Daniel 4:35, commentary and pictures

All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing before God, who does as He pleases among the angels of heaven and among people on earth, and no one can stop His hand or question what He does. It is the confession Nebuchadnezzar made when his reason returned at the end of his appointed humiliation, as he lifted his eyes to heaven and blessed the Most High whose dominion is everlasting and whose kingdom endures from generation to generation. The Most High rules over human kingdoms and gives them to whomever He wills, so that Nebuchadnezzar's dominion and glory came from God and were taken from him in a moment when he exalted himself. God is able to bring low all who walk in pride and self-exaltation, staining all human glory and leaving men to their own exalted ideas to prove that human wisdom is foolishness. Therefore God is to be acknowledged daily as Monarch of the universe, and human wills must yield without delay to His supreme will, trusting that when they consent He reshapes mind and character into the likeness of Christ.

Nebuchadnezzar's Humbling and Restoration

The words are the confession of Nebuchadnezzar after his reason returned at the end of the appointed days of humiliation, when he lifted his eyes to heaven and blessed and praised the Most High who lives forever, whose dominion is everlasting and whose kingdom endures from generation to generation. In them he declared that all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing before God, that He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and that none can stay His hand or say unto Him, What doest Thou. He acknowledged Jehovah as the living God, the Maker of heaven and earth, not a golden image, and he desired all the people of his realm to learn what he had learned of God's greatness and goodness. God can so humble kings and nobles for His glory that they acknowledge a power above themselves and use their tongues to praise Him.

His humbling came because pride and proud superiority and self-glorification led him to exalt himself. He did not heed Daniel's counsel to break off sins by righteousness and iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. After acknowledging the living God at the fiery furnace he did not continue to walk in the light and lost the holy impression, so God gave him a second dream to warn him. God took his reason and made him as the beasts of the field in seven years of deplorable degradation until he learned that the Most High rules human kingdoms and gives them to whom He wills.

At the same time his understanding returned, the honor of his kingdom returned, his counselors sought him, and he was restored and reestablished with added majesty and honor. Then he praised and honored Him that lives forever and praised the King of heaven whose works are truth and whose ways are judgment and who is able to abase those who walk in pride. His dominion and glory had come from God, who judged his pride and whose power and mercy he later acknowledged.

In this the tyrannical, overbearing, fierce monarch on the Babylonian throne who had defied and blasphemed the God of heaven became a wise and compassionate ruler who acknowledged God's power and sought earnestly to promote the happiness of his subjects. He became a witness for God, a living epistle giving warm and eloquent testimony from a grateful heart that was partaking of the mercy and grace and righteousness and peace of the divine nature. His punishment taught him to humble himself before God, and his closing words showed reformation and transformation of character wrought by God. Earthly position does not make character right; a person must be willing for God to work upon and shape them, and those regarded as wise and exalted to positions of trust must learn through Nebuchadnezzar's experience not to take his first course.

Belshazzar knew of Nebuchadnezzar's banishment from human society by God's decree, his conversion and restoration, and of the God who held his life and all his ways in His hand, but he failed to heed the lesson or glorify God, and disregarding the light God gives brought judgment and calamity upon him. God's will governs heaven and earth and cannot be hindered, and earthly rulers and empires serve His purposes so that His plans go forward even when His people cannot cooperate. This was illustrated when Babylon's king proclaimed knowledge of the true God and when Cyrus brought freedom to the captives. Rulers who encountered God through their Hebrew captives were led to proclaim that supremacy publicly.

Meaning of God's Sovereignty

All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing before God, and He carries out His own will both in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, with none able to stay His hand or say to Him what He is doing. This is the confession of Nebuchadnezzar after his proud heart was humbled under rebuke, when at the end of the appointed days he lifted his eyes to heaven and his understanding and reason returned to him. He then blessed and praised the Most High who lives forever, whose dominion is everlasting and whose kingdom endures from generation to generation, acknowledging Him as the living God, the Maker of heaven and earth, not a golden image, and desiring all the people of his realm to learn what he had learned of God's greatness and goodness. At the same time his understanding returned the honor of his kingdom returned, his counselors sought him, and he was restored and established with added majesty, praising the King of heaven whose works are truth and whose ways are judgment and who is able to abase those who walk in pride. In this the king on the Babylonian throne became a witness for God, a living epistle giving warm and eloquent testimony from a grateful heart partaking of the mercy and grace and righteousness and peace of the divine nature, showing that God's sovereignty as Monarch of the universe over heaven and earth is to be acknowledged daily.

God has absolute and unlimited right to dispose as He pleases of whatever belongs to Him, and no one can question Him or demand an explanation. People belong to Him by creation and redemption and are under obligation to Him for life and food and protecting care, so He has absolute right to them and their service. Whatever obedience He requires in anything He enjoins must be rendered to Him as His own, and to refuse it is guilt of withholding from God what is His.

His supreme authority is joined with infinite love and blessing for the creatures in His care, so His power calls for worship and obedience and no one should set the will against His or challenge His right to act. He is the omnipotent Ruler in heaven, possessing all power and acting according to His will, governing events beyond human plans so that no material safeguards, wealth, or supposed immunity can preserve when calamity comes. He will work and none can hinder Him, and His power goes with His servants to carry the truth forth as a lamp that burns by calling men of high and low degree to do His bidding. When they stand in His strength and do His will He is their helper and their God, bringing most startling revelations among His people.

God's Rule Over Kingdoms

The verse belongs to Nebuchadnezzar's account, whose experience shows that earthly kingdoms will pass away and be superseded by God's everlasting kingdom.

The Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever He wills, and Nebuchadnezzar had to learn this through humiliation after pride and self-glorification until he recognized God's sovereignty over heaven and earth, with no human power able to challenge His authority. His dominion and glory came from God, who judged his pride and whose power and mercy he later acknowledged, teaching that human rulers must humble themselves before God and recognize His rule. His greatness and position did not gain him acceptance with God, and his power was taken from him in a moment, for no earthly ruler can resist God's will in heaven and on earth. Belshazzar knew this lesson of humbling and acknowledgment but failed to heed it or to glorify the God who held his life and all his ways in His hand.

The eternal God alone is to be exalted and His word magnified, while human beings are to be placed low. All earthly kingdoms, nations, monarchs, statesmen, counselors, great armies, and all worldly magnificence and glory are as nothing before Him, as dust of the balance. God has a reckoning to make with all nations, every kingdom is to be brought low and human authority made as nothing, while Christ as King of the world and His kingdom is to be exalted. Therefore the mind is not to be absorbed in the things of this world nor fixed on human agencies but is to reach up to God.

Earthly rulers remain answerable to Him who rules in heaven and acts according to His own will. They must not make laws contrary to heaven's law or compel others to obey them. Those who oppose God and disregard His word must answer for the people they deceive, since they had access to the Bible and could know their disloyalty.

No earthly power can stay God's hand, for He is the omnipotent Ruler in heaven with power to carry out His will and to govern events beyond human plans. The hand that is strong to save is strong to destroy toward proud, ambitious human beings if no change has taken place in their hearts. When His appointed time comes to bring retribution for pride, injustice, disregard of His law, and selfish ambition, human wealth, buildings, and supposed safeguards cannot prevent it. No material used in erecting buildings will preserve them from destruction when God sends retribution, as shown when calamity like the San Francisco earthquake and fire governs events and human plans cannot make the city immune.

Warnings Against Pride and Self

The verse proves that God is able to bring low all who walk in pride and self-exaltation, and that all human glory will certainly be stained. He leaves men to their own exalted ideas to prove that human wisdom is foolishness, for human imaginations have no standing with God. This is the lesson He would have all humanity learn from Nebuchadnezzar's humiliation, reformation and transformation of character, and He designed that it should be known and shown forth by the greatest kingdom in the world. After his reason was restored the king acknowledged God's everlasting dominion from generation to generation, confessing that the inhabitants of earth count as nothing, that God does His will in the armies of heaven and among men, and that none can stop His hand or question what He does. God can so humble kings and nobles for His glory that they acknowledge a power above themselves and use their tongues to praise Him, turning a tyrannical, overbearing and fierce monarch who defied heaven into a wise and compassionate ruler who seeks the happiness of his subjects. Those regarded as wise and exalted to positions of trust must learn from his first course not to take it, for success in the Lord's work comes because God gives it, not for human glory but for God's glory, and whoever seeks to take God's glory to himself will be punished for presumption.

The record of Nebuchadnezzar's life stands as a warning not to trust in human wisdom or strength, not to trust in self and one's own wisdom, and not to make flesh one's arm. His exalting of himself shows the danger of exalting self.

God brings judgment on those who reject His warnings and exalt themselves, and He will bring ambitious plans to ruin when people with great light support one another in disobedience. He is sovereign over all creatures and works, with none able to thwart His will or call Him to account, and He will not be trifled with. He permits opposition only for a little while, for men are frail before His power to carry forward His work, and He can bring an opponent low with a touch.

The same pride endangers workers who set God aside and trust their own wisdom, cherishing what Nebuchadnezzar cherished and risking a humbling, trying experience, since power to be efficient in service comes from God alone who does according to His will among men. It warns one who seeks kingly power and self-exaltation that human power cannot overrule God, who has supreme authority over heaven and earth that none can resist or question. One who treats his own judgment as supreme may become stubborn and fall under Satan's influence, for self-exaltation could not make Nebuchadnezzar supreme. Pride, ambition and high opinions of one's own wisdom can lead to a like humbling, and rejecting those ambitions may avert that experience, since human greatness cannot overturn God's rule. Patterning after Nebuchadnezzar by exalting self and taking glory to one's own name is forbidden, and the desire for money and self-glory to spread one's own power shows the prideful ambition of one who seeks to exalt himself. The same warning reaches those who act as though they have God's authority over His people.

God does not sustain or favor human wisdom brought into His work but requires His work to be carried on as He requires, so carrying on sanitarium and medical-missionary work after human devising brings in a state of things according to the wisdom of human minds and not according to God. Eternal interest depends on a change of heart, so that planning and head-work give all others a chance to accomplish the work not after one man's devising but after the wisdom God gives them individually. If a man feels himself to be a man of power and demeans the ministry by making the medical missionary work the body instead of the hand, though God places men as stewards upheld by heaven and all inhabitants of earth are as nothing before Him who does His will with none able to stay His hand, God will leave him in the humbled position in which Nebuchadnezzar was left. While the eye is single to God's glory and His reproofs and counsels are heeded and respected, God holds the power of rivalry in obedience to His will, but when added responsibilities and a work He never appointed are taken up He no longer restrains worldly enterprise that becomes an unsustainable embarrassment.

Living Under God's Rule

Daniel 4:35 calls for God to be acknowledged daily as Monarch of the universe, ruling over heaven and earth according to His will with none able to hinder Him or call Him to account. That acknowledgment belonged specifically at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which was to recognize Him every day as supreme. Human beings have no power or standing before Him apart from what He grants, and Nebuchadnezzar's restored understanding led him to confess this sovereign rule. The same lesson applies to all people through whom God works, who must recognize that the living God is always present and supreme, for Nebuchadnezzar had to learn through severe discipline that his own scepter was not supreme and that God's everlasting kingdom and dominion extend through all generations over the nations.

To the soul whom God is preparing by bringing into connection with those reconciled to God, who receives Christ and is given power to become a child of God and who diligently seeks Him, this absolute rule is no longer dreadful but brings light, heavenly assurance and reward. Limited spiritual experience keeps people from fully grasping God's mighty works, so they should do their best and press upward to overcome rather than be defeated by Satan's devices. God's will is supreme and human wills must yield to it without long delay, a truth Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged as supreme Ruler only after fearfully severe experience. God does not compel submission, but when people consent and yield He can reshape the perverse human mind and character into Christ's likeness. Applied, this is a call to give self to God now with increased self-denial and self-sacrifice, so that He imparts from Christ all excellence necessary for perfection of character until beholding the beauty of the Saviour's character makes beholders more and more like Him and complete in Him.

Power to be efficient in service comes from God alone, for He does according to His will among men, and success in the Lord's work comes because God gives it, not for human glory but for God's glory. Whoever seeks to take God's glory to himself will be punished for presumption, for all who walk in pride God is able to abase. Workers who set God aside and trust their own wisdom cherish the same pride Nebuchadnezzar cherished after he failed to continue in the light received at the fiery furnace, and are in danger of passing through a humbling, trying experience under His second warning dream. Those who repent and humble themselves may receive pardon, peace, God's approval and another time of testing, and those who trust God and do justice will be accepted by Him, while He brings judgment on those who reject His warnings and exalt themselves and brings ambitious plans to ruin when people with great light support one another in disobedience, for God will not be trifled with.

The mind is therefore not to be absorbed in the things of this world nor fixed on human agencies, but to reach up to God, since the eternal God alone is to be exalted and His word magnified while human beings and every kingdom are brought low as nothing and as dust of the balance before Him and Christ as King of the world and His kingdom is exalted. The lesson to be heeded is to humble the heart before God and return to appointed duty, keeping the sweet spirit that truth and righteousness impart rather than a faction spirit, for while the eye is single to God's glory and His reproofs and counsels are heeded God holds the power of rivalry in obedience to His will, but when added responsibilities and a work He never appointed are taken up He no longer restrains worldly enterprise that becomes an unsustainable embarrassment, a warning against patterning self-exaltation and taking glory to one's own name. His people are to follow His directions even when obedience leads to the gates of death, their lives safe because hidden with Christ in God, for He is all-powerful and acts according to His will with none able to stay His hand.