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In part two, we were diving into Revelation 17 with the visions and prophecies therein. We are laying the groundwork to decipher the meaning of the visions about MYSTERY BABYLON.
Continue with us as we now turn to the book of Daniel, chapter 2. Before we close today, we will begin to develop some understanding of the relationship between Mystery Babylon and the Stone Kingdom.
First, a bit of background: The ancient city of Babylon was located about 50 miles south of present-day Baghdad.
It was situated in that once very fertile strip of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known as Mesopotamia.
There were actually two Babylonian empires. The first was around the time of Abraham, ca. 1950 B.C., and it reached its greatest extent under King Hammurabi. After his death, his empire fell apart in fairly short order.
Fast forward about 13 centuries to 604 B.C., where we find the second Babylonian Empire in operation. Babylon’s armies, under King Nebuchadnezzar, invaded the kingdom of Judah on three separate occasions: 604, 597 and 586 B.C. In the first (604 B.C.), he took some of the royal family captive to Babylon as a guarantee of compliance that the vassal king of Judah, Jehoiakim, would pay tribute as agreed.
Daniel, who was of the upper classes of Judah, being related to the royal family, was among those taken by Nebuchadnezzar back to Babylon as a hostage. Daniel was almost certainly still a teenager. King Jehoiakim reneged on his word and thus Babylon was invaded the second time in 597, whereupon Jehoiakim was killed and Nebuchadnezzar placed Jehoiakim’s uncle, Zedekiah, on the throne of Judah.
But Zedekiah also became rebellious and thus in 586 B. C., the final invasion occurred. This time, Nebuchadnezzar completed the capture of Jerusalem and deported almost all of the Judahites to Babylon, leaving only the poorest and lowest of the low classes there in the vicinity of Jerusalem “to keep the lawn mowed,” as it were.
In the process, Nebuchadnezzar’s armies destroyed Jerusalem by fire, including the house of God, known to us as Solomon’s temple. As we know from my series of lectures entitled The Tabernacle in the Wilderness, which included our relatively short study, Solomon’s Temple, there was much gold, silver and brass in and around the temple.
In one of the previous invasions, Nebuchadnezzar had already plundered many of the sacred golden vessels from Solomon’s temple and took them back to Babylon. This final capture of Jerusalem happened in 586 B.C. while Zedekiah was the uncooperative vassal king of the Judah kingdom, sitting on the very throne of King David.
During that final invasion and destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonians executed the sons of King Zedekiah in his presence. They then gouged out the eyes of Zedekiah himself and took him in chains to Babylon where he died some time afterward. They killed his sons to prevent any heirs to his throne.
As some of my readers know, God Himself, having had eternity to think about it : ) , had already figured out a way around that supposed impediment to having an heir to David’s throne. That story, which is utterly astonishing and thrilling, is told in a wonderful book, now about 120 years old, a book which we still carry, called Judah’s Scepter and Joseph’s Birthright.
I give my own version of this astonishing true story in even greater detail than the book, in lectures #14 through #26 in my presently ongoing series, The Kingdom of God. (For descriptions of the lectures, see pages 2-4 on the Kingdom of God Order Form here.) I had presented two of those key lectures at a Bible Conference in Minnesota in October 2017. They were video-recorded and can be viewed here for free.
I trust that you know the basic story of Daniel because this is not a study of the book of Daniel per se, but only of Babylon and the Stone Kingdom. If so, then you know how Daniel was so gifted by God in wisdom that he was selected for special training in Babylon and was seated with the wise men of Babylon.
Have you ever had a dream which causes you to wake up in the middle of the night and it is such a powerful or awesome dream that you think to yourself, “Wow, what a dream! Maybe I should turn on the light and write that down?”
I had one like that a couple decades ago, but I was so tired when the dream woke me up that I thought to myself, “Naaaa, I don’t need to turn on the light and write that down. That is such a vivid and awesome dream, I will surely remember it in the morning.” But then, I woke up next morning and had no idea what the dream actually was—only that it was important, or at least it was worth remembering.
Well, I suspect that that is what happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. His sleep is very fitful but when he wakes up the next morning, he is very troubled because he knows he had this powerful and important dream, but he can’t even remember what the dream was, let alone what it might mean.
So, he calls his Chaldean wise men and orders them to tell him what he dreamt or else he will have them all executed—and that would include Daniel and his three Judahite friends. The Babylonian wise men, of course, protested by asking the king how they could be expected to know what he dreamt. Only the gods could know such a thing, they told him.
But Nebuchadnezzar was obstinate and was preparing to have them all killed when Daniel begged for a stay of execution of 24 hours. During that time Daniel has a night vision of the same dream and is given to understand the interpretation of it as well. So, Daniel is brought before the king of Babylon and here is what happened:
Daniel 2: 26 The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof?
27 Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, shew unto the king;
28 But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these;
29 As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass.
30 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 to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.
31 Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image [statue]. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. [i.e., dreadful]
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.
36 This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.
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.
We are pushing the limit for today. For now, I can give you only the shortest of summaries of what this is all about. The dream was of the likeness of a man, which had a head made out of gold, and so on, with less valuable metals and minerals, right on down to the feet.
The image or statue symbolized a series of kingdoms or empires which would rule the world until such time as the stone strikes it and it crumbles to pieces. The stone kingdom replaces the previous empires and at the end of verse 44 it says that the stone kingdom will stand for ever.
Naturally, everyone’s immediate question is: Where are we now in this historical progression of empires? Answer: we are living in the most exciting time in all of history because we are witnessing the stone striking the image on the feet.
That is where I believe we are—at that very time where the image gets hit by the stone. We live in a time where the kingdoms of man have culminated in an extremely powerful empire. We noticed that in the ancient kingdom of Babylon, the image of a man was set up which had a head of gold. For now, I will leave you with these thoughts. Do you suppose that had anything to do with establishing the gold standard for money?
Furthermore, is it possible that in this end of the age where the rulers are not as visible as King Nebuchadnezzar was, but where Babylon is a mystery because the real rulers are hidden to most people—I ask you, is it possible that an international financial entity called Gold-man Sachs could have anything to do with Mystery Babylon?
As we look about us and ponder what has happened to America in the past century—especially in the past three decades, it appears that the ungodly and antichristian New World Order has almost everything buttoned up and locked down tight, moving towards a new dark ages in a Total Surveillance Society. And yet…it is an empire which is so fragile, that when it is struck on the feet by the stone, the whole structure comes tumbling down.
As I said, we live in exciting times, and in the blog chapters to come, we will examine these passages in Daniel and Revelation (and many others) in minute detail, and I will show you not only how they have been fulfilled in the pages of history, but I will show how you might be involved in God’s stone kingdom!