When the believer reads the Word of God, it is at the same time both crystal clear but so deep that he can never see to the bottom. The book of Daniel is one example. The smallest children can understand and love the story of Daniel and his three friends. But when it comes to the dream, visions, and prophesy, we begin to experience the great depth of the Word of God. We all have in our minds a picture of the image which was made of gold, silver, brass, iron and clay. We can also picture a stone being somehow cut without hands and smashing the image into powder. God gives us this earthly picture to teach us heavenly reality. What is that heavenly reality? In his article, Rev. Heys directs our attention to the reality of our certain victory.
Through the prophet Daniel, Young People, our God presents to us the same comforting truth which He gives us through Paul in Romans 8:28, namely, “All things work together for good to them that love God.”
However, what we read about man, in Daniel 2:31-33, where he speaks to Nebuchadnezzar, is this: “Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.”
But in verses 34 and 35 Daniel, in a different vision, presents the awesome, comforting truth concerning Christ’s coming with a blessed victory for God’s people. There we read: “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”
Take note then of the fact that we have here a vision of an image, but also a vision of a stone that smote that image. Here our God, through Daniel, presents to the believers an amazing and very important truth, by which we should note that God, through Daniel, tells us what is going to happen in this life to the ungodly enemies of God’s church. Here also is the glorious victory which God presents to His elect.
Let us then, first of all, take hold of the truth that the reprobate world, to which we by nature belong, has become a far more physically stronger people than those of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom, which is pictured here as being of gold. Consider also that today guns, which the world has, enable young children to kill men who are physically much stronger than these children are. Then too, by the telephone we can today contact people who are hundreds of miles away from us. We can by voice, through a radio or television set, speak unto as well as hear people who are thousands of miles away from us. Today it is even possible for us by an airplane to fly in one day to a place which we by train or automobile cannot reach for several days.
But, as we also read here in Daniel’s book, the unbelievers are going to lose their glory and become brass, iron or clay. This means that a physical change is coming, and that some nations, by a physical change, will be strong, while other nations very weak. Sin is developing speedily today, and we already have wars and rumors of wars, which devastate people.
However, away from and separate from the world of unbelievers, the elect children of God here on this earth, are going to be brought with body and soul into a life of heavenly glory, through Christ Jesus our Savior. He is mentioned in verse 34, but also in verse 45. There we read: “Thou sawest that a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands.” That stone, indeed, is Christ, and He is called a stone in the sense of being of almighty power, so that man cannot hurt or destroy Him as our Savior.
Christ is the stone that is cut into being without human hands doing so. He was born of the virgin Mary, but He has no earthly father. He is the eternal Son of God, come into our flesh, so that He could and does represent us. And having no guilt in Himself, but coming into our flesh, He can suffer our punishment. He can be used by God to represent us, suffer our punishment and save us from the punishment which we deserve, but also from the sinful natures which we have.
There are, Young People, two comforting truths in this second chapter of Daniel’s book. Through him our God brings us the awesome and comforting truth that there is a true church of God, which is steadily coming closer to its absolutely sure and complete salvation.
We also have here the comforting truth that all the enemies of God’s church are going to be destroyed and cast into hell. Our God presents the kingdom of Satan, that is, the host of unbelievers, as an image. And that means that these unbelievers only seem to be a glorious kingdom. But an image never is a reality. It is what one imagines something to be. This generation of Satan’s devilish kingdom certainly is physically real. But it, as unbelievers, imagines itself to have the beauty of gold. We do well—in spite of all that which men call glorious and honorable—to maintain that in God’s eyes this kingdom of Satan is corrupt, devilish, and on the way to everlasting torment in hell.
Those who are born spiritually dead are images; while those chosen in Christ are a victorious stone through Christ, because of what and through what He does in them and for them. That truth which we find in verse 35 is so tremendously important and comforting. For they, in this passage, are called a stone, which through Christ Jesus, their head, become “a great mountain,” and will soon fill the whole earth, from which those images have been removed, and cast into hell with its torment.
Very comfortingly we read in II Corinthians 4:15: “For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.” And then also in I Corinthians 6:15: “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” And because Christ is “The Stone” we, who are united with Him, do by God’s grace become that “great mountain” that “filled the whole earth.”
We surely, by God’s grace, have a certain victory. All is well! All will work together for our good, because it will all make us to be spiritually like Christ, and have resurrected bodies like His. It may seem at times as though all is against us, and in fact Satan and the world are always against us. But the comforting truth is that God causes all things to work together for our good.
Go back, Young People, to what is called “The Mother Promise,” which we find in Genesis 3:15 There, the day that man fell into sin, manifesting his hatred of God, our God said to Satan: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” Here is the first and wonderful truth of God, that He will save every one of His elect from Satan and all his sinful seed. And this becomes very plain in what we read in Psalm 139:14. There through David comes that beautiful manifestation of God’s grace. There we read: “I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”
We must never fight against that truth, but must sing it more often and enthusiastically than we do. All of our salvation, including our desire for it, comes from God in His grace. We owe every breath of life and heartbeat to God. But we also owe Him thanks for every bit of our salvation, including that desire for it, and knowledge of it.
Our God Himself said to Satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman.” He did not say,
“I am going to ask the sinners to change and love Me.” God always commands; and He always enables every one of His elect to heed His commands. He did not send His Son in the hope that a group of people in the human race would want to be saved. He told Satan that HE would put enmity between His elect and Satan.
We have spiritual victory, because the almighty God promised it and realizes every bit of it, including the desire in the hearts of His elect. Victory for all the elect is so very sure, because the almighty, unchangeable God had eternally planned to realize it.
Being those whom He saves, we will most assuredly be completely saved from the spiritual death into which Satan got us. And we will be saved most assuredly, because God is the Almighty One. That basic truth of salvation is that work of God in our hearts. Even as He created Adam and Eve with a wonderful spiritual life, He also spiritually creates all the elect to an heavenly life of love towards Himself, and realizes it through His own Son. Salvation is the very, very certain victory that will save every elect child of God, and manifest that basic truth that He is God, and that we owe Him everlasting and joyful praise for the salvation which He has realized for us and in us.
Rev. Heys is a retired minister of the Protestant Reformed Churches. He is a member of Hudsonville Protestant Reformed Church.