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Restoration Ministry

Restoration 2009: Expect It

Marc Swearingen

Love With a Risk

Running From Duty

The Pearl of Great Price

A Universal Cross

The Voice of Conscience

God’s First Promise

Iron Mixed With Clay

Christ Our Righteousness

By Faith or By Sight?

Questions and Answers with Marc Swearingen

A Knowledge of Evil

Our First Love

It's a beautiful day today, and it's another day that we can come together and rejoice in the Lord and have a devotional thought here at the noon hour.

I want to look at a very special subject today I've called, iron mixed with clay.

And I'd like to turn to Daniel chapter 2.

I want to look at a very interesting prophecy this afternoon.

For those of you who have your Bibles, let's look at Daniel chapter 2.

We're going to look at a very, very simple and basic prophecy that basically lays the foundation for the later visions of John and Daniel.

And we're going to start reading there in the second chapter of Daniel in verse 31.

But before we read, I'd just like to bring you up to speed.

For those of you who may not know what Daniel 2 is all about, basically in this chapter, a king named Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled ancient Babylon, had a dream 1 night.

And this dream was a very intense dream, and evidently he woke up from this dream and could not remember the contents of the dream, let alone understand what it meant.

And so after waking up and realizing he could not remember the dream, he called together all the wise men of his kingdom and he asked them to use their powers to try to ascertain both the dream and the interpretation.

And as we know from Daniel chapter 2, they could not do that.

And so eventually he got upset and and mandated a death decree against these men, which included Daniel and his 3 friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

So now Daniel and his friends are in a crisis because they are included in this death decree.

And Daniel goes before the king and says, look, give us some time and we'll see if we can come up with the answer.

And so the king granted them his request, and they went back and had a prayer meeting, and the God of heaven revealed the dream and the interpretation to Daniel.

And so Daniel finds himself before this king, and in verse 31 he begins to describe this dream.

And please read with me silently as I read out loud.

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.

This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

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 break them to pieces.

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 threshing floors.

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." Now, I know that you're eating, and I know that it's tough to concentrate, but I want you to just listen to me very carefully.

I want to describe to you the general order of this dream, and then we're going to look at the interpretation.

Now here, Daniel describes that the king dreamed of a great image, and evidently that great image was in the shape of a human being.

That image had a head of gold, it had chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and then down at the bottom on the feet, the feet were made of iron and clay.

And then evidently a stone that's cut out without hands comes to the image, and it's interesting that the image was first hit at the feet.

The stone did not hit the head of the image, it hit the feet of the image.

And then as a result of those feet being destroyed by the stone, the rest of the image was basically obliterated.

And then that stone became a great mountain and filled the entire earth.

Now this is basically a prophecy that outlines a succession of world empires in history.

Not every world empire, but a main general order of world empires.

Now beginning in verse 36, Daniel gives the interpretation.

Daniel says in verse 36, This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.

For the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom and power and strength and glory.

And where soever 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.

Now, right here, Daniel talks to Nebuchadnezzar and he says, Look, the God of heaven has given you supreme power and authority, and basically you and your kingdom are symbolized by this head of gold.

And so we can see that Daniel says very clearly here that Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom of ancient Babylon equal the head of gold.

And the record of history will tell us that Babylon ruled from approximately 605 BC to the year 539 BC, give or take a year.

Now, if you look at verse 39, it's very interesting that Daniel outlines that there were successive kingdoms after Nebuchadnezzar's empire.

Verse 39 And after these shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, for as much as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, and as iron that breaketh all these shall it break in pieces and bruise." So here we see that after the kingdom of gold, Babylon, there will come a kingdom of silver, a kingdom of brass, and a kingdom of iron.

Now this may be elementary, but we understand that after Babylon fell, Babylon was destroyed by the Medo-Persian Empire.

And you'll find a brief mention of that at the end of Daniel chapter 5, when Cyrus the Great and his Persian armies destroyed ancient Babylon.

And we know that Medo-Persia, that empire ruled until the year 331, when Alexander the Great and the Greco-Macedonian armies defeated Darius III in the Battle of Gaulgemela in 331.

Alexander destroyed the Persian Empire, decimating that empire and bringing Greece onto the scene of history.

So we can see that while the head of gold is Babylon and the chest and arms of silver are Medo-Persia, the belly and thighs symbolize the Greek Empire.

And the Greek Empire lasted until the year 168 BC, when the Imperial Roman Empire conquered the Greek nation, and really Macedonia in that year, in the year 168, at the Battle of Pydna.

And so we can see again, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and then in 168, beginning with the legs of iron, imperial Rome.

Now, what's interesting about this vision now is that verse 41 begins to talk about the feet of iron and clay.

And this whole concept is a very, very interesting and revealing concept to consider.

Now in verse 41, notice it says, and whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, Part of what?

It says, part of potter's clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, for as much as thou sawest the iron mixed with...

Miry clay." Isn't it interesting that through that 1 verse, the potter's clay transitions into miry clay.

And I'm going to come back to that in a minute.

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.

And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave 1 to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay." Now, let me review for a moment.

We have the head of gold being Babylon, chest and arms of silver Medo-Persia, belly and thighs of brass Greece, legs of iron Rome, imperial Rome.

But then we see the feet of iron and clay.

Now notice it's said in the text that this kingdom is partly strong, partly broken.

And I would suggest to you that There are 2, there's a dual view basically of the feat of iron and clay.

The first view is that this symbolizes a divided world state, a divided system of nations basically.

Because since the fall of imperial Rome in AD 476, there's been no global empire, if you will, or massive empire that has brought a good number of the nations of the earth under 1 rule.

There's been some attempts, but there's been attempts that have proved futile.

And so it symbolizes a divided state that will continue to exist until Jesus comes back the second time.

Now, the other view involves the potter's clay transitioning into miry clay.

When you study the Bible, you will find that the symbol of potter's clay is quite often associated with God's people, God's church.

You find in the book of Isaiah, the people of God say, Lord, you are the potter, we are the clay, right?

But then, notice it transitions into miry clay.

And when you look at the concept of mire in the Bible, or miry clay, it symbolizes infidelity, unmoldability, whereas potter's clay is moldable and workable, whereas miry clay is dirty and filthy and unworkable, unmoldable.

And when you apply the concept of clay to a church, We can see that a once faithful church becomes an apostate church.

And we find that the clay and the iron mingle and attempt to cleave.

Now, when we think of the concept of cleaving, we think back to Genesis in marriage, when a man shall leave his parents and shall cleave unto his wife, and the twain shall become 1 flesh.

Well, in a sense, you can understand the iron to be a symbol of the state, and clay as a symbol of the church, in an attempt to mingle church and state in a union.

But God tells us very clearly in the Bible that church and state can never mix.

Jesus said, Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.

And so what we see in the feet of iron and clay is not just a divided kingdom, but we see basically a symbol of the papal Roman Empire that came after imperial Rome, and a global attempt evidently to unionize church and state.

And brethren and sisters, I'm here to tell you right now, there are movements in progress that are attempting to bring church and state together.

And we need to understand that in a nation such as America, we have a pillar of religious liberty that quite often we take for granted, but we are heading into a time when there will be an attempt by papal Rome and the nations of the earth to unionize and globalize a union of church and state.

As depicted by this prophecy of Daniel chapter 2.

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Restoration 2009: Expect It

Iron Mixed With Clay

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