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THE 2,500-YEAR DREAM #4

LOOKING FOR AN EARLY EDITION

Here's an absolutely hypothetical question which I will not require you to answer. This isn't a poll with a 900 number; simply give an imperceptible nod of your head right there in your car or sitting there in the kitchen if you ever consult the daily horoscope in the newspaper. I won't get angry with you, but that will be our Thursday thought question.

It's obvious that the human race has a huge desire to know what's ahead in life. As we're recording this program, there are two network television programs on the air — I haven't seen either one of them — that are built on the premise of getting to peek into the future: Early Edition, which allows someone to see the headlines of tomorrow's newspaper, and Seven Days, which has a similar kind of time-travel motif. And of course, this has been a proven entertainment genre for many decades, going all the way back to H. G. Wells and the machine he constructed to zip him from one era to another. Maybe you remember how Bill Murray recently had to live Groundhog Day over and over and over again, to the point where he knew exactly what was going to happen and was prepared to save kids who fell out of trees and an aging sick man, homeless, who was about to die on the streets.

Well, friend, this is more fiction than science, isn't it? Because it's simply not possible for you and me to get a copy of tomorrow's newspaper until it's tomorrow. People living in a Thursday just DO NOT KNOW what Friday is going to bring. And the only time that isn't true is when you step into the pages of this wonderful old Book called the Bible.

We studied together yesterday how this incredible dream described in Daniel chapter two outlines ahead of time, with perfect and pinpoint accuracy, the four great world empires in all of earth's history. This dream, coming as it does in the year 604 B.C., predicts PERFECTLY that Babylon would be followed by Medo-Persia, then the lightning-quick armies of Alexander the Great and his Grecian empire, and then finally the raw, iron power of Rome, which ruled the world until well after the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ.

And even these details in the dream had significance. The metals in the vision had decreasing value — gold, then silver, then bronze, then iron — but INCREASING strength. Those iron legs of Rome were a perfect metaphor for how this new kingdom marched across the then-known world. It was basically like that popular game of Risk, the board game of world domination, where one player with all the armies and a good set of dice simply cannot be stopped. The NIV Bible notes suggest that these decreasing metal values also paint a picture of diminishing political power and grandeur. Nebuchadnezzar, of course, was an absolute despot — a strongman, we'd say today. By the time Rome came along, with its ferocious MILITARY power, its government, by contrast, was much more along the line of today's democracies with checks and balances, the Roman senates and assemblies. So friend, the point is made again: this vision is sent by a God who knows in all the details what the future brings. This isn't just a TV show called Seven Days, where you get a one-week peek into Tomorrowland. Nebuchadnezzar's dream is a crystal-clear view right into the after-Christ era of history.

We left off yesterday at the end of those iron legs of Rome, at verse 41. So here's 42 and following:

"Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And 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."

Well, friend, what have we got here? Of course, you and I are looking BACK onto this panorama, not ahead, but this incredible prophecy is equally precise in either direction. What happened in world history after the "(quote) decline and fall of the Roman empire"? This vast kingdom basically fell apart, splintered, into the various countries of Europe. Whoever had enough spears and swords and, later, guns, simply grabbed what territory they could and held on for dear life. But let's note that never again did one world empire dominate. Here's a comment from the Daniel research book, God Cares, by Dr. Mervyn Maxwell:

"There are four empires in the statue series, not five or six. The Roman Empire did NOT capitulate to a fifth monolithic empire. It deteriorated over a very long period and was appropriated piecemeal by whatever tribal coalition was ambitious enough to grab a portion. France, Italy, Great Britain, the two Germanies [now one], and other nations of Europe are contemporary results of this piecemeal and long-continued process."

You know, if you revert to the great old King James, there are seven words which preachers have loved to expound upon. They're found in verse 43:

"They shall not cleave one to another."

I've seen huge prophecy charts, and now computerized PowerPoint graphics, with those seven words. What do they mean? Simply this. After the breakdown of Rome, the sure Word of God tells us that there would never again, not once ever, be a world empire. No one king or ruler or "strongman" or tyrant would ever again be able to amass the forces, the firepower, to rule the world.

Two of the paraphrases we like to use both capture the attempts of visionary men to stitch together a fifth kingdom. Here's the Living Bible:

"These kingdoms will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances with each other through intermarriage of their rulers; but this will not succeed, for iron and clay don't mix."

And the Clear Word:

"The rulers of these little kingdoms will try to hold things together by intermarrying and by mixing church and state" — remember the Middle Ages? — "but these unions won't last."

Of course there were also the inevitable military campaigns, as one despot after another tried to imitate the successes of the Alexander Greats of old. Here's a bit more from Dr. Maxwell's book:

"Many ambitious and talented men," he writes, "have tried to unite Europe. Charlemagne tried to do so in the eighth century, Charles V in the sixteenth, Napoleon in the nineteenth, the Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler in the twentieth. Millions still living remember Hitler's piercing voice as in seemingly endless harangues he portrayed the Nazi goal, "Deutschland über alles [Germany over all]." But the five simple words ‘They will not hold together' held true in his case also."

I shared Monday how this Mervyn, as a kid of 14, living in England, would listen on the BBC to these frightening military challenges. The Nazi machine looked like a juggernaut, ready to swallow up all of Europe. But the Maxwell family, firm in their Christian faith, had a kind of calm about them. There was no way Adolf Hitler could succeed! Why? Because the Bible said he could not. Maybe you remember Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table there at the UN, and his bold statement to the U.S.: "We will bury you!" "The hammer and sickle of Communism will rule the world!" The person who put his or her faith in the Word of God didn't really have to worry, because Daniel chapter two makes it perfectly plain that there WILL NOT ever be a fifth world empire. God has already told us: "Four . . . and then no more."

Listen, friend, I have to ask you something. And it takes me back to our little survey question about astrology. Who do you want to believe? The horoscope writers? The psychics? The 900-number hucksters who promise you a reading with your own personal crystal-ball reader, at $3.99 a minute? Or would you rather trust in this incredible Book called the Bible, which has already proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that a prediction it made in the year 604 B.C. — that's 2,603 years ago — has been dead-on-target perfect so far?

In his book, God Cares, I can't blame Maxwell for taking a little swipe at the horoscope "professionals." He explains how "the pull of the sun and moon twists the poles slightly, with the result that the sun appears to move slowly westward each year in relation to the constellations." That phenomenon is called the "precession of the equinoxes." So what? Notice the result:

"In some ways, contemporary astrology is LESS scientific than the ancient type. Modern astrologers base their predictions on the location of the constellations of the zodiac, not as they appear today, but as they appeared in the days of the second-century astronomer, Claudius Ptolemaus! As a result of the ‘precession of the equinoxes' since the second century [that slow-moving effect], people who astrologers say are born under the sign of Libra, for example, are really born under Virgo. Modern astrology attempts to regulate our lives by the constellations according to the positions that they would have been in had we been born seventeen hundred years ago! In spite of its detailed scientific terminology, modern astrology is not based on good astronomy."

You know, friend, I read that, and I'm not struck by the amusing nature of it. Actually, this is a sad thing. You and I have the sure word of God. Why would we look over at this faulty, failed phenomenon instead? How much better to stay with Psalm 31:14, 15:

"YOU are my God. My times are in YOUR hands."