Posted on 06/10/2017 6:14:50 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.(Luke 21:24)
According to Jesus and the Prophets which preceded Him, there would be a long period of time, in which the Jewish people would languish under Gentile domination, as a consequence of the repetitive sins of idolatry and God defection.
From the time the pagan King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem in 600 BC, Jews have been ruled by Gentiles. Exactly as Joel had predicted, like a plague of locusts, Nebuchadnezzar utterly spoiled the Kingdom of Judah in four successive waves.
First He stripped Judah of her King, and royal family, (the Son of David), then took away all of her artisans, experts and promising youth, and in another wave destroyed her temple,Priests and walls, and finally deported most of her population to Babylon, until this very day, either directly or indirectly various Gentile Nations have ruled over the chosen people.
This same Nebuchadnezzar had a remarkable dream, which so un-nerved Him, he demanded that his “wise men” and occult advisors, tell him both the dream and the interpretation of it. None of them were able to do so, even upon threat of loss of life, until word of it came to Daniel, and his three fellow Hebrew captives, in Nebuchadnezzar’s court, Shadrac, Meshech and Abed-Nego.
Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, shew unto the king; But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these; As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass. But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.(Daniel 2:26-30)
After witnessing to the Pagan King of the reality of the God of Israel as the only possible source of theDream and it’s interpretation, Daniel began to tell the King the secrets of his heart.
“King, You were thinking about what was going to be happening in the future…all of the way to the very latter days”.
Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. (Daniel 2:31-33)
The Pagan King sat amazed as Daniel described in detail the King’s very vivid dream, one which he had shared with no one else.
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.(Daniel 2:34-36)
This amazing dream, granted by the God of Israel and of the whole earth, to a pagan King which He had raised up, partly to punish his own people for their transgressions, was about the entire future of the pagan, humanistic, idolatrous enterprise. This is the future of the kingdoms of man in rebellion against God, all the way to the end and final judgments.
Of particular interest in this vision is the focus on those Gentile powers which would be granted temporary custody of Israel, (Judah and Jerusalem).
Babylon would come first, and was at that time in ruling over God’s people.. The material was gold, for the Babylonian empire was the highest expression of Heathendom as world rulership and empire.
But Babylon would soon be supplanted by Persia, the Medes ad Persians would be a kingdom of silver, with one arm stronger than another, they too would rule over Israel.
Eventually they would be overthrown by Greece, an inferior metal represented her, Brass, but she would be swifter and stronger for a season, than the Persians had been in their late stages.
The most details are given of the final pagan ruler empire over the chosen people, the iron like Roman Empire. It is the longest and comes in stages, but reaches all the way to the very end of time, the time when a Stone from heaven comes and smites the statue, not into shards, but into powder, until the wind blows it all away.
This is the end of the Pagan enterprise, and of man’s organized rebellion against the Most high, so well typified by the image of man himself as a god or object of worship! Would there be a coming golden age? The golden age was at present and soon to pass away, yielding to successively less valuable materials, the last being a weakened “iron mixed with clay”.
The end would come about not by yet another humanistic, man worshipping empire, but by a stone, not made by human hands, originating in heaven and destined to smite and destroy the statue, and then to fill the earth as the Kingdom of Heaven, which would never pass away.
This amazing prophecy has proven to be a completely accurate account up to this day of the succession of Gentile Empires given custody over Israel, all of the way through time to this present day.
Babylon, an eastern power, would commence the times of the Gentiles, but she would soon give way to another Eastern power of two components, (arms) , Medo Persia, (the Medes are todays Kurds and the Persians, todays Iran).
But then He saw a Western Power take the pre-eminence, and seized the levant and the Holy people who had been sent home by the Persians. The Greeks overthrew the Persian Empire in a series of wars, under the leadership of Alexander the Great. But eventually Greek power waned, the Kingdom was divided into four parts,( As Daniel predicted inch 7), and Roman assumed the mastery of the Near east and classical World.
The King Messiah would come into this world as a subject of Augustus Caesar, and be crucified under Pontious Pilate, neither realizing that this Man was destined to be the very Stone which would utterly destroy the Humanistic Pagan Gentile enterprise at his second coming!
Thus we see that Europe, and the remnant and outgrowth of the old Roman Empire have a role to play in the events of the Last days. We are in the very last phases of it, as I will soon hopefully show you.
Interesting read again, Thank you
Thank you for posting this.
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