The Gospels
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 In The Days Of These Kings
An important text from the book of Daniel;
-- Click To Expand/Collapse Bible Verses -- Dan ch2:v26-45
Dan 2:26 The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof?
Dan 2:27 Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, shew unto the king;
Dan 2:28 But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these;
Dan 2:29 As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass.
Dan 2:30 But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.
Dan 2:31 Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
Dan 2:32 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
Dan 2:33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
Dan 2:34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.
Dan 2:35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
Dan 2:36 This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.
Dan 2:37 Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.
Dan 2:38 And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold.
Dan 2:39 And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
Dan 2:40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.
Dan 2:41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.
Dan 2:42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
Dan 2:43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
Dan 2:44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Dan 2:45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.
(KJV)
The timeline of these empires that begins with Nebuchadnezzar's own kingdom of Babylon runs like this...
The gold head, - The Babylonian empire, often called the Chaldean empire.
The torso and arms, - The Empire of Media Persia, also called the kingdom of the Medes and Persians.
The belly and thighs, - The Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, later divided amongst his four generals.
The legs, feet and toes, - The Roman Empire.
The Stone cut out without hands... Jesus Christ and The Kingdom of God.
As a rule of thumb, we can quickly see that the lower down the statue we are, the further forward in time we progress. That the stone hits the statue upon the lower part of it's legs, the feet and toes - precisely the part of iron mixed with clay, we see that God sets up his kingdom during the latter part of the Roman empire. Formerly Rome seems uniformly strong, but later there seems to be division, even with the clay in the feet. Not the place one would wish to have a structural weakness in the base of a top heavy statue. The clay is often used to refer to those individuals in whom God has formed a purpose, like a potter his work. Could it be that the clay, which is also smote by the stone, are those members of the mysteries in the Roman empire whom God calls into his kingdom?
The division of the state of Rome and its empire in respect to the kingdom of God must be spiritual. Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world. How then is it expected to destroy political systems? The religions of each of these states (which seems to causally bear upon the ones that follow after, much like the bearing of weight in the statue) are struck at it's weakest point, the feet. When God has something he can mould to his purpose, that will not mix with the political state - he seizes his chance and all the systems of religion, from Babylonian god-kings to emperor-gods as (mystery-saviours) fall.
The encroach of the mysteries from Babylonian Nimrod far back in antiquity spread throughout the region. The first three empires (not Rome) contain all of the land that belonged under the rule of their predecessors. Rome, does not have this property. Some have pushed the notion that the Islamic nations today are this fourth kingdom since they also contain the
Greek kingdom's land. The first three, and Islam in the form of the Ottoman empire, were all ruled from the city of Babylon. Why then should this pattern fail?
The first three kingdoms expanded to the point when the spread of ideas, religions and astrology were suddenly accelerated under Alexander the Great because the koine
greek tongue became the language of international use. Ideas (and religious ones at that) could be spread in
greek, (like the Septuagint for example). The need for the source of the ideas (Babylon) to be visited by foreigners to learn the language to spread them at home ceased. After the mysteries had moved into Greece and Rome proper by this time, the need for Babylon as a geographical religious lighthouse for an empire was finished.
In that long movie "Alexander" The only reason Alexander ruled from Babylon was to keep the empire in one piece. It wasn't that the locals were more important than those at home,.. just that it kept some kind of unity together. There is no reason other than religion in this case. Coupled with the development of philosophy in the west and the syncretism of religious ideas across Alexander's empire - Things were ready in Rome for the centre of imperial power to remain westward. Rome did split many years later into the eastern and western... the former being Byzantium, but being after Christ this is not totally relevant to this page.
All in all, the history of the spread of religious ideas from Babylon to Rome paved the way for their own destruction and replacement by Christianity. It is perhaps fitting that the religions that seemed to have most in common with an appearance of Christianity, should lay the groundwork for the
latter's uptake when it is so universally considered that satan sowed the seeds of those religions in order to destroy the approaching redemption by Christ on the cross.
In Genesis when God curses the serpent, he prophesies in Gen 3:15 "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
The seed is often typed with Jesus Christ. They appear almost locked in a deadlock as per the bruising. It is true that try though satan might, he will not overcome the seed of the woman even if he thinks he is tying. It's not such an obstacle to walk with a bruised heel as it is to succeed with a bruised head. The woman's seed (Jesus Christ) will overcome. Things may look bad, but God can easily perform the miraculous as if it were commonplace,.. For hundreds of years there appeared the mysteries that would have almost camouflaged Christianity as just another cult. At worst, Christianity appears as a perversion of the allegorical content of those mysteries. Whichever side a person could be on, Christianity appeared to win out overall - strange that if there were over 50 different mystery cults, if they'd won out it would be 1-0. History tells us 50+ to 0 in Jesus' favour.
Many believe that the mysteries persist today through secret societies, particularly in the masonic degrees. Also that the mysteries are used to explain the "mythical" nature of bible stories, and even to set policy in politics and education. If its true, its not working very well, is it? Men in power who honestly believe their intellects work so well as to defuse the God bomb encoded in the bible and reintroduce a totally secular society where everyone is capable of controlling all their "ungodly" animal-like desires must admit they appear to be failing spectacularly.
Christianity owes it's great successes to the transformation of character, the bonds of fellowship, a God who acts in strength and the scriptures that provide such wealth of authoritative guidance, an absolute canon of law, a strict definition of precisely what "sin" is, (always a great obstacle for any of the mysteries), along with propitiation and atonement. Divorced from the orgiastic states of susceptibility to suggestion and hypnotic imagery that the mysteries employed. - No drugs or deception, just the fundamental doctrine of truth, that would free the individual whether he was rich or a slave. No other faith had accomplished such before or since. Ever since the diaspora of the Jews with the captivity to Babylon and the spread of Jewish missionaries across the ancient world, Christianity was in the works - and its fun to know satan did a lot of the preparatory work - Thanks!
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