Chapter 2. Nebuchadnezzar dreams

Chapter 2. Nebuchadnezzar dreams In Dan 1:1-21 Daniel and his three friends are introduced to our notice as captives in a strange land, and under Gentile oppression. Their faithfulness to God, and His overruling providence exercised on their behalf, are brought before us in few words, but with great encouragement for our naturally timid souls; mention also being made of the fact that Daniel continued unto the first year of King Cyrus. In Dan 6:1-28 we are told that “This Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.” He and his three companions were of a hated, and at that time a humbled, race, and the high positions held by them in the kingdom, as well as their faithfulness to the God of their fathers, the only true God, increased to a very large degree that insane and bitter odium. They were endowed by the favour of God with more wisdom and knowledge than all the learned men in Babylon, and for this reason they ranked high among the lords of that mighty empire, and this itself was a sore grievance to those proud men. But they were there under the protection of God, and while He had need for them in that place, nothing could harm them. In Dan 2:1-49 the time arrives when the testimony of these witnesses is to be brought under the notice of the king. What effect their faithfulness may have had upon Ashpenaz or Melzar is hidden from us, but that which is done in the presence of the throne cannot so well be hidden. Through these servants of the Lord the conflict between light and darkness begins in that idolatrous empire; and in the engagement the light-bearers seem to be in danger of destruction, along with the instruments of the power of darkness. But the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and underneath them are the everlasting arms. He will keep His servants in the background, until the utter worthlessness of the king’s wise men has been manifested He will not compete with those wretched imposters. He will let them exhaust the resources of their ingenuity. Then, when it is all over with them, and they are doomed to destruction by the fiat of the king, He will take the matter in hand. It is ever so with God, and this principle of His intervention shines upon every page of the Divine revelation. Man’s complete failure is first manifested, and then, and only then, is the power of God brought to light We see this principle exhibited, among many other places and ways, at the Red Sea, at the Jordan, in Ephesdammin, but above all in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ; for it was when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. God’s activities cannot be mixed up with man’s puny efforts. Light cannot mingle with darkness.

Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. One may be sure that he had had many a dream that had caused him little uneasiness, before this one came in to disturb his tranquillity. This dream, however, was like none of the others. It troubles his spirit, and causes his sleep to depart from him; and yet he cannot bring it to his remembrance. As usual, he has recourse to his considerable band of magicians, star-gazers, and dream-readers, that they might unravel this mystery, convinced that if any one could really interpret the dream, he would also be able to call it back to his remembrance. The interpretation of the dream was no more within the compass of the mind of man, than was the ability to make the dream known to the dreamer. These were his conclusions, and they were both just and logical. He is quite certain that, had they known the dream, they could have trumped up some artificial interpretation of it, with which the king would have had to be content, though often he seems to have been made painfully conscious of the bogus character of their interpretations (Dan 2:8-9). The truth is, this was but a challenge thrown down by the God of heaven before these men, who represented the wisdom of the devil-deceived world, as His challenge goes forth verbatim in Isa 41:1-29, “Produce your cause, says the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen; let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is be that chooses you.” Who will enter the arena against Jehovah of Hosts? Who will pick up the gauntlet of the Almighty, thus thrown down in the courts of the Gentile autocrat? The magicians of Egypt tried a venture with Him in the courts of Ham, and suffered a humiliating defeat in the presence of their sovereign. Nearly six hundred years afterward, four hundred and fifty of the prophets of Baal entered the lists against one solitary servant of the Lord upon the crown of Mount Carmel, and after having been ignominiously defeated, fell under the righteous judgment that their sin merited, at the brook Kishon.

Nebuchadnezzar had sacked the holy city Jerusalem, had pillaged the glorious temple of Jehovah, and had carried away captives innumerable to his own land; but in his royal palace he is made to find himself in the presence of the One who turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolish, and who frustrates the tokens of liars, and makes diviners mad (see Isa 45:25). Whatever he may have thought about his wars and conquests, he is now faced by something that baffles the whole resources of his kingdom. He cannot dismiss his dream from his thoughts, neither can his wise men help him to have the mystery unravelled. Filled with the fury begotten by defeat, and by a suspicion that his wise men are a pack of deceivers, he will destroy them, as fell weeds that do nothing but corrupt the ground. And the decree goes forth from his presence, that all the wise men are to be slain. The powers of darkness have had their opportunity. From its foundation they had had undisputed sway in Babylon. The present monarch had as well served their purpose as had his predecessors, and the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by his armies, placing the people of Jehovah at the disposal of the proud Gentile, had been the greatest of all their victories. There is now no power under heaven that would dare to stand at issue with Nebuchadnezzar for the empire of the world. But after all how short is the triumph of the wicked! If the captive people are in Babylon, the light of God is there, also. If the supremacy of the Gentile is established in the city of the Great King, the supremacy of the servants of God is established in his presence. In bringing the holy people into Babylon they brought there the living God, and on this the powers of darkness had not reckoned. But in every instance defeat dogs the footsteps of the enemy of God. And this should not surprise us. We should only be surprised if it appeared to be otherwise, for it never is otherwise, however we may be deceived by appearances.

We are told that “Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.” This was the gift of God to Him. It was not any inborn ability, as he himself acknowledges in Dan 2:30. God had His own wise purpose in speaking to the king in a dream and vision of the night, and in allowing him to forget it, while leaving an impression upon his mind regarding it, that allowed no rest to come to his troubled spirit. God will give him to understand, that if he has triumphed over the people with whom He has identified His name, it has been with His permission, and not because He had not power enough to defend His name and interests. His infinite superiority, when compared with the gods in which the proud monarch had put his trust, must come clearly into evidence, and they must be seen to be defeated in every engagement. The Chaldeans were very confident that the king was making a demand that could not be met by any man upon earth. They are sure that no man existed who could show the king’s matter. None but the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh could meet the demand of the king: this is their final word to the man whom they feared above all men upon earth. Let come what may, they are compelled to admit their defeat, and thus, though unwillingly, add their testimony to the wisdom and might of the God of Daniel, when through him the king has both the dream and the interpretation made known to him. They have to acknowledge their helplessness. The whole resources of the king fail him. He may be angry, he may resort to violence, he may kill without mercy; but how will that avail him? When all the wise men in his kingdom have been slain, he will be no nearer the object of his pursuit than he was at the beginning.

How weak the most exalted creature is! and how apparent that weakness is, when the circumstances arise that bring the helplessness of the poor mortal to light! King David could slay the lion and the bear and the giant Goliath, but he could not save the life of Abner, nor punish his murderers, and he has to own it with sorrow, and say, “I am this day weak, though anointed king, and these men the sons of Zeruiah be too hard for me” (2Sa 3:39). The rulers of Israel could crucify the Saviour when God permitted it, in order to bring into effect His own gracious purposes, but they could not keep Him in the sepulchre; and the precautions they took to keep Him there only made more manifest the power of His resurrection. When the cripple was healed by the disciples, through the power of the name of Jesus, they had to confess their helplessness before such a testimony to Him whom they had crucified, and at the same time the unabated and incorrigible wickedness of their godless hearts, saying, “What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle has been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it” (Act 4:16). Why should they have wished to deny it? They had set themselves in opposition against God and His Christ, and like Nebuchadnezzar they can do nothing but manifest their impotent fury. “Power belongs unto God” (Psa 62:11), and it is at the disposal of all who are in the pathway of His will, and who feel their own weakness (2Co 12:9; Php 4:13).

Daniel soon learns of the sad predicament in which, not only the Chaldeans, but himself and his three friends, were placed, but instead of being excited and nervous in the face of the death that threatened them, he discerns the purpose of God in this unusual circumstance. He sees that whatever impressions the nations of the earth may have received, through the apparent defeat of the God of Israel, and that by the gods of the nations—for in that way would the success of the armies of Nebuchadnezzar be viewed—his God was quite able to take care of His own glory, and the present circumstance was one created by God Himself, to show, for the blessing of those who were not wholly given up to the service of demons, His infinite superiority to the gods of Babylon. Hence the only request he makes of the king is for time, and says that he will discover the interpretation. He does not say he hopes to be able to unravel the secret, or that he thinks he will be able; not he says he will, for he sees the intention of God in raising this question in the stronghold of idolatry. We are told in Pro 25:2 that, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” But here is a mystery that neither the king nor his wise men can penetrate.

Daniel takes up the matter, being perfectly persuaded as to the result. But though he can speak so confidently regarding the elucidation of this secret, his confidence is not in his own power to penetrate into hidden mysteries, but in the living God who for His own glory will enable him to make known to the king what his visions were and the interpretation of them. Therefore he goes straight to his three friends, and requests them to desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret, that neither he nor they should perish with the wise men of Babylon. He shrank from being involved in the destruction of those wise men, who, as Nebuchadnezzar told them, were in the habit of deceiving him, by the use of lying and corrupt words. If a servant of the Lord must by the command of his sovereign be put to death, he must surely desire that the cause for which he has to suffer may be well known, so that no one may be left under the impression that he suffers because he has been convicted of corrupt practices. Paul was exceedingly thankful that it had become well known that he was in prison for Christ, and not because he was an enemy of righteous laws (Php 1:12-13). The wickedness of the rulers of Israel numbered our Lord with the transgressors, and put Him on a gibbet between two thieves. It was then that Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luk 23:34). “Therefore,” says God, “will I divide Him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He has poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa 53:12). This, the crowning act of man’s wickedness, can never be forgotten by God. Moreover His followers are privileged to be despised and rejected as He was, but it is all joy when it becomes manifest that it is for Him that they are called upon to suffer. But when the witness for Christ is treated as a brawler, or a disturber of the peace, and to real cause of his suffering is hidden underneath a flourish of false accusations, the cup is a bitter one to drink The secret is made known to Daniel in a night vision. It is not a favour accorded to saints of this dispensation only, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us (1Jn 5:14), but was always true for the soul desiring to be faithful to God. “We know that God hears not sinners,” says the blind man, “but if any man be a worshipper of God, and does His will, him He hears” (John 9:1-41). Daniel knew that he had the gift of interpreting dreams, but his reliance was not in the gift given to him by the favour of God. He does not fall back upon the understanding that God had given Him, as though having obtained the gift He could dispense with the Giver. He is as dependent upon God in the exercise of the gift, as he would have been had no such gift been bestowed upon him.

What a lesson this is for us! The gift conferred upon the servant, if it is to be rightly exercised, must be exercised in dependence upon the Giver. There must be no confidence in self. The blessed Lord gave power to His twelve apostles, to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out demons (Mat 10:1-42), and yet in one instance we find a demon refusing to recognize their authority (Mat 17:1-27). The Lord lets them know that fasting and prayer are necessary for the successful exercise of the power He had bestowed upon them. I understand by fasting the most absolute distrust of self, and by prayer the most absolute dependence upon God. Which of us will question the ability of our Lord Jesus? Raising the dead seems to have been an everyday miracle of His. But at the grave of Lazarus we learn in what spirit He performed those works of power. We read in Joh 11:41-42, “And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And I know that Thou hearest me always; but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” Though God over all, yet had He taken the place of a servant, and His almighty power was therefore subservient to the will of the Father. The gift of God, whatever it may be, is not given to us to make us independent of Himself, but is to be used according to His direction; and every servant has to learn this, if he is to be a good and faithful workman. The answer of Daniel to the favour bestowed upon him and his three companions is very beautiful. He blessed the God of heaven. His spirit is broken. It is no longer the God of the whole earth (Jos 3:11), the God of Israel, or the God of Jacob, but the God of heaven. In this expression is buried for the moment the glory of Zion, and of the people of His choice. But whatever be the power He may establish in Babylon, He will never take the whole earth through the Gentile. He would have taken it through the nation that He brought up out of Egypt, had they been faithful to Him; and through that nation He will yet take hold of the earthly inheritance, though for the moment power has passed out of their hands. This Daniel humbly acknowledges in the title by which he addresses God.

All wisdom and all might Daniel attributes to God. Folly resides with the creature. His very angels have been charged with folly. But all the activities of God spring from the wisdom and the love of His blessed heart. Man’s ways are erratic, changeable, and capricious, for he is naturally void of understanding, and having broken loose from his Creator he is out of all proper control, and is the sport of every evil influence. Therefore man’s recovery for God is brought about by the entrance of wisdom into his heart. The witnesses of God in this world are never thrown upon their own resources. He maintains His own testimony by whomsoever He will, in His own method, and by His own power, for the natural resources of the creature are valueless in the struggle between light and darkness. it is true, as we read here, that He gives wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding; for until divine wisdom is implanted in the soul by the Spirit of God any endowment with which a man might be entrusted would only be used as a decoration for himself, and not for the glory of the Divine Giver. “To him that has shall be given.” But what he has, he has by the grace of God. The very beginning of wisdom for man is in his coming to a sense of his accountability to God, and how he has failed to answer to that accountability; and as a consequence be fears to meet Him, yet because there is forgiveness with Him, he hastens to meet Him in a day of grace, rather than delay having to do with Him until a day of judgment. His sinful condition stares him in the face, and he owns that in the dust is his true place before God. This is excessively humbling to the pride of the natural heart, but it is a triumph of Divine grace over the conceit that is ruin to the creature. Apart from this work of grace in the soul there is no ability in us to receive Divine communications. Our Lord says to the Jews, “Why do ye not understand My speech? even because ye cannot hear My word” (Joh 8:43). They had no spiritual capacity for receiving spiritual communications; and besides this, there is an inborn aversion in the natural human heart to everything that is of God, and this militates against the understanding of the simplest words of eternal life. The Lord says to the Jews, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin” (Joh 9:41). If men only took the place of poor, ignorant, misguided know-nothings, it would be the beginning of light, life, and infinite blessing; and sin, to which they were subject, would lose its dominating power. But if people are determined to trust in their own ability to judge of all that comes before them, and that in spite of the warnings of their Creator, they must remain in their natural blindness, and in the bondage of sin. John says to the babes in Christ, “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it” (1Jn 2:21). Where there is found distrust of self, and a teal desire to be taught of God, the state necessary to the reception of divine communications has been created, and progress in the knowledge of the Word may be anticipated.

It is this trust in the competency of the natural mind that explains how deplorably ignorant of the mind of God are the great majority of learned men who take the place of spiritual leaders in Christendom. They seem to have overlooked the fact that the things of the Spirit of God are hidden from the wise and prudent, and that not many wise men after the flesh are called, but that God has chosen foolish things to confound the wise, in order that no flesh should glory in His presence (1Co 1:26-29). That which is preached in the Gospel to unconverted men—repentance and remission of sins, on the ground of the work of the Cross—may be understood by anyone to whom it is declared, and were it not for the hold the world has upon men it would be believed; but to enter into the deep thoughts of God, in which lies true and eternal wisdom, requires a work wrought in the soul by the Divine Spirit, and also that Spirit’s indwelling.

Daniel is brought in before the royal dreamer, and the first thing he does is to direct the attention of the king to the God of heaven. By Him wisdom is given to the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding. He knows what is in the darkness, and the light itself dwells with Him: He dwells in it (1Ti 6:16): He is it (1Jn 1:5), and He alone can command it to shine (2Co 4:6). Daniel is in communion with the One who knows all things, and therefore the dream and its interpretation are no secret to him. From the captive brought out of Judea, Nebuchadnezzar is now to learn something of the God of heaven, who had not formed one of the gods to whom he had previously done reverence. This God is the revealer of secrets, and makes known to the king what shall take place at “the end of the days.” The days of Nebuchadnezzar were not of so much importance as were the days that were yet to come. The days in which Nebuchadnezzar exercised the despotic power, and the days that were yet to come before the presence of Christ, were days in which man was being tested in various ways. Nothing was being permanently established in the hand of man. Death had removed all whom God had raised up into a special place of prominence, and not only that, but it became manifest through the failure of all such, that no man was able to bear the weight of the responsibility of the position in which he was set, and as to men like the Babylonian monarch, their ignorant and idolatrous hearts made them willing tools of the devil.

It is thus the world goes on in its blind unbelief, transgression, and rebellion against the authority of God, always confident that it is making decided progress toward an ideal state of glorious prosperity, unspeakable happiness, and permanent tranquillity. Man, according to the conceit of his own heart, has embellished the world; against certain pestilences he has waged successful warfare) he has so used the resources of nature that a famine in one part of the world can be supplemented by the abundance to be obtained somewhere else, and the facilities for the transport of commodities have very nearly reached perfection. He is determined to reach that which he is pleased to call “The Millennium”—though without God and without Christ—by his own efforts, and of success he is confident. “The end of the days,” in his judgment, is to be the end of all his toil, the fulfilment of his lofty ambition, and the peace and contentment of the human race. But is this the picture that the living God brought before this proud monarch when sleep had sealed his eyes to the glory that surrounded his royal bed? Is it a vision of man crowned with the glory of his achievements be is made to witness? Or is it that which is the result of the wicked will of the rebellious creature, when power is placed in his hands by God? Is it progress upward to the very mountain of God? Or is it the downgrade of corruption, disappointment, dishonour, and final destruction?

“The end of the days” I have no doubt refers to the dosing days of this present age, and the introduction of the Messiah, by whom the intervention of God in righteousness and power will take place for the bringing in of an order of things in which He will have His satisfaction and rest (Job 19:25; Deu 31:29; Num 24:15-25; Isa 10:1-34, Isa 11:1-16, Isa 12:1-6; Mal 4:1-6); and this all the prophets have foretold. And what would take place in these latter days, God was about to make known to this Gentile king. But it must be through one of God’s own servants that the communication comes. The wise men must now take a back seat, and hide their heads. What had they to do with the God of Daniel? But first of all must Nebuchadnezzar learn that not only is his dream well known to Daniel, but also the thoughts of his heart before the vision was given to him. He had evidently been pondering upon what might be the future of his great kingdom in the hands of those who would succeed him. His gods had, in his estimation, shown him great favour, and even the God of Israel had been compelled to own their power and the might of his armies. But the future held mysteries. Who could throw light upon things yet to come? Was it not possible that this mighty power might yet crumble to pieces, and pass away like a dream of the night?

Daniel brings these thoughts of the king’s to his mind, “As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter; and He that reveals secrets makes known to thee what shall come to pass.” So the dream is the answer given to those thoughts, and Nebuchadnezzar gets a complete survey of the character and career of the colossal empire, which was the pride of his vain and foolish heart. And he has to witness it, in its last and strongest, if not most glorious, form, broken to pieces by a power greater than itself, and scattered like the chaff of the summer’s threshing-floor. And in the destruction of this pagan monstrosity, the nightmare of Gentile oppression shall pass away for ever.

Universal dominion is the purpose of God, and belongs, as far as the earth is concerned, to the Twelve Tribes, and they shall have it in the day of the manifestation and glory of their Messiah. But it has always been the dream of “The man of the earth,” whatever might be his nationality. The first man we read of who sought to bring to pass this idea of world-empire is Nimrod (the name meaning Valiant, or Rebel, and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Gen 10:1-32). But “when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel” (Deu 32:8). Israel set up in responsibility failed to secure the inheritance that was promised them on the ground of their obedience, but God will once again take them up, not on the ground of responsibility, but in grace, and they will inherit by the mercy and grace of God that which they could never have inherited by their own faithfulness, and with Christ in their midst they will answer to the purpose of God (Eze 37:21-28; Jer 51:19-23).

How many men since Nimrod have sought to dominate the whole earth, and perished most miserably in the vain attempt? The lust of power is deeply inherent in the nature of the child of Adam. And if he could seat himself upon the throne of the world would he be satisfied with it? No, he would not be content with anything short of the throne of the Omnipotent, nor would he with this be satisfied until he had destroyed every creature that God had made. Man is capricious in his ways, insane in his desires, cruel and merciless in his actions. Give him unlimited and irresponsible power and he will murder all about him, and in the end immolate himself. This image gives us a picture of the whole times of the Gentiles, that is, the time during which the government of the world would be in the hands of the Gentiles, the Jews being scattered throughout the earth, and subject to Gentile domination. Nebuchadnezzar has the power directly from the hand of God, and therefore the head and beginning of Gentile rule is represented by gold. To him only is the kingdom said to be thus given. To Nebuchadnezzar the prophet says, “Thou, O king, art a king of kings, unto whom the God of the heavens has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory; wheresoever the children of men, the beasts of the field, and the fowl of the heavens dwell, He has given them into thy hand, and has made thee ruler over them all: thou art this head of gold.” Except the fish of the sea everything is put under the sway of this pagan ruler.

We may safely conclude that Nebuchadnezzar never truly apprehended the extent of empire that was put into his band by the God of heaven, and that it never really dawned upon his proud mind that he had not his empire by right of conquest, by his own excellent generalship, and by the valour if his mighty army. To take his high position as a gift from a God who had hitherto been unknown to him, and of whom he was no servant, and to thus set at naught his own prowess in the field of battle, was more than his proud spirit could at present stoop to. But for the moment this cold douche of unacceptable truth could be overlooked. The prophet had told him his dream. The spectre of the night that had disturbed his tranquillity, but which had faded away from his memory, stood out once more in all its grim reality before his mental vision. Here was a man, as the Chaldeans had said, who had to do with “The gods whose dwelling is not with flesh,” and a very god he seemed to the king, though by his own confession his God had placed him at the disposal of his own capricious disposition. He can, however, now be certain that the interpretation of the dream shall be worthy of his whole trust. In the image these kingdoms are not represented in their rapacious and destructive character, nor according to the special power that distinguishes them, but according to the different degrees of splendour that marked them. We see in each successive kingdom a gradual decline of earthly grandeur and glory, though no deterioration of strength, except in the feet and toes, in which clay was mingled with the iron; this mixture considerably weakened the strength of the last kingdom. It is, I do not doubt, the introduction of the democratic element that today so enfeebles the whole fabric of law and order, that things do not hold together as they once did. To go on the principle that the people are able to govern themselves, and to put the government of a nation into the hands of the people, is to plan and invite the nation’s destruction. One has only to look abroad, and the unrest, disregard of authority, existence of associations of men that set the law of the land aside, so that it has become a greater crime and more perilous to the safety of the individual, to attempt to ignore those associations than to break the laws of the kingdom, and along with this the robberies and murders that daily and nightly abound, the perpetrators of which are never brought to justice, crowd the vision. The believer in Christ is not a politician. He is not of this world, even as Christ is not of this world. He does not interfere with its plans, its purposes and its governments. He belongs to another world—the Father’s world, a world of light, life, holiness, righteousness, peace and love. To this world he has been called by the grace of the Gospel, and is being conducted by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. He passes through man’s world, a world that stands guilty of the murder of the Son of God, and which is amenable to the judgment of God. The devil is the god of it religiously, and the prince of it politically (2Co 4:4; Joh 14:30; Joh 16:11), and the follower of the rejected Christ refuses to defile himself with it. He only desires a passage through it, for his way home to the Father’s house lies through it. He is willing to pay for all he gets on the way. He pays “Tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour” (Rom 13:7). But his separation from the course of this world does not embarrass his perception regarding its true moral condition before God. Indeed it rather clarifies his mental vision, and gives him a more just estimate of its true condition, and of the sure judgment that awaits it. Who but a devotee of dumb idols, and who thought that God was such an one as himself, could suppose this world to be anything but a hold of rebels against the authority of God? Who could suppose that He would allow a world like this to go on for ever?

No, the true believer in Jesus is the one, and the only one, who truly knows what the world is, and how sure the judgment is that awaits it. God may bear long with it—has borne long with it—but its judgment is not slumbering. The Judge is near at hand, “Behold, He comes with clouds; every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him” (Rev 1:7). When He appears it will not be a day of grace and Gospel activity, but a day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. For that day the follower of Jesus waits with patience, for he knows that in the end He who executes the just judgment of God upon the evildoer will bring in a new heaven and a new earth, in which shall dwell righteousness, and in that eternal home of peace and love be will find the consummation of all his desires and hopes and expectations.

Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold: God had made him a king of kings, and the power and splendour of the kingdom centred in himself. Little is said of his kingdom; much is said of himself. As to the others that arise after him, nothing is said of the rulers; the kingdoms themselves are more in view. “After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee.” Though the kingdom eventually comes into the hand of the son and also the hand of the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, yet neither of these are the head of gold, nor have they any place in the vision.

“After thee shall arise another kingdom.” It is not said “another person.” And after that another, and yet another. But all inferior to the first. The second is clearly the Medo-Persian, the third the Grecian, and the fourth the Roman. But none of them, though all powerful kingdoms, comes up to the first in royal splendour and glory. The Persian king was himself under the laws of his kingdom, which could be enforced in spite of his desire that they might in certain cases be set aside. The Grecian king was not altogether beyond the control of his generals. But Nebuchadnezzar was himself above all the laws of his kingdom. His rule was altogether despotic. “Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would be set up; and whom he would he put down (Dan 5:19). And this power he had directly from God, to whom alone he was answerable, though he knew Him not. God, who takes account of the actions of men, could deal with him if he abused the power that was committed to him, and with that proud monarch He did deal with a very strong hand. The fourth kingdom, as represented by the feet and toes, refers to the Roman empire in its last form, when it shall emerge out of the abyss (Rev 17:8), and its end is to go into perdition, because as then established it is satanic, and beyond everything hitherto seen on earth idolatrous. In the League of Nations we see a foreshadowing of that coming empire. Men have no idea of the source and nature of the thing they are striving after in their efforts to bring wars to an end. If the Gospel of the grace of God were believed, if professing Christians had any liking for the truth, they would not be deluded by the insane notion that democracy, and a confederacy of nations, could be the hope of the world. But having torn the Bible to pieces and cast it on the rubbish heap, and degraded the Christ of God to the level of heathen philosophers—as the Philistines placed the ark of the covenant beside the idol in the temple of Dagon—the divine decree is that they shall be given up to a strong delusion, to believe a lie, that they all may be judged who obey not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness (2Th 2:1-17). If men will not have the truth of God, they cannot complain if He does not preserve them from the devil’s lie.

Upon the feet of this imperial monster the judgment of God falls. The stone cut out of the mountain without hands smites the image on the feet, and the clay, the iron, the brass, the silver, and the gold, are broken to pieces, and become as the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind carries them away, so that no place is found for them, and the stone itself becomes a great mountain, and fills the earth. Whoever falls upon this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder (Mat 21:44).

We see this coming to pass in Rev 16:13-21; Rev 16:19, and Zec 14:1-21. These passages all refer to the day in which the stone shall smite the image, and break it to pieces. It is the great day of God Almighty; and the place in which the battle shall be fought, and where the kings shall receive their righteous reward, is called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon It will be the day of Jacob’s deliverance, and of the utter destruction of all his enemies. It will bring to an end the times of the Gentiles, and introduce the reign of the Messiah. And now the king has both the dream and the interpretation made known to him. In the midnight of his idolatrous career he is brought under the dealings of the living God. God speaks once, yea twice, yet man perceives not, in a dream, in the vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction, that He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man (Job 33:1-33). And this does not always do, and therefore, to effect His own purpose of blessing, He has recourse to more severe measures. If we were wise we would at once respond to the touch of His hand. But we are not wise, but very foolish indeed, and in our state by nature neither know Him nor the touch of His hand, and therefore must we often go on in our own way until a staggering blow leaves us writhing in the dust, and then, and only then, it may be, we shall wake up to the eternal danger to which in our headlong career we were hastening, and to which we certainly should have come had it not been for His merciful interposition in that which at the moment may have seemed to us a hard and unmerciful manner. He knows what He is doing, and He knows the kind of material He has to work with in us, and only the sorrows that are absolutely necessary to effect His purpose concerning us are we made to suffer, for He does not afflict willingly and grieve the children of men. May we know that however heavy His hand may seem to us to be, it is moved by a heart of the most infinite and tender love, and guided by a mind of unfathomable wisdom.