Kings And Kingdoms

How many of you have gone to a Hallowe'en party recently? I've been to some: harvest parties, and some Trunk or Treat gatherings. It always looks like people are having a terrific time. And there are always some great costumes, heroes and princesses and warriors and animals and people from other times.... But it occurred to me that it really would be kind of fun to have a “Bible-characters only” costume party some year. You’re not just stuck with people in robes and headdresses, either. There’s always Lazarus, if you’re into mummies, and angels and Roman soldiers and dancing girls and all kinds of animals and - well, the possibilities are endless. And if you’re like my oldest godson, who absolutely LOVES monsters, there’s always the four beasts in Daniel’s dream.

They sound just like the sort of monsters that crop up in nightmares after you’ve eaten too much Hallowe’en candy, don’t they?

"The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand upon two feet like a man; and the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side; it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, ‘Arise, devour much flesh.’" [v. 4-5]

I have this image of a glutton at an all-you-can-eat barbecued ribs feed.

The third was "like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back; and the beast had four heads; and dominion was given to it..... [and then there was] a fourth beast, terrible and dreadful and exceedingly strong; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns."

How would you like to have a dream full of creatures like that? I’d do my best to forget it as quickly as possible.

But Daniel didn’t do that. Daniel, whose faith was so strong that he went into the lion’s den rather than bow down to anyone but YHWH God; Daniel, whose wisdom was so great that King Nebuchadnezzar, the destroyer of Jerusalem, made him one of his top and most trusted officials; Daniel knew that dreams were important. So, in his dream, he asked one of the heavenly beings who was also there, in the dream, and asked what it all meant. And they told him. And he wrote it down. And now we have it.

And we still want to know what it means. Commentators and scholars have tried for centuries to explain the explanation. But it remains a mystery, with theory competing against theory and no way this side of Christ’s coming to tell who’s right. So I approach the text with some caution, and part of me would rather not deal with the subject at all. But this is what the lectionary gave us for today, and I made a commitment to myself at the beginning of the year not to duck a passage just because it was difficult. Because if Daniel thought it was important enough to write down, and God thought it was important enough to preserve for us in Scripture, then we need to spend some time with it.

Most scholars identify the four beasts with the four kings that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed about in chapter 2, the dream that launched Daniel’s rise to fame and power. The most popular interpretation is that these kingdoms are Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Some scholars believe that the prophecies in Daniel were fulfilled with the coming of Christ; others believe that they foretell the second coming and look for clues to identify the beasts with contemporary powers.

All agree that the “Ancient of Days” is God the Father, and the “one like a son of man” is Jesus, “to [whom] was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

But what are we to make of the beasts?

And why do we care? If they are Babylon and Persia and Greece and Rome, what relevance does it have for us now? And if not, isn’t it all just sheer speculation?

I believe that, like much of prophetic writing, that there is a near-term truth, an end-time truth, and an on-going set of principles. The near-term truth probably is the four popular candidates already mentioned. The end-time truth we won’t understand until we look back on it and see the pattern complete, and say, “Oh, yeah, now I get it.”