Truth Project: King Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

Welcome to Truth Matters Saturday with Dr. Cheryl Davis. One of the most intriguing dreams in history was the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a dream of the five great kingdoms that would rule the nations before the coming of Christ. In the dream, the Lord shows Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar the five kingdoms of the world. Each of the kingdoms in the dream were symbolized in a statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. On today's teaching from the book of Daniel, Dr. Davis shares with you the names of these kingdoms, their importance in history and in Bible prophecy.

Here's Dr. Cheryl Davis living on the edge of history and Bible prophecy. This dream is very interesting and really the purpose of it is to show Nebuchadnezzar the future. The dream is a witnessing of the transfer of the world's power from the Jews to the Gentile rulers. Prior to Babylon, the Jews were the world power at the time. They were a theocracy. God was their king. That was the gold standard until they asked for a king. And the first anointed king was Saul.

The second one was David. And a long history of some good kings, but mostly wicked kings. But this dream is a witnessing of the transfer from the Jews to the Gentiles being the rulers of the modern world at that time. There are four empires in this dream, so the world kingdoms will have the authority to rule the world.

Let's start with the head. Daniel tells King Nebuchadnezzar that that head of fine gold is Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar ruled in 605 BC to Belshazzar in 539 BC. The chest and arms of silver are the Medes and the Persians. The Medes and the Persians became the world power from 539 BC to 332 BC. Those kings were King Cyrus to Darius III. After the Medes and the Persian or the Persian Empire, the billion thighs of the statue made of bronze is Greece. It's Alexander the Great and the four divisions of his kingdom. He ruled from 332 BC to 63 BC. Troops were led by Alexander the Great, outnumbered two to one, yet they defeated Darius III of Persia at the battles of issues.

And we know that that is confirmed in history. Also, just to make a point about Alexander the Great, success without succession is failure. When Alexander the Great conquered the known world but could not conquer himself, he did not raise up a ruler.

And his kingdom was divided by his four generals, but basically it plunged his territories into civil war. Moving on to the statue and the legs of iron is Rome. Rome is known as the iron legions of Rome. Their moral character was depraved. They are the ones that invented crucifixion during Jesus' time for punishment. They ruled from 63 BC to somewhere between 395 and 476 BC. But the feet whose clay is mixed with iron, we have not seen that kingdom yet on the horizon.

It is suspected that it is the revived Roman Empire, consisting of ten kings or ten nations. But what does the statue mean? You know, the statue really shows the transfer of power over time, but there is more meaning into the statue. And I'd like to get into a couple points as far as what does the statue mean. The first point I'd like to cover is human government really stands on a delicate foundation.

If you look at the statue, going from the head to the feet, the statue is really supported just by a mixture that is pure mud. We read of collapsing governments recently that have gone bankrupt. We see in the last year or two prime ministers or presidents resigning over protests and the voice of the people requesting them to resign. Governments are built on an unstable foundation of humanistic ideas, which is unpredictable and weak.

Ronald Reagan said that the nine worst words of the English language are, Hello, I am from the government and I am here to help. We have seen that even in the last six months within our country. That when faced with, you know, we had a booming economy, we appear to be a strong nation, but when faced with an invisible virus, we've seen our country weaken and be driven in fear, shut up in our homes within 40 days. The second point about the statue is that human government is deteriorating. If you look at the statue from the top to the bottom, from the head to the feet, the statue descends in scale of value from gold to clay. This suggests the degeneration of the human race throughout the ages. We are seeing this play out in our country today.

Protest riots and anarchy is a sign of moral depravity and it will get worse as time goes by. So I looked up and did some research as far as the spec gravity of some of the medals that are in the statue. The specific gravity is the relative density to water. Gold is 19.3 and as you descend the statue, each medal is less and less. So silver is 10.5, bronze is 8.5, iron is 7.6 and clay is 1.9.

Clay is close to water with its spec gravity of being one. As you descend the statue, as I said, the materials decline in value. Also, the moral nature of each society increases in depravity. But as you descend the statue, each society gets stronger and stronger. And the power of governments is also represented by this statue. Babylon was a monarchy. It was ruled with an iron hand by King Nebuchadnezzar. As you move on to the Medes and Persians, which are a lesser form of government, is an oligarchic form of government. It was ruled by a few men.

And you see later that the Pers actually overcome the Medes and it became the Persian Empire. So there was even infighting among this oligarchic form of government. As we move on to Greece, it was ruled by aristocracy or nobility.

You had to be of a certain class to rule in government. But Rome, the next form, was an imperialistic style of government. It was a military style of government.

They were ruthless, very similar to Nazi Germany. But God's form of government that he prefers is a righteous rule monarchy, also known as a theocracy. When the Israelites were sent into their promised land, you know, God said, I will be your God, I will be your king. There's no need for a king.

A theocracy is the standard. But we see Israel plunge into moral depravity and go downhill whenever they ask for Saul. Whenever they ask for a king that we want to be like other societies around us and have a king, they were putting a rope around their necks. And I remember when Samuel told the Israelites, this is what a king will do. He will tax you. He will take your men to put into his army. But the Israelites made an informed decision in asking for a king.

And really, that is the beginning of their downfall. A lot of people have asked in this statue, where's the United States of America? We don't necessarily see the United States of America in this statue, as we're not mentioned. We believe that at some point we'll be in the revived Roman Empire. With our lineage being from Britain, but we are a democracy currently. You know, we are ruled as a democracy and a lot of us think that we are the greatest nation in the world. And I do agree with that. If I'm going to live anywhere, I would much rather live in America as I am happy with our democracy and the religious freedoms that we are able to enjoy. But I do want to touch on democracy in its form of government.

And this comes out of Dr. Jeremiah's book, as I mentioned before, from page 52. A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury. With the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

And I would like to talk about these stages of progression. You know, if you look at the United States of America, we have been around longer than 200 years. But I see ourselves progressing within these phases that I mentioned. We're in bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to courage and to liberty, whenever we received our independence from Great Britain. And because of that liberty, because of our democracy, because of those freedoms that we enjoy, God has blessed this nation into the point of abundance. But we have moved from abundance to selfishness, complacency and apathy. Our apathy is evident even by our low voter turnouts.

We take advantage of the rights that we have and we take them for granted. But where I think we are right now is from apathy to dependency. If you look at the previous eight years administration and the large number of peoples in this nation that became dependent on the U.S. government, we are getting into a danger because, as I said before, democracy will not exist as a permanent form of government because once we realize we can get more money out of the Treasury, that's what the majority will move to. And by pushing a socialist agenda, which has been pushed in this current election, has really a push to dependency.

And just like I said before, Ronald Reagan said that the worst eight words in the language is that I'm from the government and I'm here to help. So please be aware of what's going on in the current events. There is a push for a even bigger role of government within this nation to take over health care, in addition to other social programs. I believe that is a step into a form of bondage. After bondage, we move into a dictatorship as a country.

The fourth point that I would like to talk about this statue is the disintegrating family of government and the stream of humanity are two conflicting elements. And, you know, and really we see that today, the iron will of authority and the clay like voice of the people. We see this play out in the church. We see it play out at work and we see it play out at home. Even in my own workplace is that there are standards that we have to conform to in the delivery of health care.

They're dictated by the government. But then the clay like voice of the people, as you know, the voice of the people saying I can't maintain this standard, I can't abide by standard work. And so there's always going to be struggle in work and at home, as well as in government, over society of the clay like voice of the people in the iron will of authority. We see that playing out in the nations today with a number of riots that are happening across the country. As we near the end of the age, this struggle will get greater and greater, pulling nations apart. People will rise against governments. Authority will try to quell the voice of the people. And this will increase in the coming days.

And we see this we see this on the news daily. And as I've said before, we need to look at daily events in the newspaper or on the news and have our Bible next to us so that we know what they mean. Another point about the statue is the developing force of human government. If you look down the image as we degenerate in morality, we increase in force. So the moral character of the nations declines as you go down the statue and they become much stronger as you go down the statue. But if you haven't heard anything else in this teaching, some of you may not be interested in history as, you know, a lot of this has already come to pass. I think you can look at this statue and know that we are living on the threshold of the end of the age.

I firmly believe that this statue is a message to Daniel, as well as to Nebuchadnezzar, showing us the world's history. We have already seen those four confederacies come and we've seen them go until we're at the point of the clay and the iron which we have not seen. We are living on the threshold of the end of the age. It seems most of God's people are sensing that time is short and that the coming of the last kingdom, the kingdom made of iron and clay and Nebuchadnezzar's dream, may be close at hand. It's the kingdom of the Antichrist and the false prophet.

While it will be short in duration, approximately seven years, it will be a brutal kingdom where billions will perish in war, famine, pandemics and persecution. As we approach this time in history, it's important that you make the most important decision in your life, the decision to make Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior of your life. He alone is the one that can rescue you.

Do not delay in making this decision. If you are caught between faith and doubt, Dr. Davis would like to help you. You can reach her by email at CherylDavis at ProjectTruthMatters.com or connect with her on Facebook at Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis. Or you can write to her at The Truth Project, P.O. Box 159, St. Paul's, North Carolina, 28384. Please join us again next Saturday at the same time for Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis, where biblical truth truly matters. This has been Truth Matters, a production of The Truth Project.