Daniel's Statue Part I

2,500 years ago Daniel penned the following interpretation of a vision given to Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon concerning the great gentile Empires of man. Daniel received the vision separately from God, as Nebuchadnezzar demanded that would be the requirement so that he could trust the interpretation. The vision and interpretation was given to Daniel after fasting and prayer by himself and three other captive Israelites of Noble lineage. If he had not received the vision he would have been killed along with all the mystics and wise men of Babylon.

Daniel 2: 31-45

"My king, as you were watching, a colossal statue appeared. That statue, tall and dazzling, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was terrifying. The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its stomach and thighs were bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were partly iron and partly fired clay. As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it, struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. Your Majesty, you are king of kings. The God of heaven has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. Wherever people live—or wild animals, or birds of the air—He has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all. You are the head of gold.

"After you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours, and then another, a third kingdom, of bronze, which will rule the whole earth. A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron; for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others. You saw the feet and toes, partly of a potter's fired clay and partly of iron—it will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay, and that the toes of the feet were part iron and part fired clay—part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. You saw the iron mixed with clay—the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay.

In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation certain."

Daniel shows us that the head of the statue represents the past; the kingdom of Babylon that existed from 604 BC to 538 BC (Present day Iraq) The Persian Kingdom is actually a dual kingdom of Persia (Iran) and Media (Northeast Iran) which lasts from 538 BC to 323 BC. The Greek empire lasts from 323 BC to about 102 BC. Rome comes to power in 102 BC and according to Daniel’s interpretation; the Roman Empire exists in a divided and weakened form down to our day.

A stone is then cut out of a mountain without hands, signifying this is not a human initiated action, but divinely initiated. And what is a divine occurrence in human events is always a prophetic or spiritual event. It does not mean it is not observed in history, but unlike the empires of Daniel’s vision it is not men with ambition and ego conquering and building kingdoms and empires, it is about God destroying all the cultures and governments of man in preparation for His Kingdom, His government.

Can we see this event taking place in history? The stone striking the feet of the image and crushing them, then the stone growing until it smashes the whole of the statue and replaces the governments of man which are always represented by metals or beasts in the Bible? An apt representation for governments which are something smelted, constructed, and worked into an image by mankind. Also governments, all governments, become rapacious beasts devouring the humanity they always proclaim to liberate or protect.

Note the American government was not a celebration of the governance of man, but was designed by founders far wiser than our leaders today in that they knew government would grow to be a beast, better to divide government into competing and jealous parts to frustrate its ability to take over all aspects of human life. Our last election is to our shame as Americans, because we have lost the knowledge of our founders that government is not our friend, instead over half of Americans now look to human government as a savior, at the very time God is destroying the ability for human government to function, let alone to act as a savior.

An event as prophesied by Daniel must be a major worldwide event, so we look to something that came against the remnants of the Roman Empire far into the days after it became a divided Empire and the feet rest upon the cities of Rome and Constantinople (Present day Istanbul). That event was WWI, which started on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina). This initiated the destruction of the world order of Europe. It ended the 437 year rule of most of Europe by the Hapsburg dynasty. It ended the 462 year rule of the Moslem Ottoman Empire of the Turks, and immediately following WWI the Russian Czarist system founded by Ivan the Terrible in 1552 was sent crashing down by the communist revolution.

WWI reverberates through all of the 20th and now into the 21st century, like the aftershocks of a great earthquake. All the maps of Europe and the Middle East are redrawn; the conditions for more war are created by the Allies stupid and cruel treatment of Germany following the armistice. The stone has struck, now it just has to grow in size and grind all representation of Daniel’s image to dust.

As we progress up the legs we come to the abdomen of bronze, signifying the philosophies and culture of Greece are next to suffer the destruction from this growing stone cut out of a mountain. WWII begins; it is America that is the premier player in this war, America that prides itself on democracy, that governmental invention of the Greeks. America is a mix of Roman and Greek values, Roman law, Greek culture. The stone keeps grinding, although America seems to emerge from WWII stronger than ever our preeminence is immediately contested by Russian and Chinese communism, and a weakness to confront these threats within by our own government See the story of Algier Hiss The cold war begins, eventually America is weakened culturally, morally, and financially by the demands of the cold war, yet at the same time we take down the Russians and seemingly subdue the aspirations and naked communism of the Chinese by seducing them with a huge market for their goods.

America represents the abdomen of bronze the holder of the Greek culture, the stone now grows until it reaches to the breast of silver. Russia and China enjoyed our distress in Korea and Vietnam, bleeding us by supplying our enemies with weapons and training. Now it is time for us to return the favor, bleeding Russia to the point of collapse by supplying their enemies with weapons and training to thwart their adventure in Afghanistan (along with Iran the greater part of the Persian empire at it’s greatest extent).

In fact the ancient Persian Empire had boundaries that included Libya on the west to all of Afghanistan and Pakistan on the east. It extended down the east coast of Africa to present day Ethiopia, and northwards to encompass all of Turkey and most of Greece.

The Russians invaded Afghanistan in December 25th 1979, and less than a year later Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Iran on September 22, 1980, the stone is crushing the chest of silver as the center of the ancient Persian Empire is present day Iran and Afghanistan

Russian forces withdrew from Afghanistan on February 15, 1989. The Russians lost about 15,000 troops in this conflict, but more importantly it bled them of money, respect, and resources at a time when President Reagan was building up the American Military. The Afghanistan conflict contributed in no small way to the final breakup of the Soviet Union, a process that was completed on December 8, 1991

The Iran/Iraq war ended on August 20th 1988, with the loss of over one million Iranian lives and the loss of between two hundred fifty thousand to five hundred thousand Iraqi lives. This was no small conflict, the largest since WWII, and costing billions of dollars. Interesting to note that only Russia and the United States supplied both sides during this war, most other countries supported Iraq exclusively, especially the Arab States, noteworthy is only Israel and North Korea supported Iran exclusively, war makes for strange bedfellows. Henry Kissinger remarked that "it's a pity they [Iran and Iraq] both can't lose."

I will continue in Part II of Daniel’s Statue with the final conflicts of the stone crushing the head of gold. These human conflicts beginning at WWI are all in some way the same war, just various battles. The linkage that produces the next series of battles is amazing as the stupid, greedy and warlike nature of the nations, produces the very conditions that guarantee the next series of battles or wars.

Russia gloats at our bleeding in Vietnam; but soon we will soon gloat at, and cause their bleeding in Afghanistan. Europe gloated at a supine and punished Germany at the end of WWI; but soon the world will pay in blood for crushing their brothers. And does God even now, as He did in ancient times, raise up nations if even for a short time, to punish other nations? Of course, see how communism has been used to help with the destruction of the cultures of man, and apostate Christianity, especially the Eastern orthodox church.

And why are the toes of clay and iron referring to the inability of the peoples to mix? It is speaking of the attempt to combine people in a multi-cultural world, which will ultimately fail. Also a most important result of both WWI and WWII is the creation of the state of Israel, which among other things acts as a prophetic clock setting a time limit to the completion of the destruction of the present order.

Finally, what was the identifiable prophetic event that launched so great a move of history, so complete a destruction of human governance of the preeminence of nations and of all the inheritance of human culture and philosophy? Can we identify this event? Yes, it was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the great Welsh Revival of 1904, and the Azusa Street outpourings in 1906 in Los Angeles. These outpourings spread throughout the Anglo-speaking world and beyond.

The Pentecostal movement was a result of those outpourings. Now much of that traditional movement has become ossified and nothing of the fire remains in most of the traditional churches of Pentecostal denominations. However many movements, some known, some obscure, resulted from that time of outpouring. This resulted in many millions of people, receiving the Holy Spirit, and the return of the gifts of the spirit, including healings and miracles, but most importantly the gift of Prophecy, the very gift that the Apostle Paul put above all the other gifts.

A fascinating tie to both the worldly manifestation of this destruction by the stone cut out of mountains without hands, and the prophetic source can be seen in the life of Rees Howells the great intercessor from the Welsh Revival. Eventually Rees founded a Bible College that became so noted in the power of prayer that he and his students were given privileged and secret information of British war plans, in order that they might pray for victory during WWII.

What does that mean to our story? Since the beginning of the 20th century men and women have once again been empowered to speak prophetically in the earth. And we should remember that prophecy is not foretelling the future, it is the empowerment of God in us to CREATE the future. God is not a fortune teller, He is the creator, and He endows us with the power to create our own history, to create our own destiny, and ultimately to create the Kingdom of God on this earth, to which his son shall return to rule with us…as he is Lord of Lords, and King of Kings.

For all these decades there has been obscure groups, churches here and there, prophesying the end of man’s kingdoms and the beginning of God’s kingdom. The rule of the earth will not come from parliaments and congresses, or from the stronghold of tyrants, but it will come from the unknown and the humble, from those that groan within themselves for the righteousness of God to fill the earth; with the insurance that unrighteous and selfish prayers or prophecy will not be answered.

Just as Christ came and was born in a barn, a lowly place, unnoticed, until finally when recognized as someone strange and unique and ultimately powerful, the powers that be conspired to kill Him. But it is said that at His second coming He will not be put to death again. A time comes when His prophets will not be put to death, but they shall slay the beast, and that time is upon us now, we are living in the most incredible time in all of human history, the transition from the rule of man to a prophetic rule by his Word. The earth will be ruled by the faithful prayers and prophecy of men and woman that have no personal axe to grind, have no personal fortune to win, and who do not even have a guarantee they will see the completion of that for which they travail, but the spirit within them moves them to proclaim His rule be established. What do you choose? Do you choose the rule of man, the destruction and pollution of the earth, the killing of the animals, the false hopes, the greed, the lies, and the self-seeking? Or do you choose the righteous yet loving rule of the King of Kings?