The stone kingdom -- Nebuchadnezzar's
dream -- Daniel's interpretation -- The four kingdoms: Babylon,
Medo-Persian, Grecian, Roman -- The ten toes -- England not one of them --
Portugal instead -- The stone is God's people, Israel, now the
Anglo-Saxons -- Their increase: 1. In wealth. 2. In literature. 3.
Political influence. 4. In religious influence -- Hence this people must
be the stone kingdom.
The wonderful dream of Nebuchadnezzar, as interpreted by
Daniel, is as follows:
"Thou, 0 King, art king of kings, unto whom the
God of Heaven hath given the kingdom, the power, and the
strength, and the glory . Thou art the head of gold; and after thee
shall arise all other kingdom, inferior to thee; and another third
kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron; forasmuch as iron
breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, shall it break in pieces and
crush.
And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part
of potters' clay and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom;
but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou
sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet
were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly
strong and partly broken.
And in the days of those kings shall the God of
heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the
sovereignty thereof be left to another people; but it shall break in
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
For as much as thou sawest that a stone was cut
out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the
iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God hath
made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter; and the dream is
certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."
This dream and its interpretation was given B.
C. 603.
We are now in A. D. 1886, making 2,489 years
since Daniel's declaration. What, then, during this long period, has
taken place by which to prove the truth of Daniel's interpretation?
1. In the first place, Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, the head of
gold, passed away, and was succeeded by the Medo-Persian Kingdom -- the
silver breast and arms. Next, the brass is agreed by all to have had its
fulfillment in the Grecian Kingdom, under Alexander, and the Roman
Kingdom came last, as the Iron Kingdom. These have all come and
gone, their history having been written over and over again, so that there
seems to be but one opinion on this subject; that these four kingdoms have
fulfilled exactly Daniel's predictions.
There remain, therefore, the toes only to be
accounted for . It has been decided by historians that the Roman Empire
finally died, and from its ashes there appeared in time ten other lesser
kingdoms, in Europe, representing the ten toes.
Among these ten, England has been regarded as
one by some, but doubted by others. And the doubt is made on this
ground: It seems to be conceded on all hands, that the ten toes were
a part of the iron kingdom, growing out of it, and therefore justly
belonging to it; in the division of the Roman Empire, these ten minor
kingdoms must be formed out of the Roman Empire itself; but England is
proved by history to have never constituted a part of that empire, for
when the Roman army was withdrawn from there, England was utterly
abandoned by Rome, and was never after entered by that power.
So that England cannot properly be reckoned as
one of the ten kingdoms into which Rome was divided. And in place of
England, Portugal is believed to be the kingdom representing one of the
toes, and that the little toe. This seems to me to be the proper
rendering of the passage.
Their increase:
In wealth,
literature,
Political
influence
and in religious influence.
We have found, then, this long-sought-for
people who are to constitute the "Stone Kingdom" -- the fifth kingdom --
the kingdom, "set up by the God of heaven." And this people, who
were to retain the kingdom -- which should not be left to another people,
is verily the Anglo-Saxon race, the identical descendants of the lost ten
tribes, the very Israel of God.