The Prophecy of History, Pt. 1

Announcer: Coming to you from New York City at the historic Manhattan Center with your host Doug Batchelor. Join this exciting journey of discovery, as we learn the truth about Bible prophecy. Explore the timeless wisdom of God's Word and see how it relates to our lives today. Stay tuned, your Amazing Facts adventure begins now.

Doug Batchelor: Tonight we're going to be studying one of the most important subjects dealing with the prophecy of history. And if I was going to take one Bible subject and say, "This is the study of prophecy that we're going to have tonight that convinced me that the Bible is a supernatural book," this is the one. Well, we always like to begin with an amazing fact, and I'm going to get my little clicker here that will take us through some of these things.

From the very beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, we hear about a kingdom called Babylon. Now if you have your Bibles on your phone or if you've got a hard copy of the Bible, you might want to turn to the book of Daniel chapter 2, not far from the middle of the Bible there, Daniel chapter 2. Let me give you a little amazing fact about Babylon. Ancient Babylon had a massive impact on world history. It was a center of earthly mathematics, astronomy, and technology innovation. The Babylonians invented the wheel for work carts and chariots, sailboats to trade on the Euphrates River. They created cuneiform writing records. Babylon also developed a unique numerical system based on the lunar calendar with 360 days, which is, by the way, the same calendar as the Jews. Make a mental note of that because a year with 360 days comes up later in understanding time prophecies. Thirty days in a month is how they calculated units for measurement and this is why we've got 60 seconds in a minute, and you've got--the number 60 is all through the Babylonian calculations.

They also divided the starry heavens into 36 constellations. I'm a pilot, 360 degrees to a circle, and we use that in mathematics now, they were excellent mathematicians. Interestingly, now don't miss this, the Babylonian sacred square is composed of 6 boxes by 6 boxes with the number 1 in box 1, number 2, 3, 4. When you add all those up, 1 through 36, it comes to 666. Babylon appears in the book of Revelation. And I hope you don't know what a roulette wheel is, but you know a roulette wheel has got 36 numbers on it, and if you add 1 plus 2 plus 3 up to 36, it comes to 666, 666 is a very unique number. Did you know if you add up the first six Roman numerals, you know, the Roman numerals I, V, X, so forth, adds up to 666. So this is going to play into prophecy, but that's just to whet your appetite.

So, the zenith of Babylonian history was during the reign of someone by the name of Nebuchadnezzar II. And we don't know much or hear much about Nebuchadnezzar I, but Nebuchadnezzar II was an extremely intelligent, well-educated man, a master military man and an administrator, and he could also be brutal and ruthless, which is one reason he was able to conquer, struck fear into everybody. The zenith of the Babylonian Empire was from about 612 to 539 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar, in about 597, he came and that was his first invasion of the land of Israel.

During that time, he carried away about 10,000 captives. Among the captives that he carried away from Israel back to Babylon, there were four young men. By the way, this had been foretold by the prophet Isaiah to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah was told by Isaiah, "Your sons that issue from you will be carried off to the kingdom of Babylon and made eunuchs." And this is exactly what happened several hundred years later. So, it's just a little map on the screen here for those that are watching to give you an idea of the extent of the Babylonian kingdom-added zenith, touching on the shores of five major oceans.

Now while we go through the prophecy tonight, I want to make something very clear. We're going to be talking about the major empires of the world that were foretold in prophecy before they existed, and the reason these empires are highlighted is they all occupied God's people that were then Israel. And this was also the crossroads between three continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia, so they saw this as a world empire because they controlled the trade between these continents, they were fabulously wealthy. So, at the zenith of his power, and Nebuchadnezzar had an incredible passion for building, so he's building, how many of you have heard of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World? The only one that still survives today are the pyramids of Giza. Karen and I were there a couple of years ago. It was just last year, well, time flies. And they had things like the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, according to Herodotus the historian, was the hanging gardens of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar married a girl from the mountains and Babylon is a plain. She was constantly homesick because there were no mountains. He said, "I will build you a mountain." She said, "but there are no trees." He said, "I will plant trees and mountains and flowers," and he built these beautiful exotic hanging gardens, and some of the ancient historians say he had found some method to pump water from the Euphrates River up and irrigate it, so there were waterfalls coming down from this man-made mountain that he had.

So, you have the picture in your mind, this massive kingdom, very powerful, very opulent. One historian says that it was 60 miles around the perimeter. That's bigger than Los Angeles today, just--it was huge. Nebuchadnezzar went to sleep one night, and he was very proud of the way that God had, you know, blessed him. He thought he was pretty smart too. He was a proud man, and he knew this kingdom was great and he wondered how long it would last. He understood history, how one kingdom fights against another, and in the midst of his sleeping this night, troubled, wondering how long the kingdom would last, he had a dream that was unlike any other dream. I don't know if you've had a dream and you said, "that wasn't a normal dream," that was a three-dimensional dream. It was a vision, and he wanted to understand it.

Now if you have your Bibles, we're going to pause here and we're going to read about this. If you go to the book of Daniel chapter 2, we're not going to read the whole chapter, but we're going to do the introduction to this dream that Nebuchadnezzar had and what that stood for. What does that mean? Daniel chapter 2. And we'll read the first few verses here. Verse 1, Daniel chapter 2, "Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign," this isn't the second year that he was out fighting and conquering, but after his father died and he had complete control. "In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. Then the king gave the command to call the magicians, astrologers, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans, to tell the king his dreams. So they came and they stood before the king."

He had a pretty big entourage of wise men and counselors, and they were all into the, you know, the occultish arts, and some of them were star gazers and supposedly these are the wise men, the spiritual men. "So they came and stood before him and the king said, 'I've had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to know the dream,' and the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, 'O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream and we will give the interpretation.'" You see, they were in the business of--the king would give a dream and they'd concoct some interpretation to try to satisfy him, but he said, "No, no, no, I'm not a fool," he said, "I want to know what this dream means, and I don't want you to just manufacture something. He says, 'If you're really wise men and you're really connected with the gods, here's your chance to prove your mettle. I want you to tell me what I dream, not only because that'll be good proof, but because it's starting to get fuzzy.'"

How many of you have had a dream and you thought, wow, it was vivid, and half an hour later, you know, your dream is happening in a different brain level from your consciousness, and as you get into full consciousness, the dream is hard to access. And he's saying, "I'll remember it when I hear it, but if you're a wise man, you tell me what I dream, and then I'll know you know the interpretation." In verse 7 they said, "'King, let the king tell his servants a dream, and we'll give the interpretation.' And the king answered and said rather sternly, 'I know for a certain that you would gain time. You're stalling because you see my decision is firm. If you do not make known the dream to me, there's only one decree for you. You're on the royal payroll and you're worthless,'" like others on the royal payroll around the world. "'Only one decree for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the time has changed.'" You think I'm just going to get on with something else and forget about this. "'Therefore, tell me the dream and I'll know you can tell me the interpretation.' And they answered and said to the king, 'There's not a man on earth who can tell the king's matter. Therefore, no king or lord or ruler has ever asked such a thing from any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean. It's a difficult thing the king is requesting, and there's no other one who can tell it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh.' For this reason, the king was angry and very furious, and he gave a command to destroy all the wise men of Babylon."

Now the king back then could not just issue a fiat kill them all, they had legal process. And so, they're writing up a decree to gather them and execute them. So, you understand it took a while to do this, but they're going to be under a death decree now because the king is mad. So, the decree went out and they began killing the wise men, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them.

Now at this point we need to understand something that happened. So, Daniel and his friends were wise men in training, and they had not yet been called in before the king. And so, what happened is the guard comes in and Daniel says, "It looks like they're rounding up all the wise men. I don't know if we're in that category, we're sort of intern wise men. And we were not there and maybe this was a little hasty from the king." Daniel remembered the story of Joseph in the Bible where the king of Egypt had a dream and none of his wise men could understand, but Joseph trusted the Lord and God gave him an answer and Daniel said to his friends, "Well, we serve the same God. Let's tell the king, 'Give us a chance,' and we'll tell him what his dream means." And that's what happened.

The guard went in and said, "You know, I've got some young Hebrews that you tested, you said they were pretty smart. They say that they can tell you what your dream means if you'll just pause the death decree. What have you got to lose? Give him 24 hours." Well, the king is thinking, "Well, I want to know what my dream means and what have I got to lose. I don't want to just kill all the wise men and never know. If they think that they're going to know, and I seem to remember Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel. The new names were Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the Babylonian names. He said, "Okay, I'll give them some time."

Now this is where we launch into our study of what the dream was and what the dream meant. But before we get to that, we're going to go to the streets of New York. Can anybody know the future? We're going to go to our men and women on the street and see what they have to say about that.

Male: I think people can have visions. I think you can have a understanding of later, per se, future.

Female: You know, that's a spiritual question for me, so possibly.

Female: Yes.

Male: No, I don't think that's true.

Male: Probably, yeah, if you read the book of Revelation.

Female: The Battle of Armageddon--not in the Bible, not necessarily in the Bible.

Female: Yeah, I heard of it, but I don't remem--I don't recall what it was, so—

Doug: How many of you think that it is possible for someone to know the future, by show of hands? It's kind of a mixed group here in New York, isn't it? I'm going to ask that question again later after the study, and I want you to tell me if I've convinced any of you that it is possible for someone to understand what is coming in the future.

Why did God give the Babylonian king this dream? The answer is right here in the Bible, Daniel 2 verse 28, "But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets," and you can call out the blue color with me, "reveals secrets, and He's made known to the King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days." And that means "in the last days." So, what is this dream dealing with, the past or the future? So, you either believe the Bible or you don't, and I want you to know that we know with certainty that the book of Daniel was written hundreds of years before Christ because it was in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it predates the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of them were over 200 years before Christ and Daniel, all of Jewish history. They know that book was written during the Babylonian captivity by the prophet himself. And if you don't believe that, just say you don't believe Jesus, because Jesus said that Daniel wrote the book of Daniel, amen? So, this is a book you can trust or you can't trust anything. He says it's telling us what's coming in the future.

Question number two, when the king's counselors failed to reveal and interpret the dream, what was Nebuchadnezzar's command? How did the king feel about that? The king gave command to what? Destroy all of the wise men of Babylon. And you know, some of these wise men obviously weren't that wise and they couldn't tell the king what his dream was. We get a lot of mail at "Amazing Facts." You know, we broadcast--we're on not only 3ABN, we're on Trinity Broadcasting, Daystar, History Channel, Lifetime. Some of you have seen our programs, I get a lot of mail. I do my best to personally answer all I can. We have a team that helps us answer simple questions, you'd be surprised how many times people send me a dream. They say, "Pastor Doug, I've had a dream," and they write out this dream, sometimes pages, sometimes pages with illustrations, and they say, "Can you please tell me what my dream means?" I say, I'm sorry, that's not my gift, I know I can't do that.

So once again, we've got to go back and understand what happened. As I mentioned in about 597, Nebuchadnezzar had--he'd conquered Israel. He came back and fought against them again and destroyed the temple, but when he first came, they agreed to terms of peace. He took 10,000 of their youngest and their brightest to bring them back to his college and train them in the language of the Chaldeans, in the mathematics, the sciences, the arts of Babylon, which at the time was considered the most sophisticated education in the world you could get back then. They were masters of mathematics, they studied the heavens. Some of you remember when Hezekiah was sick in the Bible and the sun stood still, ambassadors came from Babylon to understand what caused that, what does it mean?

So, they brought among the captives, among those 10,000 were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah. They were brought in, they were put in the Babylonian educational system for three and a half years to study, then the king tested them. This is Daniel chapter 1, "And the king found them ten times wiser than all the other young men that he'd brought back from other countries." And so they were in training to be counselors and learning languages and the arts and the science and so forth, and so when the decree is going out to kill all of the wise men, they had not been invited. You can see in Daniel chapter 1, verse 3, it says they were "possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had the ability to serve in the king's palace... Now from among those sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah." Those were their Jewish names, they were later given Babylonian names.

A lot of people in America that came to America through New York City and Ellis Island had names difficult to pronounce, and so the guards or whoever were processing the people there on Ellis Island said, "We can't say that, your name is Smith." How many of you know somebody like that? They came into the city, they had one name and then they ended up with a new name that was a little easier.

Number three, when Daniel learned about the death decree, what did he ask of the king? And he did this through the guard, Arioch, what did he ask and what did he tell his friends? The answer, and this is Daniel 2, verse 16, "Daniel went in and he asked the king to give him," what? "Time, that he might tell the king the interpretation." And Nebuchadnezzar--and this is a relief, an ancient relief that--of Nebuchadnezzar. He thought, "All right, I like these young men. I will postpone the mass execution. After all, they were not brought in with the others, let's give them a chance. If they think they can tell me the dream, I want to know the dream."

So, what did they do? What would you do? "Daniel went to his house, he made known the decision to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven concerning this secret." Does God reveal secret things to His prophets? He does. What happened that night in response to their earnest, heartfelt prayer? Can you imagine praying, saying, "Lord, I need to have a dream tonight, but I don't need any dream, I need to dream the king's dream. But I not only need to dream the king's dream, I need to know what the king's dream meant."

That is a pretty big prayer, that takes pretty big faith. What happened in response to that prayer and to whom did Daniel and his friends give the credit? Answer, Daniel 2 verse 19 and verse 28, "Then the secret was revealed," not to all of them, but to Daniel. "So Daniel blessed the God of heaven. And he said, 'There is a God in heaven who reveals secrets.'" And you're going to have some secrets revealed to you tonight, friends, that I think are going to change your life.

What two principal objects did Daniel say he saw in the dream? So, the dream is composed of two principal things. Now I want to read this to you, go back to your Bibles again. Let me read what Daniel saw. He's brought before the king, and the king says, "What can you tell me? Have you had the dream?" And go to verse 31, Daniel chapter 2: "'You, O king, were watching.'" And matter of fact, I'm going to stand to the side here, and those of you in the hall, if you look on the screen, you might even actually see what Daniel saw in his dream, and Nebuchadnezzar. "'You, O king, were watching. And behold a great image. And this image whose splendor was excellent stood before you. Its form was awesome. Its image's head was a fine gold, its chest and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron and the clay and the bronze and the silver and the gold were crushed together and became like the chaff from the summer threshing floor, and the wind carried them away so no trace of them was found and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. There you have the dream.'" Did you see the image, friends? All right, it may show up again before we're over because we're going to need to review that.

So back to our lesson, let's talk about what this is all about. The Bible is pretty clear, if you look at The Ten Commandments, who knows what the second commandment is? "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images." This is what you would call in the Bible an image. He had a dream of an image, images represent false religion. And these false religions, with all the metals and minerals in this image, represent people worshiping idols of gold and silver and bronze and iron and clay, porcelain, whatever, the things of the world that they worship, counterfeit religion, kingdoms in the world that are in opposition to the kingdom of God. But finally in the end, you've got a stone that is cut, notice, "without man's hands." Do you know when the Jews built their altar they were told, "Do not lift up your tool upon it, you will pollute it. Don't be tempted to start carving it into some statue of a cow or something." "So, take rough stone, I want it to be a stone without man's hands, and it will destroy all the other kingdoms. It will grow into a mountain and fill the whole earth." And mountains in the Bible represented kingdoms.

The kingdom of Christ is that stone cut without man's hands, it's the stone that brought down Goliath, amen? It is the stone, Jesus said, "If you build your house on this stone," what is that stone? "He that hears these words of mine and does them is a wise man who's building on the rock, and the storm will come and the house will stand." I hope you're building on the rock, friends. So, this is talking about the kingdoms of the world, and it outlines the kingdoms that will occupy God's people that will ultimately be destroyed. All right, back to our lesson.

What are the two things that are mentioned in the image? Daniel 2 verse 31, "You, O king, were watching, and behold, a great image." You can also say, "a great idol." Babylonians had no shortage of idols, neither did the other succeeding kingdoms. The other thing that's very different, that is separate, that crushes the idol, you watched while a what? A stone was cut without hands. Again, Ten Commandments, written on what? By the finger of God, not the hands of man.

So, notice the contrast here, and in the image you've got--and they can put it back up again, and I would just want to review it because we're going to go through it. You end up with, you've got the gold, and then you've got the silver, you've got the bronze, you've got the iron, and then you've got the clay in the feet, and the clay is mixed with iron. So, when Nebuchadnezzar is sitting here and Daniel is relating the image, the king is saying, "All right, wise guy, you said you think you know my dream, what's my dream?" He begins to tell the king this whole dream, and what do you think the king's face looked like? He's going, "Oh yeah, yeah. How did you get inside my head? How did you know that?" And after Daniel tells the king exactly what he saw with great specificity, then, when Daniel says, "Now I'm going to tell you what it means," first of all, the king's ready to worship Daniel. And then he said, "No, no, I can't tell you your dream." Daniel's so humble he gives God the glory.

Doug: Friends, I hope you've been blessed by today's presentation. But the most important thing is not the information and the details, it's the relationship. Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? You're watching because He's planned that, and He wants to come into your heart and change your life. He wants to forgive you of all of your sins. He died for your sins, but you need to ask Him. He won't force his way in. You can ask Him now. He loves you, He'll accept you, do it right now.

Doug: Hi friends, I trust you're being blessed by what you're watching. If you want to be doubly blessed, then you're going to want to get the "Prophecy Odyssey" study guides that go along with these presentations. There's 15 study guides, they're beautifully illustrated, and they will greatly enhance your Bible comprehension. So if you'd like to get them, simply follow the instructions that you see on the screen, you will be glad you did.

Doug: Hello friends, if you'd like to learn more about God's free ideal diet for humans, you're going to want a copy of the free offer for today. It's called "God's Free Health Plan." This Amazing Facts study guide reveals Bible secrets on how you can have a longer, stronger life. To get your free copy, simply follow the instructions on your screen, and you're gonna be blessed.

Doug: What you've seen just now is only part one in this presentation. Make sure and join us for part two in our next broadcast for some of the most important points on this topic and to complete the corresponding study guides. Until then, God bless.

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