(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Now we already talked about the fact that Daniel is divided into two halves. Chapters one through six are the stories of the book of Daniel, and that's the part of the book that we're more familiar with. And then Daniel's chapters seven through twelve are the prophecies of Daniel. So that's the heavier, prophetic material, and it's a very obvious division, especially because chapters one through six are in chronological order, and then we back up and chapter seven through twelve are in chronological order once again with one another. So it's two separate sections. That's pretty obvious. But there's actually another division in the book of Daniel, and that is one based on language. You see, the book of Daniel is one of the few books in the Old Testament that's not written completely in Hebrew. Part of the book of Daniel is written in Aramaic, or what the Bible calls Syriac. Look down at your Bible there in Daniel chapter two verse four. The Bible reads, Then spake the Chaldeans to the king in Syriac, O king, live forever, tell thy servants the dream, and we will shew the interpretation. So when we get to Daniel chapter two verse four, this is where the original switches from being in Hebrew to being in what we know as Aramaic, or the Syriac language. So it says Syriac there in verse four, and it just switches that language, and it's in Aramaic all the way until the end of chapter seven. So the whole rest of chapter two, three, four, five, six, and seven are all in Aramaic. And then when it switches back to Hebrew in chapter eight verse one, is where the book switches from talking about Daniel in the third person, Daniel this, Daniel that, to being I Daniel this, and I Daniel that, then it switches to a first person narrative, and it's in Hebrew. So that's another section in the book of Daniel we could say the Aramaic section or the Syriac section, which is Daniel chapter two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Now I'm going to show you why this is significant. First let me just mention that there's one other book in the Old Testament that has a significant chunk in Aramaic, and that's the book of Ezra, because it has these pronouncements from these various Persian kings, and it tells us again, you don't have to turn there, but in Ezra 4-7 it says, and in the days of Artaxerxes wrote Bishlam, Mithradath, Tabeel, and the rest of their companions, unto Artaxerxes king of Persia, and the writing of the letter was written in the Syrian tongue, and interpreted in the Syrian tongue. And then it goes on for many, many verses in that language. So it's called the Syrian tongue in Ezra. It's called Syriac in Daniel. We know it today in modern times as the Aramaic language. So what's special about this section of Daniel that's in Aramaic, chapters two, three, four, five, six, and seven? Well, what's interesting is that there's a pattern with what these chapters are about. And you might have kind of noticed this when you're reading the book of Daniel, how certain patterns are coming up, but maybe you just didn't quite put your finger on what the exact pattern was, like similarities between, for example, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego getting thrown in the fiery furnace, and Daniel getting thrown in the lion's den. It's almost like history is repeating itself in different ways in the book of Daniel. So I've got a little visual aid to help you understand how this works. I've got these little baby blocks here, okay, with the letters of the alphabet on them. So we've got A, B, and C here. And I think Sam Gipp is going to love this sermon because he likes to emphasize the fact that my views on Bible prophecy were formed in my childhood. And so he likes to kind of harp on that. So here I've got my toys that I'm going to be playing with tonight in the sermon. But anyway, the way that these chapters work, Daniel two, three, four, five, six, and seven, is they follow a pattern that basically goes A, B, C, C, B, A, okay? And let me kind of show you what I mean by that, okay? And then I'm going to get the numbers of the chapters out here and put them here. So basically chapter two being A, I'm having to do all this backwards from my perspective, three here, and then four, five. Tell me if I'm making a mistake, people, six, and seven. Does it look good, those that are in the front and can see it? Okay, so here's why I say that it goes A, B, C, C, B, A. Stop and think about it. What's chapter two of Daniel about? It's about four kingdoms that are ultimately wiped out by God's eternal kingdom, right? That's Daniel chapter two. Then Daniel chapter three has people standing up for God, being sentenced to death, and being miraculously delivered, right? That's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Then in chapter four we have the king of Babylon being judged for his pride and his doom is interpreted by Daniel because the dream that spells out his doom is interpreted by Daniel. Then when we get to chapter five, what do we have? Something very similar to chapter four. We have, again, the king of Babylon lifted up with pride, and again his doom is interpreted by Daniel. This time it's the handwriting on the wall. Then when we get to chapter six, we have, again, someone standing up for God, being sentenced to death, and then being miraculously delivered. So can you see how chapter six is like chapter three? And then when you get to chapter seven, what do you have? A prophecy of four kingdoms that are wiped out by God's eternal kingdom. So you can see how these both have the same subject matter, A. These both have the same subject matter, B. And these both have the same subject matter, C. So that's kind of the pattern. And you might have kind of subconsciously noticed that when you're reading the book of Daniel, how these themes are being repeated, but that's the exact pattern of how it's laid out. The reason I'm making such a big deal about this is because it's very important to understand the connection between chapter two and chapter seven. Part of the key to understanding these two chapters is to understand how they go together, because these are the most difficult, obviously, out of these chapters. And it makes sense that these six form this pattern because these are the six chapters that are in Aramaic, so they form a special section in the book of Daniel. Now in all of that, if we go to the end of the book of Daniel, there's kind of another similar thing. I'll just give you this as a bonus here. But if we go to the last chapters of Daniel that are the chapters that are in Hebrew, they follow kind of a similar pattern as well. So if we take chapters eight, nine, ten, and eleven, they follow a pattern that basically goes A-B-B-A. So it's similar to the other section where it goes A-B-C-C-B-A. These follow a pattern that goes A-B-B-A. Did I mess it up? Let me check it out here. What did I do wrong? Oh, eleven's wrong. All right. Thank you. There we go. This is very sophisticated stuff up here. Other pastors have a little ear piece at a PowerPoint. We're old-fashioned. All right? These blocks are made out of wood, not plastic or foam or some other, you know, cheapo. This is Melissa and Doug stuff, folks. All right? This message was brought to you in part by Melissa and Doug. So disclaimer, Melissa and Doug do not necessarily embrace the prophetic and biblical views of Pastor Steven Anderson. So this pattern is similar because basically what's Daniel chapter eight all about? It's about all the details of the third kingdom, Grecia, and about the abomination of desolation. Right? That's covered in chapter eight. Well, guess what's covered in chapter eleven? All the details and twists and turns of that kingdom of Grecia and the abomination of desolation is also covered there. So that's our A right there. And then what's chapter nine about? Well, chapter nine starts out with what? David's praying and fasting and mourning before God. And then he receives an answer from God, an angel comes and brings him an answer. Well, guess what happens in chapter ten? The exact same thing. It starts out the chapter, he's praying, he's mourning, he's fasting, and then an angel comes and brings him the answer. So we got A, B, B, A. So this is a pattern throughout the book of Daniel. So hopefully that helps you a little bit remember the chapters in Daniel and what they mean and what they're about. But the thing we want to emphasize, of course, is the connection between chapter two and chapter seven. Now, for sake of time tonight, I'm actually just going to skip over verses one through twenty seven because of the fact that verses one through twenty seven in Daniel chapter two are very simple, straightforward. You can pretty much just read them and take them at face value. And we already just read them as a church right before the sermon started. So we're not going to go through all that again because I want to take the time tonight talking about the matters that need more explanation, which is starting in verse number twenty eight. So in verse twenty eight, we get into the actual vision itself. It says in Daniel two twenty eight, but there is a God in heaven that reveal its secrets and make it known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream and the visions of thy head upon my bed are these. As for the O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon my bed. What should come to pass hereafter? And he that reveal of secrets make it known to thee what shall come to pass. But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation of the king and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart. 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. So the first thing that we see here is that Daniel is interpreting this dream to Nebuchadnezzar as being a future prophecy. These are things that are going to happen in the future. God is going to show Nebuchadnezzar what is coming. And this image that he sees, the Bible says his brightness was excellent. So it's a very bright and shiny image because it's made out of these shiny metals. And the form thereof was terrible, terrible meaning that it invokes terror. It is scary. It's a scary looking image. It says in verse 32, this image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 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 break them to pieces. 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 threshing floors. 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. This is the dream. And we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. And of course the we there is Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. That's why he said, God revealed this to me for the sake of those who will interpret it. Why? Because if they don't interpret it, they're going to get killed. So for Daniel and his three friends sake, the interpretation is given that they might not be killed. And also because God wants Nebuchadnezzar to know this. He wants to show these things to Nebuchadnezzar. That's what the Bible says. And so he says, we will tell the interpretation because he's including his three friends because the four of them had a prayer meeting earlier in the chapter and asked God to give them the interpretation. Verse 37. Thou, O king, art a king of kings. For the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power and strength and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath thee given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all, thou art this head of gold. Verse 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. Now one thing I want to point out right away is that these sections of the image, they represent both a king and a kingdom. As he says to Nebuchadnezzar, singular thou, which is a one person pronoun, thou art this head of gold. So the head of gold represents the person, Nebuchadnezzar, but it also represents the Babylonian kingdom or Babylonian empire. That's why the second section he calls a kingdom, another kingdom inferior to thee. So he's kind of equating the man and the kingdom here. There's Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire and they both are represented by that head of gold. And then of course there's a second kingdom that's inferior. That is the chest and arms of silver. And then it says there's going to be a third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth, the belly and thighs of brass. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, for as much as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, and as iron that breaketh all these shall it break in pieces and bruise. Now who are these four kingdoms? Well the four kingdoms are all discussed in the book of Daniel and three of them are actually given to us by name. Now we know of course the first one is Babylon because he just spells it out, thou art this head of gold. The second kingdom are the Medes and the Persians and they're described in great detail or greater detail in chapter 7 and chapter 8 and chapter 11 of Daniel. So they're discussed by name so much it's pretty obvious that it's them. They're the second kingdom. God spells that out. The third kingdom is Grecia, which again is great detail in chapters 7, 8 and 11 that show us the identity of this third kingdom. It's pretty obvious who that is. Now who is the fourth kingdom? Well the fourth kingdom is the only kingdom in Daniel that's not mentioned by name. It's too far off and when God prophesies things far off he doesn't give you the names of those places and people because otherwise it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So he does not spell out the name of the fourth kingdom but there is a clue we could go to where the fourth kingdom is specifically discussed in Daniel and that is in Daniel chapter 9 verse 26 if you want to flip over there. This is a reference to what can be none else than the Roman Empire. Now it's not in the context of these four kingdoms. When he talks about the four kingdoms again he doesn't spell out the name, he doesn't spell out the identity but at least this shows the Roman Empire being mentioned in the book of Daniel as significant to Bible prophecy. Look at Daniel chapter 9 verse 26 and we'll get into this more when I preach on Daniel chapter 9 but it says and after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off but not for himself. Now who's the Messiah or the Christ? Of course this is Jesus. Messiah means Christ, Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Messiah means anointed and we can get that definition from the Bible itself because The Bible says against the Lord and against his anointed in Psalm 2 but that's quoted in the New Testament in the book of Acts as against the Lord and against his Christ. So we see that anointed, Christ and Messiah, these three words are all interchangeable in three different languages. So what we have here is the Messiah being cut off, cut off often in the Bible signifies being killed and so he's cut off but not for himself. Well guess what? That's exactly what happened to Jesus Christ. He died not for himself but he died for the sins of the whole world. He died for us. So he was cut off but not for himself. What happens next? The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary and the end thereof shall be with the flood and under the end of the war desolations are determined. So all we have to do is just ask ourselves well who did that? Who was it that destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and made it all desolate? Who was it that wiped them out? It was the Romans. This happened in the year AD 70 where the Romans wiped out Jerusalem, destroyed it and destroyed the temple itself which was a fulfillment of Bible prophecy where Jesus Christ said that it was a result of rejecting him, the punishment would be that their city would be burned and he talked about the fact that of the temple not one stone would be left upon another and that's exactly what happened in the year AD 70 when it was destroyed. So therefore we do have Rome specifically brought up in the book of Daniel. Now most people that I've talked to that are Baptists and that believe like we do about most things typically agree that the fourth kingdom is Rome and I think that that's pretty much the common view amongst evangelical Christians would be that that fourth kingdom is Rome and here's why it's so obvious besides the fact that Rome is made reference to there in Daniel 9 26. The thing that just makes it so obvious is that if we look at the pattern of the first three kingdoms what do we have? The Medo-Persian empire defeated the Babylonian empire and they took over their kingdom and then the Greeks defeated them and took over their kingdom. So all we have to do is ask ourselves the question who defeated the Greeks and took over their empire and it's the Romans. There's no other candidate. So just following the pattern of what the first three kingdoms are like why would the fourth kingdom be totally different? It's obviously following that same pattern as being the direct successor, the Persians defeat the Babylonians, the Greeks defeat the Persians, the Romans defeat the Greeks. It's pretty obvious, makes perfect sense, it's crystal clear, everything fits. Now one of the things that it describes about this fourth kingdom also if you look down at your Bible there in verse 40 it says and the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron for as much as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueeth all things and as iron that breaketh all these shall it break in pieces and bruise. The question is does that fit the Roman empire and the answer is absolutely. The Roman empire was known for being brutal and for being ruthless and for just crushing their enemies and destroying them and wiping them out. So that's a perfect description of what the Roman empire was like. So it's pretty clear what the four empires are, the four kingdoms are. Now there are a lot of academics and scholars, especially they have the circumcision I might add, who have attempted to make the fourth kingdom be referring to Greece. Now why would they want to do that? You say, you know, that doesn't make any sense. Why would they want to make the fourth kingdom refer to Greece? Well I'll tell you exactly why because they believe that the book of Daniel was written in the second century BC and so they say well if it's written in the second century BC and because they know they have copies of it from the second century BC, they found evidence of it at least that far back. They say well, you know, how could it be talking about the Roman empire when the Roman empire hadn't taken over yet? Well it's prophecy, but because they don't believe in God. It's funny, these Jewish scholars, they don't even believe in the Old Testament God. Why? Because if they believed Moses, they believe in Christ. That's what Jesus said. If you believe not his writings, how should you believe my words? If you believed Moses, you'd also believe me. That's what Jesus said. They don't even believe in their own, you listen to these Jews, they don't even believe their own Old Testament scriptures. And so it's no surprise that the thought can't even enter their mind that the book of Daniel could be accurately predicting the rise of the Roman empire. Not only that, they don't want to admit the fact that the coming of Jesus Christ is so significant and that it happened during that fourth kingdom. They don't want to acknowledge that either. So they want to make it all about that third kingdom, like, oh, it's already happened, it's over. You know, the Greeks, that was the fourth kingdom, and you know, Antiochus Epiphanes, now that's it, it's over, done, nothing more to see here. But in order to do that, in order to sit there and say, well, the fourth kingdom is Greece, here's the problem with that. You got to have three kingdoms before that. So you have a number problem, right? So how do they fix that? Because it's clear that we have Babylon, we have the Medes and the Persians, we have the Greeks, and then we have the Romans. If you're going to move the Greeks into slot number four, who's your third kingdom then? Well, here's what they do, they split the Medes and Persians in half to kind of fix this. Now, this kind of reminds me of what the Catholics do with the Ten Commandments. You know, they don't want you to pay attention to that second commandment, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Why? Their whole church is filled with graven images, their whole religion of Roman Catholicism is like heavy on Roman and light on Catholicism, right? It's all Roman. Why? It's gods and goddesses carved statues, images, idols, that have been repackaged as the saints, the apostles, whatever. But it's a pagan religion that is filled with idolatry. That's why if you walk into a Catholic church, it's just graven images are everywhere. Molten images are everywhere. So they don't want that to be one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. So they want to kind of tuck that away and just make it kind of part of the first commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me. So then they say, well, these graven images aren't other gods that we're having before Jesus. You know, so they kind of like just tag that on as just a suffix of the first commandment. But then that leaves them with a problem because the Bible uses the words Ten Commandments. So you got to have ten. So now they're left with nine. So how do they get a tenth commandment? Well they take the commandment thou shalt not covet and they cut it in half, which is just ridiculous. So they'll say the ninth commandment is thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. And then the tenth commandment is thou shalt not cover anything else from your neighbor. Now the reason that that doesn't make any sense, if you look up the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy Chapter 5, one of them puts the wife even listed second of what things you're not supposed to covet. So it's like they have to really move things around. Plus that commandment's quoted in the New Testament as simply just being thou shalt not covet and Jesus just counts it as one commandment and in Romans 13 it's just one commandment just thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness, and thou shalt not covet. But they have to do that in order to kind of cook the books to make it add up to the number it's supposed to add up even though they've been skimming off the till and removed one of the commandments there. And so that's what these Jewish so-called academics and scholars are doing here because they want to kind of confuse this. And I'll tell you why they want to confuse this because the prophecies in Daniel are some of the most amazing examples of prophecy being accurately fulfilled where I mean Daniel just spells out this is what's going to happen and he spells out this is when the Messiah is going to come and they don't want to accept that because they think the Messiah is still coming. But if you actually study the book of Daniel, the Messiah actually already came before their city was wiped out and before their temple was destroyed already happened. So they want to really mix up this book of Daniel so they come up with this goofball interpretation that Greece is the fourth kingdom so then they have to split the Medes and the Persians into two. And this is what they say, well that's the consensus among scholars. It's sort of like global warming. I mean the science is settled. It's the consensus among scientists. Everybody agrees with that, you know, that it's the Medes and the Persians are two and three. Okay, let's just prove that wrong though. Go to Daniel chapter five. Not only is that just completely ridiculous because the Medes and the Persians ruled at the same time, not one after the other in that sense. But the Bible is clear here in chapter five verse twenty eight that it happened at the same time. Look at Daniel five twenty eight, thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. So when the Babylonians are defeated, it doesn't just go to the Medes and then later it's going to go to the Persians and then later Greece. No that's not what it says. It's divided. Guess why it's divided? Because they're both ruling at the same time. It's divided and given to the Medes and Persians. That's why on the image itself you have the head of gold but then you have the arms of silver. Why? Because there are two arms to this thing. There's the Medes and the Persians. That's why later when it talks about the bear representing Persia in Daniel chapter seven, the bear is leaned onto one side. One side is raised higher than the other. Why? Because the Persians were more powerful than the Medes. And then when we get into Daniel chapter eight and the Medo-Persian empire is signified by a ram. One horn of the ram is higher than the other. That's the Persian side of that thing. But it's crystal clear that this is considered one kingdom after the Babylonian empire. We have the Medo-Persian empire, it's one empire. Then we have the Grecian empire. Then we have the Roman empire. That's the way it happened folks. That's how it played out. And so we see the proof right there in Daniel 528 that this other idea is just a cooking of the books to try to make the Bible say something that it didn't. So now that we've identified our four kingdoms, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Grecia and Rome, I want to stop and talk about the idea of dual fulfillment in Bible prophecy. Now that's an extremely important principle when we're studying the book of Daniel. We need to understand the concept of dual fulfillment. Now what does that mean? That means that when these prophecies are given, there's an immediate application for back then and then there's also a greater future application that's still coming. Now this is something that is found all throughout the Bible, literally from Genesis to Revelation. It's impossible to ignore because just over and over again we see examples of this in the Bible where prophecies of the Old Testament have a dual or even triple or even quadruple fulfillment. Why? Because they have an application for that generation back then and then they often have a future application or an end times application and maybe even for a couple different generations. Why? Because there are certain things that repeat, cycles that the world goes through, that history goes through, that God goes through when he deals with people. Now let me just give you some perfect examples of this. If we go all the way back to the book of Genesis, for example, we have the story where Abraham offers Isaac his son upon the altar, right? And the prophetic statement is made before they get to the top of the mountain because Isaac asks the question, you know, where is the lamb? He says, here's the wood, here's the fire, where's the lamb? And of course this prophetic statement is made by Abraham, my son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering, so they went both of them together. So Abraham prophesies that God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. But when they get to the top of the mountain and the angel stops him from offering his son, what is actually provided? A ram. Not a lamb, a ram. Why is that? Because of the fact there's a dual fulfillment. There was an immediate fulfillment of God providing an animal for the sacrifice, but notice how the immediate fulfillment was not exact because it was a ram instead of a lamb. Still did the same thing, still filled the same void, still accomplished the same purpose, but you're left saying, well that wasn't exactly how it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a lamb provided, instead it was a ram. Why? The reason a ram is provided is because it's being signaled unto us that there's something else coming, and the someone else that was coming was Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. God was actually going to provide Jesus as a lamb for a burnt offering. So there's an immediate carnal fulfillment where there's physically a ram right there, and then there's a future spiritual fulfillment where Jesus is the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. So that's what I mean by dual fulfillment, and we could go through tons of examples of this. I'll just give you a few just for the sake of time, but you could literally come up with probably a hundred examples like this if you studied the Old Testament and just noted every time you saw this. Another great example is where Jonah is in the whale's belly. You know, there's an obvious immediate interpretation of that prophecy, because in Jonah chapter 2, Jonah prophesies, and he talks about some things that are clearly immediate. He talks about seaweed being wrapped around his head, he talks about being in the deep, he's in the water, he's swallowed by the whale. But then he also talks about being in hell, which obviously he wasn't in hell. He talks about going down to the bottoms of the mountains, which obviously he didn't do. He talks about the earth with her bars being about him forever. That didn't happen. But in the New Testament, we see the true fulfillment. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The heart of the earth would be the bottoms of the mountains, the earth about him, out of the belly of hell. His soul was not left in hell. So notice, there's an immediate carnal interpretation, or just an immediate prophetic view of, okay, Jonah is literally praying out of the belly of the whale, he's literally got seaweed wrapped around his head. But then there's the future fulfillment of Christ fulfilling that. Another great example is the day of the Lord. How many times do we read about, in Isaiah and other prophetic books, about the day of the Lord? But you know what it often says about the day of the Lord? It says the day of the Lord is at hand. What does at hand mean? It's about to happen. So there was clearly a day of the Lord that happened back then. There were many day of the Lords where God would punish his enemies. But of course, there's the big day of the Lord coming in the end times when the sun and moon are darkened and there's a great earthquake. That comes with the opening of the sixth seal in the book of Revelation. So that's the great, big, final day of the Lord. But there were other little day of the Lords that happened back then. So what is that? It's a dual fulfillment. There was the fulfillment back then, which was not an exact fulfillment, but it was roughly fulfilled. And then in the future, it becomes exactly fulfilled, exactly the way that God said it would happen. Another great example of this is the destruction of Babylon. The book of Jeremiah is written at a time when the Babylonian captivity is just beginning. And so at the end of the book of Jeremiah, in chapters 50 and 51, God is spelling out the fact that Babylon's going to be destroyed itself. You see, this is comfort to the people that are in exile, that are being punished by Babylon, realizing, hey, Babylon's going to get what's coming to them eventually. And it's also a warning to the Babylonians themselves telling them, hey, you might be in power now, things might be going well now, but eventually you're going to be wiped out as well. So it's a call for them to repent and get right with God as well. But when it comes to the destruction of Babylon, prophesied in Jeremiah 50 and 51, which is being prophesied early on when Babylon's going great, he prophesied, no, no, you guys are going to sink and never rise again at the end of chapter 51. We have to understand that that was fulfilled because of the fact that the Medes and the Persians defeated Babylon. But it wasn't fulfilled exactly the way it's described in Jeremiah 50 and 51. There were some things in Jeremiah 50 and 51 that just simply didn't happen. Why? Because there's another future fulfillment. How do we know that? Because Revelation 18 talks about the destruction of Babylon as if it's going to happen in the future. Why? Because there's another Babylon that's going to be destroyed in the future. So Jeremiah 50 and 51 had an immediate fulfillment back then, but it also has a future fulfillment that is parallel with Revelation 18. That's why you can put Jeremiah 50 and 51 right next to Revelation 18 and there are so many parallels. Why? Because a lot of that stuff in those chapters was not just for them back then. A lot of it was pointing to the future destruction of Babylon. See he talks about how Babylon is going to sink and rise no more. And he says how it will never be inhabited again. But it also talks about how it's going to happen quickly. But see the reality of what happened to the historic Babylon is that it was kind of a slow burn because Babylon continued to be inhabited for hundreds of years after it was defeated. But eventually it became completely empty. And for almost 2000 years now Babylon has been uninhabited and it's uninhabited right now the literal physical city of Babylon. And if you remember Saddam Hussein tried to go in there and start rebuilding it. Who remembers that when they were talking about that during the Gulf War? He went in and started rebuilding it but the Gulf War stopped his plans and so it's abandoned. And so to this day it's abandoned. Nobody lives there. So the prophecy was fulfilled but it wasn't quite exactly the way it said it would happen in Jeremiah 50 and 51. Just like the lamb wasn't quite a ram. Why? Because there's still a future fulfillment that's coming that will fulfill Jeremiah 50 and 51 in toto. I mean just completely to a T. All shall be fulfilled exactly as it's stated. So look I could go on all night. I'm not just going to sit here and go on and on but I'm sure that you could probably think of some other examples in your own mind of things that have a dual or even triple fulfillment where you're thinking of stuff that was prophesied in the Old Testament that happened back then but it also had an application for Jesus. It also had an application for even the second coming of Christ. So this is not a concept that's foreign to scripture. It's all over scripture. In fact it's one of the most basic things of understanding Bible prophecy. I mean if you don't believe that Bible prophecies often have a dual fulfillment you're you know you're not even ready to study Bible prophecy if you can't even see that basic fact because you're going to come up with all kinds of wrong ideas because that's just such a basic teaching so we need to kind of lay that down. So when it comes to the fourth kingdom here's what we need to understand about this fourth kingdom. This fourth kingdom has a dual fulfillment. This is the key to understanding this chapter. The fourth kingdom has a dual fulfillment. The back then fulfillment was the Roman Empire came along and it was that iron empire that break in pieces and destroyed and was super powerful. But there's going to be a future fourth kingdom that is going to be an even greater fulfillment of this. That's why in Revelation we still see it as coming. He talks about the beast with the seven heads and the ten horns, right? Which is how this fourth kingdom is described in Daniel 7 as having ten horns. So we see that parallel. So the fourth kingdom was the Roman Empire but it also has a future fulfillment in the end times as being a global dictatorship with the Antichrist and so forth and that's all taught in Revelation. I don't have time to go into all the details of that right now. So let's talk about this fourth kingdom. Now remember in the vision that Daniel interprets the fourth kingdom is represented by the legs and feet of iron but you remember the feet are part of iron and part of clay. First of all I just want to make it crystal clear these are not five kingdoms. There are only four. It's clear that there are only four sections and when we get to chapter seven the parallel passage there are only four beasts representing the four empires. So it's just four. The feet are part of the fourth kingdom. It's the legs and feet that make up the fourth kingdom. Now when we talk about this fourth kingdom that is of iron and clay it gets destroyed by the stone that's cut out not with hands. Let's look at that in verse number 45. For as much as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it break 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 is sure. So how did the gold kingdom end? Well it ended because the silver kingdom took over. How did the silver kingdom end? Well the bronze kingdom took over. Well how did that kingdom end? Well the iron kingdom took over. How does the iron kingdom end? Well it's wiped out by this stone that basically slams into those feet and destroys them. And here's the thing, if you have a statue and the feet get blasted obviously the whole thing is going to come crashing down because everything is standing on those two feet. So that's why when the stone smites those feet and toes then basically the whole thing comes crashing down and it talks about in this verse 45 how it break in pieces the iron, that's the fourth kingdom, the brass, the clay, the silver, the gold, it all gets wiped out, right? Now the stone that is cut out without hands that destroys this empire of man is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Because this stone that crashes into the feet is Jesus Christ and his kingdom that replaces that fourth kingdom is an everlasting kingdom that shall never be destroyed. Look at verse 44, and in the days of these kings, talking about the ten kings, the ten toes of the book of Daniel, and it says 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 forever. So we see here that the stone that's cut out without hands breaks the feet and then it becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth. Mountains in the Bible often represent kingdoms and he spells it out here that this mountain is his kingdom that will never be destroyed. And if we compare this to Daniel chapter 7, of course, we see the Son of Man come in the clouds. And of course he is given a kingdom that lasts forever. So there's no question that the stone here is Jesus when we compare it with Daniel chapter 7. Now why is this important? Why is this interesting? Well let's go back to the idea of dual fulfillment. The fourth literal physical kingdom of those days that followed that Greek empire was the Roman empire. And who came during the Roman empire? Jesus Christ came. And Jesus Christ spiritually set up this kingdom. Jesus Christ came and he did not set up a physical kingdom. He didn't defeat the Romans and wipe out the physical Roman empire. But he came and spiritually set up an eternal kingdom. He brought in everlasting righteousness. Jesus Christ came and was the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and he came during that fourth kingdom during the Roman empire. But in the future we have the second coming of Christ. We know that this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you've seen him go into heaven. And when Jesus Christ returns the second time, it's not going to be to set up a spiritual kingdom in our hearts. It's going to be to set up a physical kingdom where he will rule and reign on this earth, literally sitting upon the throne of his father David, and he will rule with a rod of iron. That is going to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. So here's how this works. There was the Roman empire. During the Roman empire came the Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritually conquering, spiritually defeating death and hell, setting up a spiritual kingdom in our hearts. But in the end times, there's going to be another fourth kingdom that's described in the book of Revelation as coming. This is your anti-Christ and false prophet and all the things that we read about in Revelation chapter 13 and Revelation chapter 17. And so during that fourth kingdom revisited, or the future fulfillment of that fourth kingdom, is when the second coming of Jesus Christ will happen, and that is when he will permanently wipe out these kingdoms, and he will destroy them. Now when we see the fourth kingdom in the book of Revelation, it's an amalgamation of all the kingdoms. And that's why when Christ defeats the anti-Christ and his armies, he's in a sense defeating everything that is Babylon. He's defeating everything that is Persia, everything that is Greece and Rome symbolically. So we have coming in the future a new world order, a one world system, one world government, one world religion, one world monetary system that's all described in Revelation. And obviously I've gone into great detail on these things in the verse by verse Revelation series I did, or in our film after the tribulation, or in our recent film Babylon USA, and all these things have been laid out and explained very clearly. I don't have time to just give you all that right now in a sermon on Daniel chapter 2. But there are a few things that we need to understand about this dual fulfillment that the modern or end times manifestation of this fourth kingdom is going to be like unto the Roman empire. The Roman empire was a foreshadowing of it. So the attributes that the Roman empire had, those same attributes will be found in this future new world order, this future kingdom. Also some of the attributes of the other kingdoms that preceded Rome. And so just as Rome was ruthless and devoured and break in pieces, you know, there's going to be that type of government that's coming in the future with the new world order. So it's not just going to be this, oh, this wonderful liberal communist utopia, and we can all join together in the United Nations, it's so wonderful, it's going to be violent. I mean, study the book of Revelation. Peace is going to be taken from the earth, people are going to be killing one another. That's what's going to bring in the new world order. Violence, war, famine, pestilence, disaster, that's what's coming according to the book of Revelation. A time of trouble such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no nor ever shall be, the Bible tells us. So let's go into some of the prophecies here about that fourth kingdom, and let's understand some of these things with the idea of dual fulfillment in mind. The Bible says in verse 41, because we left off in verse 40, let's pick up in verse 41. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes part of pot of clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, for as much as thou sawest the iron, mixed with miry clay. 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. Now again, if we study Revelation 17, you don't have to turn there for sake of time, but in Revelation 17, the ten horns are described as being ten kings who all rule at the same time. So it's not a succession of ten kings, it's ten kings that all rule at the same time. And these ten kings, according to Revelation 17, they all agree to give all their power and strength unto the beast. They all agree to relinquish all power to the Antichrist himself. So who are these two kings? Well, I believe that these will be ten world leaders in the end times, sort of like we have today these groups of important world leaders. How about the G10 summit, for example? And I'm not saying it's those exact ten nations that'll be represented, but it'll be something like that in the sense of the ten most important nations or ten regions that'll represent everybody in the world. So that basically these ten leaders can hand all the power to one man. I mean, how do you have a one world government? You have the individual governments and infrastructures that are already there, and then what do they do? They relinquish power to the one world system. It's just like right now. We have our sovereign nation, the United States of America, doing what? Relinquishing power to the United Nations, giving them more of our sovereignty, giving them more of our authority, letting them make decisions that we normally would be and should be making for ourselves. So this is what we're going to see in the end times, there are going to be ten great kings or world leaders that will relinquish their sovereignty, relinquish their power all into the hands of one man, all to the anti-Christ, all to the beast. Because after all, it's an emergency. You know, and that's what they always do, right? It's a state of emergency. We have to give them some emergency powers. Hey, we got to all join together and band together right now, put aside our differences. Now the reason that it describes these ten kings as the ten toes that are part of iron and part of clay, it tells us right here in verse 42. Now some people say, oh, it's because it's part aliens and part humans. You laugh at that. That's actually a pretty popular belief, sadly, where people just take things in the book of Daniel and Revelation and just twist them so much and they let their sci-fi imagination and their fantasy novels get the better of them, and they just make up these crazy theories about hybrids that are half demon, half human, and that's why God had to flood the earth. You know, which is not what the Bible teaches in Genesis, it's not what the Bible teaches anywhere. I mean, they have to read in and add a lot of things that are not in scripture. Oh, they say the sons of God are angels. Really? Because the Bible says, unto which the angels said he at any time, thou art my son this day if I begotten thee, and again I'll be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. Hebrews 1.5 states that he never said that to the angels at any time. And that's a whole other sermon in and of itself. But the point is, people get these crazy ideas. Look, the reason that they're mingled part of iron and part of clay, it tells us. It's not because they're part alien and part human or part demon and part human. It's because the kingdom, it says in verse 42, is going to be partly strong and partly broken. So the iron represents strength. The clay or pottery represents weakness. I mean, something of iron is pretty hard to break, cast iron, but something of clay is pretty easy to break. You just shatter it. Now think about the world that we live in today. It's made up of all these different governments, and some governments are way stronger than others. And when you look at the United Nations, all these nations come together, but some of these governments are really powerful. Some of them have powerful militaries like the United States, for example, but other nations are just weak. You know, they're at the table, but they don't really have a lot of teeth behind their demands or concerns or desires. I mean, they're included because everybody has to be included in a sense, but it's not like they're really a power player. So they're kind of the clay kingdoms or the clay sections. So part of the kingdom is going to be strong, iron. I mean, they're going to be able to just crush opposition. The clay governments and the clay nations, they're not, not claymation now, clay nations, they're not going to be able to do as much to really crush the people and oppress the people because they don't have as much power as a government. They're a weaker leader, okay? So that's what we see here. And that makes perfect sense. I mean, if you're going to combine the world, if you're going to take these 10 kingdoms and put them all together into one global government, obviously parts of it are going to be weaker than others. Obviously parts of it are going to be stronger than others. It's not going to be uniform as these other kingdoms were. So that makes perfect sense. And it says in verse 43, and whereas thou saw'st 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. Now again, this is where the sci-fi people come in, oh yeah, you know, they're going to mingle themselves with the seed of men, this is aliens. This is the demons, they're going to mate with the humans. Look that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Now it's born of the spirit of spirit, Bible says, okay. And so I'm not even going to go into that anymore. It's ridiculous. And I've debunked that in more sermons than I can count. But what this is actually saying is pretty clear. What is the seed of men? What this is talking about is the physical seed that a man produces. This is also known in the Bible as the seed of copulation, okay. So man's seed is that which comes from him and allows him to reproduce, right. So when the Bible says here, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, this is referring to people becoming physically intermingled as in biologically intermingled. So this is basically people of two nationalities intermingling, right. Now we see that today, we see various nationalities intermingling. Obviously this has gone on throughout all of history. There's never been nations that were just completely intermarried only with themselves. You know all throughout history there's been a mingling. Look at the children of Israel. How long did it take them to start mingling with the heathen? Well Abraham himself is marrying Keturah and then you've got the patriarchs and who's Joseph married to? An Egyptian right away. You know you see Judah going out and marrying a Canaanite woman. I mean show me one phase in the history of Israel where they're not intermarrying with other heathen nations. It's always happened. There's nothing new under the sun. So don't let people give you this crazy idea that interracial marriage is some new concept. Wow, what a concept. It was already happening thousands of years ago in the Bible. It's something that's always gone on. It's something that people have always done and it diversifies the gene pool. People act like, oh we're all just going to look like Tiger Woods or something because we're all going to be mixed. You know we're all just going to turn into brown people that are just like not quite black, not quite white, not quite Asian, you know, Tiger Woods basically. What nationality is he? Who knows? He's everything, right? But that's not really true, okay? Because we've already been mixing for a really long time and you still see that there are still white people, there are still black people, there are still Asians, there are still all different nationalities and different types of people physically. We see that all around us, okay? Now the Bible, now obviously some nationalities have become more mingled than others, okay? We see examples throughout history where sometimes two nations will mingle so much that they become indistinguishable from one another and we just consider them one group of people. Let me give you a perfect example of this, Mexico. What's the big difference between the United States and Mexico when it comes to the American Indians? Well think about it, when the British came over and colonized what is now the United States, they brought their wives and their families with them and of course some of them did mingle with the natives but most of them did not. Most of them brought their wives, they brought the kids, they kept their own families separate. Obviously there's mingling that took place from day one but in general we can look at the 400 year history of the United States and we can see that there are pretty much white people and Indians, right? Now you go to the Indian reservations and you see some of them are a lot darker than others, why? Because there's been mingling that's going on and of course we all have a Cherokee princess in our family tree, amen? I know I do but I've got the DNA to prove it, that's the difference between me and you, you just have some wild-eyed claim about it. Well I've got proof, okay? But you know we've all got that Cherokee princess, it's always a princess, a lot of chiefs, maybe not a lot of Indians in that tribe. But the point is that the white man and the Indian by and large retain their own identities to where we can today look at someone and say this is a white person and we can look at someone else and say this is an Indian. Everybody understand what I'm saying? But when we think about Mexico it's not quite like that because the Spaniards came over and they really intermingled with the American Indians in Mexico to the point where you have people just that are known as Mexicans because they're, and what is a Mexican? It is a mixture of the Spaniards and the Native Americans who were there when they got there, it's become a mingled people. And when we go to Mexico today we just see a lot of Mexicans, which is what we would expect to see in Mexico, and we see that they are part Indian and part Spaniard. Every once in a while you'll see somebody down in Mexico that really has blond hair and blue eyes and you can say okay this guy's pretty Spanish. But most of it is just mixed, okay? And if we go to Spain though and we look around Spain what do we see? We see a lot of white people speaking Spanish, but they're Spanish people because Spain is in Europe. Does everybody understand what I'm saying tonight? Sorry if I'm being culturally insensitive to anyone tonight, I don't really care about whether that offends you or not, I'm just explaining the history of the world and explaining basics of ethnicity here. So basically, you know, that's a difference, right, between the way the United States kind of has its history and the way Mexico's history is a little bit different in that sense. When we see the history of those ethnicities. So what the Bible's saying here when it says in verse 43, and whereas thou saws iron mingled 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. What the Bible's saying is that in the end times there's going to be a lot of mixing of nationalities, but you will still be able to see distinct nationalities. You will see countries coming together and joining unions like, for example, the European Union. But even though we have a European Union, and even though they are connected, and even though they're intermingling with one another, we still have what? We still have Polish people and Germans and French people and Spaniards, and just like in America, even though there's been a lot of mixing, we still have Native Americans and we have black people, white people. So there's mixing that goes on, and there's governments that are joining together, but you still have nations. You see, when we get to the end times, the Bible's clear there are going to be nations because he talks about all nations. There are going to be various languages because he says all languages, all tongues. So that proves that in the end times there will still be languages, everybody's not going to just only speak English. Even though that's where we're heading, it's not going to get all the way there because there's still going to be languages, nations, tongues, kindreds, ethnicities. So they're going to mingle with the seed of man, meaning that not only will the governments join up, but they'll also be mixing amongst the people, but they're still going to retain their identities. They're not just going to become one and the same, just one blur of iron and clay just all mixed. That can't happen. So you have the clay and you have the iron. So that's what that's referring to in verse 43. Verse 44 says, and in the days of these kings, these ten kings of the ten kingdoms of the ten toes, the ten horns, 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 forever. And of course that is Jesus Christ's kingdom set up spiritually at his first advent and set up physically at his second advent. For as much as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it break 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. Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and worshipped Daniel, obviously that was not right for him to do that, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odors unto him, also not right. The king answered unto Daniel and said, Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret. Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon. Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon, but Daniel sat in the gate of the king. So there we made it through this bear of a chapter, Daniel chapter 2. It's a great chapter though, it's very important, and it all comes clear when we compare with Revelation, but a little bit of strong meat of the word here. If you want to do further study to really understand this and comprehend this fully, the chapter you want to study is Revelation 17. That's what deals with the 10 kings and so forth. And also of course you would study Revelation 13. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great chapter, Lord, and all the things that we could learn from it. And Lord, we just pray that you would just help us as we read our Bibles to study to show ourselves approved, not to listen to cunningly defies fables and strange theories about aliens and so forth, Lord. Help us to focus on what the text actually says and take the Bible for what it says, Lord, and compare scripture with scripture to find the truth in these things and not to be carried about and tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.