The God-given Dream of Destiny © Copyright 1996
By Dr. Joseph B. Fuiten Senior Pastor, Cedar Park Assembly of God
Table of Contents Daniel, Chapter 2 2
Part I. Daniel: Interpreting the Dream of Destiny4 >Introduction4 God Revealed what would happen in the latter days5 The first three kingdoms.5 The Roman Empire, the fourth kingdom6 In the early church there was a consensus that the fourth kingdom was that of the Romans6 God’s Kingdom, the rock cut from the mountain without human hands7 The "falling away" of the Roman Empire 9 Has the Roman Empire ended and should we expect a "Revived" Roman Empire?10 Alternative views on when the Roman Empire ended10 The invention of a "Revived" Roman Empire11 Geographical area as a base for the "revived" empire12 The ten kings13 The Roman Empire still remains in its Culture and is Reflected in the United States of America14 A Political Interpretation of the Iron and Clay14 A Cultural Interpretation of the Iron and Clay15 Sociological aspects of Iron and Clay15 Iron and Clay in Law16 Iron and Clay in Religion17 Iron and Clay in Artistic Culture18 Militarism as an indicator that Rome still lives19 Iron and Clay, a Really odd view19 Part II. What Happened to God’s View of History?22 The Pre-Christ, Jewish view of History22 The Pre-Christ Romans, and their relation to the Dream23
The Early Church and the Dream24
Part III. How God’s View of History was Destroyed28 >The so-called "Enlightenment" was an Attack upon the Christian Faith using the Tool of a Re-written and Revised History. 28 Light versus Dark Ages 29 History and the Human Spirit30 Renaming the Eastern Roman Empire 32 Why diminishing the Eastern Roman Empire obscures the Dream of Destiny and More 32 Why did Gibbon do it? 32 The Effect of Gibbon’s Work 36 What Gibbon began, others have continued 36 Summary of Conclusions 38
DANIEL 2 1
In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. 2 So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king, 3 he said to them, "I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means." 4
Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, "0 king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it." 5 The king replied to the astrologers, "This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble." 6 But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor . So tell me the dream and interpret it for me." 7
Once more they replied, "Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will interpret it." 8 Then the king answered, "I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that t his is what I have firmly decided: 9If you do not tell me the dream, there is just one penalty for you. You have conspired t o tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know tha t you can interpret it for me."
10
The astrologers answered the king, "There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or as trologer. " 11
What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king exc ept the gods, and they do not live among men. This made the king so angry and furious that he ordered the execution of all the wise men of Babylon. 13 So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death. 12
14
When Arioch, the commander of the king's guard, had gone out to put to dea th the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact. 15 He asked the king's officer," Why did the king issue such a harsh decree? Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. 16 At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might i nterpret the dream for him. 17 Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mi shuel and Azariah. 18 He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and h is friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. 19 During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Dani el praised the God of heaven 20 and said: "Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. 21"He changes times and seasons; he sets up
kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the d iscerning. 22 He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. 23 I thank and praise you, 0 God of my fathers: You have given me wisdom and power, you have made known to me what we asked of you, you have made known to us the dream of the king." 24
Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute the wis e men of Babylon, and said to him, "Do not execute the wise men of Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will inter pret his dream for him. " 25 Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, "I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means." 26
The king asked Daniel (also called Belteshazzar), "Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?" 27 Daniel replied, "No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain t o the king the mystery he has asked about, 28 but there is a God in heaven veals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadne zzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you lay on you r bed are these: 29
"As you were lying there, 0 king, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. 30 As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greate r wisdom than other living men, but so that you, 0 king, may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind. 31
You looked, 0 king, and there before you stood a large statue – an enormou s, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 3 'While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, 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 stat ue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. 36
This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king.
37
You, 0 king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you domin ion and power and might and glory; 38 in your hands he has placed mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold. 39 After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. 40
Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, 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. 41
Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partl y 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. 42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. 44
In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that w ill never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands – a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. The great God has shown the k ing what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy." 46
Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. 47 The king said to Daniel, "Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery. " 48 Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men. 49Moreover, at Daniel's request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon , while Daniel himself remained at the royal court"
PART I. DANIEL: INTERPRETING THE DREAM OF DESTINY
Introduction: In Daniel, Chapter 2, there is the account of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. This famous dream was of a figure with a head of gold, arms and chest of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. God not only revealed to Daniel the dream but also its meaning. There were to be four kingdoms with the final kingdom becoming divided and then fragmented. In the end, a stone cut from the mountain without hands will crush the previous kingdoms and set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. After revealing the dream and its interpretation, Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, "The great God has shown the King what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy." In Daniel 7 there is another dream, this time to King Belshazzer, of four beasts. The interpretation which Daniel gave corresponds to that of Daniel 2, so we conclude that they are two dreams, given to two different monarchs, but with one interpretation. Even if Daniel had not said the interpretation is trustworthy, we would still accept it as true because we accept all the Bible as God’s Word and true in its plain sense meaning. All Bible believers are nodding their heads as they read this. But if it is true, why don’t you ever read about it in history books? Even in Christian schools and colleges, you can study history at every level without so much as a reference go what God revealed about history. We have become schizophrenic. We have our biblical history, which is anything actually in the Scriptures. Then we have "real" history, which is everything else. But if Daniel’s version of history is true, then it ought to inform historiographers. (Historiography is the writing of history. We use this word rather than referring just to history itself, because historiography brings out the idea of the selection of one detail verses another. A historiographer puts his personal stamp upon the events of the past, giving to them some particular interpretation.) We ought to be able to study history and see the pattern. More than that, we ought to use Daniel’s model, which is really God’s outline, as our outline of history. If we actually used Daniel, the very reading of history would be a confirmation of the truth of God’s Word. It is certainly okay to trace other elements of history such as the history of ideas, the emergence of democratic ideals, or changing economic systems, but to totally neglect God’s main idea of what history is, as we do today, is to be ignorant of what is true. We neglect it to our own loss and detriment.
GOD REVEALED WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE LATTER DAYS We know this is more than a message to Nebuchadnezzar. Verse 28 says, "He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come." Again in verse 45, "The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. " It is plain that future events are being revealed". Some would interpret this passage rather narrowly, saying it simply showed to its readers the sovereignty of God over the kingdoms of man. But this is more than a simple allegory to show Nebuchadnezzar that God rules over all the earth. While it clearly does that, there is no reason to limit its meaning, especially when the words of the Scripture are broader. The plain sense of the content is specific. It deals with kingdoms and things that will happen in the future. An old maxim applies here: the plain sense makes sense, so to give it any other sense is nonsense. We want to understand what this "dream of destiny" meant to Nebuchadnezzar. We too, want to understand what it means to us. From Daniel 2:4 to 7:28, the book of Daniel is written in Aramaic, with the rest in Hebrew. Aramaic was the international language of that day. He used an international language because the middle portion of Daniel deals with God's sovereignty over all nations, not just the Jews. Daniel wanted Gentiles to be able to read it in their own language. Somewhere around 603 BC, Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Babylonian Empire, had a dream which he refused to disclose. He called for his astrologers to state the dream and interpret it. Of course, they could not do it. God, however, who gave the dream to Nebuchadnezzar, revealed it to Daniel. Daniel disclosed the dream, then gave its interpretation.
The first three kingdoms in the dream Daniel said Nebuchadnezzar was the head of Gold. Interestingly, Marduk, chief god of Babylon, was called the god of gold. Babylon used gold extensively. The ancient historian, Herodotus, 90 years after this, commented that even walls and buildings were overlaid with gold. The stone that came from the mountain also would have meant a lot to Nebuchadnezzar. Another name for Marduk was "The Great Mountain." They believed their gods came from the sacred mountain of the earth. They called it "The mountain of the Lands." In this the modern Tibetan religion is very similar. This much of the interpretation is certain because it is within the Scripture itself. The latter three kingdoms belong to the realm of interpretation. The second, inferior kingdom, symbolized by the arms and chest of silver, we believe represented the Medo-Persian Empire. The two arms were good representations of this empire for they were really two distinct groups of people who united in 550 BC and conquered Babylon in 539 BC. Silver, might indicate money. Their taxing systems must have been invented by the father of Democrats, because they were masters of extracting money from their subjects. The third kingdom we think was Greece, represented by the belly and thighs of bronze. The Greeks replaced the Persians in 331 BC. This was the kingdom of Alexander the Great. When Alexander died, his kingdom was divided among his four generals. Only two of these divisions were important, the Ptolemaic and Selecuid, or Syrian and Egyptian. It might be significant that this Greek empire is first the trunk of the body, but continues into two thighs. As one other interesting footnote, the Greeks highly developed the use of bronze and used it in their war implements. Even their armor was bronze. Their soldiers were called "brazen coated". On a personal note, one of my prize possessions is an ancient Greek coin bearing the head of Alexander. I also have several coins from the Selecuids
THE ROMAN EMPIRE, the fourth kingdom We believe the fourth empire or kingdom was that of Rome. It is represented by the two legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay. Rome conquered the Greeks in 146 BC. It is interesting that two legs represent Rome because one of Rome's chief characteristics was its division into two parts. Their empire was divided administratively in 395 when the sons of Theodosius I each took half of the Empire. Rome became the capital of the West while Constantinople, the home and capital of the Emperor Constantine and his successors, was the capital of the East.
In the early church there was a consensus that the fourth kingdom was that of the Romans. In all the periods of the early church, they believed that the fourth kingdom was the Roman Empire. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in the last half of the fourth century when the Empire was officially Christian. Indeed, he preached in a church built by the emperor Constantine himself and founded by the emperor’s mother, Helena. For him, the gospel kingdom had conquered the fourth kingdom. The following statement is from Cyril with footnotes on two other fathers who held the same opinion: . . . The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall surpass all kingdoms7. And that this kingdom is that of the Romans, has been the tradition of the Church’s interpreters. For as the first kingdom which became renowned was that of the Assyrians, and the second, that of the Medes and Persians together, and after these, that of the Macedonians was the third, so the fourth kingdom now is that of the Romans8.
God’s Kingdom, the rock cut from the mountain without human hands Irenaeus took the view that since the coming of Jesus was without the aid of the Joseph, then this was the stone cut without hands. He wanted to emphasize the supernatural birth of Jesus and he wanted to show the Old Testament predictions of it. So for him, the emphasis on the birth of Jesus should feature what God has done rather than the human dimension. So he drew upon the picture of Daniel’s stone cut without human hands. "On this account also, Daniel,4 foreseeing His advent, said that a stone, cut out without hands, came into this world. For this is what "without hands" means, that His coming into this world was not by the operation of human hands, that is, of those men who are accustomed to stone-cutting; that is, Joseph taking no part with regard to it, but Mary alone cooperating with the pre-arranged plan. For this stone from the earth derives existence from both the power and the wisdom of God. Wherefore also Isaiah says: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I deposit in the foundations of Zion a stone, precious, elect, the chief, the corner-one, to be had in honour." 5 So, then, we understand that His advent in human nature was not by the will of a man, but by the will of God."
Even though Irenaeus was well respected in the early church, his oblique reference did not lead others to think differently about the stone. The other early writers understood that Irenaeus was employing Daniel’s description as a secondary description rather than a primary meaning. So… In 350 AD, they were still looking for the rock cut without hands, the Kingdom of Jesus that was yet to come.
Cyril of Jerusalem sees that a kingdom was to come. It could not be the Roman kingdom, since that was a human institution, and the expected kingdom was to be without human hands. "But again thou askest yet another testimony of the time. The Lord said unto Me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. And a few words further on, thou shall rule them with a rod of iron. I have said before that the kingdom of the Romans is clearly called a rod of iron; but what is wanting concerning this let us further call to mind out of Daniel. For in relating and interpreting to Nebuchadnezzar the image of the statue, he tells also his whole vision concerning it: and that a stone cut out of a mountain without hands that is, not set up by human contrivance, should overpower the whole world: and he speaks most clearly thus." This fourth kingdom, the Roman Empire, would see the entrance of the kingdom of God. Although Cyril does not precisely say so, missing a great opportunity for clarifying Irenaeus, I infer from the above that he did not believe the conversion of the empire to Christianity was quite yet the coming of God’s kingdom to earth. If the conversion of the empire was not the final kingdom of God, then clearly the first appearing of Jesus was not that kingdom either, since by Cyril’s day that final kingdom had not yet arrived. Those who hold the view that the first coming of Jesus was the rock cut from the mountain cannot look to Cyril for support, because he would not agree with them. Although the following is a lengthy passage, and Cyril’s analysis of the 69 weeks of Daniel is hard to follow, it seems that he infers that the first coming of Jesus marked the 69th week of Daniel. Since Cyril is writing 350 years after Jesus, and since he did not believe the 70th week had yet arrived, we can conclude that Cyril did not believe the final kingdom had yet arrived by his day. . . . I have said before that the kingdom of the Romans is clearly called a rod of iron; but what is wanting concerning this let us further call to mind out of Daniel. For in relating and interpreting to Nebuchadnezzar the image of the statue, he tells also his whole vision concerning it: and that a stone cut out of a mountain without hands, that is, not set up by human contrivance, should overpower the whole world: and he speaks most clearly thus; And in the days of those kingdoms the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, and His kingdom shall not be left to another people6. 19. But we seek still more clearly the proof of the time of His coming. For man being hard to persuade, unless he gets the very years for a clear calculation, does not believe what is stated. What then is the season, and what the manner of the time: It is when, on the failure of the kings descended from Judah, Herod a foreigner succeeds to the kingdom? The Angel, therefore, who converses with Daniel says, and do thou now mark the words, And thou shalt know and understand: From the going forth of the word for making answer7, and for the building of Jerusalem, until Messiah the Prince are seven weeks and three score and two weeks 8. Now three score and nine weeks of years contain four hundred and eighty-three years. He said therefore, that after the building of Jerusalem, four hundred and eighty-three years having passed, and the rulers having failed, then cometh a certain king of another race, in whose time the Christ is to be born. Now Darius the Mede 9 built the city in the sixth year of his own reign, and first year of the 66th Olympiad according to the Greeks. Olympiad is the name among the Greeks of the games celebrated after four years, because of the day which in every four years of the sun’s courses is made up of the three 1 (supernumerary) hours in each year. An Herod is king in the 186th Olympiad, in the 4th year thereof. Now from the 66th to the 186th Olympiad there are 120 Olympiads intervening, and a little over. So then the 120 Olympiads make up 480 years: for the other three years remaining are perhaps taken up in the interval between the first and fourth years. And there thou hast the proof according to the Scripture which saith, From the going forth of the word that Jerusalem be restored and built until Messiah the Prince are seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. Of the times, therefore, thou hast for the present this proof, although there are also other different interpretations concerning the aforesaid weeks of years in Daniel.
The scenario that emerged was that the Roman Empire would remain until the stone cut without hands arrived, which is the unending kingdom of Jesus. The Roman Empire was the one who was holding back the revelation of the lawless one. They applied this thinking to their interpretation of Scripture which says: "For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders."
The Early Church said the falling away refers to the falling away of the Roman Empire. What hinders the coming of the Antichrist is the Roman Empire falling away! "Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction." "For that day shall not come, unless indeed there first come a falling away," he means indeed of this present empire, "and that man of sin be revealed," that is to say, Antichrist, "the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or religion; so that he sits in the temple of God, affirming that he is god. Remember ye not, that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things? And now ye know what detaineth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hinders must hinder, until he be taken out of the way." What obstacle is there but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)? "And then shall be revealed the wicked one, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." Implicit in Tertullian’s view is the understanding that the kingdom of Christ will follow the Roman Empire. I do not know of any modern prophecy teacher who follows this line of thinking. But then again, I do not know of any modern prophecy teacher who follows God’s description of history as contained in the "dream of destiny". But this conclusion is premature. Let’s consider how these concepts fit into the bigger picture. God's "dream of destiny" seems to indicate that the Roman Empire would be followed by the coming of the Kingdom of Christ. Two questions then arise: When did the Empire end, and how do we account for the gap between the end of Rome as a political empire and the Kingdom of Christ which is yet to fully come?
In light of Daniel 2, has the Roman Empire actually ended, or should we expect a "revived" Roman Empire? We are particularly interested in whether or not the Roman Empire exists because of what Daniel 9:26 tells us. This is one of the key verses in all the Bible. It says "The people of the ruler who will come" will destroy Jerusalem. We know who it was who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. It was the Romans. With that, we know who the future ruler's people are. They are the Romans. Putting it all together, the future ruler, the Antichrist, will emerge from out of the Roman Empire.
ALTERNATE VIEWS ON WHEN THE ROMAN EMPIRE ENDED There are essentially two views as to when the Roman Empire came to an end. The first is that it ended when the barbarians overran Rome in the fifth century. This is the impression that Renald Showers seems to hold. People who hold to this view might point to the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800, as a sign that the empire was being reinstated after having been lost. Joyce Milton calls this view a "parochial notion" that owes to being educated in the Western European tradition. Indeed, Einhard, the officially appointed biographer of Charlemagne, pointed out that Charlemagne found his new title a hindrance to good relations with the Byzantines, who objected to a Western ruler usurping their role. Apparently the Byzantines in 800 AD still saw themselves as the "Holy" Roman Empire. Not only was this the view of the Byzantines, it was also the view of the historians of the Middle Ages. Beryl Smalley records the second view, which is the prevailing historical view. This view holds that the Roman Empire continued on in the Eastern Roman Empire. Smalley says: "Had the barbarian invasions brought the Roman Empire to an end? That was a serious question. The end of imperial Rome would have broken continuity. More disturbing still, it would herald the coming of Antichrist, as Orosius taught. Barbarian historians had to tackle the problem. Their people had effectively destroyed the Roman Empire in the West: could they discern continuity all the same, so as to avoid breaking with the classical past and hastening expectations of the end of time? Each of the four barbarian historians found his own answer. One solution was to look East to Byzantium. Rome survived in the East. The Byzantine emperors ruled over all the former territories of the old Roman 'imperium' in theory, although in fact the new barbarian kingdoms were independent and has lost any close contact with the successors of the Caesars. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours and Paul the Deacon all took this view, while showing varying degrees of warmth or coolness towards the empire as an institution." Merle Severy said it best, "Though the empire became officially Greek in speech soon after Justinian's day, people of the East still considered themselves Romans. (Westerners they called Latins or Franks, when they weren't calling them barbarians.) Their Emperor of the Romans was the legitimate heir of Augustus Caesar. Down to 1453 theirs was THE Roman Empire. But it was the old pagan Roman world Christianized and turned upside down, the kingdom of heaven on earth. "Such was the Byzantine world view: a God-centered realm, universal and eternal, with the emperor as God's vice-regent surrounded by an imperial entourage that reflected the heavenly hierarchy of angels, prophets, and apostles. One God, one world, one emperor. Outside this cosmos was only ignorance and war, a fury of barbarians. The emperor had a divine mandate to propagate the true faith and bring them under his dominion." In summary, there are two answers to when the Roman Empire ended because the Empire existed in two parts: The Western Roman Empire went through a series of conquests by so called barbarians, some of whom were Christians, followed by periodic restorations. Over the centuries it changed shapes many times. Even into the 1700's there was a part of Europe known as the Holy Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire lasted until 1453. In that year, I believe the uninterrupted political Roman Empire came to an end, although in the West there were those periodic revivals of the Holy Roman Empire.
The invention of a "Revived" Roman Empire Either answer is a problem. In both of these views, the Roman Empire no longer exists today. Yet Daniel clearly speaks of that fourth kingdom lasting until it is destroyed by the "rock", which we identify to be Jesus Christ. Most have understood the problem of the Roman Empire no longer existing, so they have suggested that the Roman Empire will be "revived". There is nothing in the Scriptural text to suggest anything other than continuity in the empire. The notion of a "revived" empire is pure speculation. However, in the way that we interpret the Roman Empire, it is a necessary leap of faith, otherwise the dream makes no sense. The interpretation which I am proposing does not require a "revived" Roman Empire. My interpretation makes use of the iron and clay mixture to explain modern political realities. But lest I be labeled an oddball, let us accept the idea of a "revived" empire. If it will be revived, from what tomb will it arise? Let's consider first the geographical idea. Then we will consider the. cultural model.
IS IT A GEOGRAPHICAL AREA THAT IS THE BASE OF THE "REVIVED" ROMAN EMPIRE? There are 29 modern nations within the geographical area covered by the Roman Empire at its peak in 117 AD. Nineteen of these are European, five are African, and five are in the Middle East.
Most modern Evangelical prophecy scholars have let a western view of geography determine who they think will be in their "revived" Roman Empire. That is why they look to the Common Market to be the new Roman Empire. There is some merit in this view, but, in my opinion, their views are inadequate because they fail to take into account those other nations that were also once a part of the Roman Empire. They also fail to justify why the European community, as opposed to the other countries, will be it. There is a sense in which we can find support for the "Common Market" viewpoint. At least the view that Roman elements continue on within modern Europe has support.. Citing a couple of historical references should be sufficient to make the point: "The Roman genius, for example, is best shown in the creation of a body of law, which for its completeness and excellence must be considered one of the greatest legislative works of the human race. After many centuries of development, it is true, the empire declined and finally fell into pieces, but from the fragments great modern states, such as England, France, and Italy, have grown, and its civilization in a modified form has passed into modern life." THE HISTORIES recounting the making of the community of Europe, the republic of great powers. The base was the Roman Empire, which some Teutonic invaders and their successors had sought to preserve. Their efforts – the project of King Athaulf of the Visigoths to make a Gothic Roman Empire, the Empire of Charlemagne, and the Germanic reception of Roman law prefigure modern Europe. But first came the age ted by the Catholic church with its impossible universalism which the Holy Roman Empire presented in another sphere." The first reference simply states "its civilization in a modified form has passed into modern life." Fitzsimmons identifies both Roman law and religion as two elements besides political Rome which have been at the base of European development. But, of course, the same law and religion is also at the base of the other 19 nations of the old Roman Empire and many other nations as well. One of my main ideas is that, although political Rome is now virtually dead, the Roman Empire still exists. What I hope to show are some of the ways in which Rome still exists, although in impure form.
The ten kings But, before we turn to that idea, we should consider Daniel 7:23-24 which says "The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it. The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom." This would suggest that ten kings, either successively or simultaneously, will emerge from the Roman kingdom. We have a problem that comes from two facts. First, Daniel says, "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed..." (2:44). "In the time of those kings", refers to the time of the Roman kings. The second fact is that the Eastern Roman kingdom ended in 1453 and the West has come and gone several times. As we have said, many try to solve this problem by talking about a "revived" Roman Empire, and they might be right. But that is not very consistent with one continuous statue. For their explanation to work, we would need a statue with several hundred years of dead air between the ankles and the feet. A better way of seeing it would be to understand that these ten kings represent kingdoms which are, in some way, out of the Roman Empire and are visualized in the dream as the iron and clay mixture. Ten kingdoms will emerge, but they will be interspersed with clay. They might be separated from the other nine by time or by distance, or both. If Paul uses the word apostasia in the sense of the political rebels of the papyri documents, then these ten kingdoms might be the results of political rebellions which break up the empire. One further comment on the ten toes/horns. Some suggest that Christ's kingdom came with Christ’s first coming. The stone has already come. Aside from what we have shown of Irenaeus, the early church was not of this view, with Cyril still looking for the kingdom in the fourth century. Nor does this view fit the description of ten additional kingdoms emerging from the fourth empire. Since the rest of the dream has a chronological interpretation, it seems reasonable that the final phase would as well. Further, Christ's first coming did not destroy the existing kingdoms. They still exist. The "first coming" view falls short because it fails to match the clear meaning of the text.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE STILL REMAINS IN ITS CULTURE AND IS REFLECTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA If we stay with the view that the Roman Empire still exists in its legacy we are able to include the realities of the modern world. Particularly, we can include the United States as part of the Roman milieu. As the world's one remaining Superpower, and with a Gross National Product of almost $6 trillion, some three times larger than our nearest competitor, Japan, it makes sense to describe the world in such a way that we are included. The apparent absence of the United States in prophecy has troubled prophecy students for some time. But if you think in terms of the Roman milieu, rather than purely empires, the USA readily reappears. One small illustration of our Roman heritage is in the House of Representatives in Washington DC where there is a representation of Justinian the Great. Another reminder is the architecture of the Capitol which is almost exclusively Roman. Principally through our British heritage, the Roman legal and cultural tradition was passed to us. Along with the USA, we can also include Russia and Eastern Europe in our Roman milieu because they were profoundly influenced by the Eastern Roman Empire in terms of language, law, religion, and culture. But we do not think in terms of the USA, Russia, and Eastern Europe as being part of the Roman Empire
milieu only because it makes sense of our perception of the modern world. It also fits the description of the statue in Daniel 2. In the final period before Christ comes, the iron of the fourth empire will be mixed in with clay. It is this mixing of iron and clay that best illustrates our day.
A POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRON AND CLAY The mixture of iron and clay speaks of other, non-Empire elements being mixed in. If we interpret this politically, we end up with rebellions against the empire with many smaller kingdoms set up. We interpret the clay to be negative, it being cheaper and less durable. Then the fragment kingdoms which follow the iron of Rome are less powerful, less majestic, or less whatever, than Rome. If this aspect continues until the coming of the kingdom, then the chief characteristic of the time before Christ’s coming will be a Balkanization of the world. Indeed, Jesus described this very thing: "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places." You can expect the world to be very unstable before the coming of the Lord. One group will rise against another. Each one will try to carve out its little piece of empire.
A CULTURAL INTERPRETATION OF IRON AND CLAY When we move to a cultural interpretation of the final phase of the fourth empire, as I am suggesting, we break with the sense of empire to some degree. The text does not precisely allow for this. But can it be otherwise? How can you have two governments, one of iron and the other of clay, trying to govern simultaneously in the same place? In fact, if we insist upon a political Rome, then we must go back to the problem of the disappearance of the Roman Empire, which God said would remain until the stone from the mountain crushed it. Maybe our explanation, of mixture as increasingly smaller kingdoms emerging, will work. I would like to propose that when the pure iron of the legs changes into the iron and clay of the feet we have a shift from pure political Rome to political/cultural Rome. In general, we should move from thinking exclusively about government to thinking in terms of law, culture, ideals, organizational systems, and the other things which distinguish one group of people from another. Particularly since 1453, but also since the fall of the last "Holy Roman Empire" in Europe, elements of the Roman Empire remain, but what is non-Roman, the clay, co-exists with it. It is one thing to speculate that there has been a shift from political Rome to political/cultural Rome. But how can it be defended? I am not alone in my general conclusion. THE PULPIT COMMENTARY on Daniel 2:41-43 says the reference is "...to the mingling of two distinct culture-elements, the infusion of barbarous races into the midst of a civilized, and the barbarians taking on some of the outward forms of civilization would represent better the thing indicated. The corrupted iron and clay of Rome describes a divided world. There is strength combined with the weakness of brittleness. People are no longer united. The unity of Roman ideals is mixed with the ideals of other peoples.
Even considering the kingdoms represented by the ten toes/horns, after the Romans, no other political empire emerges. This is also the view of the writers of The Pulpit Commentary. On Daniel 2:41-43 they write, "This new development of the image is to be regarded, not as another empire, but as the outgrowth of the fourth kingdom." Merle Severy, Assistant Editor of National Geographic Magazine, in a feature article titled "The Gifts of Golden Byzantium" said: "Just as the double-headed eagle, symbol of Byzantium .... looks both east and west, forward and backward in time, so Byzantine ways of government, laws, religious concepts, and ceremonial splendor continue to move our lives today." "Much of our classical heritage was transmitted by Byzantium. Its art affected medieval and modern art. Byzantines taught us how to set a large dome over a quadrangular space, gave us patterns of diplomacy and ceremony and even introduced forks." Severy has summarized my point. The outgrowth of the fourth empire, in either its Western or Eastern (Byzantine) form, continues to shape our day. It is difficult to be precise about all the ways in which the iron and clay have mixed. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable in all these areas to be detailed. But I want to broadly suggest some of the ways in which I think we can observe the mixing of iron and clay. SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF IRON AND CLAY The Daniel text says that the "people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay" At least we know there is a sense in which people are no longer united. They had formerly been united, but will no longer remain so. We have just suggested that this might be political and it might be cultural. Now I would like to consider whether it might be sociological, that is, how the people themselves relate to one another. A particularly American concept is expressed in the Latin phrase, "E pluribus unum." This phrase, meaning "out of many, one", is the motto for the seal of the United States. The words, spoken in the language of the Romans, expressed the concept that also governed the Roman Empire. Rome was a collection of diverse people who were united under one law and culture. In time, however, what united them was insufficient to overcome the centrifugal force that threw them apart. Paul described it as lawlessness. Ever smaller groups of people want to be the law to themselves. This lawlessness is expressed as political rebellion. What broke the Roman Empire in fragments, many now see as breaking America into ever smaller parts. Arthur Schlessinger, former insider in John Kennedy’s government, has written a prophetic book called The Disuniting of America. His thesis was that the emphasis on multi-culturalism that now tes intellectual circles, is reversing the "E pluribus unum" theme of earlier America. We are no longer the melting pot where all become one. Now we are a tossed salad where each retains his former characteristic. The tomato is still a tomato and the lettuce is still lettuce. The emphasis is upon individual origin, rather than present collective position as salad member. Increasingly, we are hyphenated Americans. This fragmentation is the spirit of the age. But this is not just an American experience. From West Africa to the Balkans, to Iraq, to the mountains of Mexico, to the former Soviet Union, there is one common theme: the "people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay." First it is nationalism, then tribalism, then libertarianism, then anarchy. We might even continue our fragmentation down the sociological chain to describe the high divorce rate and family conflict. While the work of God is to return the hearts of the fathers to their children, it is the spirit of lawlessness that causes the terrible times of the last days when people will be "lovers of themselves," and "disobedient to their parents." The very nature of fragmentation is to love ourselves and to
rebel against authority. In the words of the bumper sticker, "question authority." The chief characteristic of the time before the rock destroys the human kingdoms is that the people will no longer be united. IRON AND CLAY IN LAW An organized body of law was one of the crowning achievements of the Roman Empire. The rule of Law is also one of the clearest examples of the Roman legacy. As we have already noted, Roman law influenced British Common Law which in turn was the basis for American Law. I also find this story to be tremendously inspiring. Justinian the Great was truly great. He was the one, more than any other, who successfully brought Christian principles into civil law, producing a golden age of civilization. We should appreciate him for that. We should also admire the phenomenal scope of his work. Do I sound like Ronald Reagan when I suggest we could use a man like Justinian in America today? Consider what Justinian did for Roman law: "During the life of the Roman Empire there had been gathered together from its earliest days, tens of thousands of laws and legal opinions, sufficient to fill a thousand volumes and to dampen the ardor of the most enthusiastic seeker for legal truth. When Justinian ascended the throne he called together a small group of scholars and authorities, and laid upon them the task of revising the ordinances of his predecessors since the time of Hadrian as these were found in the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes. He told them they must purge all errors and contradictions, take out whatever they found obsolete or superfluous, and select the wise and salutary laws best adapted to the practice of tribunals and the use of his subjects. The new code was completed in fourteen months, and received the signature of Justinian. Then the laws were accurately copied and distributed. Compared with what was to follow, however, this task was relatively easy. "There must now be extracted from the decisions and conjectures of judges, and from the questions and disputes of Roman lawyers, the real meaning of the laws--their true spirit. In three years this task was also completed, and the Digest of Pandects was produced. It is an abstract of 150,000 sentences, chosen from about three million. The Institutes contain the essential elements of Roman law. Justinian declared the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes to be the only legitimate system of civil jurisprudence. This remarkable monument of human labor, of human wisdom, and of the sound judgment of one of the most legal-minded of all the nations of the earth, was destined to be a source of legal knowledge and inspiration for thirteen hundred years. The sixth century may well be called the Age of Justinian." Let us consider Justinian's Code as the iron. What is the clay? In various parts of the Roman world we have seen the encroachment of so called Natural Law, Islamic Law, or in our country, secular law. We have been changing the basic Roman code at an accelerating pace. We see the changes relating to , divorce, murder, rape, capital punishment, and a host of other topics. Of course, as our country sinks under the weight of immorality, violence, and family breakup, we are also feeling the effects of those changes. In an earlier age, law was king, expressed in the Latin words, "Lex Rex." The characteristic of civilization was the rule of law, not an arbitrary rule of an individual. When the iron of civilization is corrupted, the clay of individual rights wins over the collective interests of the larger group. In the 1700’s, to be free meant that a specified set of rules were uniformly enforced. Now it means to be exempt from governmental restriction. Clay covers iron. IRON AND CLAY IN RELIGION The area of religion is more problematic. The mixture takes a different turn, but with a little help, can still be seen.
The year 476 AD marks the beginning of the "clay" in the West. In that year, for all practical purposes, the continuity of the Roman Empire was lost in the West. A whole series of changes were set in motion. The further we move into the Middle Ages, the more misshapen Western Christianity became. It is absolutely wrong to see the whole period as a twisting of the Gospel as some Protestants do. But it is also true that in many ways it was not pretty. There is not sufficient space to detail either the glories or the excesses of the time, but a couple of examples will suffice. In 1204, what one author called "the greatest crime in history" took place. The fourth Crusade was diverted by Catholic jealousy into an attack upon Constantinople. For three days, murder, rape, and robbery were the norm as the Western Crusaders virtually destroyed the city with its art and religious treasures. The Eastern Roman Empire never quite recovered from the blow it received at the hands of its brothers. By the 1400's, especially in the West, the church was immoral in its leadership, and increasingly looking to pagan ideas from the ancient Greeks in its theological studies. In Rome there were 6,000 s serving a population of 100,000. Popes openly had es and held public marriages for their children born of those relations. In the latter area, in my view, men like Thomas Aquinas were as theologically corrupting to the church as they were towering in intellect. Anti-Semitism, which had taken hold by the mid-second century, increased in force and never let go. The Old Testament was stripped of its Jewishness and spiritualized. The Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation served to clean up the western church in many ways. The Eastern Roman Empire shared features in common with the West but also important differences. The resulting differences in style and content gave the Eastern Church a different feel, and in my mind, more encouraging results. First, the continuous melding of civil and religious authority gave the East the strength it needed to expand its ministry to new territories while resisting pressure to change. In my view, this is nearest to the correct structure for authority. Not coincidentally, this period also represents the high water mark of Christianity in world influence. To its credit, the East has a very strong devotional strain, mixed with a heavy emphasis upon almsgiving and caring for the sick, homeless, and needy. Mixed with the power of Christianity was the compassion of Christianity; an unbeatable combination. The basic religion of both East and West remains today as the nt form of Christianity. Catholicism in the West, in spite of the Reformation and its Protestant residue, and Orthodoxy in the East continue to form Christianity's mainstream. While we are encouraged by the Pentecostal movement which, by the end of the century will comprise one half of Christianity, we are discouraged by the invasion of new religious ideas into Christianity. We now have the clay of the eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism and their western counterpart, the New Age Movement. We still contend with Islam. Increasingly, we face the mixture of pagan ideas and thoughts, along with secularism, as battlefields for Christianity. Philosophies of individualism and Western democratic values have brought church order and discipline near to collapse. Every group does whatever it wants. A person disciplined in one church, if he is disciplined at all, is accepted in the next. Of course, what I might consider clay, another person might consider iron. Which, in an odd way, illustrates my point. Every man does what is right in his own eyes.
IRON AND CLAY IN ARTISTIC CULTURE With regards to culture, the wonderful Christian heritage in painting, sculpture, and music is so sparse. The values of paganism brought into art, music, literature, and architecture are painfully evident. The late Francis A. Schaeffer did a good job of showing the intrusion of these polluting pieces of "clay" into art and even politics in his book How Should We Then Live, The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture.
We could also examine Science. In the Scientific world, we must now contend with the clay on the origins of the earth, when life begins, when life ends, creating life and life forms, , causes of crime, etc. MILITARISM AS AN INDICATOR THAT ROME STILL LIVES It is also possible that the important Roman legacy will be a militaristic one. Certainly, the most evident quality of Rome was its power to grind down every enemy with its powerful military machine. In Daniel 11, when the one we commonly call the Anti-Christ comes, he will worship a god of fortresses and apparently spend vast sums of gold, silver, and precious jewels on military equipment or ventures. Might it be that what is Roman about the future ruler will be his Roman militarist spirit? Just as Greece had a "sar" or prince who is widely believed to have been some sort of demonic being, so this "Roman" leader may also have one. In this case, Rome's "sar" may be acknowledged by the future anti-Christ as that god who makes his military success possible, the same god who helped Rome become an empire in its early days of rapid conquest. IRON AND CLAY, A REALLY ODD VIEW One idea on the "mixing" of iron and clay could be built around the English rendering of the Hebrew word for "mixing". That word is ‘Arab’. Pursuing that strikes me as without merit, but curious nonetheless. I'll give it one paragraph. Geoffrey R. King in his commentary, DANIEL, believes that the ten toes are actually the Moslems. He views the whole vision as indicating how Gentiles are oppressing Jerusalem. Jerusalem becomes the hinge on which the whole vision turns. He says, "What was the next power to occupy Jerusalem? And who has occupied it ever since the Roman empire? Mohammedan power. And unless I am completely mistaken the whole Mohammedan world comes in here; and the feet are the Mohammedan powers which occupied Jerusalem right away through the years on and off from 637 when the Saracens took over the city from the Romans until 1917 when Allenby freed Jerusalem from the Turks." He is able to justify his view by saying, "the Roman empire gave place to the Mohammedan empire, and the Mohammedans based their regime on the Roman system". It is an odd view, but then, prophecy is filled with odd views. (Some might think I am doing my best to keep the tradition alive.) Having come to this point, I find myself exhausted trying to separate the iron and the clay. Maybe it isn't necessary to be able to describe what is Roman and what is Clay. At least not for me. I'll leave that to the experts on history. In the end, it will all be destroyed by the stone cut without hands from the mountain. However, if we were going to describe and interpret history from God's point of view, we could describe the various elements of clay that have entered the Roman iron. The single point that I have tried to show in this last section has been that the Roman Empire, even though it is now politically dead, continues to live in the form of its legacy in so many areas of modern life. In that sense, the picture presented by God to Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar is a true picture of history as it has been known. Unfortunately, something happened which has all but obscured God view of history. In the next section, I want to show that God's view has ted the past. Then I want to describe what happened to change that.
PART II WHAT HAPPENED TO GOD'S VIEW OF HISTORY? In every age since the sixth century BC when the Daniel passages were written, the text has been interpreted to mean what the "plain sense" meaning indicates. Anyone reading these passages today can clearly understand that they relate to all the kingdoms on the earth until Christ returns. The wording is very
straightforward and Bible readers in every age have understood this. What has changed is earlier Jews and Christians treated the text seriously, integrating it into their overall learning and letting it influence their world. We read it, preach it, and presumably believe it, but find no inconsistency in not applying its truths to our study of history. We have reduced these passages to ancient history or future prophecy. No Christian today would describe his own period of history as being represented on the statue. In that, we have abandoned the Scriptural representation of our age and have gone searching for other models for our historiography. This abandonment of the Bible, particularly Daniel 2, as the provider for our historiographical model occurred about 250 years ago. It happened as part of the secular move of the so called "Enlightenment". So successful was this secular revolution, so complete its victory, so thoroughly has the Biblical concept been scrubbed from the pages of history that most Christians, even well educated ministers and professors, do not even realize how secular they have become in their view of history. We have all been taught the secular version of history so completely we do not even know there is a Christian option. What I hope to show is that Christians throughout history accepted the Biblical version, and the loss of the Biblical version of history was the result of a conscious effort by atheists, infidels, and secularist historians to undermine the Christian nce. Then, I hope to challenge Christian historians, book publishers, school teachers, and preachers to return to the Biblical model of history, organizing their work around what God has revealed.
The "dream of destiny" has influenced every generation of historians and thinkers except the last couple hundred years
THE PRE-CHRIST, JEWISH VIEW OF HISTORY Daniel's influence was felt, first of all, among his own people the Jews. What he wrote, they took seriously. He influenced the Jews to think of history in terms of periods or eras. Herbert Butterfield has summarized Jewish thinking about history in the centuries before Christ. He then gives us a thumb nail sketch of the influence of the "Dream of Destiny" over the centuries: "One of the characteristics of Judaism in the period immediately before the Christian era had been the tendency to "period-ize" history, to divide it into epochs, each of which had its character because it was ted by certain forces. It was a practice stimulated particularly by the eschatological speculation, the description of the successive stages in the working out of the "Last Things", perhaps a division of events that were to be in a certain sense outside history but still an effective division of time. To the people of Israel, the rise of colossal neighboring empires which had begun to make political life almost impossible for them and had led to exile, had appeared to be a tremendous judgment of God; and as one vast empire succeeded another, bringing frustration and repeated disasters for them, the Israelites began to count these colossal empires as the prelude to the end. They caught from abroad the theory of the Four Monarchies, the Four World Empires, which makes its appearance in the book of Daniel. And the Christians took over the idea. By this time, Rome tended to be thought of as the last of the Four, and it therefore stood as the final Empire before the End. In the Judaism of the first century AD and in Christianity rather later, it is explicitly held that the continuance of the Roman Empire is the only thing that is holding back the end of the world. Tertullian in the third century AD says that Christians want to defer the End and support the Roman Empire partly for this reason. This Four-Empire system became the accepted way of periodising the world history in Christian Europe; it received a new lease of life at the Reformation and it continued to be used into the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century."
Of course, Butterfield takes a typically liberal approach to revelation, treating what Daniel wrote as something which the Jews invented or borrowed from others. But those who believe the Bible in what it plainly says will accept the fact that God gave the dream first to Nebuchadnezzar, and then again to Daniel. God also gave the meaning of the dream. However, Butterfield is both clear and correct in showing the vast influence this dream has had upon historians and Christian thinkers. For our purpose here it is important to note that the "Dream of Destiny" was having its impact upon the Jews right from the time of Daniel.
THE PRE-CHRIST ROMANS, AND THEIR RELATION TO THE "DREAM OF DESTINY" By the third century BC, we know the dream was making its way among the Romans and was having an impact. You will remember that Daniel wrote the key parts of the book in Aramaic so the whole world could read it in the international language of his day. Besides that, Daniel had an influential position in several administrations, so I can imagine his words were widely read. The impact on the pre-Christ Romans was profound. Lildia Storoni Mazzolani, in her work, ironically titled, Empire Without End, Three Historians of Rome traces the writings of Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus on the history of Rome. Mazzolani describes the impact of Daniel 2 on the thinking of the Roman Empire long before Christ, the Church, or the Christian era: "Ambiguous and disquieting omens arose in the interim between the victory of Cynoscephalae and that of Magnesia (197-190 BC), won on the plain dotted with temples that had been built by Cyrus and Artaxerxes. A prophecy of Daniel's made its way into the Roman milieu and was then passed down by historians and philosophers to Saint Jerome. This was Nebuchadnezzar's dream. The sleeping king saw a great image, his head of gold, his breast and arms of silver, his stomach and thighs of brass, his legs of iron, and his feet of iron and clay. Daniel interpreted this vision. He told the king that after the fall of his kingdom others would follow, corresponding to the various parts of the image’s body; thus their value would continually diminish. Once all the earthly kingdoms had perished, a new kingdom would be created, it would never be destroyed, or left to other people, and it would stand forever. (Her footnote referenced here says: "The final kingdom the only lasting one, is Rome, for Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 1.2; for Appianus, Preface 9- for Velleius Paterculus, 1.6.) Mazzolani's text continues: "Was this simply a metaphysical vision, or an allusion to everlasting dominion? Various hypotheses were offered. The Medes, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Carthaginians had successively ruled the world, but each had been displaced. The crucial question was who would govern the final kingdom destined to last forever. Rome aspired to this position, and many authors granted her this right. They created fantastic myths with scrupulous accuracy in their details. Rhythmically scanned measures and symmetrical verses were arranged according to a rigorous chronology that corresponded to the centuries lost in the dark mists when Rome had no history. Each city destined to rule the world had to be founded in the same year that its predecessor fell. Thus Rome was born the same year that Babylon fell." Of course, we would disagree with some of their individual interpretations of Daniel and some of their conclusions. But the precise conclusions of these ancient speculations are less important for our purposes, than the fact that Daniel's revelation formed the organizing principle of their speculation. What they said referenced what Daniel said. All this was nearly 200 years before Christ. Much later, when the church ted both legs of the Roman Empire, it is not surprising that God's revelation to Nebuchadnezzar formed the core of the historiography.
THE EARLY CHURCH AND THE "DREAM OF DESTINY" The Scofield Reference Bible, in its introduction to the book of Daniel, noted that Daniel's interpretation ted the early church's thinking and continued to te European historiography up until the middle of the eighteenth century. Earlier we showed specific references from the early church Fathers. We agree with what Scofield has said, that it was nt. Others have traced the ideas down to St. Jerome, showing that he accepted this scheme of history as being God's outline. We also know what Augustine wrote on the subject. Augustine was an early, and key, influence on a Christian view of history. Unfortunately, he did not follow Daniel's vision but chose his own organization of history. He wrote, almost like a modern dispensationalist, of six ages of man beginning with Adam to Noah as the infancy of man. Then he considered the period from Noah to Abraham as man's childhood. He continued in this way right on through the time between the first and second comings of Christ which he called the "old age" of man. "Old age", in turn, gave way to the age to come. His work made it more fashionable to think about history as periods. This made room for a further development of Daniel 2 as an historiographical model. In 417, a Spanish priest and friend of Augustine, named Orosius wrote History Against The Pagans: "The most original part of his work was his time scheme of the four monarchies. The fourth beast of Daniel's vision represented the Roman empire.... (The book) transmitted the idea that the fall of the Roman empire would usher in Antichrist. The ten horns on the head of the fourth beast of Daniel's vision signified ten kings who would divide the empire among themselves....(History Against the Pagans) was one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages." Later, in LIBER FLORIDUS, an illustrated encyclopedia compiled by Lambert, a canon of St. Omer, before 1120, the seven ages of Augustine were united together with Daniel. By this time, the Biblical vision was firmly established as the nt view without rivals in the Christian world. "The theme of four world monarchies, which would rise in succession, passed into Christian historiography and supplemented the six ages as a chapter division of universal history." "Antichrist and Daniel's ten-headed monster increased their prestige by making an appearance in the Christian Apocalypse. Medieval Latin scholars identified 'John', the author of the Book of Revelation, with St. John the Evangelist and the writer of the Epistles of St. John." Smalley is less generous than Scofield as to the duration of the Biblical influence: "The fourth beast of Daniel's vision and of Revelation....proved to be a hardy, long-lived creature. The dream statue also persisted in standing upright, in spite of its clay-mixed feet. The beast had recurrent spells of sickness, and the statue tottered at intervals; but they failed to disappear. They survived both in fact and in theory. The division of world history into periods corresponding to the sway of four world monarchies established itself so firmly that it was still taken seriously as late as the sixteenth century." The French Scholar, Jean Bodin, began the drift away from the Biblical model in 1566 when he published his Method of History. What began as a small hole in the dike was to turn into a flood of secularism. However, the Biblical model was to survive for a couple more centuries before the so called "Enlightenment" washed it away, replacing it with a social and economic history.
PART III. HOW GOD'S VIEW OF HISTORY WAS DESTROYED THE SO CALLED "ENLIGHTENMENT" WAS AN ATTACK UPON THE CHRISTIAN FAITH USING THE TOOL OF A RE-WRITTEN AND REVISED HISTORY. The Enlightenment was a period of intense secular attack upon Christianity. Many historians of this period used the re-writing of history, focusing on negative aspects of church activity in the past, to undermine the church's influence both in their day and even to our day. In particular, they pointed out elements of what they called "superstition" and how churches tended to use force to oppose evil. They made it a point to concentrate on the negative while minimizing the positive within church history. With this new history as a weapon, they could beat Christianity out of the minds of the intellectual leaders by making Christianity took bad: "... adopting ancient materialism, rationalism, or the outlook of physical science, (they) rejected theology and abandoned religion altogether. For both, the Enlightenment meant a polemic against the Christian churches, as well as Judaism, and the articulation of new beliefs. Since religion touched in different degrees all spheres of life, the battleground included philosophy, morality, and history. Superstition and persecution were the themes of Enlightenment church history." It is clear that if a writer magnifies negative elements, making the negative the organizing principle around which historical facts are arranged, the overall effect will be negative. So, by writing mainly about the religious element in the outbreak of some war, and minimizing the more human aspects of lust for power or wealth, it is possible to make religion seem like something a nation is better off without. Rather than using an economic interpretation to history as Beard would later do, or a political interpretation as many have done, the "enlightenment" interpretation was religious. They not only used a religious interpretation, but did so intentionally in order to criticize the Church in particular and Christianity in general. They wanted to diminish Christian influence and values so that their preferred value system, organized around humanist values, could prevail. They especially emphasized what they termed the "religious wars" and the Inquisition. In fact what history book would be without a major section on the Inquisition? Chuck Colson's research has indicated that in the Inquisition only some 3,000 people were killed over three centuries. Yet the Inquisition was made to be the centerpiece of Christian history. Of course, when 3,000 people are killed for any reason it is significant. But on the scale of history it is inconsequential. Fifty million died at the hands of Stalin in the name of atheism. The Moslems have killed more than a hundred times as many Christians in Sudan alone as died in the Inquisition. But very little is ever mentioned of that. At the moment there are dozens of conflicts around the world and thousands are dying every year, but history books do not record our era as the era of tribal conflict. The point is, making the Inquisition an organizing idea in history was really designed by atheists and anti-Christians as a means to undermine the position of the church. Their anti-Christian agenda succeeded. Even down to our own day, people are repeating the exaggeration. The exaggeration goes on to the point where it really becomes a lie, a misrepresentation of history. While it certainly is true that religion played a part in every aspect of life, including the conflicts, there is considerable room to debate the degree to which religion determined the conflict. Robinson is clearly uncomfortable with how the anti-Christian historians from the so called "Enlightenment" forward were emphasizing the religious elements when he said each person can "...decide for himself how far 'religion', in the particular sense in which he may be inclined to use that term, played its part in the war, massacres, persecution, dynastic rivalries, hatreds, and
dissensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All enterprises tended to assume a religious complexion and proffer religious sanctions and justifications".
LIGHT VERSUS DARK AGES Even the very choice of the name "enlightenment" was a value laden choice in which they meant to favorably contrast their "enlightened" age with that of Christianity, which they wanted to characterize as an UN-enlightened, or a "dark age". M. A. Fitzsimmons said, "The age, in its critique of the past, became so self-conscious that it christened itself: the Enlightenment." "During most of the Middle Ages, the Byzantines were richer, better educated, and more civilized than their counterparts in the West." There were no dark ages in the Eastern Roman Empire. But that is a story that the anti-Christians did not want to tell. They preferred to characterize Christianity as negative, with ancient paganism the real force of civilization. Unfortunately, Christians and Christian historians have either allowed this name to stick, or were unable to prevent it. Whatever happened back then, now, every time we use this term we allow our own Christian history to be cast in a negative light. Do we truly believe that the humanist ideals of that era, which stand against the authority of the church and Scripture, reflect greater enlightenment than an individual bowing himself before God's authority expressed in His Word and His Church? If we do not believe this, then why do we accept their slanderous titles and even use them without qualification? Until such time as Christians are able to overthrow these negative characterizations, we should at least qualify our use of the terms by saying such things as "the so-called 'enlightenment'", or "that era that secularists called the 'enlightenment'", or "the self-styled 'enlightenment'". We might even register our disapproval of the term by simply putting the term within quotation marks. I am suggesting that the re-writing of history was done intentionally by men who hated Christianity and wanted to diminish God's influence in the world. I know very well that people educated in the secular view would object to that statement. But I am not alone in that assessment. M. A. Fitzsimmons, Professor Emeritus of History at Notre Dame University has written about many of the historiographers of this era. Consider his comments about the work of one of the principal historians of this self styled "Enlightenment", the noted anti-Christian, Voltaire (1694-1778): "Voltaire's importance in historiography is that this prince of the philosophies, the new learned estate-replacing bishop and priest, wrote biographies that exemplified Enlightenment taste and works that provided a new kind of exemplary history, an approach that would be meaningful or useful for those jected Providence." Although Voltaire criticized the church for their use of what he called persecution, he was less opposed to the use of force when it served his goals. "He could find reasons to ignore or even favor persecution in the name of progress and enlightenment or in dealing with rivals." During the so called age of "enlightenment", the subject matter of history began to shift away from empires, wars, and positive religion to what Voltaire called the "history of the human spirit."
HISTORY AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT "The human spirit, as a subject of history, began to receive repeated mention in the early eighteenth century. Its importance as a historical subject on a level with war and religion reflected a changing intellectual outlook. Those jected earlier authorities as well as Providence thought that the direction and meaning of
history had their source in the human spirit. Fontenelle (1657-1757), whom Voltaire called the most universal spirit of the age of Louis XIV, described the historian as ordering and delicately interrelating history's immense heap of facts to reveal the succession of events and ideas and 'the history of the human mind.’" The outcome of a war was once considered one of the key ways in which God, or Providence expressed himself. God was active in making or breaking empires. By shifting to the human spirit as the driving force of history, the "dream of destiny", become irrelevant. What does it matter what Daniel wrote? It is not the point anyway. Butterfield gives us a sense of the background to God and war: "It is interesting to note the important part played by war in the rise of the notion that God has a part in history. Indeed, it is one of the surprises of history to learn for how long, and over how wide an area, war was a sacred thing, and was particularly associated with the action of gods. The Old Testament writings are no exception, for in them war is a matter that particularly concerns Jehovah, particularly involves his active intervention. Next to prayers for the harvest, prayers for victory in war must have had the priority in the petitioning of the ancient world, and must surely also have it in that of the modern." "All the more remarkable is the great labor Voltaire undertook when he sought to benefit men by "un-deceiving" them (2:126), to destroy the Christian, providential view of history and to replace it with a conception of man on his own." The shift to history and the human spirit was a way of weaning people from the view that God was somehow moving history on a course. If we hold to the "Dream of Destiny" it is clear that God is directing history, at least to the extent that no empires can arise because he has said there will only be four, not more. On the other hand, if the "human spirit" is the driving force, then, in effect, God is eliminated. This was their objective, to loosen the grip of God and the church upon life. Voltaire was not alone in his anti-Christian work. He was joined by Edward Gibbon, another noted historian of that era. Together, they were powerful in moving historiography away from its Biblical base.
EDWARD GIBBON: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE Edward Gibbon's monumental work on Roman history dramatically changed the way the western world thought about Roman history. He successfully redefined who the Romans were and what they contributed. When Gibbon was finished, the Roman Empire was no longer an empire of two parts, east and west. The western part was important, even though it remained as fits and starts after the sack of Rome right up through to Gibbon's era. He saw the modern European states as the true successors of the Roman Empire. RENAMING THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE The Eastern Roman empire, although they called themselves "Romans", Gibbon and others renamed Byzantines. By changing their name, their Roman birthright was taken from them centuries after their demise. Then, by diminishing their contributions to civilization, he pushed them into the obscure wings of history. This late name change is confirmed by Joyce Milton when she says: "...Byzantium, is today commonly applied to what might more accurately be called the Eastern Roman Empire. This double usage tends to obscure the fact that the people of that time, whom we now refer to as Byzantines, never thought of themselves as such. Although they were a mixed lot ethnically and although they came from a variety of cultural backgrounds, the citizens of Byzantium considered themselves Roman. After the sixth century, when Greek
replaced Latin as the chief language of the empire, their name was simply translated in the Greek Romaioi'".
WHY DIMINISHING THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE OBSCURES THE "DREAM OF DESTINY" AND MORE The net effect of these revisions in history was to hide the reality of God's revelations found in Daniel 2. There, God described a fourth empire, which is the Roman empire, as the two legs of iron. Modern history, both secular and Christian, has cut off one leg. The Roman Empire is no longer viewed as the two legs of iron that God revealed. The so called Byzantines cease to be Roman. Now the statue must have only one leg, if we see it from God's perspective at all. That part of the Roman Empire which lasted into the 15th century as a continuous political reality disappears into the eastern fog. The whole point of the loss of the divine perspective on history is that the final conclusion is lost as well. Gone is the conviction from seeing history progress toward its conclusion. Gone is the reinforcement of prophecy by having Daniel's vision verified in historical teaching. Gone is the respect for the divine sovereignty over nations. Gone is the organizing and prioritizing principle of history. We have lost a lot. I should say, a lot has been stolen. We need to reclaim history for Christ. WHY DID GIBBON DO IT? The question is, did Gibbon intend to dismantle the Christian perspective on history? The quick answer is YES! Fitzsimmons says this of Gibbon: "In Decline and Fall, the art is so well sustained that the 'flexibility' of Gibbon's plan may not be recognized. He originally saw his theme as the fall of a city and empire and, as part of it, the decline of its public life and pagan culture. This story ended with the end of the eastern empire in 1453 and, in the West, the beginnings of modern Europe and the revival of ancient learning." According to Fitzsimmons, Gibbon shared many values with Voltaire. In their re-writing of history, the Christian faith had to be cast in a negative light. These revisionist historians preferred the values of paganism rather than the values of Christianity. To them, the ancient Greek and Roman worlds were the touchstone of civilization. Only when those pagan values began to return was there a "Renaissance". "...his (Gibbon’s) interest in pagan and classical culture required an ending that was also a beginning, the reign of Constantine (AD 305-336). With him the Western Empire came to an end, the Eastern Empire began a life span of eleven hundred years, and pagan, classical culture was succeeded by the Christian Church. This beginning was the triumph of superstition, the end of civilization rather than a new one, because in Gibbon’s mind there was only one civilization, not many." To Gibbon, Christianity triumphed, not because of God's intervention, or because of its inherent superiority based on truth, or for any other divine reason, since these would be unknowable by his ideal of reason alone. He saw Christianity's rise as based on five causes which he enumerated: the Christian's intolerant zeal, their belief in a future life, their belief in miracles, their pure morals, and the union and discipline of the Christian church. Gibbon also took an extremely negative view of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, largely because of its consistent Christian beliefs, values, and practices: "Such rare optimism never intruded into the pages devoted to the Eastern Roman empire, the millennial continuation of the Roman Empire. Gibbon had misgivings about this subject; he
feared that it would entertain neither his readers nor the author. At the end of volume 3 he reassured himself 'The majesty of Rome was faintly represented by the princes of Constantinople, the feeble and imaginary successors of Augustus. Yet they continued to reign ... and the history of the Greek emperors may still afford a long series of instructive lessons and interesting resolution (2, Chap. 3 8, page 90). "Volume 4 then was devoted mainly to Byzantine history from Zeno (474-491) to Heraclius (610-641). Gibbon was not entirely satisfied, and to deal with eight centuries more of Byzantine history as well as western Europe, the Church, Rome, and humanist learning, was an ungratifying and melancholy prospect. The eastern empire, he believed, provided a uniform and therefore un-instructive and unnecessary tale of vice, servility, despotism, and superstition. What except a kind of is to be told about an empire that defies logic and biology by subsisting 1,058 years 'in a state of premature and perpetual decay'? Gibbon once said that instead of emphasizing the fall of Rome it would be more proper to wonder at how long it survived. Byzantium's millennium he found too long, a time without a single discovery to promote human happiness or a single idea for speculation. Gibbon diminishes the long history of Byzantium as: "A succession of priests, or courtiers, treading in each other's footsteps in the same path of servitude and superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or corrupt: and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still ignorant of the causes of events, the characters of the actors, and the manners of the times which they celebrate or deplore."' He characterizes this long succession as barren. Christians would call it faithfulness. If I preach the same Salvation message through Christ as my father, are my views then narrow, my judgment feeble, or my life barren? To Gibbon this is boring. To me, passing my faith to my children is the ultimate expression of faithfulness. Listen to Gibbon criticize Christian faithfulness: "But the subjects of the Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both of Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity, nor animated by the vigor of memorable crimes. The freemen of antiquity might repeat with generous enthusiasm the sentence of Homer, 'that on the first day of his servitude, the captive is deprived of one half of his manly virtue.' But the poet had only seen the effects of civil and domestic slavery, nor could he foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihilated by the spiritual despotism which shackles not only the actions, but even the thoughts, of the prostrate votary." For Gibbon, Christianity is spiritual despotism which keeps people in , even in their thoughts. It is not the means of Salvation. Nor is it the body of Christ on the earth. It has no redeeming value for spirit, mind, or body. It is slavery. His basic prejudice against our faith is revealed. The motives that governed his selection of historic details are boldly admitted. "Gibbon's failure to understand is monumentally expressed. The judgment of a historian of Byzantium, Steven Runciman, is that Gibbon's views delayed the development of Byzantine studies for a century. If they did, it was because these views coincided with the outlook of western Europeans that they are dynamic and that Orientals from Near to Far East are unchanging. By Enlightenment standards the eastern Greeks were servile, ineffectual, and superstitious. In sum, Gibbon found the prominence of religion, monasticism, and theology in the Byzantine Empire not only regrettable but offensive and disturbing." "In a remarkable feat of construction and compression, Gibbon nevertheless covered the reigns of sixty emperors over six centuries in his forty-eighth chapter."
That Gibbon had as his aim the diminishing of Christianity, and the strengthening of the anti-Christian values of the so called "Enlightenment" is further clarified by what Fitzsimmons has written: "The style, approaching declamation, identified the author as the historian, the impartial historian, a man of studied detachment. His detachment conveyed to the reader the sense of witnessing a world spectacle. It was the necessary mask of Gibbon, the censor of morals as well as the ironist, who mocked by pretending to take absurdities seriously, and by feigning ignorance or uncertainty. Irony was his principal and inevitable weapon against Christianity and the churches, inevitable because to deny the reality of the religion's spiritual claims required that the church be considered solely in terms of this world, swords, violence, lust for power and all. That Pascal, the protagonist of Christian belief, was Gibbon's annually read model enlarges the vein of irony." Fitzsimmons goes on to say, "The role he assigned to the humble Christian was to believe and submit. Nevertheless, Gibbon is unrelenting in his sneers, derision, irony, and innuendoes. Religion is the chief inspiration of his wit, and it becomes wearisome. Gibbon could have dismissed some ecclesiastical history as unworthy of his notice. Instead he was scrupulous, but every mention of religion troubled him and drove him to irony and mockery." In the endnotes to his work, Fitzsimmons wrote this of Gibbons: "’The arrogant autocracy with its servile subjects which Gibbon attributed to Byzantium never in fact existed,’ is the view of Steven Runciman, a British Byzantine scholar, in ‘Gibbon and Byzantium.’" The judgment about Gibbon’s s effect on Byzantine studies is on the same page. Some of Gibbon's lapses may be explained by his lack of a good guide to Byzantine history, but he read very widely and the major defect is lack of empathy. His account was shaped by Western Enlightenment, and classicist prejudices. The prominence of the church in Byzantine history repelled him. Finally, the design of his history was based on his view that the West revived. For contrast, the lack of creativity of the East had to be emphasized. Nor did he have any taste for Byzantine art; even St. Mark's square in Venice he found decorated 'with the worst architecture I ever yet saw.' (By Norton, LETTERS, 1:93). "With consummate irony he attacked that faith, all the more cogently, to avoid the legal penalties which a more forthright onslaught might have incurred. He did so in thinly veiled fashion. The immediate and continued popularity of the work--its publication was begun in 1776 and was completed in 1788 and it was promptly greeted with wide acclaim--was due partly to its scholarship and literary style and partly to its being congenial to the anti-Christian temper of a large proportion of the reading public." In giving such negative and minimal treatment to the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, Gibbon was adding his value judgment that century after century of people raising their families and their crops in the stable environment of the nce of Holy Scripture and the Church is not history worthy of note.
THE EFFECT OF GIBBON'S WORK If we accept Gibbon's judgment, and apparently the judgment of his intellectual successors, what do we do to God's revelation, in Daniel 2, of an empire illustrated by two legs of iron? The answer, of course, is that we turn it into a one legged man, and obliterate the essential description which God gave to the Roman Empire, with all the losses which we began by mentioning. Gibbon, by his treatment of the Roman Empire, not only down-played the first and greatest Christian era, robbing us of its motivational model, but also
masked the Divine characterization of the critical flow of history. In fact, Voltaire, Gibbon, and their spiritual co-conspirators, changed the writing of history. Christianity has not been able to shake off their revisions and return to history as God revealed it, even to this day.
WHAT GIBBON BEGAN, OTHERS HAVE CONTINUED Historians following Gibbon were thus given license to further diminish the Christian contribution that the Byzantines, or Eastern Roman Empire represented. Joyce Milton points out one such negative view: "Prejudices centuries in the making are not easily eradicated... The nineteenth-century historian W. H. Leckie, complained, in his History of European Morals, that Byzantine history was one long chronicle of decadence and debauchery. Of the Byzantine Empire, Leckie wrote: 'The universal verdict of history is that it constitutes with scarcely an exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed... The history of the Empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs and women, of poisoning and conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude and perpetual fratricides.'" Milton goes on to show that Leckie's view was "far from the truth." Yet the misrepresentations of one generation of anti-Christian historians gets assumed by the next. So, by the time Steward C. Easton wrote The Western Heritage, he is able to limit the consideration of the Eastern Roman Empire to a "successor state of the East" and lump it into a single, brief chapter, along with the Muslim Empires. Easton says, "If the long history of the Byzantine Empire is considered, it must be stated that its contribution to the cultural heritage of the world is relatively small." ' Apparently the work of Justinian the Great in the codification of law, his 'Corpus Juris Civilis', including Biblical law within the legal framework is not much of a contribution. When, in it's more than a millennium of existence, did Byzantium ever cease to produce great art? And why did Europe experience a so called Renaissance, coincidentally with the movement of artists and scholars from the fall of Constantinople into Europe? What of their legendary skill in diplomacy and public administration? And what of architecture? The architecture of such buildings as Hagia Sophia represented a stunning advance in its day (and was widely copied in the West) and remains a wonder these nearly 1500 years later. In fact, the domed roof of the US Capitol building, and of the Capitol building in Olympia, Washington is a concept and technical invention of the Byzantines. What cultural greatness in the West surpasses these contributions? One generation, represented by Gibbon, diminishes the Byzantines because of their Christian culture, allowing the next generation to depreciate it further. By our day, the historians would have us believe the Byzantine's main contribution was despotism, absolutism, and an antidemocratic subjecting of institutions and people. Easton called it "the Byzantine heritage of absolutism" On it goes, secularists and humanists, wanting to promote their vision of the progress of history, criticize Christian cultures and replace it with their own revised version of history. Pathetically, we who are Christians let this twisting of history go unchallenged. The Christian contribution to civilization disappears. Instead, when the Paganism of Greece and Rome, with its rampant , common abortions, and abuse of children (to the point where a Roman could kill his own children without legal penalty), begins to be felt again, it is hailed as a "Renaissance," a rebirth. Our Christian historians have abandoned our young people to the vicious wolves of secularism and humanism. Then we wonder why Christian young people succumb to the call of "the world". They succumb because they have no sense of who we are, and what our spiritual forefathers created on this planet. They don't know that more than a
thousand years ago Christians invented hospitals for the sick, homes for the aged and homeless and free, public education. They don't know that we stamped out abortion and championed the rights of children to live free of abuse nearly two thousand years ago. In a thousand ways, Christianity has shaped civilization, based on the Scriptures, into what we enjoy today. But you would never know it from reading history books, even in Christian schools. Now the secularists and humanists are trying to do to American history what they have already done to world history. For example, the high school textbook for American History, used by Snohomish High School, in Snohomish, Washington, is able to tell the story of American history without even one reference to Christianity, the Church, the Bible, or to the foundational role we played in making this nation what it is. What lies! What garbage! What an abuse of history! When will Christian historians rise to the intellectual challenge of our day and give us the textbooks our young people need? Why do we Christians continue to let our tax dollars be used to finance the brainwashing of our own children into the secularist camp? What kind of a person allows his children to be taken captive without so much as an objection? Our goal is that God's perspective can be restored in our day, first to Christians in Christian schools, and then in the whole world. A rendering of world history, based on the revelations found in the book of Daniel, has not been attempted in the last 200 years. The first attempts are likely to be filled with wrong conclusions and interpretations. It will take time for historians to go back through the facts and reorient them to the Christian framework. After two centuries of secular distortion, it may take some doing to get it right. What David Barton has done for American history now needs to be done for world history. Although it will be difficult, it needs to be done. We have been captive in Babylon so long, members Jerusalem? There must be some Christian historian who knows the way back. Like Daniel, the hope needs to be stirred again in our hearts. Christians need to yearn for deliverance and restoration. We need to feel about Christianity what Daniel felt about Jerusalem: "If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." APPENDIX TO "DREAM OF DESTINY" From the study of this portion of Scripture we can conclude the following: 1. God rules history rather than being surprised by it. He outlined all time, even before it happened. 2. There is only one God who rules all people, even those who do not believe in him. God set the boundaries and times of every empire and every nation. It is stated plainly in Daniel 4:17: "The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men." 3. God is sovereign over all the nations. A. By what law did Nebuchadnezzar have to honor God? He was Babylonian, not Hebrew. He had his own religion to which he was true. He had not been given the 10 commandments, nor was he a member of the covenant people. He had to honor God, because only God is truly God. B. Abraham lived about 1850 BC. He lived in Ur, about 125 miles from Babylon.
Although the culture was pagan, there was a continuous line of knowledge of God that had come down from Noah and his descendants. C. Job may have come out of this era and type of person. D. Abraham, like Nebuchadnezzar, though he lived in a pagan land, was accountable to God. The New Testament confirms this idea in Romans 1:20: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse," This is the analogy of the watchmaker. Design equals designer. Order in creation equals an orderly Creator. 4. If God rules all people, then all people need to come to a knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. If Nebuchadnezzar was accountable to God, every kingdom, and nation and people group, is accountable. Missions becomes the mandate, a specific requirement, as Matthew 28:19-20 shows: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." 5. The organizing principle of history is recording how the man of Daniel 2 is being revealed. 6. The Iron legs of Rome, as they merge into the feet, are the touchstone of empire, nationhood and society for our day. 7. Studying Western Civilization through European eyes while neglecting Byzantine Civilization is to create a one legged man instead of the two legs that Nebuchadnezzar saw. Furthermore, it neglects the greatest Empire which was thoroughly Christian and which ruled up to 1453. We need to study the Eastern Roman Empire as the continuation of the Roman Empire. We should break off the negative characterizations of this empire given to it by anti-Christians. 1. If God saw history in this way, we should also study history in this way. To the extent that we organize our view of history in some other way, we deviate from the divine view. Thinking of history as God thinks of history is to think in a way that is true. 2. History is not aimless or even circular. Time is moving toward a particular, pre-determined end. The mountain ends the other kingdoms and will, itself, have no end.