First I will start with The beast in Revelation 13 and work backwards.
In the vision he saw “a beast rise up out of the sea,
having seven heads and ten horns,
and upon his horns ten crowns,
and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
And the beast which I saw [was like] unto a leopard,
and his feet [were as] the feet of a bear,
and his mouth [as the] mouth of a lion:
and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority”
(Revelation 13:1-2). For this description will help identify the beast.
In Daniel 7, we find exactly these same symbols described.
Here again are the beasts, the seven heads, the 10 horns,
and here also is the lion, the bear and the leopard.
And here in Daniel the Bible tells us what these symbols represent.
God had given Daniel understanding in dreams and visions (Daniel 1:17).
a dream and a vision (Daniel 7:1) in which he saw four great beasts (verse 3)
1In the third year of the reign of (Jehoiakim) king of Judah
came (Nebuchadnezzar) king of (Babylon) unto Jerusalem, and besieged it.
2And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels
of the house of God: which he carried into the land of (Shinar)
as in Revelation, the beasts came up out of [the sea].
[out of the seas] = populations and multitudes of people from the world.
3And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.
The first was like a “lion” (verse 4),
the second was like a “bear” (verse 5),
the third like a “leopard” (verse 6),
and the fourth was so dreadful and terrible it could not be compared
to any wild beast known to inhabit the Earth! (verse 7).
- "having seven heads and ten horns" ,the seven "heads"
Now there was only [one head] described on the lion, [one] for the bear,
[one] for the fourth beast —but the third beast, the leopard, had [four heads]
—thus making seven heads in all!
And out of this great and dreadful fourth beast grew 10 horns!
“These great [beasts], which are four, are [four kings], which shall arise
out of the earth,” is the interpretation of verse 17.
-And the word king is synonymous with kingdom, and used only in the sense
that the king represents the kingdom over which he rules, for in verse 23 we read,
“The fourth beast shall be the fourth [kingdom] upon the earth .…” Notice also
the word kingdom is used to explain the beasts in verses 18, 22, 24 and 27.
-the “horns”
“And the ten [horns] out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise .…”
Notice the 10 horns, or 10 succeeding kingdoms or governments,
come out of a kingdom, not out of a man, or a superman. these 10 horns are 10
succeeding kingdoms growing out of the fourth kingdom, which was to rule the Earth!
-Daniel 2 Identification of the Kingdoms
These same four world-ruling Gentile kingdoms are described in the second chapter of Daniel.
King Nebuchadnezzar of the Chaldean Empire, who had taken the Jews captive, had a dream,
the meaning of which God revealed to Daniel.
The king saw a great image. Its head was of gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly
and thighs of brass, its legs of iron and its feet and toes were part iron and part clay.
Finally, a stone, not in men’s hands, but supernaturally, smote the image upon his feet and toes.
It was broken in pieces and was blown away like chaff. Then the stone that smashed it became
a great mountain and filled the whole Earth.
“This,” Daniel says, beginning verse 36, “is the dream;
and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.”
“… Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee,
and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and
subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise”
-the stone smashing the image at its toes is found in the 44th verse:
“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never
be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces
and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.”
The Stone is Christ and His world-ruling Kingdom. The interpretation of the stone is given many
places in the Bible. “Jesus Christ of Nazareth … is the stone which was set at nought of you
builders, which is become the head of the corner” (Acts 4:10-11).
And so we see that here are four universal world-ruling Gentile kingdoms.
They begin with the Chaldean Empire, which took the Jews captive to Babylon.
-God had promised ancient Israel to be His nation if they obeyed and faithful, they would
grow into a multitude of nations—or an empire—that would dominate the entire Earth.
But, for disobedience they would have to be taken captive by Gentile nations, the world’s
first empire, God revealed through Daniel in chapter 2, it was God who had turned world
dominion over to this succession of Gentile empires.
-The Beasts
The first was Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom, the Chaldean Empire, called “Babylon”
after the name of its capital city, 625-539 b.c.
37Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven
hath given thee (a kingdom), power, and strength, and glory.
38And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of
the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made (thee ruler over them all).
(Thou) art this head of gold.
#1 head of gold. Chaldean Empire. (626 BC-539 b.c)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Babylonian_Empire
-
The second kingdom, which followed, then, we know from history, was the Persian Empire,
558-330 b.c., often called Medo-Persia, composed of Medes and Persians.
39And (after thee) shall arise another kingdom (inferior to thee),
and another third kingdom of brass, which shall (bear rule over all the earth).
-Daniel 5 , Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzars son is now king.
27TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
28PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and (given) to (the Medes and Persians).
31And (Darius) the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_the_Mede
#2 breast and arms of silver -Medo-Persian Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire
-
the third world kingdom was Greece, or Macedonia under Alexander the Great, who conquered
the great Persian Empire 333-330 b.c. But Alexander lived only a short year after his swift
conquest, and his [four generals divided] his vast empire into four regions:
Macedonia and Greece, Thrace and Western Asia, Syria and territory east to the Indus river,
and Egypt. So these were the [four heads] of the third beast of Daniel 7.
And the fourth kingdom, which, developing from Rome, spread out and gradually absorbed
one after another of these four divisions—“dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly,”
was the Roman Empire (31 b.c. to a.d. 476).
It had absorbed all the others, occupied all their territory, was greater and stronger than all.
The royal splendor of ancient Babylon, thus having the head—the strongest part of the lion.
It had all the massiveness and powerful army of the Persian Empire symbolized by the legs,
The swiftness, the cunning, the cruelty of Alexander’s army, symbolized by the leopard.
The fourth beast was unlike any wild beast of the Earth. stronger, greater, more terrible any.
-And so John, in Revelation 13, sees, not four beasts, but one beast.
Not a leopard, but like a leopard—possessing all its cunning, cruelty and speed.
But it also possessed the dominant characteristics of the two other most powerful beasts
—the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. Daniel’s fourth beast, the Roman Empire,
had absorbed and therefore it included the three beasts before it.
Thus it included all seven heads. And John’s beast also has seven heads. It was Daniel’s
fourth beast, only, which had 10 horns, and John’s beast has 10 horns.
-And so, if we are willing to be guided solely by the Bible description of this “beast” and to let
the Bible interpret the symbols used to describe it, we come to the inevitable conclusion that
the beast of Revelation 13 is the Roman Empire, of 31 b.c. to a.d. 476!
Nebuchadnezzar’s image, by the two legs, describes the two divisions of the Roman Empire,
after a.d. 330: West, with capital at Rome, and East, with capital at Constantinople.
John also pictures this beast, not as a church or as an individual man, but as a powerful government
having a great army. For they worshiped the beast by saying, “Who is able to make war with him?”
-the Horns of the fourth beast of Daniel 7 and of the beast of Revelation 13.
The 10 horns symbolize the same thing—10 stages of government continuing out of the Roman
Empire. The 10 horns “out of this kingdom [the fourth—the Roman Empire, 31 b.c. to a.d. 476]
are ten kings that shall arise .
And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven
[not in heaven], shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High …” Daniel 7:24, 27
The 10 horns, then, are 10 kingdoms to arise out of the fourth kingdom, the Roman Empire.
These kings, also called kingdoms, continue from a.d. 476 until the time when the stone,
Christ and His Kingdom, smashes the image on its toes, and the kingdom is given to the saints.
the kingdoms represented by the horns are successive, not contemporaneous.
