Let's take another look at the 10 toes of Daniel's image to see how the potter's clay and iron are forming amidst today's geopolitics.
by Paul Kieffer
In the second year of his reign, the Babylonian
king Nebuchadnezzar had a troubling dream that none of his counselors
could explain. Babylonian culture placed considerable emphasis upon dreams,
and Nebuchadnezzar was convinced that this one was of great importance
(Daniel 2:1-3). God began His influence over this great pagan king by
allowing the prophet Daniel to interpret the dream without any prior knowledge
of its content.
Under God's inspiration, Daniel explained
the details of the dream to Nebuchadnezzar and provided the king an astounding
preview of history. In his dream, Nebuchadnezzar saw a human image with
four distinct parts, each symbolized by a different metal: "You, O king,
were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor
was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. This image's
head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs
of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay" (Daniel 2:31-33).
The image in the dream represented, in symbolic
form, the sequence of great empires that would dominate the civilized
world's political scene for centuries, with the final part of the fourth
empire existing at the time of Jesus' return to earth to establish the
Kingdom of God. Daniel's interpretation gives us a "disclosure of God's
plan for the ages till the final triumph of Christ" and "presents the
foreordained succession of world powers that are to dominate the Near
East till the final victory of the Messiah in the last days" (The Expositor's
Bible Commentary, Vol. 7, pp. 39, 46). In other words, the chronological
sequence of the empires depicted by the image is to be viewed from "top
to bottom," so to speak, with the feet of the image representing the "empire" that
exists at the time Jesus returns. The feet of the image are struck by
the stone that represents God's Kingdom (verse 34).
