The Bible: The Book of Daniel Essay -- Religion, Nebuchadnezzar

Traditionally, a prophet gives a message from God to His people. Another way Daniel sways from being a typical Old Testament Prophet is that He interprets God’s messages, yet sometimes he was not the original recipient of the message. A vision, dream, or miraculous event happens and Daniel is called in to give an interpretation of what God’s message is in this happening. As Daniel was like John in the book of Revelation with his writing style, he is much like Joseph in the book of Genesis in his prophetical style. Another difficulty for Hebrew scripture is that these pagan Gentile leaders were the ones to whom God originally imparted His visions. In some circumstances, Daniel was called to miraculously tell the details of the vision before giving his God given interpretation. It is no wonder that even if Daniel was available to be put into the prophetic section, a staunch Israelite would not have placed him in this area. His prophecies and writing are focused upon Gent iles. He uses an apocalyptic literary style and on top of this His messages are not always delivered to Him from God in a normal prophetical style. In chapter seven, Daniel dreams a dream of four beasts. The first is like a winged lion, the second is like a bear with three ribs in its mouth, the third is a four headed, four winged leopard, and the last one is the worst of all and destroys the first three. It has ten horns and a small eleventh horn comes up and yanks out three of the horns. This little horn had eyes and a mouth. The vision is interpreted for Daniel. The four beasts are four kingdoms. The fourth kingdom will be greater than all the previous kingdoms and its ten horns represent the ten kings of that kingdom. The eleventh king will subdue three of th... ... that the part which would be the breast and the arms of silver will crush the former kingdoms just as iron crushes in real life. The kingdom will retain some of its strength, but as it moves into the feet, it is now a divided kingdom. Just as it retains some of its strength, the clay shows that it has gained some weakness. The iron and clay mingled shows the inner mingling of these peoples. The final image in the dream is the stone that becomes a mountain and engulfs the entire world. This is not only the fifth but it is also the final kingdom made by God that will never be taken over by another kingdom. It also will end all other kingdoms. Daniel ends his interpretation and recollection of the dream by saying, â€Å"the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy† (Daniel 2:45).