An Amazing Bible Prophecy

About five hundred years before the birth of Christ, God gave the world a startling glimpse into the future through the prophet Daniel. He presented an outline of world history, from Daniel’s time to our own day.

This prophecy appears in the second chapter of Daniel. It actually originated in a dream God gave Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, some 2,500 years ago. The dream deeply troubled this monarch—but he couldn’t remember its main elements when he woke up! After all of Babylon’s wise men failed to help the king recall his dream or interpret it, a young Hebrew exile named Daniel arrived on the scene, claiming that the God of Heaven could reveal all mysteries.

Standing before the king, Daniel boldly declared:

ind“You looked, O king, and there before you stood A LARGE STATUE—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.
ind“The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.
ind “While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.
ind “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But THE ROCK THAT STRUCK THE STATUE became a huge mountain and FILLED THE WHOLE EARTH.”
—Daniel 2:31-35. (Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptural texts in the DISCOVER guides are from the New International Version of the Bible [NIV].)

This statue, at first glance, may seem to have little to do with finding hope in contemporary times. Babylonian imagery is a long way removed from the missiles and terrorists haunting our world. But hold on to your seats, because we’re about to fast-forward through thousands of years of history—with God operating the remote.