The Golden Headed Statue
Why Rome Is Not the Fourth Kingdom
of the Iron legs
of the Iron legs
Although it has been traditional to understand the Roman Empire as being represented by the iron legs of Nebuchadnezzar statue there are a number of factors which show that it does not fulfil this role.
Firstly, the dream statue would be seen from Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective of Middle-Eastern empires, whereas Rome became a western empire significantly focused on Europe as far west as Britain.
Secondly, a common factor for the kingdoms in the statue is that of having control over the city of Babylon and occupying its territories. This is because the statute in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream has its feet in the single location of Babylon. This was true for:
Nebuchadnezzar himself who made Babylon the centre of the first kingdom of the prophecy.
Cyrus the Persian who made Babylon the centre of the second kingdom of the prophecy and dramatically extended Babylon’s conquered territories.
Alexander of Macedon who made Babylon the centre of the third kingdom of the prophecy and occupied approximately the same territories as had the Medo-Persian Empire.
So, the fourth kingdom, the iron legs, should also fully encompass the ancient Babylonian territories. Although, the Roman Empire did absorb the territories of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires, the above detail was not true of the Roman Empire because it never conquered Babylonia. It merely had control over the city of Babylon for one year only under Emperor Trajan in A.D. 155, but never extended itself beyond the Euphrates River, but rather it bordered and was largely in competition with the Parthian Empire—a new Persian empire—which controlled all of the Babylonian territory east of the Euphrates.
Thirdly, Rome was not the next empire to follow on from Alexander’s Macedonian empire. In fact, it was the Seleucid Greek Empire that followed on from Alexander and then the Parthian Empire which then conquered the Seleucids.
Fourthly, apart from the fact that the sixth empire listed in Revelation 17:10-11 was evidently the Roman Empire as the “one is” in John’s day, there are no notable prophecies concerning Rome in the Scriptures. It is only assumed from incorrect historical statements that Rome was the fourth Kingdom in the statue.
Fifthly, the two iron legs of the golden-headed statue could not be the Eastern and Western divisions of the Roman Empire as in the traditional interpretation. Otherwise, the image would have to stand on one leg for the time represented after the end of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476 until the fall of the Eastern Byzantine Roman Empire in A.D. 1453 and which fell to the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire.
THE CRUSHING OF EARLIER KINGDOMS
Lastly, there is a major detail regarding this fourth kingdom/ empire as represented by the iron legs. It is that it is, “hard as iron, as iron pulverizes and crushes all. Like iron that breaks everything to pieces, it will crush and break all the earlier kingdoms” (Dan. 2:40 NJB). Such crushing would involve the occupation of the defeated capital city, exile or death of the ruling dynasty, and subjugation of the populations of these earlier kingdoms—all to the point that nothing would be left of the culture or language of those empires. But this was not how the Roman Empire operated. Although Rome did persecute Christians as well as Jews to a lesser extent, the Roman Empire never crushed the territories it conquered. In fact, such events were not the history of Rome in its engagements with its conquered territories which still maintained their own cultures and did not fully embrace Latin and so leaving Greek as the primary culture and as the lingua franca.
Furthermore, being made of iron indicates government by a religious, hard, inflexible and cold system of law such as exists with Islamic law; whereas the Roman Empire operated on the Pax Romana as one seeking peace and allowing captured peoples to maintain their religion, culture and language.
All of this therefore means that the traditional interpretation that the fourth kingdom is Rome is incorrect.
Why the Islamic Empire Is Represented
by the Iron Legs
Islam is a political power that operates on religious lines based on its various religious books and their interpretation by the religious leaders. In its fundamentalist radical form, it has world-domination as its goal and comes under the headship of the Caliphate of the time. These Caliphates over time were:
The four Caliphs ruling from Medina in Arabia (A.D. 632-661)
The Umayyad Caliphate ruling from Damascus (A.D. 661-750)
The Abbasid Caliphate ruling from Baghdad (A.D. 750-1258)
Mamluk Empire/Caliphate ruling from Cairo (A.D. 1258-1519)
The Ottoman Empire/Caliphate ruling from Istanbul (A.D. 1519-1923).
These Caliphates constituted a single Islamic Empire and the reasons why it is this empire that is represented by the iron legs are that:
Unlike the Roman Empire the Islamic Empire occupied all of the territory of the Babylonian Empire. It was the Islamic Caliphate which had conquered the Babylonian lands by A.D. 650 and later it was the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire which conquered the last stronghold of the Eastern Roman Empire in A.D. 1453 becoming “the other” which, in John’s day, had “not yet come.”
Unlike the Roman Empire, the Islamic Empire has not stood on one leg for part of its history, but has always had its Sunni (85%) and Shiite (12-15%) denominations.
The iron legs of the statue are fulfilled by the Islamic Empire because of its governmental arrangement by a politico-military-religious, hard, inflexible and cold system of law that was, “hard as iron, as iron pulverizes and crushes all. Like iron that breaks everything to pieces, it will crush and break all the earlier kingdoms” (Dan. 2:40 NJB). Whenever Islamic wars were won the Caliphate totally took over occupation of the defeated cities, exiled or executed the previous ruling dynasty, and then totally subjugated the population replacing the law with Muslim Sharia law and changed the customs and languages of the defeated nation.
In spite of the recent failed attempt of Isis to revive the Caliphate, it is clear from the biblical prophecies that there will yet be a revived Caliphate as a revived Ottoman Empire that will in time become Antichrist’s empire as seen in the ten toes.
- The Feet and Ten Toes
Indeed, the feet and ten toes represent a future revived Ottoman Empire—a renewed Islamic Caliphate—again stretching out from Turkey and eventually becoming Antichrist’s Empire. Antichrist himself is firstly seen in his “little horn” stage (Daniel 7:8; 8:9 and 11:21-28) and then in his final powerful satanic stage (2 Thess. 2:9) with control over the ten toes/horns/kings (Dan. 7:24 Rev. 17:12-13).
This empire, in being made partly of iron and partly of baked clay, “shall be a divided kingdom” (Dan. 2:41) comprising these 10 Middle-Eastern nations as an Islamic Confederacy under Turkey. Indeed, because the focus is on the feet and toes it is possible that the baked clay of the feet represents the weakening effect of democracy, but also act like iron with its iron like Sharia law.
Final Fulfilment Involves the Entire Statue
Daniel reports to King Nebuchadnezzar that:
“As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone [Messiah] that struck the image became a great mountain [God’s Kingdom] and filled the whole earth” (Dan. 2:34, 35).
Combined with the statement in Daniel 2:44 that: “in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom” the fact about these kingdoms that they, “all together were broken in pieces” must mean that in the final fulfilment, i.e., when the rock (Messiah’s Kingdom) crashes into the feet of the statue, it will bring down all the modern-day kingdoms in the territories occupied by the ancient kingdoms—Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greek, Ottoman, and the revived Islamic/Antichrist Empire. Today all of these territories in the Middle-East are Islamic. So, from an end-times perspective the kingdoms described in the statue image are modern-day Islamic powers in the form of a confederacy.
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