3.1. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream and Daniel’s Vision

• Perspective - Nebuchadnezzar’s dream describes the series of kingdoms from man’s perspective. They appear as a beautiful image comprised of various metals, some precious. Daniel’s night vision describes the same kingdoms from God’s perspective. They appear as a series of vicious beasts.¹
• Downward Trend - In both passages, the sequence shows a downward trend. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the head of the image is gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, the legs of iron, and the feet of iron and partly clay. The value of each metal reduces as the kingdoms advance. At the same time, the strength of each metal grows stronger with each kingdom until the last kingdom which contains two extremes: the strength of iron and the weakness of clay. In Daniel’s night vision, the last beast is uniquely terrible compared with the preceding beasts and much additional information is given concerning this last beast.²
• Broken by God - Both the image and the last beast are destroyed directly by God. This tells us that the kingdoms represented by the series of precious metals and the ferocious beasts spans from Daniel’s time until God’s kingdom comes on earth. (See The Arrival of God’s Kingdom.)

Notes

¹ “How sobering a thought that God sees the nations of the earth as wild beasts.”—Donald Grey Barnhouse, Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1971), 236.

² “The preciousness of the metal deteriorates from the top of gold to the clay of the feet, and there is a corresponding lower specific gravity; that is, the gold is much heavier than the silver, the silver than the brass, the brass than the iron, and the clay in the feet is the lightest material of all. The approximate specific gravity of gold is 19, silver 11, brass 8.5, and iron 7.8. . . .While the materials decrease in weight, they increase in hardness with the notable exception of the clay in the feet. The image is obviously top heavy and weak in its feet.”—John F. Walvoord, Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation (Chicago, IL: Moody Bible Institute, 1971), 63.

³ “The interpretation of the royal image of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. Dan. 2:31-43) and of the four corresponding beast figures of the night vision of Daniel (Daniel Dan. 7:1) as the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman world empires is found as early as Irenaeus (died A.D. 202) and in Josephus and the Jewish Rabbis. Luther says: ‘Upon this interpretation and the meaning all the world is harmonious, and fact and history strongly prove it.’ ”—Erich Sauer, The Dawn of World Redemption (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1951, c1964), 172. Although no longer popular with Roman Catholic interpreters, this was the interpretation of Jerome: “Formerly the four kingdoms of Dn were commonly understood as being the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greco-Seleucid, and the Roman empires. Although this theory, defended by Jerome, was once regarded as the ‘traditional’ Catholic interpretation (in connection with the attempt to explain the ‘seventy weeks of years’ in 9:24-27 as culminating in the death of Jesus Christ), it would now find few modern Catholic exegetes to support it.”—R. E. Brown, J. A. Fitzmyer, and R. E. Murphy, The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996, c1968), Dan. 2:33.

⁴ See [Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, Charting the End Times (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2001), 88].

⁵ See also Rev. Rev. 13:2+.

⁶ See also Dan. Dan. 8:20; Rev. Rev. 13:2+.

⁷ See also Dan. Dan. 8:21-22; Dan. 10:20; Dan. 11:2-4; Rev. Rev. 13:2+.

⁸ See also Dan. Dan. 9:26.

⁹ See also Rev. Rev. 20:4-6+.