In my article titled The Middle East and the Beast of Revelation I explored the fact that the fourth beast of Daniel 7 which is the composite beast of Revelation 13 has nothing to do do with the Roman empire in a revived form as the European Union but with a kingdom centered in the Middle East. In this article I will explore the same fact using the image of Daniel 2. Assuming that the reader is familiar with the story of king Nabuchednezzar's dream, I will not quote the entire chapter here. I will only quote the key verses and explore their meaning. If you are not familiar with the story of Nabuchednezzar's dream, I strongly suggest you read Daniel 2 before reading this article.
As the story goes, the Babylonian king had a dream which really bothered him. He then called for all the wise men of Babylon to interpret the dream for the king. But as his wise men arrived, king Nabuchednezzar not only wanted them to interpret the dream but to tell him the dream itself in order to test the wisdom and abilities of his wise men. As the king found that this would be an impossible task, he was found to be very angry with the wise men of Babylon and commanded to destroy them along with some of the Jewish captives. A young Jewish captive by the name of Daniel became aware of the king's anger and requested that the king would give him some time to interpret the dream.
As Daniel went to his house to pray, God revealed the king's dream to Daniel and its interpretation. This caused Daniel to rejoice in God and praise him for his majesty, power, and sovereignty. Daniel was then brought before the king Nabuchednezzar to tell him the dream and its interpretation. Before Daniel made the interpretation of the dream known to the king, he made sure to let the king know that no wise man can know the secret demanded by the king, but only God in heaven is able to reveal such a secret. As Daniel starts to tell the dream to the king, he says:
''31Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
32This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
33His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
34Thou 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.
35Then 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.
36This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.
37Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.
38And 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.
39And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
40And 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.
41And 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.
42And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
43And 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.
44And 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.
45Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake 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. (Daniel 2:31-44)
As Daniel gives the king the interpretation of the dream, he says that the king is the head of gold, namely the Babylonian empire which ruled Mesopotamia and sections of the Middle East during the time of the king's dream. Daniel says that the other metals of the image represent 3 other kingdoms that would arise after the Babylonian empire. The popular interpretation of this passage goes as follows:
Head of gold - Babylonian empire
Breast and arms of silver - Medo Persian empire
Belly and things of brass - Grecian empire
Legs of iron - Roman empire
Feet of Iron and clay - Revived Roman empire in the
form of a European confederacy
I myself used to believe this postulation and that was due to the fact that I was spending too much time reading popular prophecy books and spending little time reading the biblical text itself. The problem with Rome being the fourth kingdom in this passage is the fact that verse 40 says:
''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''
The New King James Version reads as follows:
''And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others.''
Note that the fourth kingdom will breake in pieces and crush all the other kingdoms. This is not true of the Roman empire. When examining a map of the Roman empire during its greatest extent (view map here), we find that it did not even reach beyond the Euphrates River in Babylon. For the Roman empire to have crushed all the other kingdoms, it must have been able to conquer the Grecian and Medo- Persian empires. Rome conquered the Western portion of the Grecian empire but not the Eastern portion. Rome did not even reach the heart of the Medo-Persian empire (Iran) which extended East to the Indus River. The fourth kingdom had to conquer all the areas of the 3 previous kingdoms in order to meet the criteria of the text in Daniel 2:40
Some argue that the two legs of the image in Daniel 2 are the East-West division of the Roman empire. In his excellent article titled Daniel's Scope of Prophecy Does Not Include Rome!, Dave Watchman writes:
''After that the belly and thighs of brass represent the Grecian Empire of Alexander the Great, today we would call the Middle East. Then the two legs which are merely extensions of the thighs represent two of the four generals which this vast territory was divided up between at the death of Alexander the Great (Daniel 8:21-22). General Ptolemy to the south took over an area around Egypt, and General Seleucid in the north took over an area we would call Syria today, and of course Israel was a land bridge between the two. Then the feet, which are merely extensions of the Grecian legs, represent the future Antichrist Empire; which is the focus of the entire Book of Daniel in the first place.
Read carefully now the anatomy of this metal man image as it is dissected into each of it's parts by the Authorized King James Bible in Daniel 2:32-33 :
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.
Lets read again the description of the third Grecian Kingdom:
The text says ...his belly and his thighs of brass. It doesn't say his “belly and his hips” of brass, or itdoesn't say his “belly and loins” of brass; IT SAYS HIS BELLY AND HIS THIGHS OF BRASS. Now we know from our own body, the thigh ends just above the knee, and the legs are extensions of the thigh; in other words as that Ole song goes “the FOOT BONES connected to the ...LEG BONE: the LEG BONES connected to the ...THIGH BONE”etc. So the legs and feet are merely extensions out of Alexander the Greats Grecian Empire; therefore making it impossible the Antichrist Kingdom in the feet will come out of the Roman Empire/E.U.! This is where the kings of the North and kings of the South in Daniel Chapter 11 come from: extensions of the Grecian Empire.'' [1]
It appears that Babylon had to be the center of the kingdoms that ruled after the Babylonian empire. This was true with the Grecian and Medo-Persian empires but not true with Rome. Even though Rome could cross the Euphrates and reach Mesopotamia around the year 116 AD, this only lasted a few months until the Roman emperor Trajan died and the Romans retreated from the region. [2] Babylon must have been the center of the fourth kingdom as it was the center of the first three kingdoms. According to Revelation 18, Babylon will be the center of the Antichrist's kingdom which is the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2. Babylon was the Lion in Daniel 7 and the lion's mouth is seen on the beast of Revelation 13.
Another reason why Rome cannot be the fourth kingdom is seen in Daniel 2:34-35:
''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. 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.''
Here we read that the stone which symbolically represents God's kingdom will destroy the Iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold (Babylon) TOGETHER! This means that when Christ returns he will destroy all the kingdoms of Daniel 2 at the same time. How can that be since Babylon, Persia, and Greece ruled in the past you might ask? Even though Daniel saw these kingdoms as successive empires, he also saw them coming back together in the future. This is true in Revelation 13 where we read that the three beasts of Daniel 7 which represent the same kingdoms of the metal image of Daniel 2 are seen together as a composite kingdom made of the body parts of the leopard (Grecian), bear (Persian) and lion (Babylonian) empires.
The fourth kingdom in Daniel 2 must be a conglomeration of the 3 previous kingdoms since all of them are destroyed together when Christ returns. If Rome was not in view in Daniel 2, which kingdom is supposed to be the fourth then? A very little mistake has led prophecy students to conclude that there will be a revival of the Roman empire to be the kingdom of the Antichrist. This mistake goes as follows: Most prophecy teachers say that since Rome fell, no other empire has ruled any part of the world, therefore Rome must return to form the kingdom of the Antichrist. History shows quite the opposite. After the Western section of the Roman empire fell in 476 AD, the Eastern section with Constantinople as its capital continued on until about 1453 A.D, when it finally fell to the Islamic Caliphate of the Ottoman Turks.
History shows that the Ottoman empire conquered the entire Middle East, parts of Asia, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southwestern Europe all the way to Spain, yet prophecy teachers say that no other empire ruled since the fall of Rome. Before the Ottoman empire, there was another empire which conquered the entire Middle East, parts of Asia, North Africa etc. around the year 850 AD. This was the Islamic empire (view map here) and as we can see, it ruled much of the world including the three previous kingdoms of Daniel 2, namely the Babylonian, Persian and Grecian empires which ruled the entire Middle East. It seems quite clear from the text that the Middle East is what is in view in Daniel 2.
It is hard to conclude whether the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2 which crushes all the others is the Islamic empire or the Ottoman empire. Since both empires basically ruled the same areas and had the same objectives, i.e. bring the dominated areas under Islamic rules, we can conclude that they can be one and the same in two different stages.
This Islamic-Ottoman kingdom alone qualifies to be the fourth kingdom of Daniel which was supposed to crush and brake is pieces the Babylonian, Persian and Grecian empires. As the Islamic empires conquered the three first kingdoms of Daniel 2, it crushed them and as the Islamic empire divided the conquered lands in different section under different rulers, it literally broke the others in pieces as the text says in Daniel 2:40
Today Islam is growing to be the major power in the Middle East. Islam is not just a religion as many assume but it is also a form of government, a judicial system and a political ideology. It could be classified as a theocracy just as Israel was a theocracy in ancient times when the Torah and Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) shaped the lives of the Israelites. The Koran is not only used as a religious book, but as a political and judicial document which shapes the policies of Islamic nations in the Middle East. The text in Daniel says that the fourth kingdom will produce 10 kings as seen in the image of the ten toes of the feet of the image which are a mixture of Iron and 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.'' (Daniel 2:42)
The toes of the image which are ten are mixed with a new element (clay) which makes the kingdom partly strong and partly broken. In the following verse Daniel explains what the weakness of the clay represents:
''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.''
Here we see that they (the toes) shall MINGLE themselves with the seed of men but shall not be united just as iron is not MIXED with clay. It is interesting that the words MINGLE and MIXED are translated from the same Aramaic word ARAB (Strong's 6151).
Some have suggested that the Aramaic word ARAB refers to the Arab peoples. [3] The Strong's concordance itself says that an Arabian is a related entry to the Aramaic ARAB. We read that the kings represented by the toes will not cleave one to another even as iron does not mix with clay. This is referring to a division among these kings. Even though they are politically united they do not have the same goals.
Could it be that this is referring to the fact that within Islam itself there are disagreements regarding how to follow Islamic rules. This is a fact that can be seen in the Islamic world as some nations are Shiites whereas others are Sunnis. These are two branches of Islam that oppose each other. Could it be that Daniel was given insight into the differences of beliefs among the 10 kings of the feet of the image who supposedly are Arabs? Could it be that these differences are what the clay refers to in order to make the kingdom partly broken?
The Return of Babylon, Persia and Grecia
As we have seen in this article, the Iron, the Silver, the brass and the gold will be destroyed at the same time. This suggests that the Babylonian, Persian and Grecian empires will be present in the end times and will be partly united into a single kingdom to be destroyed by Jesus Christ. The current situation in Iraq is paving the way for this nation to become a major player in the region. Revelation 18 makes it very clear that Babylon must be the political and economic center of the Antichrist's kingdom.
The Persian bear is awakening. Persia officially changed its name to Iran in 1935. Iran is currently becoming one of the strongest nations in the region militarily with the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles and the goal of producing a nuclear bomb. Persia (the bear) is said to crush with its feet in Daniel 7 and the feet of the bear are seen in the beast of Revelation 13. The regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan were also under Persian control.
Grecia is also arising. We should take notice of the fact that when we refer to the Grecian empire we should not think of modern Greece or Athens. The Grecian empire was divided into four major sectors and later the Seleucid dynasty which ruled the regions of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan was the major power that came out of the Grecian empire and according to Daniel 11, the Antichrist comes out of this Grecian division which is North of Israel. The other major division of the Grecian empire was the Ptolemaic dynasty which ruled the regions of Egypt, Libya and Northern parts of Sudan.
Do you get the picture now? Here we have a total of 10 Islamic nations that could be the 10 kings that will come out of the fourth kingdom.
1 Iraq
2 Iran
3 Pakistan
4 Afghanistan
5 Turkey
6 Syria
7 Lebanon
8 Egypt
9 Libya
10 Sudan
Since Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other nations of the Middle East were under the dominion of these kingdoms and of the Islamic-Ottoman empire, we can have more than 10 Islamic nations as candidates for the 10 kings. In our article titled The Ten Kings of the Beast: They Come From the East we explored the identity of possible 10 Islamic nations to be the 10 horns of the beast of Daniel 7 that will be the 10 toes of the feet of the image in Daniel 2.
Conclusion
Popular prophecy teachers all point to Rome as the fourth kingdom of Daniel. They all say that Rome must return in the form of a European confederacy in order to bring forth the 10 nations that will for the kingdom of the Antichrist. The text in Daniel seem to skip Rome which began as a Western kingdom and jump to the Islamic empire which ruled the entire Middle East, the geographical context of Daniel 2. Today we see that the Islamic nations of the Middle East that were within the confines of Babylonian, Persian and Grecian domination are rising to power and are threatening the very existence of Israel which will be the main target of this kingdom. The European Union does not fit these description as many assume. Only the Islamic nations of the Middle East meet the criteria of Daniel 2 in order to fulfill biblical prophecy.
God Bless You!
Rodrigo Silva
11/13/08
Endnotes
[1] Dave Watchman, Daniel's Scope of Prophecy Does Not Include Rome! - Available in the article page
[2] Walid Shoebat & Joel Richardson, God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible pg. 312
[3] Walid Shoebat & Joel Richardson, God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible pgs. 316-317 - Available at our online store
