Daniel and the Future Kingdoms

29“As Your Majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. 30As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive, but so that Your Majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.

31“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.34While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

36“This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. 37Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; 38in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

39“After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. 40Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. 41Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. 42As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.  (Daniel 2) 

Thoughts: No astrologer of the king could tell the king what he dreamed, so the king would not listen to their interpretation.  Daniel alone, by God's grace, could not only interpret the dream, but reiterate to the king what he saw in the dream. 
      What he saw were the empire successions to come. 
The gold was Nebuchadnezzar's own kingdom. 
The silver was the kingdom of the Medes and Persians
The bronze was the kingdom of Alexander the Great of Macedonia and his successors
The iron was the Roman empire.  which was divided into east and west. 
The rock that struck the statue and filled the whole earth was the kingdom of Christ. 

Some people thought that Daniel could not have interpreted the future so clearly.  In other parts of Daniel he predicts the ram (Persia) being beaten by the goat (symbol of Greece).  He also predicts 70 x7 or 490 years until the king of kings comes.  So some had dated the book of Daniel after the first century AD until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered with a copy of Daniel going back at least to 120 BC.  The point of this whole dream and intrepretation and writing is that the Lord controls the future, and we should trust the one who both knows and controls the future. 

Prayer: Lord, help me to trust in you and your love.