These are much-loved chapters and don’t require much explanation from me, so I don’t want to waste your time with unnecessary words from me. I do want to point out the historical context of the book. Recall from the reading for Jeremiah 23 – 25 on day 224 (August 12) that Judah was carried into exile by the Babylonians in three waves. Daniel and his friends were deported in the first wave, indicating that they were from the most important families of the nation, the nobles. They would have been impressive young men, but understand that their choices in the events described here were what made them the outstanding characters that they were. It wasn’t the outstanding characters that enabled them to make the choices they did; rather, those characters were made by the choices. This is important because it teaches us that we can’t excuse ourselves from making the tough choices with the claim that we’re not Daniels. We can be like Daniels only if we’ll make the tough choices and do the hard things.
The statue in Daniel 2 depicts major empires in the world’s history. As Daniel explained, Babylon was the gold head. As the successor to the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire is the kingdom represented by the silver chest and arms. The bronze belly and thighs represent the Greek empire established by Alexander the Great. The fourth kingdom of iron represents the Roman Empire. These are clear to us because they are history to us. The feet of clay mixed with iron is debatable, but I believe that it is a kingdom yet to come. Since there is no clear reference for such a kingdom in history, I believe we haven’t seen that empire yet. The kingdom that will never be destroyed is of course the Church. Why do you suppose God wanted us to know about this vision?