The Vision/Dream of Nebuchadnezzar

This is found in Daniel chapter two. And Daniel was interpreting the dream there. It talks about an image of a beast, a great tall statue, with its head of gold, and I think the head of gold represented the Babylonian Empire, the silver representing the media Persian Empire, coming down to the waist of brass was the media Persian Empire. And finally, the Roman Empire, the legs and the feet of iron and clay.

Daniel continues that in this vision or dream, a stone cut out without hands, comes down from heaven, and smarts, that image on the feet, the image of the beast on the feet, and breaks it up, and destroys it, scatters it into pieces. This is something that is a divine act of God. And it can only be fulfilled the only possible fulfillment of this in history is Jesus Christ. Daniel, in Daniel, chapter nine, told us when this would happen, he gave the time period for this. It  said, 70 times seven weeks, which is 490 years, and going from the time of Daniel, and the, return of the Jews in exile there and Babylon back to Jerusalem. Counting forward 490 years you come to the time of Christ. In the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and john when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and into His ministry.

So all the Jews, then were expecting the fulfillment of Daniel's vision, they knew it was for 490 years that the kingdom of God would be coming. And they didn't know how the kingdom of God would come.

Jesus came in and claimed, as John the Baptist did that Jesus was the coming of this kingdom, He was the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy. And it was difficult for Jews to understand it in that time, because Jesus was totally nonviolent. They expected the Messiah would come and equip them to mount an insurrection against Rome and destroy the Roman Empire, and dictatorship of Israel.

That's all they knew. When Jesus refused to do that. They were confused, and they ultimately rejected him, mainly for this reason that he would not lead them in a violent insurrection. But instead, Jesus claimed that he would suffer when they came to make him king over them.

Not just to the sufferings of Christ, but also through the sufferings of the church. As we say, in the book of Acts, there is no time in which Paul or any of the apostles, church leaders in the book of Acts, or in any of the letters in the New Testament say, “enough is enough church, next time they come for us, we will be ready for them.” That just doesn't happen in the New Testament. They are forgiving, they overcome darkness by light, overcome good, evil by good. And they overcome violence by serving by their loving their enemies by their redemptive acts of kindness and restoration towards their neighbor. This is what Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount. And it's what preached in every one of the letters of the New Testament, all through the book of Acts is never the message. But this was the message for the first 250 years, at least of the church, going up towards 300AD. They were utterly and totally non-violent. In fact, all of the Church Fathers spoke in this manner.

This is a new community with love one another in this way, and bring about a transformation.

So this is the clear teaching of the early church. And later on, we know that the church began to shift in these ideas, particularly when they married it, so to speak politically with Constantine, who claimed he had an image of revelation of Jesus, saying he should kill his enemies in his name, which is rather unfortunate.

So let's rise up church, let's rise up and be bold, be peaceful, be revolutionary people bringing kindness, love and care to one another and breaking out of the confines of selfishness, and our own little corners and boxes, and saying, look, we are one community, we are building unity. We are one people in Christ, and we're going to share with one another and build a new future.

So don't be intimidated by the corruption and the evil in the world today, by the image of the beast. It's in the nations around about us today. God has an answer. He is the God of heaven. He is coming with his temple to smite that, corruption to bring down these rolling pounds and to build his temple in the world today.

This is what God has promised. He will do it in our lives, and in our time. So let's be up and doing with faith, boldness in the Holy Spirit. And going out there knowing that God is the God of victory, and it's a good year in His name, no matter what the enemy does. God has the final say.

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