The Feet of the Image

Harold Dart

After describing the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, the prophet Daniel gave the interpretation in Daniel 2:36-45.

According to Daniel the dream was given as a consequence of Nebuchadnezzar’s own desire to know the future: "As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass" (2:29).

Four Universal Empires

Expositors are in general agreement that the various parts of the image picture the succession of kingdoms which would rule over areas of the Middle East adjacent to and including the land of Israel, and ultimately over vast areas of the world. It is a picture of gentile world dominion extending down to the advent of the kingdom. Babylon, the head, was succeeded by the empire of the Medes and Persians, then by the Greek empire under Alexander and his successors, and finally by the Roman Empire, the strongest and most extensive of all.

Most of the efforts of expositors to understand the implications of the image are concerned with the extension of the Roman Empire into the feet and toes. The smiting of the feet of the image by a stone which represents the intervention of the Kingdom of God indicates that the symbols of the vision are intended to portray the history of the fourth empire until the time that it was swept away by the "stone." This leads naturally to an inquiry as to the historical circumstances portrayed by the feet of the image, which are part of iron and part of clay. The biblical statement indicates that the feet and toes are divisions and extensions of the fourth kingdom into lesser and weaker components not having the unified strength of Rome itself—not "cleaving one to another."

These divisions, however, do have a characteristic which identifies them with the fourth kingdom in that they are partly iron, retaining some of the elements of Roman strength which will give them leading roles in events affecting the course of world history. We should thus expect to find Rome continuing to play a significant role throughout history—even until the advent of the Kingdom of God.

History has no more brilliant example of imperial success than the Roman Empire. It united an area of the Middle East extending from the British Isles to Egypt and Armenia under one dominion for over two hundred years. The fall of the Roman Empire is ranked as one of the greatest focal points in human history.

Roman Law

The Roman law, the instrument and symbol of her unity, was the Empire’s greatest achievement. The acceptance of this legacy in the Middle Ages gave both church and state a basis for their own systems of law and helped to civilize Europe by spreading widely the principles of equity and humanity embodied in the structure of that law. Roman law did not share the fate of the Empire. The barbarian conquerors retained both Roman law and law courts for their Roman subjects; for their fellow Germans they harmonized Roman law and legal concepts with their own law and customs. In the eastern Roman Empire, Roman law and legal theory, as crystallized in Justinian’s great codification, remained in force for almost a thousand years. In both East and West the church erected canon law, its own legal system, upon Roman foundations.

Thus Roman law remained a vital force in the centuries after the decline of the Empire. It still performs its ancient mission of binding together disparate peoples, for a large part of the Western world employs Roman law today.

The underlying concepts of Roman law have equally influenced jurisprudence, philosophy, and practice. From the time of Rome’s earliest legal code, the Twelve Tables (ca. 443 B.C.), the harshness of the law was steadily modified.

Today, fifteen hundred years after the end of the western Empire, the traveler in Europe moves along the routes of ancient Roman roads and visits cities which have had a continuous history from antiquity to the present.

Dominance Over Israel

With the entry into the land of Judea by the Roman general Pompey and his capture of Jerusalem in 63 B.C., the Roman Empire became the fourth empire of Daniel’s vision. The whole of Syria became a Roman province and Judea was granted limited autonomy under the Roman governor of Syria. Following Julius Caesar’s victory over Pompey, he made several decisions in favor of the Jews in the land. Hyrcanus and his sons were made high priests and rulers of Judea. The walls of Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by Pompey, were rebuilt, and the use of the Jaffa harbor was restored to the Jews. In 30 B.C. Herod was confirmed as king of the Jews by Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, and Israel became part of the Roman province of Syria.

In the west the Roman Empire continued its imperial form for approximately 450 years. The decline and fall of the western division of the Roman Empire came gradually over several centuries and its causes have been the subject of much historical explanation and debate.

The advent of Christianity brought an element into the Roman Empire which greatly affected the course of history. While the Empire was being invaded by open violence and undermined by decay, Christianity gently and gradually came into the minds of men. Starting in obscurity, it gained vigor from opposition and finally flew the banner of the Christian cross over the ruins of the capital. The influence of Christianity was not confined to the limits of the Roman Empire. The church and its tenets continued to expand, until by the middle of thenineteenth century it had spread to almost every corner and among all peoples of the globe. The industry and zeal of the iron kingdom of Rome had been inserted into the church and then widely diffused to the shores of all continents by means of colonization.

It has been alleged that Christianity in its political effects was a disintegrating force and tended to weaken the power of Rome to resist her enemies. The actual effect of Christianity, however, was to unite, rather than to sever, and to bind together national or sectional feeling. In the political strategy of Constantine, the first emperor to espouse Christianity, it was possibly the idea of unifying the dissident tendencies in the Empire that motivated his support of Christianity.

Events that were to occur in the southern and eastern divisions of the Roman Empire are pictured in the eighth chapter of Daniel, verses 9 to 12.

The Forces of Islam

In A.D. 610, in the city of Mecca in the Persian province of Arabia, Muhammad, the founder of Islam, had a vision in which he said he was commanded by the angel Gabriel to proclaim Allah as the one true God. He began to write verses which he claimed had been given him by an angel. Muhammad also cited Jewish and Christian concepts and acknowledged that prophets before him, especially Abraham and Jesus, had been divine teachers; but he proclaimed that his teaching was greater and that it corrected and completed previous Jewish and Christian teachings. He thus magnified his own rule as being that of the greater prophet.

His early teachings were rejected by the idolatrous citizens of Mecca and he was forced to flee to Medina in A.D. 622. In Islamic history this flight is called the Hegira, and the date marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. He was received with acclaim in the neighboring city of Medina. There were succeeding hostilities between his followers in Medina and the citizens of Mecca with inconclusive results until Mecca at last determined to stamp out the growing power of Medina and sent a force of 10,000 men against Medina. But here they came up against an unexpected obstacle. Muhammad had entrenched himself behind a wall and a trench, a most unsportsmanlike tactic in Bedouin warfare. Muhammad refused to leave his fortress, and the attacking force was unable to arrive at a decision as to how to meet this outrageous conduct. As they delayed, the rains began to fall. Their encampment became uncomfortable and their divergent views produced tempers and disputes. At last the great host began to disperse in all directions and ceased to exist as a threat to Muhammad and Medina. Never again did Mecca take any effective action against Muhammad, and its leading men gradually came over to his side. Finally, under the terms of a treaty, Mecca was established as the spiritual center of Islam, to which prayers should be directed and pilgrimages made. In A.D. 629 Muhammad came to the town as its master.

Thereafter Muhammad prevailed in battles and massacres until all of Arabia came under his control. He died in A.D. 632 at the age of 62, master of Arabia. His religious teachings became the cement which bound together his followers into an intense fanatical unity. History makes it evident that Muhammad was vain, egotistical, tyrannous, and a self-deceiver. The religion he founded was intolerant and promulgated largely by the sword.

Abu Bekhr

When Muhammad died, in the eleventh year of the Hegira, his close friend and supporter Abu Bekhr succeeded him as Caliph (successor) and leader of the people. While Muhammad had been the creator of Islam, Abu Bekhr became its conscience and will. Abu Bekhr was a man of strong faith, without doubts; and he began to carry out Muhammad’s projected actions with plundering raids and plans for the subjection of the whole world to Islam. This was in accordance with the letters the prophet had written from Medina in A.D 628 to all the monarchs of the world, proclaiming this to be the will of Allah.

This effort almost succeeded. Sweeping to the east and south, Islam took possession of Jerusalem and the "glorious land." By A.D. 661 they had conquered Persia, Syria, and Egypt. Later conquests spread Islamic dominion along the northern coast of Africa and into Spain, occupying the region once the province of the eastern Roman Empire and washing against the shores of the western dominions.

Islam had been pitted against the corrupt Christianity of the seventh century Byzantine Empire in "the later time of their kingdom, when transgressors have reached their fullness" (Dan. 8:23). Eastern Christianity had become a babel of ideologies, talking and preaching endlessly of trinities, doctrines, and heresies which had no appeal to the common man. This theological jungle was no match for the single minded loyalty and fanaticism of the followers of Muhammad, who were assured of an entrance into paradise by simple obedience to the commands of the Koran. The surest way to attain this blessed goal was to die in battle against the infidel in the service of Allah. Islam also prevailed because it found politically apathetic peoples who had been robbed and oppressed. They were uneducated and unorganized with selfish, unsound governments out of touch with their people.

Islam swallowed cities, nations, sects, and races and became a vast empire with many millions of converts. Its sole textbook was the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad, and it prospered mightily with the aid of the sword. Its hold upon the allegiance of millions of its converts was to remain until the "latter time of the indignation, for at the appointed time, the end shall be" (8:19). "When he shall even come against the Prince of princes and be broken without human hands" (8:25).

The apostate "little horn" of chapter 7, which arose in the professing Christian church of the western Roman Empire, had a counterpart in the regions of the eastern Roman Empire, where another agency of the dragon’s power became established at about the same time. Both of these forces have trodden down and persecuted the true saints and have continued to exist and play roles in opposition to the establishment of the Messianic kingdom on earth—of which Jerusalem will be the center, as opposed to either Rome or Mecca.

Islam has had an incredible revival of power in recent years, since the restoration of the nation of Israel, which has aroused the forces of the Islamic little horn in its efforts to destroy the established Jewish nation. Military assaults, economic blockades, and condemnatory actions by the United Nations have all been hurled against Israel.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth verses of the eighth chapter, Daniel was told that the vision had a time span of 2300 days. In history, Alexander the Great, the large horn of the he-goat, first struck the Persian ram when he defeated Darius at the river Granicus in 334 B.C. If the vision began at this point and extended for 2300 years, on a year for a day basis, the terminus would be in A.D 1967., the year in which Israel wrested control of the city of Jerusalem from the Islamic forces of Jordan’s King Hussein. The ultimate destruction of the little horn is stated to be as a result of opposition to the Prince of princes, that is, to the establishment of the Messianic rule in the end of the days. Both "little horns" of Daniel are brought to an end by the institution of that kingdom, the "mountain of the Lord’s house," the dominion of the Prince of princes.