Introduction.
This article introduces a series of articles on “Christianity, the Fifth Kingdom”; how mistakes the apostles made were capitalised upon by power-hungry bishops during the second and third centuries, and how these bishops eventually conquered the Roman Empire in 390AD to become the Fifth Kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the ‘feet of iron and clay’; a conglomeration of sectarian, human organisations that ruled the world for almost sixteen hundred years but has been crumbling before our eyes.
Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream.
In 604BC Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon, had a dream of a great image and wanted to know what it meant. Daniel, a Hebrew captive, provided the divine interpretation.
Below is a short outline of the dream; the full account can be found in the second chapter of Daniel.
The image’s head was of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of brass, its legs of iron and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
You saw that a stone, cut out without hands, struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them to pieces.
Then the iron, clay, brass, silver and gold were broken to pieces and became like the chaff that the wind carried away.
And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
The Divine Interpretation.
Daniel explains to Nebuchadnezzar that his dream was a divine revelation, a prophecy;
There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries and he has revealed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the future.
In Daniel’s interpretation of the dream, the head of gold represented King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian kingdom. The Babylonian kingdom would be followed by four more kingdoms until, finally,
“The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed”.
Below is a summary of Daniel’s interpretation, verses 37 to 45;
You, O king, are the head of gold. (37–38)
Another kingdom inferior to you will arise after you, and then a third kingdom of bronze. (39)
A fourth kingdom, as strong as iron will break and crush all these. (40)
The feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, will be a divided kingdom with some of the firmness of iron in it. As the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle; the iron and soft clay will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. (41–42)
And, in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end and it will stand forever. (43–44)
A great God has made known to the king what will be after this; the dream is certain and its interpretation sure. (45)
The three kingdoms after the neo-Babylonian Empire (626 to 539BC) are usually understood to be the following;
1. The chest of silver is the Medo-Persian empire (550 to 336BC).
2. The thighs of bronze is the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great (336 to 63BC)
3. The legs of Iron is the Roman Empire (27BC — 390BC*).
Christianity, the Fifth Kingdom.
I wish to present an argument that Christianity, the conglomeration of sectarian, human organisations, is the Fifth Kingdom, the final, and most extensive human empire in history.
I will also demonstrate why this ‘brittle kingdom of iron and clay’ cannot be the earthly representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that Jesus, ‘the Stone that struck the image’, is yet to establish His divine kingdom over the earth; his Kingdom is the sixth and final kingdom that will never be destroyed.
I will show how this fifth kingdom came into being and how it, Christianity, conquered the Roman Empire during the closing decade of the fourth century.
Most importantly I will demonstrate the significance of the ‘soft clay’ and how the mixture of ‘iron and clay’ turned into a brittle marriage, a marriage that has dominated world history for 1,600 years but is crumbling to dust before our eyes.
The final kingdom, the stone cut out without hands, is coming!
There has never been a better time to be a disciple of Jesus Christ!
