#2 On September 11, 2001, the world tingled as we pricked up our ears and listened to shocking news bulletins coming out of New York City. Then from the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. “Terrorists. Hijacked planes. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” It was like a plot from some horror movie. What kind of people would do something like this? “What if I had been in one of those airplanes?” Jeannie’s mother was flying out from Dulles Airport in Washington to the West Coast that very morning! When the attack hit New York, all flights were immediately grounded. We knew 86-year-old Evelyn landed somewhere, but where? We worried for 8 hours! What a relief when we finally discovered her plane had landed in Kansas City. Tonight we’re still reeling in shock from the aftermath of the attack on America. Suddenly our flight on Planet Earth is a whole lot more bumpy. Anthrax. Jihad. The world is on tiptoe tonight. Wall Street is holding its breath – fuse lit and burning. Everyone is watching the Middle East. Wondering. Something is coming of epic proportions. Our worried world waits. Pundits now say the future is so frightening that something greater than man, a power above man, outside man must alter the collision course our great nations are now taking? During this very program it is my purpose to actually identify this needed force. From now on you can read your newspaper with a new perspective. See world events in a new light. You are on the verge of a truly thrilling discovery! Strange as it may seem, to properly identify this power, it is necessary to go back 2600 years into history and take a look at one of the shrewdest cartoons of world history ever produced. And no wonder! God Himself designed it. Let’s go back to the splendors of an ancient eastern palace, wherein one night a great world monarch had a most remarkable dream in Daniel, Chapter 2. This dazzling young monarch just happens to be Saddam Hussein’s hero. (Today is Saddam’s birthday: 66) Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon, forged together the great world empire of Babylon. Determined to establish an eternal dynasty, he even went to the pains of stamping his own name on every brick used in the construction of Babylon. (If you win the prize on “Jeopardy” or “Wheel of Fortune” and go over to Baghdad next week, tourists can still buy an original brick from ancient Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar’s name stamped on it!) That proud monarch was determined Babylon would always rule the world. Thinking of his empire to come, one night Nebuchadnezzar fell asleep. He dreamed a dream, Verse 1 says. In that dream he saw terrible things. He saw the rise and fall of political empires crashing one after another. In his terror he awakened. He cried out in that palace bedroom. His Taliban guards and aides and Secret Service agents came rushing in: “What is it, king? What is it?” “Oh, I have had an awful dream. Terrifying things are about to happen. So ominous, I feel sick.” “What is it? Tell us.” The king said: “Quick! Call the wise men – the astrologers!” In the days of the ancients, dreams were very important to them. So, fortune tellers were employed to foretell the future. So here they came, the brains trust of the empire. Mathematicians. Astronomers. Scientists. All with their fancy degrees and Ph.Ds and Fiddle-dee-dees. Lecanomancy. Belomancy. Necromancy. Hepatoscopy. And they said, “What is it, King?” <Daniel 2:3> These men were like our 21st Century Harvard graduates. Wall Street’s Market Analysts. <Daniel 2:4> The king said: “Now listen! That’s the very point. I have forgotten the dream. You divines claim to have direct communication with the gods. You tell me my dream!” Verses 5-6 record the desperate struggle between the so-called wise men and the king. The wise men, who everyone could now clearly see were stalling for time; and the king who demanded: <Daniel 2:5, 6> “C’mon King! Tell us the dream!” “You tell me the dream or I’ll have the whole bunch of you religious hypocrites killed!” “O King,” <Daniel 2:10, 11> The king roars. “Slay them all! Execute every last one of them!” <Daniel 2:13> At the court of Babylon during this very time lived the young God-fearing Jewish prophet Daniel. He and his three companions had been captured by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies. They were POWs. But – because of their superior I.Q.s – they weren’t made slaves or killed in genocide. These three Hebrews were training as future “aides” to the king. For some reason Daniel and his three friends hadn’t been called in for Nebuchadnezzar’s “midnight madness” consultation. So when the Attorney-General Arioch and his soldiers came to arrest Daniel, the Bible tells us this winsome young man responded with gracious tact. “This seems very harsh and abrupt, Arioch. That’s unlike the king. What’s the matter?” “Sorry, Daniel. The king had too much pizza last night.” <Daniel 2:24> “If you’ll grant a temporary stay of execution and THEN take me before the king, both the dream and its interpretation can be made known to the king.” It’s a fascinating drama here. The king grants Daniel’s request. Daniel heads home and spends the night in prayer. That very night God revealed the secret dream to him in a night vision. Next morning, Daniel calls Arioch on his cell phone: <Daniel 2:24> Daniel steps into the throne room. The king flatters Daniel: “I understand you are pretty wise, pretty smart! Able to tell me what I dreamed.” “Just a minute,” replies Daniel. “I want you to know I didn’t come up with this...” <Daniel 2:27-28> “King, when it comes to foretelling the future, the brains-trust of mankind is like Enron and WorldCom! But O King, God has taken this occasion to outline through your dream the history of the world for more than 2,600 years!” Really? The king leans forward upon his throne. “Go ahead. What did I see?” He listens intently as loudly and clearly Daniel begins to speak. <Daniel 2:29> “Yes, Daniel, what did I dream?” <Daniel 2:31> “Aha, Daniel! Yes, yes! That's it! An awesome image! <Daniel 2:32, 33> Amazed, Nebuchadnezzar listens: “Danny boy, you’ve done it again! That’s just as I saw it.” <Daniel 2:34, 35> “That’s right!”
says the King. The dream ended with that “Stone” hurtling
out of nowhere. Striking the image at its feet. Shattering and grinding
the whole statue to powder so fine the wind blew it away. Daniel looks at the king. The king looks at Daniel. He’s still leaning forward on the edge of his throne. His face brightens. “Yes, That’s it! That’s the dream exactly as I saw it! Amazing! It comes back now, every detail.” This great metal man, each different metal less in value as you descend from head to toe: gold, then silver, then brass, then iron, then iron mixed with clay. Someone asks: “But what possible significance can this obscure strange dream have upon Iraq or today’s world? Ah, my friends, wrapped in this strange image are hidden certain salient facts capable of transforming our entire outlook! What does it mean? That’s the question Nebuchadnezzar asked. Said the young prophet, <Daniel 2:36> [Now, please notice, friend! I’m not placing some modern interpretation on a musty old dream. It was interpreted on the spot!] Again the king nervously changes positions on his chair and listens...as In just a few words, God sketched history from Babylon’s time – 600 years before Christ – to the final climax of Earth’s history. Daniel looks squarely at Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of this world’s first universal kingdom, and declares, “Your majesty, here’s what this dream means:” <Daniel 2:38> Babylon. “That’s real fine! Babylon the Golden. That fits!” The king was thrilled to think he was at the top of that image. Babylon was the golden kingdom of a golden age. They used gold everywhere. The fabulous hanging gardens of Babylon were one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. 150' wide streets, all paved, criss-crossing each other at right angles. A subterranean tunnel under the Euphrates River connecting the two royal palaces. A food supply on hand for 20 years in case of enemy attack. Babylon the Golden. Babylon the impregnable. It could never fall. They were eternal. They thought. As Daniel talked, the king was enjoying the thought of his supremacy. “All this fits, Daniel! I’m that head of gold! Go on with this wonderful forecast.” <Daniel 2:39> What? An inferior kingdom conquer Babylon and rule the world? It cannot be! Never will an inferior kingdom tumble Babylon and rule the world! Archaeologists have excavated clay tablets inscribed with these words by Nebuchadnezzar: “The fortifications of Esagila and Babylon I strengthened and established the name of my reign forever.” This is why Saddam Hussein once stated to the press, “Nebuchadnezzar is my hero!” No one will ever take Baghdad! The Bible says proud Nebuchadnezzar, <Daniel 4:30> But God’s Holy Word said that another power would achieve world supremacy and supersede the golden kingdom of Babylon. Even identified it by name for Daniel. In Daniel 8:20 and 5:28, God names this power as Medo-Persia. Did this happen? It did. Daniel lived to see it. History tells us it was a dual empire. How? During the reign of Belshazzar, the arrogant and proud grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Mede laid siege to Babylon. Babylonians laughed. Scoffed at Cyrus and his armies as they gathered outside the walls of Babylon. No problem. There was NO WAY Babylon could fall. But God said Babylon would succumb to a lesser nation. Cyrus would do the work. By strategy. On October 13, 539 B.C., the golden kingdom of Babylon came crashing down and collapsed in just one night! How? God prophesied it 200 years before through the prophet Isaiah: <Isaiah 45:1> Prophecy revealed Cyrus would do this – 150 years before he was born. But how? Cyrus could not break down the walls. So He did an amazing thing. Sounds so simple now. But no one had ever heard of it before. The Euphrates river was the key. History tells us his engineers worked upstream to divert the river that ran through the center of the city. Then one night, on a given signal, one group of soldiers turned aside the whole Euphrates River, the river dropped to a trickle, and the rest of his army tramped down into the river bed and marched under the great walls of Babylon into the city. That night by surprise-attack the Persian army stormed Belshazzar’s palace. They captured the city, killed the king and Babylon the Golden crashed in one night! Now Media-Persia ruled the world. For two centuries. From 539 to 331 B.C. the breast and arms of silver of the great image ruled. A kingdom inferior to Babylon. It happened. History confirms it. But the prophecy goes on. History goes on. Daniel predicted the kingdom of silver would fall. <Daniel 2:39> Did that come to pass? Could Daniel have identified this third power when it hardly even existed yet? In Dan. 8:21 he puts it down in black and white. The belly and thighs of bronze on this metal image is Greece! He names it 300 years before it arose. Daniel spelled it out, 1, 2, 3: First Babylon. Next Medo-Persia, then Grecia. History backs the Bible up. The fantastic story of Alexander the Great, a dazzling young general who marched his armies so fast it seemed his feet touched not the ground. We were in Greece two summers ago and our guide showed us the exact place where Alexander collided head-on with Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Arbela in 331 B.C. There were so many Persian ships in the bay they couldn’t maneuver or turn around! Alexander’s rag-tag band of just 47,000 soldiers against 1 million Persians. Impossible? (20:1 odds?) Daniel 6 said: “No! The Greeks will tumble the Medo-Persian Empire.” It happened. At the young age of 25 Alexander became ruler over the most extensive empire the world had ever known: Greece, the 3rd world empire. The Greek historian Arian, writing about Alexander, said, “I am persuaded there was no nation, city, nor people...where his name did not reach...There seems to me to have been some divine hand presiding both over his birth and actions.” Greece. The kingdom of brass. I don’t believe it was just coincidence that Greek soldiers wore brass armor, brass spears, brass helmets, brass shields and brass battle-axes! That was the third metal in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Alexander the Great! What a general! In 5 short years he marched his armies all over the globe. He crossed the Himalayas to India. Finally at 32 he sat down and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. A bloodthirsty, licentious soldier, Alexander often killed his own friends for sport in his drunken frenzies. Or he’d burn down beautiful palaces, simply to watch them burn. Unfortunately he dropped dead of acute alcoholism. After his death, the Greek empire went downhill fast until finally, “On June 22, 168 B.C., at the Battle of Pynda, perished the empire of Alexander the Great, 144 years after his death.” But, God predicted four world empires, one after another. So, after the thighs of brass we’re down in the legs of iron. <Daniel 2:40> Turning to history again – Sure enough! Rome crushed Grecia. She was the most fierce and ruthless kingdom yet. This great iron monarchy of Caesars – who called themselves gods and demanded worship. Everyone knows Rome was the cruel power that put Jesus to death. Roman soldiers nailed Him to a cross on Calvary. Iron Rome. Characterized by rumbling iron chariots, short swords made of iron, and fantastic highway systems. A horribly fierce authoritative power. “But listen King,” “Now a major change in world history. No more world empires follow Rome.” “What?” says Nebuchadnezzar, “No fifth world empire?” “No,” says Daniel. “Prophecy says the 4th world empire is the very last.” Babylon the Golden, Medo-Persia, Grecia, the iron monarchy of Rome. Then God says a change is coming. Nebuchadnezzar leans forward on his throne listening as Daniel points down to the feet of the great image. “King, do you remember in your dream you saw a great break up? You remember the feet were part iron and part clay?” Yes, but what does that mean? <Daniel 2:41, 43> “You mean there won’t be one world empire any more?” “Exactly.” No fifth world empire. Rome would rule for 600 years, but then it would disintegrate. Did it happen? Go to any Barnes & Noble bookstore and read Edward Gibbons’ The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Rome divided. Like the ten toes. Dan. 7:24 says ten kings would arise. Gibbons tells how Rome imploded and collapsed through luxury, vice, political corruption, scandal and moral decay. It caved in, becoming an easy prey for the Barbarian tribes that began to invade the empire around A.D. 476. Over those Alpine passes to the North they swarmed in from Northern Europe in full revolt. They deposed Emperor Augustus, and Rome fractured into segments – little nations and countries – corresponding exactly to the ten toes of the image. Rome came apart, just as iron and clay come apart. They can’t mix. Nothing you can do welds iron to clay. <Daniel 2:42, 43> I’m here to tell you tonight, in history we’re right there now! Those Barbarian divisions became basically the nations of modern Europe today. In fact, most historians list these ten barbaric tribes. Alamanni Germans But here’s the point: God predicted these nations of Europe would never unite. They’ll try. <Daniel 2:43> In other words, intermarry royalty – but that won’t work! Look at the history of Europe. Intermarriage. Intrigue. Alimony. Palimony. God says, “No! They’ll try.” (But what?) READ THE TEXT WITH ME... <Daniel 2:43> They would fail. Seven words in Verse 43 spell the doom of all future attempts for world dominion. They tried forging one world empire down through the Middle Ages: clear into the 20th Century. Now in the 21st Century they’ve come up with the European Common Market; new common currency, the Euro. Is it working? No! They are still divided, more than ever! Intermarriage, divorce, remarriage, adultery, incest, intrigue – you name it – went on in Europe. Suddenly all the political rulers began to be related to each other. So what happens? World War I was one great big family quarrel. Most of the rulers of Europe were related in some way to Christian IX of Denmark. World War II. Same story. Another family argument, as far as Europe was concerned: the Czar of Russia, the King of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany...were all first cousins related to Queen Victoria, their grandmother! If you ever visit Denmark, go to the palace and see this famous picture of the family tree of the royal families of Europe. They were all related! They hoped romancing each other and marrying each other would prevent wars. Well, it didn’t. It’s never worked. God predicted they could not stick together – just as iron and clay will not stick together! Everyone tried to glue the nations of Europe together again. Charlemagne in 800 DEFEATED
Finally admitted God was too much for him. Kaiser Wilhelm DEFEATED A single verse in prophecy spelled doom to all these efforts to unite Europe under one flag: God said, “THEY SHALL NOT CLEAVE ONE TO ANOTHER!” I think of last summer’s G-8 SUMMIT in Kananaskis, Alberta. Remember? June 6, 2002. Bush. Tony Blair from England. Canada. France. They were all there – trying to bring world peace, peace in Europe, peace in the Middle East. I don’t wish to be disrespectful or unpatriotic. But these seven words spell the ultimate doom of the United Nations, the League of Nations, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Organization of American States, the Palestinian-Israeli peace accord: “They shall not cleave one to another.” Whether it’s Moscow or Beijing or the White House...they may get together, but they can’t stick together. It will never be! Those same words hang over every peace table, every council of nations, every effort toward uniting the world in peace. God said, “They shall not cleave one to another.” So, ladies and gentlemen, WHAT’S NEXT? That is the question tonight. And The Voice of Prophecy SPEAKS again! Suddenly the prophet stops short: “Look there, king. See it coming!” The king looks up as though he sees something. “Do you see it? That stone cut out without hands, and it comes down and strikes the image upon the feet, and smashes all these nations to bits. The image explodes, shatters in a billion pieces. And the stone grinds it to powder, and blows it away.” The king watches that “stone” grow until it becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. “Daniel, what does that ‘Stone’ represent?” Ah! He hears this pronouncement: <Daniel 2:44, 45> Friends, Daniel 2 is a picture of tomorrow morning’s newspaper! The next great event on the stage of human history! The Kingdom of the Stone! The second-coming of Jesus Christ, that’s what’s next! The Stone “cut out without hands” means God’s kingdom won’t be founded by the hands of men, but by the mighty hand of God. And it IS a kingdom that will fill the whole earth. When the Hallelujah Chorus we sing every Christmas will fulfill the prophecy, <Revelation 11:15> Daniel 2 is a panoramic picture of history in advance for our benefit. You and I tonight have been permitted to peek behind the curtain of time and see the continued struggle that has gone on for thousands of years from Daniel’s time to the coming and establishment of Christ’s kingdom. And we see whose side will win. Soon. WHAT’S NEXT? Christ’s kingdom – the very next event! Not the Taliban or Osama bin Laden. Or atheism. No! Listen! We’re living down in the toenails of that image! It’s almost over! Very soon now the Majesty of Heaven will arise and step across the threshold of time. He’ll see our seething, war-torn planet and say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s closing time. Things have gone far enough. The wisdom and brains-trust of humankind is bankrupt! It’s over.” Permit me to ask you a question: If all these predictions in just one chapter of the Bible are absolutely correct in every detail (tracing 1000s of years of history in advance) – can’t we trust the rest of the Bible, too? Can we rely on other truths God’s given to guide and help us prepare for His coming? Can’t we tonight be absolutely certain Jesus really IS coming a second time? Soon. Just as this prophecy in Daniel 2 says! Tonight we’re living on borrowed time. We’re right down there in the toes, on the very verge of God’s eternal kingdom. We’ve come to the end. The next move isn’t man’s. It’s God’s. No more “voyager spacecraft” invasions in-TO space. We’re about to witness a glorious invasion FROM space! But think! In loving mercy God reveals step by step exactly what’s coming. So we can face the future (not with fear) but with confidence. Our business tonight, friend, is to determine to become a citizen of the eternal kingdom that is coming. We can. We must! Through the wonderful citizenship freely offered through Jesus’ blood-stained cross on Calvary. God is making up His kingdom and deciding who’ll be part of that kingdom. You didn’t come here by accident. I believe you’re here by Divine appointment. He is inviting you today. Come. Study. Open your mind to God’s plan for your future. WHAT’S NEXT? The choice is up to you. Will you ponder with me these words from Joey’s song – Are you ready for Jesus to come? Eternal God, thank You for this dramatic picture of truth in Daniel 2 – for the certainty of these words in this amazing dream! We want to be citizens of that eternal Kingdom of the Stone. As our heads are bowed, Lord, I simply want to invite any person in this auditorium tonight to consider being in that Kingdom, to seriously explore how we can be a citizen. Jesus is inviting us. Personally. He’s present whenever His Holy Word is preached. Jesus is here! King of Kings, Lord of Lords! Now, if a world president walked into this room right now, we’d all stand in honor and respect. But Jesus is here. So we want to honor You. Respect You. Choose to be a citizen of Your Kingdom. Friend, if you’d
like to begin putting your faith more firmly into God’s incredible
Word, the Bible. You don’t know all the answers, but you’re
making a choice – to choose to rest your future in God. You’d
like to say, “God, my eternal security is in You. I’m
going to come to these meetings, enroll in these DISCOVER lessons.
Do whatever it takes.” [I want to invite you right now to
take your response card] |