Nebuchadnezzar's dream image (Daniel 2:32-35) is a key prophecy of successive world empires, ending with a stone cut without hands that strikes the feet, crushes every material to chaff, and becomes a mountain filling the earth. Because it is an image, it recalls the second commandment's revulsion toward images and signals that what it represents is contrary to God. Its materials descend in value from gold to silver, bronze, iron, and finally a worthless mixture of iron and clay, yet they increase in hardness until the iron and clay. This pictures the moral and cultural decline of the empires alongside their growing military and political power. The progression from head to toes marks the movement of time, so the empires are successive and can be traced on a historical timeline until the prophecy extends into the future. The head is a monolithic government directing the body, the paired arms and legs are divisions of power, and the ten toes of mixed materials are a weak-strong, possibly short-lived confederation. The head of gold is Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC), to whom God gave a kingdom, power, and glory. He conquered from Persia to Egypt, took Judah captive, and built Babylon into the ancient world's most magnificent city, though it was steeped in paganism, astrology, and the worship of thousands of gods, making it the prime example of the world's religious confusion. Daniel 7 parallels this with a lion with eagle's wings, picturing his early conquests and later his humbling and acknowledgment of God's sovereignty. Qualities of Babylon, like those of the empires that followed, reappear in the end-time Beast, and all these empires spring from one way of life contrary to God.

The fourth empire of Nebuchadnezzar's image, with legs of iron and feet partly of iron and partly of clay (Daniel 2:33), is the Roman Empire. Like the earlier empires, it is divided in two, as the two legs and feet show, and later into ten parts, as the ten toes show. Iron signifies strength far superior to the previous kingdoms and the toughness and brutality by which Rome subjugated nations, enslaved millions, razed Carthage, and made crucifixion standard practice. Clay does not bond to iron, so the final form is partly strong and partly brittle. Its internal unity will be unstable because its cultural and political components are too diverse to hold together, whatever "mingle with the seed of men" (verse 43) finally means. Daniel 7's fourth beast, with huge iron teeth and ten horns, expands this picture. The horns are ten successive resurrections of Rome, from the Germanic kingdoms through Justinian, Charlemagne, Otto, Charles V, Napoleon, and the modern Italian dictators and Hitler, all under the influence of the little horn, the false church. The last horn, the last head, and the ten toes are still future: a brief final revival of ten kings who give power to a dictator called the Beast, destroy the false church, and war against Christ, only to be destroyed at His Second Coming. This revival will likely center in Europe, and the European Community is the most likely vehicle, though God may order events differently. Believers must therefore endure, watch, and stay faithful.

In Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the great image, the chest and arms of silver represent the Medo-Persian Empire (c. 539-330 BC), the second world-ruling kingdom. Daniel 2:39 explains only that it is "another kingdom inferior to yours." This inferiority is not political or military, since Persia controlled nearly double the territory of Babylon and kept the empire whole for over two hundred years. Rather, it lay in internal division, symbolized by the two arms of Medes and Persians, in succession struggles at each emperor's death, and in the character of its rulers. Cyrus, though humane and used by God to restore the Temple, did not acknowledge God's sovereignty as Nebuchadnezzar did (Daniel 4:28-37). The Aramaic word for inferior, 'ara', means earth or ground, so Persia was more worldly in God's eyes. According to the prophecy, the trajectory of the successive empires is downward. Persia centered on military and political strength, and its government became a model for later powers. Its religion, Zoroastrianism, faded before the cults of Mithra and Anaita, whose practices Catholicism later absorbed. The same empire appears in Daniel 7:5 as the bear with three ribs in its mouth and in Daniel 8 as the ram with two horns, the taller rising later. These symbols emphasize Persian might, which fell in six years to Alexander's Macedonian army. The bear's feet in Revelation 13:2 suggest that the end-time Beast will share some of its traits.

Nebuchadnezzar's vision in Daniel 2 provides only sparse detail about the third world-ruling empire represented by the belly and thighs of bronze, stating merely that it would "rule over all the earth" (verse 32, 39). This brevity itself signals the relative unimportance of this kingdom in the unfolding of prophetic events, since it fell between the Old and New Testaments and played a lesser role in the history of God's people than did Babylon or Persia. Its position between the chest and arms of silver, already identified as Medo-Persia, and the legs of iron, generally accepted as Rome, allows this third kingdom to be safely identified as Greece. The body parts used to represent it offer further confirmation: the belly, a single part, depicts a monolithic government under one ruler, while the thighs, being two parts, represent a subsequent division of power. This matches the historical pattern of the Greek Empire, which began under the singular leadership of Alexander the Great, built upon the remains of the conquered Persian Empire, and then split after his death in 323 BC into kingdoms ruled by his generals, from which two major powers eventually emerged—Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria. Later prophecies in Daniel 7 and 8 expand upon this portrait. Daniel 7:6 depicts a four-winged, four-headed leopard, symbolizing the remarkable swiftness and ferocity of Alexander's twelve-year conquest from Greece to Egypt to India, a campaign made more astonishing by events such as a seven-month siege of Tyre and three years spent subduing Bactria. Alongside his military conquests, Alexander spread Hellenistic culture and language, which later helped prepare the way for the spread of the Gospel. Following his sudden death without an heir, his empire was divided among four generals—Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Syria and the eastern territories, Lysimachus in Thrace, and Cassander in Macedonia and Greece—corresponding to the four heads of the leopard. Thrace was later absorbed by the Seleucid Empire, and Macedonia's power was eventually curbed by Rome's rise. Daniel 8 adds further detail through the image of a goat with a notable horn, identified as Alexander, who swiftly defeats a two-horned ram representing Persia, then dies at the height of his power, after which four generals divide his kingdom. This chapter also introduces Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid king nicknamed "Epimanes" (the madman) by the Jews for his violently anti-Jewish policies. He outlawed circumcision, Sabbath observance, and possession of the Torah, executed those who refused to eat swine's flesh or bow to pagan images, erected a statue of Zeus Olympius in the Temple as an abomination of desolation, and proclaimed himself divine. Daniel 11:21-35 expands on his deeds, presenting him as a type of the end-time Beast, whose future embodiment is described in Revelation 13:5-7 as a blasphemous persecutor of God's people. Elements of Greece's character—speed, ferocity, and conquest—reappear in the leopard-like Beast of Revelation 13 and in the end-time King of the North. This third kingdom thus sets the stage for the fourth and most terrible kingdom, the legs of iron and feet of iron mixed with clay in Nebuchadnezzar's image.