“But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth.” Daniel 2:39
The Grecian kingdom (330–63 BC) was the third Kingdom. Alexander the Great established what was the largest empire probably in ancient times. He died in 323 BC the third kingdom that would rule over the whole earth was Greece. Alexander the Great, the greatest general in ancient times, conquered and ruled the known world of his time. He died at Babylon, his vitality exhausted before he was thirty-three years old. During his lifetime, the soldiers under his command were dressed in bronze and brass helmets, breastplates, shields, and swords.
The belly and thighs of bronze represented the kingdom of Greece under Philip II of Macedon and his famous son Alexander the Great. Alexander was the ruler who, when he had completed his quest for world dominion, is said to have sat down in his tent and wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer.
While Daniel’s prophecies concerning Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians were fulfilled in part in Daniel’s lifetime, in his prediction of the empire of Greece he accurately foreshadowed an empire which did not come into existence until two hundred years later. It would have been impossible for Daniel by any natural insight to have anticipated that a small and insignificant Greek state, namely, Macedonia, should reach such great power and prestige and have such a rapid rise as that of Alexander’s kingdom.
The precise fulfillment of prophecy in the Grecian Empire sets the stage for the fourth and final Gentile world power, that of Rome, which dominated the scene at the time that Christ, was born in Bethlehem. It is this empire which figures largely in the history of the church as well as in prophecy of things to come and constitutes the framework of prophecy related to the nations in the end of the age.