FOUR GREAT BEASTS

Daniel’s vision of the ‘four great beasts’ seems to run parallel to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the ‘great image’ in chapter 2. In all likelihood both the four portions of the image and the four beasts represent the same great world empires: the Babylonian; the Medo-Persian; the Grecian; and the Roman. As might be expected, Nebuchadnezzar saw each of these kingdoms in their outward aspect - as man views them, impressive and magnifi­cent. In contrast, Daniel visualized them in their true spiritual character - as God views them, wild and ravening beasts.

The lion, the so-called ‘king of beasts’, depicts the Babylo­nian empire, the king of which was an absolute despot with unchallenged authority. Its ‘eagles wings’ suggest the vastness of its dominion. The bear depicts the Medo-Persian empire, with its great crushing power. The Persian section of the alliance came to dominate the empire; ‘the bear raised up itself on one side’. The leopard depicts the Grecian empire of Alexander the Great. Its four wings suggest both the speed and the universality (to north, south, east and west) of its conquests. The fourth beast, terrifying and extremely strong, depicts the Roman empire, especially noted for its monstrous cruelty.

This fourth beast ‘had ten horns’, a feature which particu­larly interested Daniel, vv. 7, 8. These horns, he was told, represented ten kings. This feature of the Roman empire clearly directs us from the past to the future; ‘the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet’, Rev. 17. 12. The’little horn’ which arose among the ten is marked by great insight, blasphemy and savage persecution of God’s ‘saints’, vv. 20, 25. Yet, in God’s time, he will be ‘slain’ and his body ‘given to the burning flame’, v. 11. The description of this ‘little horn’ corresponds in many details to that of ‘the Beast’, who, following the advent of our Lord Jesus as the awesome Warrior King, is to be ‘taken, and … cast alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone’, Rev. 19. 20; cf. Rev. 13. 1-10. And when all four transient ‘great beasts’ are only a memory, ‘the Ancient of days’ will give universal dominion to ‘the Son of man’ - to our Lord Jesus and His saints.