Lesson 10: The History of the World Foretold

One of the first questions we need to answer about this prophecy is why it was given to an unbelieving king like King Nebuchadnezzar rather than to Daniel. One reason was to show this king of a powerful, ungodly kingdom that the true God was the only one who could foretell the events of earth’s future. This is one of the greatest signs that the Bible is real and true – only Someone who knows the future in complete detail can prophesy those details hundreds and even thousands of years in advance.

A second reason was to bring King Nebuchadnezzar to be a believer in Creator God. While this did not happen immediately, it was certainly a part of all that God did in his life to bring him to faith in Himself. As we, too, come to Jesus by faith, we soon begin to recognize the plans He had for us which directed us along His path to bring us to Himself.

A third reason is that it brought Daniel to a high position which would affect history hundreds of years later. We will talk about this in a later lesson. We will see Daniel’s promotion in the next lesson.

A fourth reason, as we will also see later in this book, was for us, today, to see the truth of God’s plan for human history and lead us into deeper faith in Himself. Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 24 that He gave them (and us) information of things that would come in the future so that when we see them happening, we will believe Him more completely and our trust in Him would grow.


The dream foretold of six government systems that would rule the earth as attempts to revive Babel, (Genesis 11) which God dispersed. Only the last of these listed will truly accomplish that goal. As we read in the verses in the last lesson, those one-world governments are:
*Babylon under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar
*Medo-Persian Empire which defeated and succeeded Babylon
*Greece under the rule of Alexander the Great
*Rome under the Caesars
*A revived-Roman Empire ruling the whole world in the last days
*A “stone” that would crush all the other governments and fill the earth

The first four of these one-world governments are described in our history books which confirm the details from this chapter. More details of these four kingdoms are also prophesied in the book of Ezekiel. The fifth will receive far greater detail and explanation in later chapters of Daniel as God tells him more. And the “stone” is Jesus Christ, foretelling His description as the “chief cornerstone” in Ephesians 2:20 and other passages. We will study this kingdom more later as well.

People around us may insist that everything is by chance, but God makes that argument void as He tells us what will happen in the kind of detail that only comes from someone who has “seen” those events. God, eternal and not limited to time as we are, knows the “end from the beginning” as He states in Isaiah 46:10.

*Memorize: Isaiah 46:9-10 – Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand.”