Daniel 2 - why not China?

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Eoghan

Puritan Board Senior
In considering the four kingdoms why is there no mention of China? As Jay Adams put it stand four people in a room and one of them is chinese!

The chinese "empire" represents 1/4 of the world population and yet...
 
Perhaps because China played no role in redemptive history, whereas the other kingdoms mentioned in Dan. 2 all did?

Inclusion in prophetic literature is not determined by popular vote.
 
Right. We should see these as kingdoms that dominated the world from Israel's perspective from Daniel's day until Christ. God chose to work through that perspective and those people at that time.
 
I have been mulling this over too and if my perception of history is correct China basically kept to itself, as did Japan. What seems to have characterised the Empires of Daniel was conquest and assimilation. In this sense these empires were seeking to assimilate and make others like them. Daniel is a case point as is Rome which often sent sons of chieftans to Rome for education. This was to guarantee good behaviour of conquered tribes but also as a process of assimilation. I don't know that the chinese really went in for this.

Anyone agree or can refine what I have said?
 
I have been mulling this over too and if my perception of history is correct China basically kept to itself, as did Japan. What seems to have characterised the Empires of Daniel was conquest and assimilation. In this sense these empires were seeking to assimilate and make others like them. Daniel is a case point as is Rome which often sent sons of chieftans to Rome for education. This was to guarantee good behaviour of conquered tribes but also as a process of assimilation. I don't know that the chinese really went in for this.

Anyone agree or can refine what I have said?

I think you are still missing the most important point. Each of the kingdoms prophesied by Daniel played an important role in the history of redemption. The Babylonians destroyed the Temple. The Persians gave the order for the Temple to be rebuilt and the Jews to return to Jerusalem. The Greeks unified the known world under one language (which also happens to be the language of the New Testament). The Romans built and secured roads which enabled the Apostles to carry the message of the Gospel to the whole Roman world (and beyond!). The conquest and assimilation which these different kingdoms/empires did is only secondary to their functions (which God providentially ordered) to prepare the world for Christ and the message of salvation in Him alone.
 
I don't think I am missing the point. I think the focus is on those Empires which threaten Israel through cultural assimilation. Babylon gave way to Persia which gave way to Greece which gave way to Rome which gave way to the Kingdom of God. Each is a man-made structure of immense power which fails, it is the last ushered in by the Messiah that endures!

---------- Post added at 01:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 PM ----------

I would be interested to hear how the Greek empire iminged on Israel
 
Christ's Kingdom was set up during, and in, Rome's Empire and Christian/Western civilisation grew out of the division of Rome.

It is this Christian/Western civilisation that now dominates the World and is in the process of subsuming all nations.

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 for ever. (Daniel 2:44)

The Christianisation of the World is a process in history which God ordains that the Evil One and his angelic and human minions shall resist at every point.

Where would be the glory if the whole World had immediately become Christian the moment they heard the Gospel?

---------- Post added at 09:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:32 PM ----------

I would be interested to hear how the Greek empire iminged on Israel

You'll learn about that later in Daniel. Antiochus Epiphanes and all that!

---------- Post added at 09:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:38 PM ----------

If you can be bothered getting another book, I'd recommend this as a short and simple and sane and straightforward commentary on Daniel:-

DARE TO STAND ALONE DANIEL: Read and Enjoy the Book of Daniel Welwyn commentary series: Amazon.co.uk: OLYOTT STUART: Books

I highly recommend it.

China is now slowly being brought into Christ's international Kingdom, the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). We're at an early stage of the maturing, growth and development of Christ's Kingdom. In Christ's international nation cultural and linguistic differences can be maintained while what is sinful is removed.

Israel is swallowing up the whole World under her great King, Christ Jesus; greater than Joshua, Moses, David and Solomon put together.
 
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1 in 4 people are chinese. You cannot ignore them. They are the paymasters of the US. Without them the US is bankrupt - no?
 
1 in 4 people are chinese. You cannot ignore them. They are the paymasters of the US. Without them the US is bankrupt - no?

You seem to be following a futurist approach to Daniel. Futurism is the whackiest approach to apocalyptic literature in the Bible. Futurists and their "newspaper exegesis" or "newspaper eisegesis" find anything from Napoleon, Mussolini, Communism, Hitler, the fall of Gordon Brown and the rise of David Cameron, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the affairs of Berlusconi, etc, etc, in the Book of Revelation.

Do you think it was important for Daniel's immediate audience, or those that followed in the centuries up to the Advent of Christ and the establishment of His New Covenant Church, to know that 25 centuries down the line China would be on the rise and America on the wane?

Do you think it is important for us to know this from God's Word, or is this why God has given us newspapers and televisions?
 
I think you misunderstand the question Richard. I am not propounding a thesis but asking a question. Indeed if you notice I have posted further on it as my thoughts have developed.

In it's context the dream is an example of special revelation to Nebuchadnezzar a pagan king who worships Marduk in a pagan temple?

It is an accepted part of fair debate that we do not attribute to an author opinions which are not expressly avowed. Even if they are a logical consequence of statements made. An author may be unaware of what he is implying and indeed expressly disavow such a view if it is pointed out. (L. Berkhof somewhere in Principles of Biblical Interpretation) I think you are going a little far in attributing a futurist approach, whatever that is?




FOUND IT
"Hence the rule so often forgotten in in practice yet essential to fair controversy, that it is not allowable to charge upon an author the consequences of his statements when not expressly avowed or adopted..." p158
 
...and in conclusion!

Having chewed this over for the better part of a week, prayed over it and consulted other wiser christians I think I have come to a conclusion.

For the Jews the Babylonian exile was (aand is) a seminal experience. They were at risk of cultural assimilation under the Babylonians and again under the Persians. Daniel shows them as culturally unbowed and still faithful. Esther likewise, albeit perhaps more of a wake-up call.

We forget or de-emphasise that our Saviour is also the Jewish Messiah. If man or Satan had succeeded in wiping out the Jews then that would have been that! (Sadly even that line of reasoning is weak in the light of Sovereignty, as it is like saying if there was no sun) These four kingdoms are attempts to organise mankind, a cultural Tower of Babel. The Jews are told quite clearly they will survive and they will give rise to the kingdom of heaven. Now granted their understanding was still developing but Daniel was about to expand on that.

These kingdoms will come and go bit the Jews WILL give birth to the Messiah who WILL bring in the kingdom of heaven. This in the reign of the Roman empire.

For the Jews it lets them know they are not the victim of the vageries of history. They are travelling down a path that has been paved for them by divine decree. They have seen a glimpse of Providence.


For Nebuchadnezzar who has been driven to distraction by "not knowing" he has been granted the luxury of "knowing". It also demonstrates to the Jews just how much in control their God is. Marduk has not trounced the God of Abraham. Rather He has allowed the Jews to be taken captive - for a season.

Besides God is not finished with Nebuchabnezzar. He is undergoing some "re-education" of his own and this is only lesson one.

Hope thois helps and serves as a suitable closure to this thread.
 
futurist approach

Futurism is the approach to apocalyptic literature in the Bible followed by dispensational premillennialists. Partly because they take a very literalistic approach to e.g. Revelation, they do not see anything from Revelation 6 to 19 as having been fulfilled yet. But they often predict that it is about to be fulfilled in our time and identify personalities and events that indicate that.

I don't know if futurism has been applied to the four empires of Daniel. Possibly it is just too clear that the first empire is Babylon and the last empire is Rome.

Another book I'd highly recommend along with the Olyott book is "The Interpretation of Prophecy" by Patrick Fairbairn (Banner of Truth). He deals in-depth with Daniel and why the four empires are presented in two different ways.
 
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