Special significance attaches to the fact that no sooner had the times of the Gentiles begun than God made known the future course of their authority over His people, and the character and doom of that authority, and made it known to the first Gentile conqueror himself. It was in the second year of his reign that Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream the great image by means of which the purposes of God were to be communicated to him. The description of this, given by Daniel to the troubled monarch, is as follows: "Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This image, which was mighty, and whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the aspect thereof was terrible. As for this image, his head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron, and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors: and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Dan. 2. 31-35). Interpreting this vision, the prophet identified Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean monarch, with the head of gold, and foretold that his kingdom, or empire, would be followed in succession by three others, corresponding respectively to the different parts of the remainder of the image and to the nature of the metals composing them. Of the four kingdoms the last is to engage our chief attention in these papers. Passing from the first, the =Chaldean=, as specified in Daniel's words to the king, "Thou art this head of gold" (v. 38), we are shown that the second kingdom was that of the =Medes and Persians= by the prophet's record of the doom of Nebuchadnezzar's successor, Belshazzar: "In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom" (Dan. 5. 30, 31; cp. v. 28). That the third kingdom was the =Grecian= we find in the interpretation of part of a vision recorded in the eighth chapter: "The ram which thou sawest that had the two horns, they are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough he-goat [who was seen to destroy the ram, v. 8] is the king of Greece" (vv. 20, 21; cp. chap. 10. 20). The Fourth Kingdom.