Daniel 2 - A Reason to Trust the Bible

           If God is outside of time, like we believe He is, then we should expect the book He gave us, the Bible, to also have elements outside of time. It does! It is estimated that 30% of the Bible is prophecy and Daniel 2 is unique in that in approximately 600BC, Daniel gives the history of the world's empires from then on including the future coming kingdom to finish out world history.

        I like to think of time as a long train of box cars going down a track. If you are sitting at an intersection waiting for it to pass, you see one car at a time. If you are in a helicopter high above it, you see the whole train all at once from the engine to the caboose and everything in between. God is in that helicopter. He is outside of time and sees it all at once. We are in the auto watching cars go by one by one. We have seen some of the past but we can't see beyond the present. Daniel 2 sees it all because God wrote the Bible and gave this prophecy actually in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar but interpreted by Daniel.

        Of note is that the Babylonian empire, that Daniel was seeing in the present was seen by Isaiah 140 years prior to this along with the Medes and Persians 70 years later, even naming the Medo Persian king who would release the Jews from bondage, King Cyrus. The Greeks were mentioned so specifically in later chapters of Daniel that it is said when Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem to capture it, the High Priest showed Alexander where he was described in Daniel and Alexander, so impressed, left Judea alone. Micah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and the Revelations of John all deal with this text, also. These prophecies are so specific that skeptics have believed that they were penned after the fact until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered which authenticated their early dating.

        Someday soon, however, this statue will come crumbling down. Daniel describes a rock, which symbolizes our solid rock, Jesus, like a bowling ball headed for the pin or a meteor coming down from the sky, destroying the statue. This Rock will set up a kingdom, the Kingdom of God (which BTW I'm already a citizen of) that will last forever at His Second Coming.

         God is sovereign. These things have occurred and will occur. As Handel said in the Hallelujah Chorus

The kingdom of this world (or, The Kingdoms of this world have become...)

(Is become) the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, and of His Christ;
And He shall reign for ever and ever,
For ever and ever, forever and ever,

King of kings, and Lord of lords,
|: King of kings, and Lord of lords, :|
And Lord of lords,
And He shall reign,
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings, forever and ever,
And Lord of lords,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

  Aren't you glad you are following the one who controls it all?

 Aren't you glad you are on the winning side?

 Aren't you glad that book you're reading is true and can be trusted?