In his book, "The Merciful God of Prophecy," Tim LaHaye, like other premil dips (premillenial dipsensationalists), discusses the alleged prophecies of Daniel, including those in the story about Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream about a statue. The statue had a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay. Daniel, enlightened by the all-knowing God of heaven, told Nebby that each part of the statue represnted a different kingdom. And Daniel explicitly identified the head of gold with Nebby's kingdom.
There is no universal agreement about the identity of the kingdoms that were to follow Nebby's, but LaHaye, like many other premil dips, identifies the silver kingdom as the Persian (or Medo-Persian) kingdom of Cyrus the Great, the brass kingdom as Alexander the Great's kingdom, the iron kingdom as the Roman empire, and the iron-and-clay kingdom as a revived Roman empire.
LaHaye, like many other fundamentalist prophecy freaks, seems to accept as "Gospel truth" Daniel's falsehoods that Nebbys kingdom was a kingdom over the whole world and that the brass kingdom (Alexander's) would be a kingdom over the whole world too. (Note: Even though some secular historians parrot the cliche that Alexander conquered the known world, that cliche is false. He didn't even conquer the known world, let alone the hole world, as allegedly prophesied by Daniel.)
LaHaye refers to these allegedly prophesied kingdoms as "world empires," apparently going along with the falsehood that they were all kingdoms (empires) over the whole world (even though Daniel only identified two of them as kingdoms over the whole world). And LaHaye brags that Daniel prophesied all the world empires of history. That's supposedly why the prophecy stopped with Rome (except for the revived Roman empire of our present and future).
Of course, there have been lots of other empires that Daniel clearly didn't include in his prophecy: the Chinese empire, the Arab-Muslim empire, the empire of Genghis Khan, the empire of Tamurlane, the Ottoman Turkish empire, the Spanish empire, the Dutch empire, the French empire, the British empire, to name several. LaHaye gives an explanation of why Daniel, who supposedly foresaw all of human history, didn't prophecy any of those empires. LaHaye mentions Genghis Khan and Napoleon and he says they tried to conquer the world but failed to do so. Therefore, their empires were not "world empires."
The problem with that explanation, of course, is that, by that standard, none of the "world empires" supposedly prophesied by Daniel were "world empires" either. Neither Nebuchadnezzar, nor Cyrus, nor Alexander, nor the Romans conquered the world. Some of them, e.g., Alexander, may have tried to do so but failed, like Genghis Khan and Napoleon.
There is, in fact, no good reason to believe that Daniel, prophet of the all-knowing God, foresaw all human history and all the "world empires" throughout history, as premil dips such as LaHaye claim. And, as I've already pointed out, some of Daniel's alleged prophecies, as interpreted by the premil dips, were literally false.
So why be a premil dip, Tim LaHaye? Why pretend the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of God and that all (alleged) prophecies in the Bible are literally true? Why leave the truth behind, Tim LaHaye?
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When I was a kid, we had some neighbors that were Jehovah's Witnesses. They gave us a video about that prophecy stuff, although it might not have been the exact same one. Egypt and Assyria preceded Babylon, though that was followed by Persia, Greece and Rome. They said that the U.S and Soviet Union together formed a sort of world order, which was replaced by unity under the United Nations. As a history geek, I really thought the video was cool. I wasn't much into skepticism at the time.
TGGP: I'm no expert on Jehovah's False Witnesses and their take on Bible prophecy. Offhand, I'm not sure if they're premil dips like Lindsey, LaHaye, the late Falwell et al. But in the books I've read on prophecy, the JFWs have received some attention because of the times they've set a specific date for the end of the world, apparently mistakenly.
TGGP: Since i posted the previous comment, I've read a little about about the JFWs on the Internet. According to at least one article, they're premillenialists but not dipsensationalists.
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