God's plan for human history centered first on Israel, his chosen ones, then on the church, his redeemed ones. Since the birth of the church in the first century, the Jews and the Christians have been members of the same family, though they seldom admit it. There has been bickering back and forth, the first accusing the second of heresy, the second accusing the first of killing the Savior, the first accusing the second of prejudice and persecution, the second accusing the first of economic manipulation or subversion, and so on. They have acted like distant cousins who never got along with each other.
But God's plan has always included both cousins, making special provisions for each and giving each his own time of influence. He is bringing them both to the place where they can experience the relationship with him that he has always wanted. In the process, we can expect to see a warming of relationships between those Jews and Christians whose hearts are warm toward God. God will use world situations to bring spiritually sensitive Jews and Christians to himself and to each other.
When God was about to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, he renewed his covenant with them. He pronounced blessings on them if they honored the covenant and curses on them if they dishonored it. What curses would they experience from God if they dishonored the covenant? They would have disastrous problems with their crops and livestock, plus diseases of various kinds.
They also would have serious problems with people. "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies." (Deut 28:25). "You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her" (v30). "Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned" (v31). Nations would oppress them, enslave their children, and steal their crops (vs 32-33). God would use other people to deal with the Jews.
God promised King David that he would make David's son the king and bless him as he had David. David's son would build the temple and his kingdom would be secure. Then God made a very significant statement: "I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul" (2 Sam 7:14-15). God would use men to correct and punish Solomon.
Throughout the Old Testament, prophets thundered their warnings of judgment from God in the form of national exile or occupation by foreign armies. There was the Assyrian captivity, then the Babylonian exile, then the Persian occupation, then the Greek and Roman occupations.
Even today God uses ungodly people to accomplish his will, to bring glory to himself, and to create situations that allow him to intervene in our behalf. God is sovereign and all-powerful, and he will complete every detail of his plan.
God's plan for the end times includes a new entity that will rise to power and create a crisis that requires God's direct intervention. This entity will have political, military and economic power. To secure its control over the earth, it will attempt to crush both Jews and Christians who continue giving their allegiance to God. This entity would eventually exterminate both spiritual cousins unless Jesus personally returned to earth and destroyed it.
The Old and New Testaments give us images of this entity, referring to it as a beast, a horn, a man, an animal, and so on. In this chapter we will examine scriptures that describe this entity, consider how it will gain and use its authority, and speculate about what it may be. In the process, we will examine some of the ancient empires, too.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S STATUE
Let us begin by examining Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream about a large statue of a man. Its head was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs bronze, its legs iron, and its feet a combination of iron and baked clay. A rock struck the feet of the statue, causing the entire statue to crumble, then the rock became a huge mountain that filled the earth. Daniel then told Nebuchadnezzar the interpretation.
"You, O king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; 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" (Dan 2:36-38).
The Israelites were captives in Babylon from 605 BC to 536 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon during most of that time (626 BC to 539 BC). Israelites from the royal family and nobility were taken to Babylon to serve in the king's palace, which is how Daniel came to serve Nebuchadnezzar.
The empire has been known throughout history as the most glorious of the empires. Nebuchadnezzar made the capital one of the wonders of the world, with an elevated procession street decorated with glazed tiles portraying life-sized lions, lush parks irrigated by canals, and the famous hanging gardens. This empire was the head of gold in Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
"After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours" (v39), represented by the chest and arms made of silver. Silver is valuable, but inferior to gold. Do the two arms imply that this kingdom will have two parts? Historically, we know that the Medo-Persian empire followed the Babylonian. Cyrus the Great united the Media and Persian empires, so the dream was correct: the empire would consist of two parts. The Medo-Persian empire occupied Israel from 536 BC to 333 BC.
"Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth" (v39); this was the Greek empire. Alexander the Great began a military campaign that in only ten years conquered the civilized world from Greece to India. The Greek empire occupied Israel from 333 BC to 167 BC.
"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" (v40). The word "finally" is not in the Hebrew text. The translators may have inserted it to make the verse more readable and identify this as the last empire of the dream.
I think the sequence also identifies another empire, but does not discuss it as a separate entity. History reveals that the fourth empire, the statue's iron legs, was the Roman empire. It was a ruthless empire, crushing all the nations it conquered, as Daniel predicted. Rome conquered Greece in 146 BC, then gradually conquered the entire Greek empire. Rome occupied Israel from 37 BC to 70 AD, when Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel ceased to exist as a nation. The statue in the dream had two legs, implying there would be two parts of the kingdom, and the Roman empire did in fact split in 395 AD. The western part was called the Roman empire and it lasted until 476 AD. The eastern part was the Byzantine empire, which lasted until 1453 AD.
What is the significance of the four empires in Nebuchadnezzar's dream? They were not the only large empires of history, and they were not the only empires that existed during that period of history. They were, however, the foreign empires that affected Israel from the time of Daniel until the nation's destruction in 70 AD.
Daniel's description of the statue continues.
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 (vs 41-43).
Daniel does not call this a fifth empire, but he gives it a unique identity (toes) and composition (iron and clay). This entity is what I will call the Final Human Empire. It will be the next empire to affect Israel, which became a nation again in 1948.
Daniel repeatedly says this empire consists of two elements that do not mix: baked clay and iron. He explains this by saying the people will be a mixture and will not remain united. This could imply that the empire will be a mixture of races, people or nations. He clearly states it will be a divided kingdom and there will be a lack of unity, indicating conflict of some kind. In spite of its internal problems, however, it will crush and break nations as the legs of iron did. The fact that the statue's toes represent this empire suggests there will be ten parts. We will see that the number ten is significant in other prophecies about this empire, too.
NOT A REVIVED ROMAN EMPIRE
In my opinion, this Final Human Empire will not be a revived Roman empire as many believe. Each of the historical empires in the statue was separate from the previous one; none of them came out of its predecessor. There is no reason to require the fifth one to come out of the fourth.
The original Roman empire split into western and eastern empires. If the Final Human Empire is to consist of nations from the Roman empire, then shouldn't five nations (toes from one foot) come from the western empire, and five nations (toes from the other foot) come from the eastern? That is, five nations would be from southwestern Europe, Britain and the northern coast of Africa, and five would be from the area of Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Egypt. Yet the traditional interpretation of a revived Roman empire has all ten of the nations (toes) coming from the western empire, which is only one leg.
I realize every analogy has its limitations, including the human statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. None of the empires in the dream grew out of the previous one as one part of a human body is attached to or grows out of another. The image of the statue was accurate enough, however, to identify two of the empires as having two parts: arms for the Medo-Persian, and legs for the Roman. So we can expect the Final Human Empire to represent ten entities, probably nations. But I think there is no reason to believe the ten countries will be from the old Roman empire, either the western or eastern part.
I also am convinced the Final Human Empire is not the European Community. Many believe that the EC (European Community) is the revived Roman empire, but some of the EC members lie outside the boundaries of the old Roman empire. People from those countries might have migrated from territory originally occupied by Rome, but I think there are other reasons the EC could not be the Final Human Empire.
First, there are more than ten members of the EC. When the Community was formed in 1957, it had only six members. Three more nations joined in 1973 and one in 1981, raising the total to ten and convincing Christians worldwide that the EC would become the "beast." But two more nations joined in the late 1980's, raising the total to twelve (Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain). And several others became associate members in 1991 (Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary). Many other nations are members of the European Free Trade Association, and these are also likely candidates for membership in the EC. Considering the changes in Eastern Europe and the world's economic condition, the EC's membership could approach twenty by the year 2000.
The primary function of the EC is the economic development of its members, as demonstrated by its EC-92 plan. EC-92 seeks to merge the Community members into a single marketplace by December 31, 1992, making it a major power in finances, trade, technology and industry. This plan has been caused in part by the decline of American capitalism and the growing financial control exercised by Japan. EC members are relaxing trade barriers among themselves, adopting common product and labor standards, and adopting a common currency by 1999 to encourage commerce among its member nations.
The EC will continue to work on political union, forming a "United States of Europe" possibly by the year 2000. Unlike the USA, however, the EC will exercise little federal control because its members are sovereign nations. There is talk of a united military force, but it would likely be formed after political union is achieved. It is unrealistic to expect the European Community to become a world-dominating military force such as the Bible describes in the last days. The EC's goals are nothing at all like those of a military or political world empire.
If, on the other hand, the EC were somehow to become the Final Human Empire, then we would expect the following to happen only in Europe: a cash-less monetary system with the "mark of the beast," worship of the image of the "beast," and Christians killed for opposing the "beast." In the prophecies about these events, however, we see universal references such as "inhabitants of the earth" and "every tribe, people, language and nation." So the European Community is a very unlikely candidate for the Final Human Empire.
Another organization exists which could easily fulfill the role of the Final Human Empire.
This article is a brief excerpt of a book chapter which addresses the following topics: