his dream, and the King gets mad and wants to kill them all, and that would include Daniel and his friends. Daniel and his friends pray and the Lord gives Daniel both the dream and the interpretation!

King Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream

Daniel 2:31 ¶Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
32 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.
35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.

As we see, the image was the shape of a man, a human being.

The Interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream

Daniel 2:37 Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.
38 And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold.
39 And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.
41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.
42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.

From the interpretation, we see the parts of the body of the image represented four kingdoms or empires! One was already in existence, and others were in the future. But the second one was in the very near future and happened in Daniel’s time! But the third and the fourth kingdom was hundreds of years in Daniel’s future. There is no way he could have known of them apart from God telling him. And the fourth Kingdom continues on to this very day!

According to God’s Word, the great kingdom of Babylon, the “golden city” of ancient times (Is.14:4), with its great King Nebuchadnezzar, was undeniably the head of gold, or the beginning of this great image.

Isaiah 14:4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!

Babylon means “confusion“. It started with Nimrod around 2230BC the time of the Tower of Babel and ended with Belshazzer, Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson in 538 BC. The Babylonians were intellennt people. That’s why they were represented by the head. Also the head is of gold a precious metal that doesn’t tarnish. Once I saw a documentary of treasure hunters searching for a sunken vessel, and after 17 some years of searching they finally found it! Divers went down and brought up gold bars lying on the ocean bottom for more than 350 years. The gold bars were bright and shiny as if they had been under the salt water for only a day!

The Second Kingdom: Medo Persia 538 BC to 331 BC

According to world history, the dual kingdom of Medo-Persia followed Babylon; therefore we know what the kingdom of silver was without its even being named in the interpretation here. It is named, however, in a later chapter, the “MENE MENE” handwriting on the wall vision of Daniel 5:18-31, as being the kingdom that did conquer Babylon.

Daniel 5:28 PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

Notice also the remarkable symbolism in the image. The dual kingdom of Medo-Persia is depicted here by two arms. Persia was the stronger of the two, just as in the body one arm is stronger than the other! And the Medes and the Persians were also good with their hands. Darius the Mede figured out how to invade the city of Babylon by diverting the water that runs under the city so his army could enter it and attack and kill king Belshazzar.

The Third Kingdom: Greece from 331 BC to 27 BC

Daniel 2:32b …his belly and his thighs of brass…
Daniel 2:39b… and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

We know from history that this third kingdom, the one to follow Persia, was the Grecian Empire. In a later chapter Daniel specifically prophesies that Greece will be the conqueror of Medo-Persia. (Dan.8:21,22) This was fulfilled over three hundred years after the prophecy was given!

The empire of Alexander the Great was not necessarily the most powerful, but it was the most extensive. It extended almost to Italy, all the way to India, and all the way from southern Russia down into Africa, bearing rule over or dominating the world of his day. In just 10 years Alexander conquered the known civilized Western world, the fastest world conquest in history!

The Greeks were also interested in philosophy and religion or spiritual things. And it is held by the Greeks and by almost all religions that the seat of the spirit is in the BELLY. As Jesus said, “Out of his BELLY shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit.)” (Jn.7:38,39)

The Fourth Kingdom: Rome 27 BC to the present

This fourth kingdom was Rome. Rome, the tough, iron-fisted kingdom which clamped down with IRON MILITARY RULE over the entire known world in the days before Christ, was one of the longest-reigning empires the world has ever known. It so “subdued all things” that for nearly one hundred years there were no major wars, no one even being able to muster a force against the Roman rule.

Here again, it is very interesting to note how similar this particular part of the image is to the actual fulfilment of the Roman Empire. Two legs of iron: Was Rome ever divided into two parts? Yes! In its decline it was divided into an eastern and Western Empire. The Western Empire was ruled by Rome, and the Eastern Empire, ruled by Constantinople, was called the Byzantine Empire. So EVEN THE PARTS OF THE IMAGE ITSELF SYMBOLISE THE KINGDOMS OF MAN, AND THIS BECOMES EXTREMELY SIGNIFICANT AS WE GO ON TO THE FEET.

The city of Rome is in Italy, and the country of Italy on a world map looks something like a boot! “Boots on the ground” is an expression for foreign infantry or military presence in a country.

Most Bible-believing scholars teach that the last and 4th kingdom of the interpretation of the dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had in Daniel chapter 2 is the Roman Empire. Is therefore the Roman Empire ruling the earth today? Most people don’t seem to think so. But Daniel 2 teaches the fourth kingdom continues till the “stone cut without hands” — Jesus Christ — comes and destroys it.

Daniel 2:45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.

The Roman Empire, therefore, must be covertly ruling the earth till this very day! We are living in the time of the “feet” and the “toes” of the image depicted in Daniel chapter 2.

Revelation 13:3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

I believe the “deadly wound was healed” represents the restoration of the Roman Empire in the European Union.

The Clay of Daniel 2:43

And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

We see that iron represents strength, therefore the clay represents weakness. This could symbolize Democracies and Dictatorships in the Endtime. Dictators are strong and do what they want. Democracies are supposed to represent the will of the majority, but because the majority is always wrong, the founding fathers of America didn’t want to set up democracy or a government of the people per se, they set up in instead a Republic which means government by LAW!

Another interpretation of the iron and the clay could be like the bones and flesh of your feet. The bones represent the iron and the flesh covers the iron and hides it. I really believe the USA is really a dictatorship of the elite that is hidden behind the democratic process! They say you have a choice who you want to rule over you, but the choice is merely an illusion. The votes are rigged. Lenin said, “It’s not the votes that count, it’s who counts the votes.

The stone cut without hands represents Jesus Christ, His virgin birth.

Isaiah 28:16 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.
Ephesians 2:20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
1 Peter 2:6 Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

It hits the image on the toes, the Kingdoms of the earth fall apart, and the Stone becomes a great Mountain symbolizing God’s Kingdom on earth! That’s the only part of the prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled, and is something we are all praying for and waiting for!