The Prophecy Project:
Session 21
WELCOME… To session number twenty-one of the prophecy project. Last session I went through Daniel chapter 2 the dream of Nebuchnezzar king of Babylon. The king asked all of his pagan wise men to tell him the dream and also the interpretation. The Chaldeans got the king angry and he passed a sentence of death upon all the wise men of Babylon. Unfortunately Daniel and his brethren were included in with the wise men. Daniel sought and received from the God of heaven, the God of his fathers, the dream and interpretation. The king had dreamed of a great image (image of a man) with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly of brass, two legs of iron and two feet and ten toes, of iron and clay. We covered the meanings and empires by name from the head to the ankles. They are: Babylon, the head of gold, Medes and the Persians, the chest and arms of silver, Greeks, the belly of Brass, Romans, the two legs of iron (east and west). I did not have time to cover the two feet and ten toes.
But now I want to look into explore the two feet, we read in Daniel 2:33&34 that the two feet which proceeded from the two legs was smote with a stone made without hands, (whose origins is not from man or earth) and the feet of clay and iron were broken and the whole image came crashing down.
Now let look at verse 41.
(41) And 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 iron, forasamuch as thou sawest iron mixed with clay, (42) 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.
In the description of the dream itself the toes are not mentioned specifically, only as the feet. But in the interpretation the toes are acknowledged and shown to be also part of iron and clay, and that the strong part of them is the iron, and that iron has been shown in the legs to be military might, and we know that military might is an extension of economic strength. The term “broken” (coming apart) is used to describe at least part of the elements of the toes and that is the clay.
(43) 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.
This verse adds a dimension to the description, that at least part of the weakness, is different peoples or families (the seed of men). These differing peoples or cultures are united at some level, perhaps in purpose, but the they don’t trust or like each other (not cleaving one to another), this is seen to be a weakness or a brokenness. They also are attached to different feet and different legs, thus eastern verses western, each coming out of the Roman empire. The people of the Roman empire were not all Roman, but rather many peoples RULED or controlled by the Romans, many different nations and geographical areas.
(44) And 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.
These ten toes and the fractured alliance are the last best attempt of the world’s kingdoms to defeat God at the end of the age, Daniel told the king that the dream applied to the last days.
The sequence of empires represents the Kosmos, the world system founded in Babel so long ago. This is another account of the battle of revelation 19, when God returns from heaven to set up a kingdom. These two feet and ten toes are another representation of the beasts kingdom as seen in Revelation 17, ten horns, lion, bear and the leopard.
(45) Forasmuch as thou sawest that 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.
The stone cut out without hands, means that this is God’s doing and man has no place to glory, and the system and empires of man are gone, never to raise,
Revelations 11:15 The kingdoms of this world (Kosmos) are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign for ever and ever.
(46) Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him. (47) The king answered unto Daniel, and said, of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret. (48) Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon. (49) Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set shadrach, meshach, and abednego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon: but Daniel sat in the gate of the king.
Daniel did not want the authority of ruling over the wise men or the province of Babylon, but handed it off to his fellows, and took up a position of a counselor to the king.
Now let’s turn back to revelation chapter 17. We’ve covered the woman, mega Babylon, The daughter of Babylon, America. We also covered the beast as a man, and found him to be the Assyrian, as revealed in his apostasy (late in his life). But I want to identify the ten horns, the lion, the bear, and the leopard. They are shown to be a composite empire in Revelation chapter 13, starting in verse 1.
(1) And I (John) stood upon the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast (one beast) rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy, (2) And the beast was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion:
Daniel showed us this same beast in Chapter 7, but with some interesting twists, Daniel sees the beast rise out of the sea just like John except there are initially four beasts, rising in sequence starting with the lion, then the bear, then the leopard, and they loss their dominance to the final beast with ten horns. The first three don’t die but submit to the ten horns, whose leader is the little horn (the Assyrian). When the ten horns are dominate over the other three beast, we then have the beast as seen in Revelation 13, a single beast with ten horns (with the ten horns coming last), this will relate to the feet and the ten toes.
Now let study the beast as seen in Revelation chapter 17.
(8) The beast that thou sawest was, was not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition:..when they behold the beast that was (existed), and is not (does not exist now, 90 AD, the time of the vision), and yet is (will exist again)
(9) And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains (foundations), on which the woman sitteth. (10) And there are seven kings (empires): five are fallen (they’re gone), and one is (exists now, at the time of the vision, around 90AD) and the other is not yet come; (did not exist in 90AD but will come at the end) and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
This is a sequence of historic empires counting backwards from the ten kings, for a total of seven empires, We have no problem knowing which empires God sees as important in this sequence. They would be the same empires as indicted in Daniel chapter 2 as the great image. However there is one caveat, that being, when you count backwards from the Roman Empire you come to Babylon as fourth empire behind Rome. (Greeks, Persians, Medes, and Babylon). But since we are told that five are fallen, we must step back one more kingdom, That kingdom is Assyria, which ruled until around 612 BC. This makes perfect sense knowing that the little horn is an Assyrian and comes from (is of) one of the seven.
(11) And the beast that was, and is not , even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.
The man that manifests out of the sequence of seven historic empires is considered to be the eighth. Why are we told this? We could just know his origins without him being called the eighth.
there are times when the beast is everything, including the seven historic empires and the ten kings of the end times, and the four animal empire which usher in the ten kings. At other times the beast is only the seven, or only the man which rules the ten horns. It’s often very difficult to know who is being spoken of. I believe that by calling the man beast, or Asshur the eighth he is separating him from the seven.
In Revelation chapter 13 verse 3 we are told that the beast with seven heads has one of the heads (one of the seven) wounded to death and the deadly wound is healed. The Assyrian or man beast is not one of the seven he (the man) is called the eighth. It is very possible that the head that is wounded is not the man but rather one of the seven empires which existed then was gone then returns in the end times to fulfill a major part in the events of the end. That nation would be Assyria, which does not exist right now, and appears to be a dead nation, and could never be reestablished in the middle east again, based on Islam and Moslem dominance in the middle east. But, what a miracle it would be if the Assyrian people were to get their land back. And then out of Assyria comes the eighth which is Asshur. We were told in Isaiah 23:13 that the Assyrian will found the nation for them in the end, for those Assyrians who are in Diaspora in the wilderness. God was able to re-establish Israel in the middle east despite Moslem and world opposition in 1948 why not Assyria?
Now, we had, last week followed the empires from Babylon thru The Romans, which went to the ankles of the great image, but what about the feet? History tells us that next major empire to control the middle east is the Ottoman Caliphate, with ruled from AD 1458-1919. The Ottomans actually defeated the Romans in Constantinople in 1458, ending the Roman Empire. But, despite their best attempts the Ottomans never ruled or controlled Europe, they only controlled the Eastern Roman Empire. They did not fulfill the dream of Nebuchadnezzar’s two feet and ten toes. As it turns out Charlemagne (Charles the great) and other kings of Europe turned the Moslems back and stopped Islam from changing times. Islam was meant to be an event of the Herod syndrome which we covered in earlier sessions. But, the Ottoman Empire was defeated in 1919, at the end of world war 1, and effectively dismantled. One of the first effects of this, was that the Lion of the British Empire took control of much of the middle east especially Israel. The British empire was not going to last long after this time, though the British have never been destroyed, Militarily, they did lose their Empire one nation at a time. Their last attempt at military influence in the middle east was a join operation with France in the 1950’s against Egypt, which ended in a debacle. Since that time England has had her feathers plucked and by and large been given a man’s heart. The British were strongly opposed to the re-establishment of Israel, even outlawing immigration of Jews to Palestine, and supporting Arab opposition to the Jews at nearly every turn.
With British influence gone from the middle east it was the Russians who stepped in as the next great power to wield military might and influence in the area, and oppose the Jewish state at every turn. But the Russian bear has stepped back when the soviet union basically when bankrupt and lost many of the nations it controlled. It has in recent days attempted to re-establish some level of influence in Syria. But it is really just taking sides of some issues.
The real power to rise in the middle east is Militant Islam, while not a nation or empire in the western sense of the word, it is a nation with the desire to establish or re-establish a Caliphate in the middle east, and even beyond. The common goals of Islam is not disputed amongst Moslems, but rather there is infighting to see who is going to be in charge of the new caliphate, and who will get the honor of destroying Israel. I believe the Islamic militant movement is the leopard that has heads facing every direction, and wings to fly around the world to force Sharia law wherever it goes. It isn’t well organized to the outside world but it is at the spiritual level.
The next major player on the world scene will be the ten horns or toes, it will arise out of the east and west Roman Empire. It will take dominion from the Moslems in the middle east.
..Stop here..
I need to close this session at this point, but next session I want to cover the ten toes, which are the final ten kings of the final kingdom. I want to cover it well, in detail.
Thank you.