The city building inspector of Paso Robles, Calif. declared the old
furnace in a Mennonite church to be faulty. It had served them well
for many years, but the church officials installed a new furnace.
Shortly after it was in stalled the church burned to the ground. A
faulty furnace was listed as the cause of the blaze. There is no
guarantee that the new will be better than the old even on the
physical level. This is even more true on the level of thought. One
man said after reading the latest book, "What is new in it is not true,
and what is true in it is not new." This is certainty the case in the
realm of theology.
This is not to say that there is nothing new under the sun, for
there are always new applications of old truths. We are not to be
blind to the new like the Pharisees and feel that all that is not
traditional is heresy. Since we do not fully understand all of the
implications of the old, just as they did not understand all the
implications of Old Testament prophecy, we are to give all new ideas
an honest hearing. On the other hand, we dare not be like the
Athenians either, for they spent their time in nothing else but either
to tell or hear some new thing. This is the mentality of our modern
mind. People are crying for the new not because the old has failed,
but because they know nothing about the old, and they have no
foundation.
We do have a foundation as Christians. Christ is our rock, and
the Bible is our anchor, and we have a whole history of
interpretation to build on. When it comes to difficult places of
interpretation we cannot afford to dismiss this history and launch off
into a new interpretation unless we can clearly demonstrate that the
new is superior and has the evidence in its favor. For example, the
orthodox or traditional interpretation of Daniel 2 has been held to by
Josephus, the majority of the early church fathers, all expositors
through the middle ages, and the majority of modern expositors. In
spite of this impressive list for its support I would not hesitate to
depart from them and adopt a new view if the evidence was clear
that they were wrong. Since I have not seen any such evidence I will
continue in the line of the old and expound Daniel according to the
traditional view, and seek to show that the new has no right to claim
our allegiance.
In verse 41 Daniel says that the Roman Empire will be divided as
symbolized both by the two legs and feet of the image, and by the fact
of the iron and clay being mixed. The kingdom is solid iron in the
legs, and so it was powerful at its beginning, but later it gets weak
due to foreign elements that divide its unity and its strength. Mud
just won't miss with metal. Nothing is easier than to show that the
intrusion of the barbarians on the one side and the Arabs and Turks
on the other was the cause for the break down of the unity and
strength of the Roman Empire.
At this point we have to consider an important new idea brought
in by the Dispensational interpretation. They take theses ten toes of
the image and say that they represent ten kings or kingdoms that shall
arise in the last days as a revived Roman Empire. This is an
assumption with no basis in the text. In fact, the text refutes the
assumption. The toes are mentioned in both verses 41-42 as part of
the single fourth kingdom, and they are used to illustrate it as being
part strong and part broken. There is not the slightest hint that they
represent ten different kingdoms into which the Roman Empire
divided. Let alone referring to ten such kingdoms arising centuries
after the collapse of Rome.
It would certainly be impossible to guess that they might stand
for such a thing unless somebody told you, and even then it would
take a great deal of faith in the persons insight to believe he could see
that interpretation in the words of Daniel. It is not worth the gamble
to impose such an unfounded interpretation upon Daniel, for God
will not hold us guiltless if we add to His Word what is not there. If
one is only interested in being new and different, then these ten toes
take on all kinds of possibilities. For example, the anti-sports
Christian could see the ten toes of iron and clay as symbolizing
athlete's foot, and so conclude that Rome fell because of an over
emphasis on sports. There would be a measure of truth in this view,
and it would allow them to lament over the craze there is in sports
today as a sign of the times.
There is no end to what can be done with a little imagination, but
if you are interested in what Daniel intended to communicate then we
are limited to taking his words as they are, and he says the ten toes
and feet mixed with iron and clay are to symbolize that the fourth
kingdom was divided, and was both strong and weak. The
traditional view sees what history later confirmed, and that is that
the mixing and intermarriage with the Huns, Goths and Vandals led
to disunity and the breakdown in marriage and family, and this
contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. This old view is the
best I have found, and it best fits the remainder of the interpretation
of this book.
In verse 44 Daniel says that in the days of those kings, that is in
the days represented by the kingdoms he has just mentioned, and
specifically the fourth kingdom of Rome. This is the typical way of
Jewish literature to represent a period. The book of Ruth opens, "In
the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land..."
This does not mean famine all through the days of the Judges, but
simply refers to that era of history. So here he is saying that in the
days of this unique series of universal kings God is going to break
into history with His kingdom. This means that the Kingdom of God
entered history during the time of the fourth kingdom, and if we are
correct that this was Rome, then it follows that God set up this
Kingdom when he sent His Son to earth to be born and became
incarnate in human flesh during the reign of Caesar Augustus.
The Dispensational view skips this event and says Daniel's
prophecy looks to the second coming of Christ rather than to the first
coming. They say their were not ten kings when Jesus came the first
time and so the literal interpretation demands that we look to the
second coming for the fulfillment of this prophecy. This is a rejection
of what Jesus said when He declared that the Kingdom of God was at
hand. The Kingdom was the theme of most of His parables and is the
basic theme of the whole New Testament. It is inconceivable that God
is revealing what is ahead and He skips the most important event in
human history, which is the incarnation and life of Jesus. This is the
central event of Old Testament prophecy. The kingdom that last
forever began with the coming of Jesus. Those who put this off to the
second coming diminish the present glory of Christ.
This issue here is over which coming we are to give the most
emphasis to as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. The orthodox
view puts the focus on the first coming, and it exalts Jesus in His
present status at the right hand of the Father where he reign until all
enemies are put under His feet.
