Daniel 2:36

"This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Thou, O king, art king of kings, unto whom the God of heaven hath given the kingdom, the power, and the strength, and the glory; And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens hath he given into thy hand, and hath made thee to rule over them all: thou art the head of gold. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee; and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that crushes all these, shall it break in pieces and crush. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters clay, and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but there shall be in it of the strength of iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry 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."

THE INTERPRETATION

Owens noted that the number four prevails in this chapter. "There were four Hebrew children, four classes of wise men mentioned, four metals in the image, which represented four kingdoms."[9] The identity of the four kingdoms is certain. For the first 1700 years of the Christian religion, the four kingdoms represented by the four parts of the image were universally understood to be:

The kingdom of Babylon, represented by the head of gold.

The Medo-Persian Empire, represented by the silver.

The World-Wide Kingdom of Alexander, represented the brass.

The Roman Empire, represented by the iron mingled with clay.

Owens admitted that this understanding of the passage dates back to the book of 2Esdras in the apocryphal Old Testament, although we were unable to find it from the reference he gave (2 Esdras 12:12).[10] No one can deny that the understanding of the fourth kingdom as that of the Romans is actually older than Christianity. Despite this and without regard to the truth that the fourth kingdom cannot possibly be identified with any other except the Romans, the current crop of Biblical critics are shouting in the most vociferous manner that the fourth kingdom was that of the Greeks. There is only one reason for such allegations, that being the purpose of critics to get rid of the magnificent predictive prophecy in this chapter of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven. That kingdom, of course, was set up in the days of those Roman kings; and, after moving the date of Daniel as close to those times as they dared (quite arbitrarily, of course), the predictive prophecy still foretells the establishment of the kingdom of Christ! So, what do they do? They misinterpret the prophecy in a vain and ridiculous attempt to make it say that the kingdom of Christ would be set up in the days of the Alexandrian Empire. One has to be ignorant of both the Bible and human history in order to be deceived by such a perversion of the truth.

The first thing to be determined in the interpretation of this prophecy is the question of what the four kingdoms mean, whether regimes or individual kings, or persons. Owens was correct in his declaration that, "There is no question as to the identification of regimes instead of persons. It was not Nebuchadnezzar as a person, but the Babylonian era,"[11] that was meant by the head of gold. Even today there is no disagreement on this.

Now, as any student of history knows, Babylon was succeeded by the Medo-Persian Empire, not two empires, but only one. The Medes and the Persians are repeatedly mentioned in the Book of Esther as joint names of a single government (Esther 1:19, etc.). However, in order to move the prediction of the establishment of Christ's kingdom from the days of the Romans, the critics have (in their own eyes) removed the kingdom of the Romans from the image! How do they attempt such a thing? By making the nonexistent Kingdom of the Medes to be the second kingdom, that of the Persians the third, and that of the Greeks the fourth. We reject such an adjustment of history out of hand. As Leupold put it, "There never was such an empire as the Median empire,"[12] that is, in the worldwide extent indicated by the vision, and especially if it must be found as a successor to Babylon, that is, coming after Babylon, a vital requirement of the vision. There was, of course, a state called Media (never a world empire); but it was conquered by Babylon in 550 B.C.,[13] years before Babylon itself was conquered by the Medo-Persians. Even more disastrous to the theory of making the Medes a successive empire to that of Babylon, is the fact that the Medes were also subjugated by Alexander the Great in 330 B.C.,[14]thus forming a portion of the Greek Empire, exactly as they had been subjugated at an earlier time by the Babylonians. Thus, the Medes were an important subordinate part of both the Babylonian and Greek empires. In the days after Babylon, they enjoyed their greatest worldly authority as identified with Medo-Persia.

The Medes first appear in ancient history in the year 836 B.C.; but throughout the greater part of their entire history they were subject to Assyria, Babylon, (subordinate partners with Persia for awhile) and then subject to Alexander the Great. Herodotus referred to Media as an empire; but in view of what is known concerning them they were never an empire in the worldwide sense indicated in this vision, and certainly not after the fall of Babylon!

In view of these facts and others to be cited below, the critical device of making subordinate Media one of these worldwide empires is totally unacceptable. Critics misconstrue Daniel 5:31, which declares that Darius the Mede took the kingdom. However, there is no reference in that to a Median kingdom, for the same passage says that, "The kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and Persians" (Daniel 5:19); thus it was one kingdom with two prominent elements, The Medo-Persian Empire. The mention of Darius' race in Daniel 5:31 did not change the facts. It was just like saying that Herod the Idumean (the Great) ascended the throne of Judea; but that could never have meant that he took over the Kingdom of Esau! (Idumeans were Edomites, the posterity of Esau).

The interpretation of the vision by Daniel continues.