LESSON: SEVEN
ABOUT YOU'RE FUTURE
Doctors Patricia and David Mazak saw a great deal of heartbreak in their work. As pediatric specialists they dealt with many suffering children. But they were struck by the fact that some kids bounced back from disaster while others were crushed by it. Why? Why, for example, does one child go to drugs, while another goes to college? Why do some abused children grow up to become abusers themselves, while others become good parents?
The Mazaks conducted an extensive survey to find answers to these questions. In their study, one overriding trait kept popping up among those kids who survived trauma and went on to build healthy lives. The secret? "Basic life view of optimism and hope."
Hope made the difference. Hope, more than anything else, helps us beat the odds when they're stacked against us.
Human beings desperately need hope. But how do we get it? Hope is hard to find in our world UNTIL we look at it from the perspective of Bible prophecy. This DISCOVER guide examines a remarkable prophecy that has inspired countless individuals with a vibrant hope.
AN AMAZING BIBLE PROPHECY
About five hundred years before the birth of Christ, God gave the world a startling glimpse into the future through the prophet Daniel. God presented an outline of world history in advance for 2,500 years, from Daniel's time to our own day.
This prophecy originated in a dream God gave Nebuchadnezzar, some 2,500 years ago. The dream deeply shouldn't remember the dream when he woke up! After all of Babylon's wise men failed to help the king recall his dream or interpret it, a young Hebrew exile named Daniels arrived on the scene, claiming that the God of heaven could reveal all mysteries. Standing before the king, Daniel boldly declared:
"You looked, o king, and there before stood a large stature an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. "The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and clay and smashed them. "Then the iron, the, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth." Daniel 2:31-35. (Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptural texts in the DISCOVER guides are from the New International Version of the Bible [NIV].)
This statue, at first glance, may seem to have little to do with finding hope in contemporary times, but hold on.
THE PROPHECY INTERPRETED
After telling a very impressed Nebuchadnezzar exactly what he'd seen in his vision, the prophet Daniel explained:
"This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king." Daniel 2:36.
THE HEAD OF GOLD:
What world power did Daniel tell the king the head of gold symbolized?
"You, O king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory. You are that head of Gold." Verses 37, 38.
Daniel was saying to the ruler of that world's greatest empire: "Nebuchadnezzar, God is telling you that your empire, Babylon, is represented by the that your empire, Babylon, is represented by the statue's golden head." The chest and arms of silver: from a human perspective Babylon looked like an empire that would last forever. But what does the prophecy say would happen next? "After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours." Verse 39.
Influfillment of God's prediction, Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom crumbled into ruins when Cyrus, the Persian general, overthrew the Babylonian empire in 539 B.C. So the chest and arms of sliver represent medo-persia, another mighty empire.
THE BELLY AND THIGHS OF BRONZE:
At does this part of the great metal image represent?
"Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth." Verse 39.
The belly and things of bronze of the image symbolize the kingdom of Greece. Alexander the Great conquered the Medes and the Persians, she ruled from 331 to 168 B.C.
THE LEGS OF IRON:
"Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom [said the prophet], strong as iron for iron breaks and smashes everything and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others." Verse 40.
After the death of Alexander, his empire weakened and split into rival factions until finally in 168 B.C., at the battle of Pinna, the "Iron Empire" of Rome crushed Greece.
Caesar Augustus ruled the Romans Empire when Jesus was born about two thousand years ago (Luke 2:1). Christ and his apostles lived during the period represented by the legs of iron. Gibbon, the eighteenth-century historian, no doubt had Daniel's prophecy in mind when he wrote: "The images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome." Edward Gibbon, the History of the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire (John D. Morris and Company).
Think for a moment about this prediction from a human point of view. How could Daniel, living in the time of Babylon, have any idea of how many empires would succeed each other hundreds of years in the future? We have a hard time figuring out what the stock market is going to do next week!
And yet Babylon, medo-persia, Greece, and Rome followed each other exactly as predicted- like obedient schoolboys in a line. Is God in control of the future? Can we have hope on the basic of his grand plan? The answer is a resounding, yes!
THE FEET AND TOES OF IRON MIXED WITH CLAY:
Would a fifth world power follow Rome?
"Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were iron and partly clay, so partly, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle." Daniel 2:41, 42.
The prophet predicted not a fifth World Empire, but a division of the iron monarchy of Rome. Rome would fracture into ten kingdoms, as symbolized by the feet and into ten kingdoms, as symbolized by the feet and toes of the image.
Did this actually happen? It certainly did. During the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Era barbaric invaders from the north poured down on the decaying Roman Empire, delivering blow after blow. Finally ten of the tribes gained most of the territory of Western Rome, and ten distinct, independent nations established themselves within the boundaries of Europe. Thus the toes symbolize the modern nations of Europe today.
