Remaining Holy in a Hostile World: Daniel 2-- The Statue from the Slumber Part 1

Introduction

When I began this chapter I talked about a dream I had two decades ago about the rapture. I have wondered about that dream as well as other dreams I have had over the years that still come to my mind. Some dreams fade with the morning light or the alarm clock and others can hang on for days, weeks, months, years, or even decades. When we left Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel was before the King about to tell the dream and its meaning.

Daniel 2:27–30 NKJV

Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, “The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.

Daniel had told him that while no gods could tell the dream or its meaning there is One God in Heaven who can and this dream this vision that he had is about what will happen in the future. Daniel also humbly says that he tells this to the King not because he is more special.

The Dream (Daniel 2:31-35)

Daniel 2:31–35 NKJV

“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. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

So from what we know, King Nebuchadnezzar had been having this dream for several nights in a row. Imagine if you had the same dream night after night. There is this statue (or as it called here, an image). This same Aramaic word is going to be used in the next chapter as well.

English Standard Version Chapter 2

This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening.

Something about this statue, this image really freaked him out. The most powerful man in the world is frightened by this statue. It is massive, bright, and it was standing before him in the dream.

Then Daniel tells him about the image.

The Head is made out of fine gold

Chest and Arms are made out of silver

Belly (middle) and thighs are made out of bronze

Legs are made out of iron

The feet are made out of mixture of iron and clay (literally the clay is baked clay). So clay that has iron in it and it has been baked.

The dream takes a turn and stone (Greek word in LXX lithos not petros). It is representing something small.

Matthew 3:9 “and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”

It is cut out without hands.

A Handbook on the Book of Daniel (2:34)

By no human hand: here the writer suggests the intervention of God without actually stating it. Other languages may have to say “with no human assistance” or “without the help of any person.”

This tiny stone hits the statue in the weakest point (the feet made of clay and iron). The whole thing comes crashing down and everything is destroyed.

They become like chaff

Psalm 1:1-6 “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, But are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

The wind drives the remains away. Nothing is left.

The stone becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth!

Imagine if you were the King and this was your dream night after night.

Daniel had asked the LORD for the dream and for its meaning. God had given to him and now it was the time to tell the King what the dream meant. From earlier in verse 28 we know that this is about future events.

Daniel 2:28 “But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these:”

The Interpretation

Daniel 2:36 ““This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king.”

Many believe that Daniel and three friends were all here together (that it was not just Daniel).

Head of Gold

Daniel 2:37-38 “You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold.”

The first area is the head of gold, which represents the King who had the dream.

Daniel respects his authority and gives him honor.

He also points out that God is the One who has given it to the King. This is going to play out in an upcoming chapter.

Chest and Arms of Silver / Belly and Thighs of Bronze

Daniel 2:39 “But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth.”

Legs of Iron

Daniel 2:40 “And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others.”

Feet: Mixture of Clay and Iron

Daniel 2:41-43 “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay.”

Faithlife Study Bible Chapter 2

Part of Statue

Kingdom

Head of Gold

Babylon

Chest and Arms of Silver

Media or Media-Persia

Middle and Thighs of Bronze

Persia or Greece

Legs of Iron, Feet of Iron and Clay

Greece or Rome

The Stone

Daniel 2:44-45 “And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.””

Psalm 118:22-23 “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing; It is marvelous in our eyes.”

Matthew 21:42 “Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, And it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

Mark 12:10 “Have you not even read this Scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone.”

Luke 20:17 “Then He looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written: ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone’?”

Acts 4:10-12 “let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. This is the ‘stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.’ Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.””

1 Peter 2:7 “Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone,””

Response of the King

Daniel 2:46–49 NKJV

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, prostrate before Daniel, and commanded that they should present an offering and incense to him. The king answered Daniel, and said, “Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret.” Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts; and he made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief administrator over all the wise men of Babylon. Also Daniel petitioned the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego over the affairs of the province of Babylon; but Daniel sat in the gate of the king.

The one who is bowed down to and prostrated before is bowing down to Daniel, but not because of who Daniel is, but because of who God is.

English Standard Version Chapter 2

The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings,

Application / Conclusion

God will reveal Himself and make Himself known.

Open Doors tells of how visions are changing eternal lives

Tofik* grew up attending Islamic schools and rose to the position of an imam in his East African village. Several deeply personal revelations brought him to faith in Christ, at the risk of his life.

Tofik trained to become an imam for 24 years at an Islamic madrasa school in Africa. “In school, I only learned about Islam,” he said. “Parts of our teaching were about destroying Christianity. So we did what we learned, by attacking Christians once we finished our training.” He said he was taught that Christians are bad people. He and the other students were also encouraged to steal from and kill non-Muslims. “Our teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town, and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that’s what we did,” Tofik said. “We beat them, attacked the church and burned their Bibles.”’

Tofik was later selected by the local mosque to be trained in Saudi Arabia for further Islamic studies. After finishing his education in Saudi Arabia, he returned to become an imam in his village. He led the construction of 16 mosques in his area. He also imposed a rule—no village leaders or visitors could preach Christianity in his town.

Visions of Jesus

One night, in the midst of his zeal for Islam, his journey to Christ unexpectedly began. “There was an incident in 2002 where I had a vision from the Lord early in the morning around 3 a.m.,” he said. “In the vision, I saw Jesus very clearly telling me to follow Him.”

“My wife asked me what happened in my dream because I woke up very startled, and when I explained it to her, she was scared and said, ‘We are going to be infidels, so we need to pray.’” He told her which Quranic verses Jesus told him to read in his dream and that each verse specifically instructs the reader to follow and believe in Jesus.

When he returned to sleep, Tofik immediately had another vision of Jesus. “Jesus appeared saying ‘It’s Me, follow Me. When you follow Me you will pay a price, there will be persecution in your life, but in the end, you will be victorious. I am with you.’ ”

His wife and children were reluctant to accept the idea of following Jesus, but Tofik could not ignore the visions of Jesus, and he began attending church. After attending his first church service, Tofik asked to meet the leaders. Initially, they were suspicious of his motives, knowing his reputation as one of the most influential Islamic leaders in the area.

“I told them about my dreams and everything else, so they accepted me and prayed for me,” he said. “I wanted to show my change externally, so I stopped wearing Islamic styled clothes. The news of my attending church spread quickly back home and many people started to cry, thinking of me as ‘as good as dead,’ because in Islam when you convert to another religion people receive it that way.”

Cast Out

His tribe was especially angry over his decision to follow Christ. “They reacted by coming to my home saying, ‘this brother is dead.’ In our culture, when someone dies, their property is shared. So they destroyed my house, setting it on fire, and they took my cattle, and the remainder of my property,” he said. “They then falsely accused me of burning another house, so I was jailed and taken to court. It was only in the court process that the witnesses proved their dishonesty by having contradicting testimonies.”

After being released from jail, Tofik helped bring more than 200 people to faith in Jesus. “The Bible became my weapon. I traveled many places to preach and teach about the Christian faith… I planted a church right in the compound where I live and many people decided to follow Christ—as a result, local villagers were upset. So again, they attacked me physically and burned my house.”

“The attackers assumed I was dead, so they threw me into the compound,” he said. “Then they looted the small kiosk I owned and proceeded to loot and burn my children’s properties. They said they have killed the lead figure and now our area is free of his activities. They started shouting and singing.”

Tofik said initially he wanted to retaliate; his dreams persuaded him otherwise. “The voice of Jesus himself spoke to me in my dreams about persecution, so I knew it was going to come and was ready,” Tofik said. “For those who destroyed my household, I was initially involved in prosecuting them at court, but later I said ‘no’ and chose to forgive them and leave it in the hands of the Lord, so the people were released.”

“Persecution isn’t all bad, it has some good parts,” he explained. “We need to start by loving people. We need to love them and show them love. In an Islamic context, we cannot just see each other when we have need of support. We need to always socialize with them,” Tofik said. “We need to be patient and slowly they will come to faith in Christ.” (https://www.opendoorsusa.org/take-action/pray/after-dreams-of-jesus-imam-renounces-islam/)