---
title: "The Image and the Kingdoms: Daniel 2 and 7 Through History"
category: "prophecy"
description: "Nebuchadnezzar's image and Daniel's four beasts as one prophecy: Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece and Rome, the ten kings and the little horn, the stone cut out by no human hand, and where the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 sit inside it."
tags: ["daniel", "revelation", "dispensationalism", "kingdom-of-god", "antichrist", "prophecy", "chart", "lang/aramaic", "lang/greek"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Daniel 2:31-45; Daniel 7:1-28"
bible_references: ["Daniel 2:1-49", "Daniel 3:1", "Daniel 3:17-18", "Daniel 4:17", "Daniel 5:28", "Daniel 6:28", "Daniel 7:1-28", "Daniel 8:8-9", "Daniel 8:20-22", "Daniel 9:24-27", "Psalm 118:22", "Jeremiah 29:7", "Matthew 21:44", "Matthew 24:15", "Mark 14:62", "Luke 20:17-18", "Luke 21:24", "Colossians 1:13", "2 Thessalonians 2:3-4", "Revelation 13:1-7", "Revelation 17:12-14"]
date_created: 2026-10-19
date_modified: 2026-10-19
ai_provider_models:
- anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---
# The Image and the Kingdoms
*Daniel 2 and 7 through history*
In 603 BC a king who had already taken Jerusalem lay awake over a dream, and a young captive from
Judah told him what he had seen. It was the whole future of the kingdoms that would rule God's
people, from that king's own empire to the day God ends them all, given before most of them existed:
> ✝️ Daniel 2:31-35 (ESV)
>
> 31 "You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness,
> stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of this image was of fine gold,
> its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly
> of iron and partly of clay. 34 As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck
> the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the
> bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of
> the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be
> found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
**In one sentence:** God showed a pagan king the whole course of Gentile power, from Babylon to the
end, as one image that a stone not cut by human hands will strike and replace; Daniel 7 shows the
same four kingdoms as God sees them and names the last ruler of the fourth, and that ruler's three
and a half years are the second half of Daniel's seventieth week, so the image, the beasts and the
weeks are one prophecy of history ending in Christ's kingdom.
[](https://the-way.lewy.au/assets/img/comics/the-image-and-the-kingdoms.svg)
The [Daniel's kingdoms sheet on the timeline](/timeline/#daniel&view=chart) draws this study as
one picture: the image down the left side, each part ruled across to the years its kingdom held.
## Key Takeaways
*(This section follows the [Key Takeaways](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/key-takeaways/) format — see that page for what
each part is for.)*
### Types & Prophecy
- **Four kingdoms, three of them named by Daniel.** Babylon is the head of gold (Daniel 2:38),
Media-Persia the ram (Daniel 8:20), Greece the goat (Daniel 8:21). The fourth is unnamed; this site
reads it as Rome, on the evidence of Daniel 9:26.
- **One prophecy told three ways.** The image (Daniel 2), the beasts (Daniel 7) and the seventy weeks
(Daniel 9) cover the same history, and the little horn's "time, times, and half a time" (Daniel
7:25) is the last half of the seventieth week (Daniel 9:27).
### Lessons about Jesus
- **Jesus is the Son of Man who receives the kingdom.** Daniel saw "one like a son of man" given an
everlasting dominion (Daniel 7:13-14), and Jesus claimed that title before the high priest (Mark
14:62).
- **He is the stone.** The kingdom God sets up "in the days of those kings" breaks every kingdom
before it (Daniel 2:44), and Jesus spoke of a stone that "will crush" whoever it falls on (Luke
20:18) with the verb Greek Daniel uses of the stone kingdom (Daniel 2:44).
### Memory verses
> ✝️ Daniel 2:44 (ESV)
>
> 44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be
> destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these
> kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever,
### Be Transformed
- **Think.** History is going somewhere. God "removes kings and sets up kings" (Daniel 2:21), and the
last kingdom on the map is His Son's.
- **Attitude.** Steadiness under powers you did not choose. Daniel served four kings across nearly
seventy years (Daniel 1:21; 10:1) and bowed to none of their gods.
- **Do.** Pray for the city you live in, as God told the exiles to (Jeremiah 29:7), and refuse the
one thing Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused: worship of anything but God (Daniel 3:18).
### Prayer
Father, You rule the kingdom of men and give it to whom You will. You told a proud king the end of
his empire before it began, and You have told us the end of ours. Thank You that the kingdom that
will fill the earth belongs to Your Son Jesus, and that You have already transferred us into it.
Keep us faithful under the rulers we live under, unafraid of the beasts, and watching for the stone.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
## Study outline
- **[The night the king could not sleep](#the-night-the-king-could-not-sleep)**: the setting in 603
BC, and the God who reveals mysteries.
- **[One image, four metals](#one-image-four-metals)**: the image part by part, and the image of gold
the king built in answer.
- **[Naming the four kingdoms](#naming-the-four-kingdoms)**: Babylon, Media-Persia and Greece from
Daniel's own mouth, and the case for Rome as the fourth.
- **[The same four as God sees them](#the-same-four-as-god-sees-them)**: Daniel 7's beasts, the ten
horns and the little horn.
- **[The stone and the Son of Man](#the-stone-and-the-son-of-man)**: who receives the kingdom, and the stone Jesus spoke of in Luke 20:18.
- **[Where the seventy weeks sit in the image](#where-the-seventy-weeks-sit-in-the-image)**: Daniel 9
inside the silver and the iron.
- **[Between the legs and the feet](#between-the-legs-and-the-feet)**: whether the stone has struck,
with the case on both sides.
- **[What this shows about God](#what-this-shows-about-god)**: God rules the kingdoms of men, gives the kingdom to His Son, and so you can live faithfully under any of them.
## The night the king could not sleep
### Daniel 2 in its year
**The dream came in "the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar" (Daniel 2:1, ESV).** He took
the throne in 605 BC, the year he beat Egypt at Carchemish and first besieged Jerusalem (Daniel 1:1;
[Chronology Anchors](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/chronology-anchors/), entry 10). Counted the Babylonian way, from
his first full year, his second year is 603/602 BC. Daniel had been in Babylon two or three years and
was still a young man in training at court (Daniel 1:3-6).
The king summoned "the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans" and demanded the
dream itself as well as its meaning (Daniel 2:2-5). They answered that only "the gods, whose dwelling
is not with flesh" could do that (Daniel 2:11, ESV). Daniel and his three friends prayed, God showed
Daniel the dream in a night vision (Daniel 2:17-19), and Daniel blessed the God who "removes kings and
sets up kings" (Daniel 2:21, ESV). [Dreams and Visions](https://the-way.lewy.au/holy-spirit/dreams-and-visions/)
treats the chapter as a dream given and interpreted; this study takes up what the dream said.
### A God in heaven who reveals mysteries
**Daniel's first words to the king give the credit away.**
> ✝️ Daniel 2:27-28 (ESV)
>
> 27 Daniel answered the king and said, "No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show
> to the king the mystery that the king has asked, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals
> mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream
> and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these:
The word for "mystery" is the Aramaic רָז (*raz*, H7328), a secret held in
heaven until God discloses it. [Israel and the
Church](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/#what-scripture-means-by-a-mystery) follows the
word into Paul. "In the latter days" is בְּאַחֲרִית יוֹמַיָּא
(*be'acharit yomayya*, H320, H3118), literally "at the end of the days", as the LSB's footnote gives
it. The phrase sets the dream's horizon: it runs from the king's own reign to the end of history.
## One image, four metals
### What the king saw
**The image is one figure from head to toe.** The Aramaic צְלֵם (*tselem*,
H6755) means an image or statue, and it was "mighty and of exceeding brightness" (Daniel 2:31, ESV).
Each part is a different material, and the materials run downward from gold through silver and bronze
to iron, then iron mixed with "potter's clay" (Daniel 2:41), חֲסַף (*chasaf*,
H2635), fired earthenware.
Two things change as the eye moves down. The metals lose value: gold, then silver, then bronze, then
iron. And they gain hardness, until the iron "breaks to pieces and shatters all things" (Daniel 2:40,
ESV). The feet then lose the strength the legs had, because iron and clay "will not hold together"
(Daniel 2:43, ESV). Daniel calls that last stage "a divided kingdom", פְּלִיגָה
(*peligah*, H6386) (Daniel 2:41).
### The stone
**The end of the image comes from outside it.** A stone "was cut out by no human hand", לָא בִידַיִן (*la vidayin*, H3809, H3028, "not by hands"), and struck the image "on its feet"
(Daniel 2:34, ESV). The metals were broken "all together" (Daniel 2:35), כַּחֲדָה
(*kachadah*, H2298), "as one", which is the LSB's footnoted literal rendering. Then the stone "became a
great mountain and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:35, ESV). Daniel 2:45 adds that the stone was cut
"from a mountain": God's kingdom comes from where God is.
### The king's answer: an image all of gold
**The next thing Nebuchadnezzar built was an image, the same word, all of gold.** "King Nebuchadnezzar
made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits" (Daniel 3:1, ESV).
צְלֵם runs through both chapters, from the dream (Daniel 2:31-35) to the plain
of Dura (Daniel 3:1-19). Told he was the head of gold and that a kingdom would come after his, the
king set up an image of gold from top to bottom and ordered the nations to worship it. Daniel 3
leaves his motive unstated; the shared word sets the two images side by side, and the reader
sees the king's answer to God's revelation. Three young men refused it: "we will not serve your gods
or worship the golden image that you have set up" (Daniel 3:18, ESV).
## Naming the four kingdoms
### Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece
**Daniel names three of the four himself.** The first he names to Nebuchadnezzar's face: "you are the
head of gold" (Daniel 2:38, ESV). Babylon's kingdom held from 605 BC until Cyrus took the city in 539
BC (Daniel 5:30-31).
The next two he names in a later vision, of a ram and a goat:
> ✝️ Daniel 8:20-21 (ESV)
>
> 20 As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. 21 And
> the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king.
The ram is one animal with two horns, so Media and Persia are one kingdom, the silver of the image.
Daniel 5:28 says the same of Babylon's end: "your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and
Persians" (ESV). Greece is the bronze: Alexander broke Persia at Gaugamela in 331 BC, died in 323 BC,
and his empire went to four kingdoms of his generals, settled at Ipsus in 301 BC (Daniel 8:8, 22).
[Chronology Anchors](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/chronology-anchors/#daniel-names-the-kingdoms-himself) dates
each of these fulfilments.
### The fourth kingdom: Rome
**Daniel never names the fourth kingdom, and this site reads it as Rome.** The case rests on three
things in the text.
1. **Daniel 9 points to it.** After the sixty-nine weeks, "the people of the prince who is to come
shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Daniel 9:26, ESV). Rome destroyed both in AD 70, so the
people of the coming prince are Rome's people, and the last ruler arises from the fourth kingdom.
2. **The kingdom follows Greece.** The fourth kingdom crushes "all these" (Daniel 2:40), and Rome
took the Greek kingdoms one by one, ruling Judea from 63 BC.
3. **Jesus put Daniel's end after Greece.** He told His disciples to watch for "the abomination of
desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel" (Matthew 24:15, ESV) in the Roman years, two centuries
after Antiochus IV.
The other reading counts Media and Persia as two kingdoms and makes Greece the fourth, so that the
little horn of Daniel 7 is Antiochus IV and the book ends in the second century BC. Daniel 8:20 tells
against it: the angel gives Media and Persia one ram. The ESV Study Bible notes that the church's
traditional commentators have "almost universally" identified the four as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece
and Rome (note on Daniel 2:43-44), and that scholars who take the visions as written after the events date the
book to the second century BC.
## The same four as God sees them
### Four beasts from the sea
**About fifty years after the dream, Daniel saw the same four kingdoms again, as beasts.** The vision
came "in the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon" (Daniel 7:1, ESV), when Belshazzar ruled as
regent for Nabonidus, between 553 and 550 BC. Chapters 2 and 7 open and close the Aramaic part of the
book (Daniel 2:4 to 7:28), and both are about four kingdoms. In chapter 2 a king sees them as a
splendid figure of metal; in chapter 7 a prophet sees them as beasts that devour.
| | Daniel 2: the image | Daniel 7: the beasts | Daniel 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Babylon | Head of fine gold (2:32, 38) | A lion with eagles' wings, made to stand like a man (7:4) | |
| Media-Persia | Chest and arms of silver (2:32, 39) | A bear raised up on one side, three ribs in its mouth (7:5) | A ram with two horns (8:3-4, 20) |
| Greece | Middle and thighs of bronze (2:32, 39) | A leopard with four wings and four heads (7:6) | A goat whose great horn breaks into four (8:5-8, 21-22) |
| Rome | Legs of iron (2:33, 40) | A fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns (7:7, 19, 23) | |
| Its last form | Feet and toes of iron and clay (2:33, 41-43) | Ten horns, and a little horn that puts down three (7:7-8, 24) | |
| God's kingdom | A stone that becomes a mountain (2:34-35, 44-45) | One like a son of man given an everlasting kingdom (7:13-14, 27) | |
The leopard's four heads match the goat's four horns, both the divided Greek empire. The fourth beast
has "great iron teeth" (Daniel 7:7, ESV) and "claws of bronze" (Daniel 7:19, ESV), the iron of the
image's legs.
### The ten horns and the little horn
**The angel explains the horns as kings.**
> ✝️ Daniel 7:23-25 (ESV)
>
> 23 "Thus he said: 'As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be
> different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break
> it to pieces. 24 As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall
> arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. 25 He
> shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall
> think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and
> half a time.
The ten horns answer to the toes of the image, which Daniel 2 does not number (Daniel 2:41-42); this
site reads both as the fourth kingdom's last form, divided among ten kings.
The little horn rises after them and rules over the saints for "a time, times, and half a time",
three and a half years. Paul calls him "the man of lawlessness" who "takes his seat in the temple of
God, proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, ESV), and Revelation gives his beast
authority "for forty-two months" (Revelation 13:5, ESV). This is the figure the church has called the
Antichrist.
**Daniel 8 has a different little horn.** Daniel 8's horn grows "out of one of" the goat's four horns
(Daniel 8:9, ESV), from the Greek kingdoms, and its acts fit Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who desecrated the
temple in 167 BC. Daniel 7's grows from the fourth beast. Antiochus is a preview of the last ruler,
and Jesus still spoke of the abomination as future after him (Matthew 24:15).
## The stone and the Son of Man
### One like a son of man
**Both visions end with God's kingdom replacing the kingdoms of men, and Daniel 7 says who receives
it.**
> ✝️ Daniel 7:13-14 (ESV)
>
> 13 "I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of
> man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given
> dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his
> dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not
> be destroyed.
"One like a son of man" is כְּבַר אֱנָשׁ (*kevar enash*, H1247, H606): a human
figure coming "with the clouds of heaven", where the beasts came up out of the sea. The kingdom that
"shall not be destroyed" (Daniel 7:14) is the kingdom of Daniel 2:44 that "shall never be destroyed",
and Daniel 7:27 gives it to "the people of the saints of the Most High". Before the high priest Jesus
took the title as His own: "you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming
with the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62, ESV). [The Olivet Discourse](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/olivet-discourse/) follows
Daniel 7:13 through Jesus' teaching.
### The stone that will crush
**Jesus also spoke of the stone.** After quoting Psalm 118:22, He said, "Everyone who falls on that
stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him" (Luke 20:18, ESV;
compare Matthew 21:44, which some early manuscripts lack). "Crush" is λικμάω (*likmaō*, G3039), and in
the New Testament it occurs in these two verses only. Greek Daniel uses it of the stone kingdom:
"λεπτυνεῖ καὶ λικμήσει πάσας τὰς βασιλείας", "it will grind and crush all the kingdoms" (Daniel 2:44,
Theodotion's Greek). The link is one rare verb, which makes this an allusion, and it puts Jesus in
the stone's place.
## Where the seventy weeks sit in the image
**Daniel 9 runs inside the image, in the silver and the iron.** Gabriel's count starts from "the
going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem" (Daniel 9:25, ESV), a Persian decree, and runs
sixty-nine weeks of years to the Messiah:
> ✝️ Daniel 9:26-27 (ESV)
>
> 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the
> people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come
> with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 27 And he shall make a
> strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice
> and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed
> end is poured out on the desolator."
Read against the image:
- **The sixty-nine weeks begin in the silver and end in the iron.** The decree is Artaxerxes', in his
twentieth year (Nehemiah 2:1), and the count reaches the week Jesus rode into Jerusalem in AD 33
under Rome. [Prophecy Events and Times](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/prophecy-events-times/#the-flagship-calculation-daniels-seventy-weeks-to-the-triumphal-entry)
works the arithmetic.
- **The Messiah is cut off in the iron**, crucified under a Roman governor, and the city falls to
Roman armies in AD 70 (Daniel 9:26).
- **The seventieth week belongs to the feet.** "The prince who is to come" makes the covenant of
Daniel 9:27, and his people are the people who destroyed the city. He is the little horn of Daniel
7, risen from the fourth kingdom. His "time, times, and half a time" (Daniel 7:25) is the "half of
the week" after he stops the sacrifice (Daniel 9:27), and Revelation's forty-two months (Revelation
13:5). [The Tribulation](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/tribulation/) draws that week year by year.
So the three visions meet at one point. The little horn of Daniel 7, the prince of Daniel 9 and the
toes of Daniel 2 are the last form of the fourth kingdom, and the kingdom of God replaces it.
## Between the legs and the feet
### The question
**Has the stone struck yet?** If it is Christ's first coming, the kingdom began with Him and grows
like the stone into a mountain. If it is His return, the image still stands, and the church age runs
between the iron legs and the feet. Both readings are held by believers who take Daniel as
prophecy, and the text gives reasons on each side.
### The case that it is still to come
This site holds that the stone strikes at Christ's return. The reasons are in the text:
- **The stone strikes the feet,** the divided last form (Daniel 2:34), and every metal is broken "all
together", כַּחֲדָה (Daniel 2:35). The image is destroyed in one blow, and
only then does the stone grow. Rome outlived the cross by centuries.
- **"In the days of those kings"** (Daniel 2:44) points to the kings of the feet, the ten of Daniel
7:24. Rome in Jesus' day had one emperor. Writing late in the first century on the usual dating, John
still called the ten kings future: they "have not yet received royal power" (Revelation 17:12, ESV).
- **Daniel 7 gives the kingdom after a judgment.** The little horn prevails "until the Ancient of
Days came, and judgment was given for the saints" (Daniel 7:22, ESV); the beast is killed, and then
the kingdom is given (Daniel 7:11, 26-27).
- **Daniel 9 already has a gap.** The events of Daniel 9:26, the Messiah cut off and the city
destroyed, fall after the sixty-ninth week and before the seventieth begins.
[Prophecy Essentials](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/prophecy-essentials/) and [Immediately After](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/immediately-after/) treat
that gap, and the image has the same one between legs and feet.
- **Jesus put His coming with the clouds in the future** when He took Daniel 7:13 as His own (Mark
14:62).
### The case that it has struck
The other reading takes the stone "cut out by no human hand" as Christ in His first coming, and the
mountain filling the earth as the kingdom spreading through the gospel, the way the mustard seed grows
into a tree (Matthew 13:31-32). Its reasons are that Jesus announced the kingdom at hand in His own
ministry (Mark 1:15), that God has already "transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son"
(Colossians 1:13, ESV), and that the stone "became" a mountain, which suggests growth over time.
### Where that leaves the reader
**Both readings hold that Jesus is the King and that His kingdom ends every other.** They divide over
when the image falls. The kingdom is present now in its King and its people (Colossians 1:13), and
[Your Kingdom Come](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/your-kingdom-come/) treats what that means for prayer. Daniel 2 describes
something more: the visible end of Gentile rule, in one blow, which history has not yet seen. Jesus
called that span "the times of the Gentiles", during which "Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by
the Gentiles" (Luke 21:24, ESV), and the statement of faith on this site holds the dispensational
order it implies: the church caught up, the seventieth week, then Christ's return to reign.
## What this shows about God
**God rules the kingdoms of men.** The sentence on Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4 says why it was given:
"that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will"
(Daniel 4:17, ESV). He showed the greatest king of his age where his empire stood in a sequence of
four, decades before the second arrived and centuries before the fourth. History is His story told in
advance, and every empire in it has a date of expiry He has already set.
**God gives the kingdom to His Son.** The image ends in a stone and the beasts end in a Son of Man.
The Father has appointed Jesus to the throne that outlasts every throne, and He has given that
kingdom "to the people of the saints of the Most High" (Daniel 7:27, ESV). That is you, if you
belong to Christ: delivered "from the domain of darkness and transferred... to the kingdom of his
beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13, ESV).
**So you can live faithfully under any kingdom.** Daniel served Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius
and Cyrus (Daniel 2:48; 5:29; 6:28). He sought the welfare of Babylon, as Jeremiah told the exiles to (Jeremiah
29:7), and he never bowed. You live in the long middle of this prophecy, under rulers who will one day
be chaff on a threshing floor. Serve them well, pray for them, and keep your worship for the God who
will set up the kingdom that stands forever.
## Discussion questions
1. **The language.** The same word, צְלֵם, names the image in Nebuchadnezzar's
dream (Daniel 2:31) and the golden image he set up (Daniel 3:1). What does putting the two side by
side say about how he received God's revelation?
2. **The text in its context.** Daniel names Babylon, Media-Persia and Greece (Daniel 2:38; 8:20-21)
and leaves the fourth kingdom unnamed. How does Daniel 9:26 help identify it?
3. **Christ.** Jesus took the title "Son of Man" from Daniel 7:13 before the high priest (Mark 14:62).
Why would that answer have been heard as a claim to the kingdom of Daniel 7:14?
4. **The hard part.** Does the stone strike at Christ's first coming or at His return? Which details of
Daniel 2:34-35, 44 weigh most with you, and why?
5. **Be transformed.** Daniel served four kings faithfully and bowed to none of their gods. Where do you
need to serve the authority over you better, and where do you need to refuse it?
## References & Recommended Reading
- *ESV Study Bible* (Crossway, 2008), introduction to Daniel; notes on Daniel 2:1-49, 2:40, 2:43-44,
7:1-2, 7:15-27. Consulted to check this study's reading, especially the traditional identification
of the four kingdoms and the dates of the visions.
- *NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible* (Zondervan, 2016), note on Daniel 7:1: Belshazzar's regency,
the Verse Account of Nabonidus and the Nabonidus Chronicle.
- *NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible* (Zondervan, 2018), note on Daniel 7:1.
- *Legacy Standard Bible* (Lockman Foundation, 2021), footnotes at Daniel 2:28 ("Lit end of the days")
and Daniel 2:35 ("Lit like one").
- *CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible* and *NLT Life Application Study Bible*, footnotes on Matthew 21:44.
- Brenton's Septuagint (Theodotion's Greek Daniel), Daniel 2:44; Masoretic Text (Westminster
Leningrad Codex) with MACULA Hebrew morphology for the Aramaic.
- On this site: [Chronology Anchors](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/chronology-anchors/),
[Prophecy Events and Times](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/prophecy-events-times/), [The Tribulation](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/tribulation/),
[Immediately After](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/immediately-after/), [Prophecy Essentials](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/prophecy-essentials/),
[The Olivet Discourse](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/olivet-discourse/), [Your Kingdom Come](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/your-kingdom-come/),
[Dreams and Visions](https://the-way.lewy.au/holy-spirit/dreams-and-visions/).