The Book of Daniel: End Time Playbook for the Saints (Part Four)
Prophetic History of Empire
I have come to understand the Book of Daniel as one of God’s great gifts to the Church living in the End Times. What we may have dismissed as simple Sunday School stories meant for children have incredible application for us today and will have even more so in the days to come.
In the last blog posts, we revisited the stories of Daniel and his three friends living in Babylon. And how their uncompromising faith in the face of state instituted paganism resulted in incredible deliverance. These stories relate powerfully to Saints living in the End Times. Living in a world intoxicated with sexual immorality, we must refuse the wine of Babylon. When everyone around us is bowing before the Antichrist, we must stand. When the Antichrist prohibits the worship of God, we must unflinchingly seek the Lord.
The Book of Daniel gives us so much more when it comes to the End Times. It gives prophetic context illuminating the dark days ahead. Incredible deception will cloak the earth. To survive this coming storm we must be anchored by the Word of God. The prophecies contained in the Bible provide a road map to the future of world events and the hope of a coming Kingdom that will never end.
The story begins with a dream that deeply troubles King Nebuchadnezzar. He calls the wisemen of Babylon in to tell him what the dream was and what the dream means. When the wisdom of Babylon fails, Nebuchadnezzar decrees execution for his advisors, which includes Daniel and his three friends. Daniel convinces the King to stay the execution for another day while he seeks the Lord about the dream. In dramatic fashion, God reveals the dream and the interpretation to Daniel.
“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces”
That folks, contained in a single paragraph, is the history of empire from Nebuchadnezzar to the end of time. To God, this whole human history thing boils down to a statue He plugs into a dream of the king. A dream with profound ramifications to saints living in the End Times. The statue consists of 5 parts:
Head of Gold
Chest of Silver
Midsection of Bronze
Legs of Iron
Feet of Iron and Clay
But what does the dream mean? Daniel gives the interpretation:
“You [Nebuchadnezzar] are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay”
From the days of Nebuchadnezzar there have been four primary empires that ruled the earth ever since. Some will argue that other empires should be considered. But from a macro perspective there can be no doubt of these four empires:
Babylon/Nebuchadnezzar
Persia/Cyrus
Greece/Alexander
Rome/Caesar
If Babylon is the Head of Gold, Persia the Chest of Silver, Greece the Midsection of Bronze, and Rome the Legs of Iron… what, then, are the feet of Iron and Clay?
There are two clues that inform our perspective. The first is the fact that the feet of iron and clay are smashed by the rock uncut from human hands. This means that when Jesus returns to earth He will smash the empire of iron and clay. So we can safely assert that the empire of iron and clay is the final empire of this age.
The second clue that informs our perspective is the fact that the feet are made partly of iron. This means that there is a continuity between the empire of the legs and the final empire of the feet. In other words, the empire of iron continues through to the end. The final empire isn’t a new empire, it is a continuation of Rome but with an added element represented by potter’s clay.
What is God telling us about the final empire with the prophesy that they will mix iron with clay? I believe this points us to the rising tide of transhumanism. An idolatrous, blasphemous, and dangerous idea is beginning to rise on the world stage. The core of this ideology is that evolutionary progress rests in our ability to harness technology and bend life to our corporate will. Transhumanism means “transcendent man.” It is what motivated the Tower of Babel and it is what drives us toward the Technological Singularity.
The final empire of this age will be marked by transhumanism. The mixing of iron and clay is essentially the mixing of man and machine; the merging of the technological with the biological. All for what? To “guide our own evolution.” How does God see this final attempt of fallen man to save himself through technology?
“A stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” - Daniel 2:34