07-CHAPTER SEVEN - When Daniel Saw the Kingdom
CHAPTER SEVEN When Daniel Saw the Kingdom NO PROPHET has ever given such a practical forecast of the King and the kingdom as Daniel. Some six hundred years before CHRIST, he wrote of His coming. Two thousand five hundred years have now gone by and his greatest predictions still await fulfillment.
Many of the prophets wrote of CHRIST’s humiliation, His sufferings, and His death. Daniel wrote of the King in His beauty, His glory, His exaltation. Daniel saw Him enthroned - a world ruler, supreme over all. That day is yet to come. Not until all other kingdoms have been overthrown will it be realized. Have you ever noticed how often the words "King," "kingdom," "rule," "govern," "throne" are used in the Book of Daniel? Count them, if you will, and you will be amazed. Daniel is the Book of the King and His kingdom.
Earthly kingdoms are discussed and set aside. All culminates in the rule of JESUS CHRIST, who is to sit on David’s throne and govern the entire world. All nations, kings and potentates are to bow before Him, for He is to be Lord of lords and King of kings. As a matter of fact, He is spoken of in Revelation 1:5 as "the Prince of the kings of the earth." Hence, He is to rule over all other kings.
World Powers Destroyed
First of all, see Daniel 2:44 : "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in Pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." This is the vision that describes the sudden destruction of the last great world power. It is not gradual; it is sudden. CHRIST is a smiting stone. The present world systems are to be destroyed. Those who look for world conversion are totally ignorant of the meaning of this vision. CHRIST’s kingdom fills the whole earth only after the smiting. It is worldwide in its dominion and influence. But let us go back a little. You remember the vision as seen by King Nebuchadnezzar. "Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image . . . This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and this thighs of brass, His legs. of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay" (Daniel 2:31-33).
- the gold, you will remember, represented Babylon, the first great world power;
- the silver, the next great empire, Media-Persia;
- the brass, Greece; and - the iron, Rome.
All of them were world empires, and they appeared in that order, exactly as foretold.
Then the king saw a stone, cut out of the mountain without hands, crash into the feet of the image and grind it to powder. GOD was making known to the king, Daniel said, what was to come to pass. Already the four world powers have appeared. Rome disintegrated, but the fragments still remain. Out of the present world systems will come ten nations represented by the ten toes, and then the Stone will strike.
That, then, will be the next great event in world history. Soon now will come the crushing blow that will demolish all world powers. With the appearing of JESUS CHRIST in millennial power and glory, as Lord of lords and King of kings, will come the complete and final overthrow of all earthly governments, powers and dominions. When Will It Take Place? Not one word of this prediction was fulfilled at the first advent. The world powers were not destroyed. They never have been destroyed, nor will they be until CHRIST, the Smiting Stone, at a single stroke, demolishes them all. It will be judgment, sudden and final. The fatal blow was not struck when He came the first time. Then the world struck Him. When this happens He will do the striking. It will be a startling and world-shaking catastrophe and, immediately after, the kingdom of GOD will be established on earth. When will it be? "In the days of these kings." (Daniel 2:44)
Never yet have they been seen. The revived Roman Empire has yet to be ruled by ten dictators. When that day comes the Stone will strike, and not until then. That is the direction in which we are now headed. Ten men will finally rule the world. When that day dawns, judgment will fall. CHRIST will come. At a single stroke all ten will be overthrown and destroyed. No dictator will survive. All are doomed.
"In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom." (Daniel 2:44)
Man does not bring in the kingdom. The Church does not do it. All this talk about co-operatives, church union, a world church - all such talk is nothing but trash. It is absolutely contradictory to the precepts of the Word of GOD. The Devil himself would sanction a world church. The synagogue of Satan is already in the making. And all who are working for a world church are working for the enemy. No my friend, GOD Himself is to usher in the kingdom. This is not the spiritual kingdom in which we all believe; it is a literal kingdom right here on earth, established after the striking of a single blow, as if by a hydrogen bomb, world-wide in its destruction. This is the kingdom described by the prophets - the glorious reign of CHRIST. A Universal Kingdom
Next, Daniel 7:27 : "And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." This is a different vision, but of the same kingdom. It is to be established "under the whole heaven." No kingdom has ever been so great, so magnificent, so powerful. It will be governed under CHRIST by the people of GOD. All nations will bow down and obey Him. Hence it will be universal. He, the Lord JESUS CHRIST, will be the supreme Ruler, for the mountain of His kingdom is to fill all the earth. What a day that will be! This is man’s day; GOD’s day is coming.
Today the nations, like beasts of prey, rule and govern by force. War after war has been fought. Oh, the blood that man has shed! Man’s inhumanity to man - who can describe it?! Russia’s concentration camps, where millions of human slaves are worked and beaten to death, or shot; where life is cheap and brute force dominates - what a ghastly system!
Never in the six thousand years of man’s history has there been such a diabolic dictatorship. Cruelty, brutality and violence are its chief characteristics. Truth it does not know. Lies and hypocrisy dominate it. Black slavery was a paradise in comparison. No such blood-thirsty tyrant has ever appeared. Millions have perished. Other millions will be murdered, for it knows no mercy. Atheism is its creed. It would tear GOD Himself out of His Heaven. And yet there are ministers who advocate it, even though they know they would be the first to die. Communism is atheism. Hence, no one - Christian or Jew - who believes in GOD, can be a communist. So terrible is it that, when American soldiers tried to send refugees back to Russia, because of the inhuman and shameful Yalta agreement, they fought with teeth and nails in a wild and desperate effort to escape, willing rather to die than return. And, when their writers were told to say more about the joys of Russian life, they answered by pointing out that millions had just buried those who had died from planned famine. Millions more, they said, were in jails and concentration camps, where they were perishing from cold, torture and starvation. Of the thousands who returned to the "Soviet Paradise," most were murdered or tortured to death in slave camps. Few, if any, survived. Will the world ever forget the frightful man-made famine when Stalin collected grain by force and more than four million people died, while another fifteen million were killed and other millions were sent to Siberia and the Arctic regions? Or the great purge when fifty thousand were executed and hundreds of thousands forced into slave labor camps? When the war broke out, a million Russians put on German uniforms in the desperate hope of escaping. When they were forced back, hundreds committed suicide rather than return to the horrors of communism.
Between 1950 and 1952, the communists executed two hundred Chinese a day in Shanghai alone, according to a Reuters’ dispatch. British estimates put the executions in China at 14 million, a very conservative figure. What wholesale murder! GOD help them when they appear before the Great White Throne! No civilized government obtains confessions by force. Only the most hardened pagans and criminals use such tactics. Among civilized nations a man is considered innocent until he is proved guilty. Not even his own confession of guilt is sufficient to condemn him without evidence. Communism uses the third degree, namely: physical torture, to compel innocent men and women to confess, and then condemns them on the basis of their own confession.
Even savages would not stoop so low. In my mind the third degree is the greatest of all crimes and should be punished with death. In Russia and China millions of innocent men and women have undergone the most brutal physical and mental torture to force them to confess to something of which they were not guilty, and tens of thousands have died under the inhuman sufferings inflicted upon them by those monsters of cruelty who, some day, must themselves face the judgment of GOD.
Well, now, contrast this brutal system with the glorious kingdom of GOD, when love will govern and peace reign. What a change will take place. And of this change Daniel and the prophets write. No wonder the Devil hates prophecy. Justice, the Bible says, will then be meted out. Righteousness will flourish. Violence, cruelty and brutality will be gone. There will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more slavery. All men will be free. Life will be safe and secure and none will go hungry again.
CHRIST Is Victor
Now Daniel 7:14 : "And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."
CHRIST is Victor! Here it is in Daniel 7:14. "There was given him dominion."
Hence, He reigns. He is King. He has a kingdom over which He rules, and it is a glorious kingdom. What the three disciples saw in a few moments on the Mount of Transfiguration, we now see for a thousand years on all the earth, for His kingdom covers the entire globe.
All peoples serve Him. All nations submit to His rule. All languages acknowledge Him. His reign is universal, His kingdom world-wide. The Eskimos in the Arctic, the Indians of the jungles, the Arabs of the desert, the Tibetans on the roof of the world, China’s teeming millions, and India’s countless multitudes, obey His edicts and commands. Never has a ruler had such a following. No such kingdom has ever existed.
It will be strong, because He is strong. All Heaven will be back of it - all the power of GOD Himself. Satan will be impotent, for he will be in chains, securely bound. He can do nothing. No world power will ever rise against it. It will be safe from destruction.
It will need no armies or navies for its defense. No hydrogen bombs will be used to protect it against aggression. Soldiers and armaments will be no more. Never again will young men be conscripted for the army, there to be taught to drink and debauch themselves, there to lose their purity and their virtue. No longer will they leave multitudes of nameless babies in the lands they conquer. No longer will young women be robbed of their virtue and ruined for life. Rape and loot, drunkenness and brutality, waste and desolation and sorrow - the harvest of every war - will be no more. Nothing but the kingdom of CHRIST can end it all. No one but JESUS Himself can usher in the Golden Age, and rule without an army.
Hear now GOD’s last word to Daniel: "But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days" (Daniel 12:13). When it is all over, Daniel will be there. He will be a witness to it. He will see his visions fulfilled to the letter. What a day that will be, the day when the King comes back to reign!
~ end of chapter 7 ~
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