The Four Empires In The Book Of Daniel

The Book of Daniel follows the life of Israelite named Daniel during the Babylonian captivity. Daniel and his friends are taken into captivity, but they soon serve under Nebuchadnezzar as interpreters. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream where sees an enormous statue with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mixed iron and clay. The statue is then destroyed. Daniel interprets the dream as four empires that will be crushed by God’s kingdom. In another story, Daniels friends are thrown into a furnace for disobeying Nebuchadnezzar. However, they are protected by God and Nebuchadnezzar starts to worship God. In his second dream, Nebuchadnezzar sees a big tree cut down. Daniel interprets the tree as Nebuchadnezzar. He will lose his …show more content…
Each one represents a future empire. There are different interpretations on which empires the beasts represent. He sees a lion with the wings of an eagle, a bear holding three ribs, a leopard with four wings and four heads, and an unknown beast that was very different from the others and exceedingly strong. Daniel has a vision of a ram and goat. The ram represents the second empire (Bear) in Daniels previous dream and the goat represents the third empire (leopard). In the final years of the Babylonian captivity, Daniel prays with God for the return of his people to Israel. Daniel shares the blame of sin with his people, and his prayer is simply asking for God’s mercy. God ordains a period of “seventy weeks of years” to Daniel. There are various interpretations what this means. One interpretations sees this as the period of time between the decree to rebuild and restore Jerusalem and the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. Chapters 9 gives some indications about Jesus’s ministry in verses 26, and 27 but it isn’t completely clear. Daniel sees more visions involving the end times, the struggle for power by different empire’s and the eventual resurrection of