Nebuchadnezzar's Dream Interpreted

Daniel, a young Israelite taken captive to Babylon with others, later became God's Prophet. King Nebuchadnezzar had an impressive dream which on waking he could not recall. His "wise men" could not help him. Finally Daniel, guided by the Lord, told both the dream and its interpretation.--Daniel 2:1,5,26-30.

The dream and its interpretation interests and concerns us today as much or more than it did Nebuchadnezzar. In his dream the King saw a great Image; its head was gold, its breast and arms silver, its belly and sides brass, its legs iron, and its feet iron intermingled and smeared with clay. Then the King saw a Stone cut out of the mountain without hands and hurled at the feet of the Image. The Image fell, ground to powder, and the wind carried it away. Then the Stone grew until it filled the earth.--Daniel 2:31-35.

The Divine interpretation of this dream, given through Daniel, explains that the head of the Image was the Babylonian Kingdom, the breast and arms the succeeding Medo- Persian Empire, the belly and sides of brass the Grecian Empire, which followed, and the legs the succeeding Roman Empire. The feet represented the "Holy Roman Empire" and its successors; the iron of the feet the civil power, the clay intermingled and smearing over the iron pictured the ecclesiastical power of our day. Thus seen, we are living in the days of the ten toes, or divisions of the Image.