Earthly Kingdoms Will Crumble
The future is a subject that fascinates us. Arthur Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, puts it well, ‘No age has shown more interest in the future than our age.’
Right now, most people aren’t very optimistic about the future. In fact, most people are scowling pessimists. Carl Jung, the great psychologist, said, ‘We have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us into the future with ever wilder violence.’
We hire wealth managers to predict it, insurance brokers to protect against it, and medical professionals to prepare us for it. In contemporary America, we are obsessed with the future.
In chapter 2 of the Book of Daniel, Daniel reveals exactly that to the king: the future. He lays out the future as it was revealed through the king’s dreams; dreams that are every bit as relevant today as they were twenty-six hundred years ago.
The revelation of Daniel, his vision of the future—at least the first part of the vision—is really quite simple. It’s merely that human kingdoms don’t last.
Not only do earthly kingdoms and/or civilizations not last, but they also bear within themselves the seed of their own destruction, which cause them, inexorably, to decline.
These are not, however, Daniel’s only insights into the future.
44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, 45 just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.” — Daniel 2:44-45
What a powerful vision of the future!
There’s a new kingdom, not made by human hands; a stone cut from a mountain, which will shatter the kingdoms of the earth. It will inaugurate a new reign on earth, the kingdom of the God of heaven.
After hearing that, how can you not want to give up everything you have to this new and powerful kingdom? That’s exactly what king Nebuchadnezzar did. He gave everything he could give to this eternal kingdom of the God of heaven.
He gave homage, offerings, incense, chief prefect over all the wise men, even the rulership over Babylon…everything!
How about you? To which kingdom have you given yourself? To the kingdom of this world that won’t last and so often goes from bad to worse? Or the kingdom of God and of the Lamb, that is full of eternal light and life?
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