Friday, December 31, 2010
Seventh Christmas Day
Daniel 2:44 In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL
The Bible says that nobody can know when Jesus will come again to judge the world. But that wasn't the case when Jesus came the first time. Prophecies in Daniel circle the period of history in which the Savior would arrive to establish His eternal kingdom.
Here's how it worked: In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar saw a vision of a magnificent statue. It had a gold head, silver arms and chest, a belly and thighs of bronze and legs and feet of iron and clay.
God's prophet Daniel interpreted that the different materials represented different empires that were to come. The gold was Nebuchadnezzar and the currently reigning Babylonian Empire. After the gold would come the silver (the Medo-Persia Empire), the bronze (the Greek Empire under Alexander the great) and finally the iron (the Roman Empire).
Daniel says the last kingdom would be a powerful, amalgamated kingdom. But it would also be a divided kingdom. More importantly, Daniel notes that during the reign of this empire's kings, God would establish an eternal kingdom.
Here's the point: God's Messiah had to be born DURING THE REIGN OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Any "savior" born outside that window simply couldn't be the eternal king God was pointing to.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus called a census that brought His guardians there. To fulfill the prophecy, Jesus was right on time. And on the cross He established the eternal kingdom of forgiveness when He suffered and died for our sins.
