Earthly Kingdoms | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 21, 1878

Earthly Kingdoms.

We find in the book of Daniel several very plain prophecies in regard to the kingdoms of this world. In the second chapter we find one presented to us by the use of an image of a man with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, thighs of brass, and legs of iron, with feet and toes part iron and part clay. The prophet Daniel says in verse 38 that the head of gold symbolized the then existing monarchy of Babylon, who, with Nebuchadnezzar as its king, ruled the then known world. But the prophecy says that another kingdom will rise symbolized by the silver, and a third one of brass, to bear rule over all the earth. War at length broke out between the Babylonians and the Medes and Persians, which resulted in the overthrow of Babylon, and established Cyrus, of Persia, as the leading king of the world, B. C. 536. We next find this kingdom threatened by Alexander, of Grecia, and a decisive battle, fought at Arbela, B. C. 331, left Alexander the victor, and Greece ruled the world. We need only inquire which was the next or fourth kingdom that ruled the world. History answers Rome. Gibbon says: "The empire of the Romans filled the world." This was the fourth and last kingdom that has ruled the whole world.

In the image, the iron symbolizing this fourth kingdom was divided at the feet into ten toes, and so Rome has been broken up, and in A. D., 483, had resolved into how many parts? Six? Eight? Nine? No, ten. Just that, and no more, as the prophecy had said. And these kingdoms exist in the old world to-day. Then what follows? The prophet sees the fifth universal kingdom. We can do no better than to give it in his own words: verse 44, "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." We are not living in the days when Babylon, or Media and Persia, or Grecia, or Rome can say they rule the world, but we are down in the divided state of the Roman empire. Reader, the words of the prophet have been true thus far, can we doubt the fulfillment of the very closing particulars of this prophecy, when all the rest has been so unmistakably sure? Then we are living in the time when the God of heaven will set up a kingdom. Are you ready to enter it? Can the Saviour say of you, "Come ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Is that kingdom for you? —Notes of Warning.