In the book of Daniel, we have an illustration of the nations exercising their authority over the earth during their appointed times. The second chapter contains King Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a great image which, as Daniel showed, represented the march of world powers, culminating with their being replaced by a Kingdom set up by "the God of heaven," which would then rule the entire world.

 

     “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

     “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

     “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

     “In the time 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 crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands —a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

     “The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy." -Daniel 2:31-45

 

     Notice that the image begins with Babylon, the first world power to trample Jerusalem. Doing so, it left God's throne empty in Jerusalem. So the beginning of "the times (Kairos) of the Gentiles" (mentioned in the previous article- An Appointed Time) began about 600 years before Christ, with Jerusalem's destruction.

     Although they started long ago, the times of the Gentiles will not last forever. They will have a definite end. We can see this with our own eyes as we watch the problems of the world escalate: Nuclear arms races, scarcity of resources, pollution, man's impact on the natural environment, our willingness to visit harm on each other. We cannot continue living as we have been. But as the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians, at the full limit of the appointed times (Kairos) God will replace the current state of affairs with his own administration.

 

     "With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment —to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ." -Ephesians 1:9, 10

 

     The salvation of the world is at hand. We are living through the most exciting time in history. The world as we know it is ending, a much better world is on the horizon.