Certain people have rececently commented that having a golden statue of President Trump is related to the hebrews making a golden calf at Sinai. I strongly disagree with this analogy. There is another more potent analogy available. The statue of Trump was dedicated June 6th at the National Doral Golf Club in Miami but calves and people are different.

The golden calf represented the gods of Egypt or Canaan: Apis the bull-god or El the god of strength for the canaanites or even Ba’al, the Canaanite and Phoenician god of fertility, storms, rain, and agriculture. Maybe the hebrews somehow thought the golden calf was part of Yehovah worship. Therein lies the deception.

There are other icons that people have been expected to worship: the statue of Nero and other roman emperors and the golden statue made by Nebucheddezar. Nero was a nut case and used the christians as a scape goat after the burning Rome in AD 64. He ends up blaming the christians which results in huge persecution for the local population. This is extra-biblical so I wanted to focus today on Nebuchaddezar.

We start off in Daniel 2 with the 2nd year of King Nebuchaddezar. The King had had a dream that none of the magicians, enchanters, or sorcerers and Chaldeans could know, much less interpret. Remember it was over 1800 years earlier where Joseph interpreted the dreams of the butler, the baker, and pharoah in Egypt. In this case Daniel had to not only interpret the dream but speak of dream details only the King and the Lord of Heaven knew.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but unless I have a really, really impactful dream I tend to forget most of it during the course of the day. The King might have written down his dream but the text makes it clear it was a secret from all others. So I’m going with the idea that the dream really, really troubled the King.

It is interesting that starting with verse 4 through chapter 7 the rest of the text is in Aramaic. The Chaldeans were a semi-semitic group. I will come back to that idea in a bit.

For now notice in verse 5 that ‘the king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins’.

So the threat was against a specific group of people who had conquored Babylon some two or three generations beforehand and of which Nebuchaddezar shared cultural heritage. We shall return to this idea soon.

The sad fact is that Daniel and his friends were also targeted in this annihilation because he was among the wise men of Babylon. Daniel and his three hebrew friends were of the royal family and nobility of Judah exported in the first wave to Babylon. So Daniel had to act because the jewish people were also targeted, just as Queen Esther was later born for such a time as that. Let us pick up the story in verse 17.

Dan. 2:17-18:: Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

We see the first thing Daniel did was wisely consult his prayer partners. We all need a prayer team. A group of people to stand in the gap as we confront evil and unimaginable consequences. Daniel is then set to interpret the dream.

Dan. 2:31-33:: You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

in verse 28 Daniel declares to the king “you are the head of find gold”

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• Standard definition of the statue kingdoms

To set the stage for further revelation, let me recap for you standard definitions of the statue components.

1) Head of Gold (Babylon): Daniel identified Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire as the “head of gold”.

2) Chest & Arms of Silver (Medo-Persia): A second, inferior kingdom that would conquer Babylon.

3) Belly & Thighs of Bronze (Greece): A third, faster-spreading kingdom that would rule the earth.

4) Legs of Iron (Rome): A fourth kingdom, strong as iron, which would crush all previous powers.

5) Feet of Iron & Clay (Divided Kingdom): A final, fragmented empire that is partially strong and partially brittle, unable to unite fully. This is what is left of the Roman Empire (iron) as whatever power is yielded by the Catholic Church today. Clay is seen as democratic or unstable ruling elements. I’m thinking this is today’s political environment.

6) The Rock (God’s Kingdom): A stone “not cut by human hands” destroys the statue and grows into a mountain filling the earth, representing God’s eternal kingdom

Many of us christians look forward to the setting up of God’s kingdom, his millenial rein. This is a kingdom for the 12 tribes of Israel.

— The setup that hurt Daniel’s three Hebrew friends

Dan. 2:48:: the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.

Does this not sound a bit familiar to Joseph being made ruler over all of Egypt?

Dan. 3:1-2:: King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

I am strongly suggesting that the statue that Nebuchadnezzar set up was none other than one of himself. In his dream he was the head of gold, now he made a stature of all gold so he could be venerated. However, the other rulers, the Chaldeans, did not like Daniel ruling over them. They devised mischeif against the Jews.

The book of Daniel is traditionally believed to have been written in the 6th century BCE (circa 536–530 BCE) by the prophet Daniel during the Babylonian exile. The book of Esther was written later on during the Persian empire but probably took place somewhere betwen 483-473 BCE), about 50 or so years later.

Nebuchadnezzar himself was a Chaldean. The Chaldeans were semi-semitic speaking people who conquored Babylon around 626 BCE, well before either Daniel or Esther. If you remember your bible, Abraham himself was born or at least lived in Ur of the Chaldeans. It to those people, including Nebuchadnezzar I focus in this teaching.

What is really curious about chapter 3 is that Daniel is completly missing from the narrative. It is his three hebrew friends that are in trouble. Where did Daniel go? At the end of chapter 2 ‘Daniel is given many gifts and promoted to ruler over the whole province of Babylon. We read Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained at the king’s court’. We learn that the statue of Nebuchadnezzar was set up on the plain of Dura. Yet Daniel remains abscent. There is no Mordecai to counsel the ruler as with Queen Esther.

Jealousy runs deep. Remember Haman who later went after the Jews in Persia? These Chaldeans also went after the Jews.

Therefore at that time certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews (Dan. 3:8)

It seems like the theme of absentee ruler happened well before Queen Esther. Daniel was off doing affairs of the state or worse yet indulging in ungodly things. We simply are not told what preoccupied his time as his three good hebrew friends where threatened with death.

Before I leave you with a bad image of the Chaldeans let me add a footnote. Today the Chaldean people has settled in many areas, including America. Many are christians and do not even consider themselves Arabs. Aramaic is their native languge but many also speak Arabic, expecially in Iraq.

So in the end, I am not concerned that a statue of Trump represents a pagan god. I am more concerned that Mr. Trump is considering himself to be as god. Nothing good can come out of a ruler who lacks humility.

I am hoping that our jewish friends are not being set up for an attack after being abandoned by their ruler, just as the three hebrew children thrown into the fires (of affliction).

Psalm 82 does say ‘you are all gods and are all children of the most high’ (Ps. 82:6). We just need rulers who rule righteously.