PRECEPTS FOR LIFE
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The following is an actual transcript of the PRECEPTS FOR LIFE Broadcast. For the purpose of filling transcript requests quickly, they have received only light editing. If you have questions concerning the material covered in this broadcast, Kay has published a number of books explaining the Scripture in depth. These books may be ordered by contacting the telephone number or address printed above.
SERIES: Daniel (Dare To Be God’s Messenger)
OPEN
If you’ve moved in Christian circles where they hold the Word of God in high esteem, you know that they believe that Jesus Christ is going to come again, that He is going to rule on the face of this earth and that all the nations will be in submission to Him. And yet they’ve been waiting for this for centuries. They’ve been waiting for millenniums actually and it hasn’t happened. Will it come to pass? That’s what we’re going to see today as we look at God’s Word.
PART ONE
I am so thankful that you are studying the book of Daniel with me because it does have the answers. You know as we were looking at our last program we were talking about this painting that this chess player saw because he was a lover of art. And he saw a chess game, if you’ll remember, and there were two players. One was the devil sitting back smiling at this young man that was in absolute anguish, sweat on his brow as the devil picked up the chessman and put it down. And the title of the painting was Checkmate.
Has the devil checkmated God? Has the devil stopped the future? Has he so maneuvered that Jesus Christ will never return, that He will never set up His kingdom? Or has he even blinded the minds of others so that we forget that Jesus Christ is coming, that that’s what the Word of God says and we begin to live as if He’s not? Well, as I shared with you in our last program there’s one more move on the board and God is about to show it to Nebuchadnezzar as Daniel, now, comes and stands before him and tells the king what he dreamed and what the interpretation of that dream was. Now you remember that Arioch had come to put Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abed-nego to death because Nebuchadnezzar was going to kill every wise man in the kingdom, every conjurer, every sorcerer, every magician, every wise official because they could not interpret this dream.
They could not tell him what he dreamed and they could not interpret it. As a matter of fact they told the king you are asking too much. No one, no human being has ever been asked to not only give an interpretation of a dream, but to reveal the dream itself. But when Arioch came to Daniel, Daniel said you wait and I’ll go and I’ll come back with the interpretation. And he went to God in prayer and God showed him what was going to take place in the future. So that’s where we are.
That’s a brief review so that you’re in context. Let’s go to Daniel, chapter 2, verse 26. And the king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, and that’s what the king had given Daniel as a name. Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen and its interpretation? And Daniel answered before the king and said as for the mystery, (now remember we’re marking the word dream, and so this dream is a mystery, so we would mark it the same way). As for the mystery about which the king has inquired, neither wise men, conjurers, magicians, nor diviners are able to declare it to the king. In other words, what your wise men said is true. They’re not able to declare it to you. However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.
And He has made known to king Nebuchadnezzar what will take place in the latter days or literally, what will take place in the end of the days. In other words, this dream is going tell you the future. It’s going to tell you not only the future, but it’s going to tell you the end, the latter days of the future. And he says this was your dream and the visions in your mind while on your bed. As for you O king, while on your bed, your thoughts turned to what would take place in the future and He who reveals mysteries has made known to you what will take place. In other words, Nebuchadnezzar was lying on his bed and he was contemplating the future.
This man was a great, great conqueror. He was a ruler of an enormous, enormous kingdom. And, he’s looking to the future and he’s, and he’s thinking, I mean he has just taken over the Babylonian kingdom. It is the second year of his reign. Remember chapter 2, verse1 says in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. So he’s just his second year into his rulership. And as he’s lying there and contemplating the future God gives him this vision and God takes him beyond himself all the way to the end to the latter days.
What’s going to take place in the future? Now when you mark the word dream then I would mark the same way, what will take place in the future, because that’s what the dream is all about. So you want to understand. You want to learn everything that you can about this dream. And as we look at it we want to be very careful. We want to look at the details. We don’t want to come to it with a presupposition. We don’t want to say, O I’ve heard this taught before, this is what it means. Forget that, because what I’m trying to do with you is to show you that if you will carefully observe the text, if you will ask the who and the what and the when and the where and the why of the text and the how things are going to happen, if you will interrogate the text in that way, if you will observe it carefully, if you will observe it accurately, then eventually interpretation will rise to the surface and you will not only know what does it say, but you will understand what does it mean.
And then consequently you will know what you are to believe and how you are to live. So as we look at this I want you to follow it very, very carefully. All right he says, Daniel says to the king, but as for me, this mystery has not been revealed to me, for any wisdom residing in me more than any other living man, but for the purpose of making the interpretation known to the king, and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind. And listen to the humility of this man. Listen to this because he could have walked in there and said, you can get rid of all the rest of the conjurers and magicians and these wise men, because I’m ten times smarter than any of them, because the God of heaven has given me all this wisdom. Just ship them out of here. You don’t need anyone but me. I’ve got the dream. They couldn’t give you the dream. I’ve got the interpretation.
They couldn’t tell you that because they couldn’t tell you the dream. I’m the one that spared their lives. See there’s none of that. And this is what I want you to see. As we study these chapters I want you to see the character of this man of God. We’ve looked at him in chapter 1 and we have seen that he is a man who has made up his mind that he’s not going to defile himself, but that he’s going to be true to his God. He is a young man that is not bitter because in all probability this young man, like the others, if he was going to be in the king’s court was a eunuch. Here is a man that has come in as a captive and yet has not been bitter and not been angry. Here is a young man that is separated from his family, from his people who will never go home, who will never return. And yet he is not morose. He is not angry. He is not embittered. He is a man who is trusting in this God whom he knows.
Remember he is a man that was born during the time of Josiah when there was a revival because they found the Word of God that had been lost in the house of God. And all the people had been gathered together and they had heard the Word of God expounded and they made a covenant to obey God. And under the years of Josiah, as Daniel grew up, he saw a king who really loved and really feared God. And so he lived under that period of time. And then he saw his evil father, but he saw God deliver. He saw God be true to His word. So here is a man who is not caught up in himself. And this is so important. This is what gets us in trouble.
This is a man that is not caught up in himself. This is a man who is caught up with God. I want to ask you a question today. Are you caught up with yourself, with your own importance, with your own wisdom, with your own ability or even with your lack of wisdom, your lack of ability, your lack of prowess in conquering life and living life?
Are you caught up with you in any way, in a negative sense or in a positive sense? The secret to getting rid of being caught up with yourself is to get caught up with God. And so he says it’s not because I’m any better than any other man, that I am able to give you this dream and its interpretation. It’s simply because God has revealed it to me. God has made known to me this so that He might make known to you and give you an understanding of the thoughts that you’ve had in your mind. And then he’s going to tell him the dream.
You O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue. That statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you and the appearance of it was awesome. Now in the margin of the text that we sent you of that you downloaded you want to write, this is the dream, and color it, mark it the way that you marked the dream. The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs, of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You continued looking until a stone was cut without hands and it struck the statue on the feet of iron and clay and crushed them.
Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed all at the same time, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone the that struck the statue became a great mountain kingdom and filled the whole earth. You say what does all that mean? We’ll talk about it after we pause for this announcement.
PART TWO
Welcome back. Remember Nebuchadnezzar saw an awesome, extraordinary statue right in front of him. That statue had a head of gold. It had a chest of silver.
It had a belly and thighs of bronze. It had legs of iron and feet that were made up of iron and clay. And then he saw this great stone and it struck the statue on the feet then it crushed the whole statue. Everything crushed, the clay, the iron, the bonze, the silver, the gold, they all crushed. And,the wind came and carried them away and not a trace of them was found. And it says but then, then the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain. Now you heard me say that that was a picture of a kingdom.
And the only way that you would know that is to look up mountain in the scriptures and see if it’s referring to a physical mountain, like Mt. Sinai or Mt. Nebo or whatever like that or you would go and see that it’s also used symbolically for kingdoms. It’s a symbolism, or a metaphor, for a kingdom. All right, and that stone that struck this statue became a great mountain and it filled, and this is very important, all the earth.
Now, Daniel continues, this was the dream. Now we shall tell its interpretation. We, we who? God and Daniel, His spokesman. We shall tell its interpretation before the king. You, O king are the king of kings. Now can you see Nebuchadnezzar kind of sitting up even more straight? You are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven, and he may go back down a little bit when he says this, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory.
What have you just learned? Who gives power? Who gives strength? Who gives glory? Who gives a kingdom? Who sets up kings and puts them down? It’s God. What had Daniel seen and what had Daniel said about God in Daniel, chapter 2, verse 21 after God gave him the dream and the interpretation? It says it is He who changes the times and epochs. He removes kings and establishes kings. He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding.
It’s God that sets up the kings. Do you know that? Do you realize that? Not only good kings, but even base kings. God sets on His throne and God rules. And so he goes on to say and wherever the sons of men dwell or the beasts of the field or the birds of the sky He has given them into your hand. And He has caused you to rule over them all. Once again it is God that has given you this power.
And it is God that has caused you to rule over them. He says you are the head of gold. Ding. Now we know that this head of gold on this statue represents Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadnezzar represents Babylon. I always remember wherever I go that I am not just a person by the name of Kay and the last name of Arthur, but I am also a representative of Precept Ministries. And, I’m a representative of the Lord, Most High. And then it says and after you there will be another kingdom inferior to you and then a third kingdom of bronze.
So after you, he’s giving a time sequence so you want to put a clock here. So he’s the head of gold. After him there’s going to be another kingdom, but it’s inferior to him. Why? Well it’s silver. Silver is never more precious than gold. Gold is the most precious of all the metals. And then it says another third kingdom of bronze. Now you want to notice that he has said a third kingdom, because all of a sudden what you see is he’s numbering the kingdoms.
The first one was Babylon. The second one, we don’t know. We just know that it’s silver. And I’m not going to tell you what it is because you’re going to discover it later on in our study. And then there’s a third kingdom of bronze, which will rule, over all the earth.
Then, then, sequence of time; there will be a fourth kingdom. Now you want to keep that fourth kingdom in mind. As strong as iron in as much as iron crushes and shatters all things. So gold is good, but it’s soft. Silver is not that hard either. Bronze is good, but iron is really trough and so this fourth kingdom is of iron because it’s going to shatter. So like iron that breaks in pieces, it, this fourth kingdom will crush and break all these in pieces. All these what? One, two and three: Babylon and then whatever the silver is and then whatever the bronze is, the iron is going to shatter it. The iron is going to break it into pieces. And in that you saw the feet and the toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom. It what? It, the fourth kingdom.
And this is why we suggested that at verse 40, that you would mark this fourth kingdom and that you would color it a certain color.
I just happened to color it brown. All right, and then I underlined it in black. So this is the fourth kingdom and I started marking everything about this kingdom because it gives me more detail about the fourth kingdom than the interpretation gives of any other of the three kingdoms that precede it. And it says it will crush and break all these in pieces. In that you saw the feet and the toes and I colored that brown, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it, colored that brown, will be a divided kingdom; but it, colored it brown, will have in it, in the kingdom, colored it brown, the toughness of iron, in as much as you saw the iron mixed with common clay.
And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery or clay, and some of the kingdom, so I marked toes of the feet, cause it belongs to the fourth kingdom. I marked the kingdom because it belongs to the fourth kingdom. Will be strong, and part of it will be brittle. And it goes on to say that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they, they what, they who?
They, referring to the toes of the kingdom, the toes that are part of the fourth kingdom, the toes that are partly iron and partly clay. And it says they, these toes will combine with one another in the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.
In other words, you can’t take iron and weld it with pottery. The two cannot be welded together. So it’s going to be a lose relationship. And it says and in the days of those kings. All of a sudden the ten toes are referred to as kings. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people. It will crush and put an end to all these things, but it itself will endure forever. Now wait a minute.
In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, which will never be destroyed. Hey, there it is. There’s one more move on the board. We are not checkmated by the devil. The nations of this earth are someday going to be gone and there is going to be only one kingdom that will rule on the face of this earth. Who will you give your allegiance to?
Michael James Stone
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