History forcefully reveals that you can stake your life on the Bible.
I was 18 and remember the moment well. I had recently made my decision to serve God and was poring over a Bible study lesson on the second chapter of Daniel. Each verse I read engaged me as I learned about an ancient Babylonian king who was given a description and explanation of a troubling dream by a God-fearing Hebrew youth. The details of this dream and its interpretation are impressive and important!
King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a great image that had a head of fine gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet and toes of iron mixed with clay. It was an imposing statue which brought pride to the king when he realized his kingdom was symbolized by the head of gold. Yet his vanity became bitter disappointment as he discovered that this prophecy described successive kingdoms that would rule after Babylon. History confirms that the joint kingdom of Medo-Persia, pictured by the arms of silver, conquered Babylon in 538 BC. Medo-Persia fell to Alexander the Great and his Greco-Macedonian Empire in 331 BC, depicted by the belly and thighs of brass. But the Greeks were overthrown by the iron monarchy of Rome, which occurred in 168 BC.
Daniel’s prophecy didn’t end there. Rome was to be divided into partly strong and partly weak nations represented by the feet and ten toes of the image. From 351 to 476 AD the dismemberment of Rome was done by ten leading tribes – the Alamanni, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians, Heruli, Anglo-Saxons, and Lombards. With an accuracy that cannot be equaled, God, through the prophet Daniel, revealed world history hundreds of years before it happened. Today nearly all of these nations comprise most of Western Europe.
Then Daniel shared with Nebuchadnezzar something important about those nations represented by the ten toes of the great image: “As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men: but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay.” (Daniel 2:43) The iron was mixed with clay and therefore had no ability to stick together. According to this prophecy, no man or army of men could ever hope to consolidate these nations, but that hasn’t prevented them from trying.
More than three centuries after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, had himself crowned in Rome by the pope. His new empire stretched from the Pyrenees to the Danube and from Hamburg to Sicily; and his imperial seal bore the words Renovatio Imperii Romani, “the Renewal of the Roman Empire.” Charlemagne’s empire fell apart fairly swiftly after his death, but the desire for the re-establishment of an over-arching political structure for Europe wasn’t abandoned.
Charles V tried, yet failed. Louis XIV tried, and he failed. Napoleon created the Legion of Honour in 1802 on the model of the Roman Legio Honoratorum and invoked Charlemagne at his imperial coronation in 1804. The battle of Waterloo was his demise. Then came Hitler. Hitler’s loyalists gave the Roman salute and their cry “Heil Hitler!” was modeled after “Hail Caesar!” Hitler’s vain aspiration for the triumph of culture and a union born of racial superiority, ensuring a thousand years of peace, ended in utter disaster.
Queen Victoria was known as the grandmother of Europe due to intermarriage in multiple attempts to reinstate the Roman Empire. It is believed that by the turn of the twentieth century every ranking hereditary ruler of Europe was related to the British royal family. The result of all that intermarriage was World War I. Through all these failed attemptsthe words of the Bible, “they will not adhere” held true.
It is my contention that we can believe the Bible. Even if you’re a skeptic, you need to be seriously considering the Bible. If your faith is wavering, don’t doubt anymore. Not only can you trust the Bible - you can
