“A Great Image”

Sunday, December 05, 2021

Daniel is easily the most fanciful of the Old Testament prophets.  Jonah would be next on the list, and while the great fish catches our attention, remember that Daniel has the fiery furnace, the lions’ den, and the handwriting on the wall, not to mention the apocalyptic visions of both Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar.  Just as with Jonah, we find the more unusual parts of the story more entertaining and memorable than the dry politics of, for example, Jeremiah.  We teach them to children; but adults should pay closer attention!  The first vision found in Daniel usually meets with a simplistic interpretation only half a step beyond what Daniel himself gave, but it has more to teach us, if we’re willing to make a couple of connections. 

After Nebuchadnezzar has a troubling dream, he demands that the wise men tell him both the dream and its interpretation.  Only Daniel can tell what the dream was, because God has revealed it to him.

“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (Daniel 2.31-35)

Then comes the interpretation.  Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar, “you are the head of gold” (v38), and that the remaining parts of the great image represent the kingdoms that are to come after him, until God’s own kingdom is established, shattering the kingdoms of earth and standing forever.  We can quickly surmise that this is fulfilled in the church, and then we’re ready to move on.

Not so fast!  What’s the very next thing we read about Nebuchadnezzar?  He “made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits” (3.1).  No further detail is given about its appearance, but considering the dream he’s just had, it’s not a huge leap of the imagination to suppose that the image resembled the image he saw in his dream.  But what is its purpose?  Is it to commemorate the dream and remind all the kings of men that their reigns will come to end even while God’s lasts forever?  No, he commands everyone under his authority “to fall down and worship the golden image” (v5), or face death for refusing.

Did Nebuchadnezzar get the point of the dream?  It was supposed to remind him that his power was fleeting and fragile, and that no amount of earthly glory could make him more than a mortal man.  He apparently didn’t listen much past “you are the head of gold.”  Instead of reacting with humility, he wanted everyone else to acknowledge his glory and majesty, without a care for his own future downfall.

This is the same thing we see from the beast in Revelation 13.  The false prophet “deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast” (Re 13.14), and gives over “those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain” (v15).  The visions in Revelation are often mistakenly interpreted as pertaining exclusively to the end of the world and involving a lot of obviously supernatural activity at every step.  Yet we see an example, from more than five centuries prior, of a king doing exactly what John’s vision predicted would happen again, and it wasn’t some miracle-working, many-horned, bear-pawed, talking hybrid—it was the legitimate governing authority, the expected and accepted power of the day, bound by the same laws of nature as the rest of us—although he might claim to be something greater.

The next mistake is to correctly identify the beast from the sea as the Roman state, and then move on, congratulating oneself on cracking the code.  But while Rome is clearly in view, didn’t it look an awful lot like Babylon in Daniel’s time?  And wasn’t the point of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream that Babylon and Rome weren’t so special—that kingdoms of men come and go with monotonous regularity, while God’s kingdom remains?  Babylon wasn’t the first to proclaim its government divine, and it wasn’t the last, either.  Rome also would not be the last.  It impersonated Christ—the horns, the crowns, and the “mortal wound” (13.3)—and it portrayed itself as the savior of its subjects.  Established governments generally want nothing so much as to increase their power over individuals, and for thousands of years they have pulled this same stunt, stoking fears of some physical danger, and presenting themselves as the only thing standing between the populace and disaster.  It’s an effective tool, and its success clearly demonstrates that most people’s minds are not set on things that are above, but on things that are on earth (Co 3.2).  Of course, we have to live in the physical world, and that means we have to deal with physical problems every day of our lives.  But don’t make the mistake of believing that physical dangers are worse, or more severe than spiritual ones.  It’s the other way around.  The physical problems will go away one day, but the problem of sin and separation from God goes beyond this world.  Instead of buying into the cult of the beast and worshiping its golden image, concern yourself with washing your robes in the blood of the Lamb, and being conformed to his image day by day.

Jeremy Nettles

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