END­TIME MESSAGES FROM JESUS – Sabbath Morning Evangelism   Volume 6

01. THE WORLD’S LAST RULER
1 End – Time Messages From Jesus

2 The World´s Last Ruler

Our story begins with the downfall of a nation that God had chosen
as His own. God had heaped blessings on Israel, but repeatedly
Israel had disobeyed God’s commandments.

3 The Israelites had intermarried with the heathen from nearby

countries. Partly because of this, Israel became an idolatrous
nation. There is much about this in the Bible. Let us examine one
or two references.

4 In prophetic vision, Ezekiel was shown the inside of the temple of

God. “So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping
things, and abominable beasts, and …

5 …all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall
round about.” Ezekiel 8:10.

6 Remember that this was a vision which portrayed in imagery the

spiritual corruption that was prevalent in Israel.

7 “Then said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn
again, you, and you will see greater abominations than these…”

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8 “…So He brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house;

and there, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the
porch…”

9 “… and the altar, were about twenty­five men with their backs 
toward the temple of the Lord,…”

10 “…and their faces toward the east; and they were worshiping 
the sun toward the east.” 
Ezekiel 8:15,16

11 This, very briefly, sets forth the corruption in Israel. As a result,

God allowed the Babylonians under the leadership of king
Nebuchadnezzar to invade the country. Jerusalem was destroyed,
King Zedekiah’s sons were killed before his eyes; then he was
blinded and carried away to live out his life in Babylon. The
Babylonians took more. They took the precious vessels of the
temple and great treasures of gold and silver, and the elite of the
people to be slaves.

12 Now the scene changes. Nebuchadnezzar, sleeping in his palace,

dreams. Not an ordinary dream, but one which deeply impressed
him. In the morning he awoke weighed down with a feeling that
something of vital importance was communicated in the dream. If
he could only understand it. If he could only remember it, and that
he could not do.

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13 His wise men cannot help him. His “cabinet” of astrologers,
magicians, soothsayers, and sorcerers were called in. The king
asked them to tell him what he had dreamed and what the dream
meant. They recoiled in terror. If they had known what the dream
was, they could have manufactured some kind of meaning
sufficiently ambiguous to fit almost any eventuality.
Death decree is issued. Now they were in a terrifying dilemma, for
Nebuchadnezzar threatened them with death and the confiscation of
their property unless they told him what he wanted to know. They
protested that what he was asking was unfair.
Now the king was no fool. He had no doubt sensed before that
these so-called wise men were clever deceivers.

14 “I know of certainty that ye would gain the time, because ye see

the thing is gone from me,” he said angrily. Daniel 2:8.

15 “The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is

not a man upon the earth that can show the king’s matter.”
Daniel 2:10.

16 Nebuchadnezzar had enough. He decreed death to all the wise men

in the country. Among these were some young Hebrew captives
who were innocent of wrongdoing. Among those innocent ones
were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. The Babylonian
court was to be their home, and they were trained to be civil
servants in the class of the wise men. They were given Babylonian
names. Daniel became Belteshazzar; Hananiah became Shadrach;
Mishael became Meshach; and Azariah became Abed-nego.

17 They had been tested by being commanded to eat food from the
king’s table (which had been offered to idols) and to drink the
king’s wine. When they refused to do these things, they were given
a testing period and then examined, and were found to be far

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01. THE WORLD’S LAST RULER
superior in wisdom to those who ate and drank what they had
refused. Nebuchadnezzar was delighted with them. We do not know
how long these Hebrew lads had been in Babylon when
Nebuchadnezzar had his dream, but they were included in the death
sentence now issued.
Daniel intervenes. Daniel asked Arioch, the captain of the king’s
guard:

18 “Why is the decree so hasty from the king?” Daniel 2:15

19 Then Daniel went to the king and asked for time, promising the
king that he would give him the information he wanted. He was
granted his request, and Daniel and his companions prayed to God
for wisdom.

20 Now we find Daniel standing before Nebuchadnezzar. He took no

credit for himself.

21 “The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the
astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare
to the king…”

22 “…But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has

made known to King Nebuchednezzar,…”

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23 “… what will be in the latter days. Your dream,

and the visions of your head upon your bed,
were, these: …”

24 “…But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me

because I have more wisdom tan anyone living,…”

25 “…but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the
King, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.”
Daniel 2:27, 28, 30

26 We should pause long enough here to note the humility of Daniel in

taking no credit to himself for the revelation that he was about to
give the king. It was this quality of absolute honesty and frankness
that enabled the man to continue so long in high places in the
changing government of Babylon.
Now he turns to the dream.

27 “You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This

great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you…”

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28 “…and its form was awesome. This image´s head was of fine
gold, its chest and arms of silver,…”

29 “…its belly and things of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly
of iron and partly of clay…”

30 “… You watched while a stone was cut out without hands which
struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in
pieces…”

31 “…Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold
were crushed together, and…”

32 “…became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the

wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found…”

33 “…And the stone that struck the image became a great

mountain and filled the whole earth.” Daniel 2:31-35

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34 This is a rather long passage of scripture, but a most important one,
and one that we will need to come back to. Now let us turn to
Daniel’s explanation of the significance of the image. There is no
question that as soon as Daniel began to describe the dream,
Nebuchadnezzar recognized it as exactly what he had seen in his
dream. We can almost see him leaning expectantly forward to hear
what Daniel was about to say.

35 “You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has
given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory;...“

36 ...and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the 
field and the birds of the heaven, ...“

37 “...He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler
over them all—you are this head of gold. Daniel 2:37, 38

38 History confirms the vision. Today we know that Babylon was all
that the dream described, but two centuries ago not much was
known about Babylon, and no one could read the Babylonian
language. There was a key to this language at a place called
Behistun in West Iran.

There near the ruins of an ancient town was a cliff on which were
carved inscriptions in Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, and these
three languages told much the same story.

39 An archaeologist by the name of Ralinson, with the use of ropes,

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hooks and immense ladders, laboriously copied the inscriptions,
and his copy was the key to deciphering ancient Babylonian. Today,
it has been said that we know more about Babylon at its height than
about London two centuries ago…

40 Babylon ruled first. Babylon was truly a world city. Gold, iron and
tin from Africa, Spain and the British isles cam to Babylon, as well
as timber from Lebanon. From India and Ceylon came gems,
pearls, spices and precious wood. But like all others before and
since, Babylon was only a man-made city and country, and the
deciphering of the dream continued:

41 “But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours;

then another, a third kingdom of bronze,…”

42 “…which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom
shall be strong as iron: inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces…”

43 “…and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that

kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others.”

44 Adolph Hitler was not the first ruler to imagine that his nation
would last “forever.” Nebuchadnezzar must have been dismayed to
hear that the glory of Babylon would be overthrown by another
nation. But it was to happen; and Daniel would still be alive to see
it.

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45 Medes and Persians conquer.

46 “That very night Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, was slain. 
And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty­
two years old.”

47 Alexander the Great. This great Medo­Persian empire was not to 
last either. It was swiftly conquered by a young Greek military 
genius named Alexander, with the decisive battle at Arbela where 
the Persians are said to have outnumbered the Greeks 20 to 1.

48 Describing Alexander the Great, Goodspeed said, “In 13 years of 
incessant activity, he mastered the world and set it going in new
paths.”

49 Another writer said of Alexander: “He was never defeated and he

finished almost every war in one or two battles.”

50 Alexander’s supremacy was short-lived. He died at the age of 33,

and the Greek empire did not long survive his death.

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51 “And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, inasmuch as

iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything;…”

52 “…and like iron that crushes, that kingdom, will break in

pieces and crush all the others.”
Daniel 2:40

53 This kingdom was Rome. Any student who has read world history
knows that the succession of kingdoms as outlined in the second
chapter of Daniel is exactly that recorded in reliable history.
Rome finally defeated Greece in the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.
The genius of Rome was largely that of organization, and Rome
built a kingdom that was to far outlast any of the three previous
world powers.

54 Two hundred and more years after Pydna, the record states: “And it
came to pass in those days that a decree wentout from Caesar
Augustus that all the world should be registered.”
Luke 2:1

55 Note carefully the words, “all the world,” because for centuries,
Rome was ruler of the world.

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56 The great historian of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Gibbon, wrote, “The world became a safe and dreary prison for
the enemies of the emperor; to resist was fatal and it was
impossible to fly.”

57 But even Rome fell—a victim to inward rot and the rebellion of
barbarian hordes which broke the decadent empire into pieces as it
grew soft. It is absolutely amazing that this and the subsequent
history of the world was foretold 25 centuries ago in such detail that
we could not improve on the record even with the hindsight we
have today.

58 “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter´s clay and
partly of iron, the kingdom shall be devided;…”

59 “…yet the strenght of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the
iron mixed with the ceramic clay…”

60 “…And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of
clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile…”

61 “…As you say iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle
with the seed of men;…”

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62 “…but they will not adhere to one another, just as
iron does not mixed with clay.”

63 We need to stand back and look at this prophecy a moment. God

revealed that, beginning with Babylon, there would be four world
kingdoms—Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. We could expect
that the record would continue with more of the same kind of
kingdoms; but the prophecy predicts that there will never be
another kingdom that will rule the world—that is, under the
rulership of men.

64 The marvel of this is that more than one strong man and nation
have tried to do what the former kingdoms accomplished.
Charlemagne tried it and was even crowned king of the Holy
Roman Empire in 800 A.D. Before he died he realized that he had
failed.

65 Charles V of Spain, hundreds of years later, was similarly crowned.

He failed and lived his last disillusioned years in a monastery.

66 Napoleon terrified Europe with his victories but was ultimately

defeated and died in exile.

67 Germany, under Wilhelm II, seemed bound for triumph in World

War I, but failed miserably, and he too died in exile in Doorn,
Holland.

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68 Out of the wreckage of World War II arose the Nazi power with
Adolph Hitler as its leader, equipped with the mightiest military
machine in the history of the world. And Hitler almost succeeded.
Sweeping through western Europe, the German army surrounded
the elite of the British army at Dunkirk and nearly captured it.
Miraculously, much of the army was returned to England, but
England stood almost powerless with the enemy only 21 miles
away.

69 If you stand on the cliffs of Dover, England, you can clearly see the
shore of Belgium, and it must have looked mighty close in 1940.

70 Three dates were set by the German high command for the invasion
of England, we are told. First was September 16-20, a time when
the English Channel is generally calm and without god. But on the
seventeenth, a bad storm erupted that lasted from September 17-30.
Then the Germans decided to cross under the fog which generally
prevailed during November and December, but for the first time in
the history of weather bureaus, there was no fog during those
months of 1940.

71 The final date was February 14, but at that time there was a
submarine earthquake which caused unusually high tides and
necessitated moving the hundreds of invasion barges that had been
camouflaged and hidden along the European coast. This revealed
the locations to the British air force who bombed the vessels so
badly that the invasion plans against Britain were abandoned and
the fatal decision to invade Russia was made. You will notice that
none of the events that kept Germany out of England were the work
of man. God had His hand over events and the fulfillment of the
prophecy continued.
And now we come to the real climax of the prophetic narrative; a
climax that will affect every one of us.

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72 “And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a
kingdom which shall never be destroyed;…”

73 “…and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall

break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall
stand forever.”
What a promise!

74 One day, while Berlin was still in ruins after the war, two men stood
looking at the utter desolation of the site of the former German
chancellery in Berlin. In the center of the debris a huge cube of
reinforced concrete stood on one corner where a blast of explosives
had left it. Under that cube of masonry there had been located the
bomb shelter where Hitler had shot himself rather than be captured
by the advancing Russians.
One of those two men now standing on the site was German, a
Christian, who had left Germany just at the outbreak of the war,
leaving behind his young wife and 18 month old son. He was
unable to get back—for years. “When I saw my son the next time,
he was 11 years old!” he told his companion.
This father is a symbol of millions of people who suffered
heartbreak and deprivation during those awful years. His
companion’s thoughts turned to the promises we have just read in
Daniel.

75 “And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a
kingdom which shall never be destroyed;…”
Daniel 2:44

76 Yes. What a promise! No more war. No more parting. No more

sickness. No more starvation. No more concentration camps. No

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more Vietnams. No more Middle East conflicts. No more
Cambodian refugees. No more Central American upheavals. How
wonderful to think about!

77 But we need to do more thank think. We need to prepare.

“Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call
and election sure, for if you do these things you will never
stumble.”

78 “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made

known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ…”

79 “… but were eyewitnesses of -His majesty… And so we have

prophetic Word confirmed, …”

80 “…which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark

place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your
hearts.”
2 Peter 1:10, 16, 19

81 Today, as we consider the prophecies of this marvelous book and

the infallible promise of God, tonight is the time to make our
calling and election sure. We can do this by simply accepting Christ
as the ruler of our lives as He is the final ruler of this world and all
the worlds.

82 How do we do this? After we have come to Christ and accepted

Him as our Savior from sin, He will help us to repent of our sins

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and confess them. Sometimes we need to confess to those we have
wronged, but for the main part we need to confess to God. If
restitution must be made, it should be done, if possible. When we
have done these things we can go to the Lord and ask Him to give
us His strength to do His will. Christ will then be our King, our
Savior and our dearest Friend. Peace will be in our hearts, for we
have peace with God.

83 Right now you can make the decision to accept Christ and be free
from sin. If this is your determination, while our heads are bowed,
will you raise your hand as a witness to God that you have so
determined?

84 If this is your determination, while our heads are bowed, will you
raise your hand as a witness to God that you have so determined?

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