We are in Daniel 7, Daniel’s vision of the four beasts. So far we’ve seen that the first beast, the lion with eagle’s wings, was the empire of Babylon, and the bear on its side was Medo-Persia. Today we get to the third and fourth beasts, found in Daniel 7:6-8.
6 After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. 7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. 8 I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.
In verse 6, Daniel’s gaze shifted to a third beast, which looked “like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it.”
This winged four-headed leopard represented the empire that followed Medo-Persia: the Greeks. This corresponds to the belly and thighs of bronze in Nebuchadnezzar’s image (Dan. 2:32, 39). Leadership in the ancient Near East passed from Assyria to Babylon in 612 B.C., from Babylon to Persia in 539 B.C., and from Persia to Greece in 331 B.C.
Now, Daniel had grown up under the Babylonian empire and likely could have guessed that the Medes and Persians would be the next world rulers, but Greece? There is no way that Daniel, outside of revealed prophecy from God, could have known that Greece would become a world empire.
Alexander
Alexander the Great Alexander the Great, detail from Alexander and Porus, painting by Charles Le Brun, 17th century; in the Louvre, Paris, France.
Their outstanding characteristics are their speed, strength, and cunning (cf. Jer. 5:6; Hos. 13:7; Hab. 1:8). The four wings on this leopard’s back made it even faster. The figure of a leopard was used by Jeremiah (Jer. 5:6) and Hosea (Hos. 13:7) as a symbol of swift judgment that was coming on Judah and on Israel. The leopard was apparently used in these pictures of coming judgment because the leopard would pounce suddenly on its victim.
Alexander depended not upon the size of his army, but on speed and strategy. The lightning character of his conquests is without precedent in the ancient world, and this is fully in keeping with the image of speed embodied in the leopard itself and the four wings on its back. Alexander’s army included thirty-two thousand soldiers and five thousand calvary. While he was the progenitor of the blitzkrieg type of attack, Daniel 7:6 reminds us that he was “given authority to rule.” No matter how brilliant a strategist Alexander was, it is ultimately God who gave the victory.
In Daniel 8, the same empire is said to move so rapidly that it did not touch the ground, “a male goat came from the west . . . without touching the ground” (Dan. 8:5).
In fact, Alexander’s armies conquered other, often larger, armies, with superior tactics and lightning fast movements. Alexander overthrew the rule of Persia and conquered all the kingdoms of the known world in twelve years (336-324 B.C.).
Alexander’s kingdom included the entire eastern Mediterranean world in the west and extended as far as India in the east.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-the-Great
In 324 B.C. the youthful conqueror of the world returned and visited the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae. Alexander died a year later at the age of thirty-three trying to rebuild Babylon, which God said, through the prophet Jeremiah, would never be rebuilt.
“Before your eyes I will repay Babylon and all who live in Babylonia for all the wrong they have done in Zion,” declares the LORD.
“I am against you, O destroying mountain,
you who destroy the whole earth,” declares the LORD.
“I will stretch out my hand against you,
roll you off the cliffs,
and make you a burned-out mountain.
No rock will be taken from you for a cornerstone,
nor any stone for a foundation,
for you will be desolate forever,”
declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 51:24-26)
“Alexander was twenty years old when he began his wars. When he was twenty-six he conquered Darius, and became master of the whole Persian empire; but when he was thirty-two years of age, in his full strength, he was broken. He died of a drunken surfeit [excess], or, as some suspect, by poison, and left no child living.”
Actually, Alexander did have two sons, Hercules and Alexander, but Olympias, Alexander’s mother, poisoned them, as well as Alexander’s brother, Arideus, who had been made king in Macedonia.
In the interpretation of the vision (vv. 15-28), the angel does not interpret the meaning of the four heads, so ultimately interpreters cannot be certain. In any case, God’s sovereignty is clear once more, as “dominion was given to it.” Again, the verb is passive. Although Alexander was a great general, his victories came because God had “given” them.
Alexander began his conquest of Persia in 334 BC and in one decade had established a vast empire. The four heads of the leopard may suggest this vast dominance, to the four corners of the world.
Another possibility is that the four heads point forward to what happened after Alexander died. Without an available heir to the throne, his four generals divided up the empire.
Each of these successors ruled one of the geographical segments of Alexander’s empire: Greece, Western Asia, Egypt, and Persia. The exact identification of the rulers is debatable because it took about 20 years for the kingdom to be successfully divided. But there is no question that Greece split into four major parts after Alexander died (cf. 8:8, 22).
The generals were known as the Diadoclii or the “successors.” In Egypt, Ptolemy I ruled. In the eastern provinces, the general was Seleucus I. In Macedonia and Greece, Antipater and Cassander took power. And in Thrace and Asia Minor, Lysimachus became the general.
https://www.thecollector.com/who-are-the-diadochi-of-alexander-the-great
Ultimately just two of these kingdoms remained strong, and they battled each other for almost two centuries. Some of the details of their battles were told in advance in the prophecies found in Daniel 11. In fact, the prophecy is so clear and so accurate that some people think a scribe using the name of Daniel must have written it in the second century before Christ, after these events happened.
Lion, bear, and leopard imagery also appears in Hosea’s prophetic ministry to the northern kingdom of Israel. God used those animal comparisons to describe his judgment on Israel: “I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs; I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open” (Hosea 13:7-8). Pagan empires operate under the sovereign rule of God, who raises up and brings down, and his purposes include judgment—even if pagan empires are his unwitting instruments. God’s sovereignty is not contingent on their consent.
As frightening as these beasts were, the most hideous creature was yet to come.
The fourth beast (Dan. 7:7-8) receives almost as much attention as the first three beasts combined, and Daniel and the angel focus on this beast in the interpretation section as well (vv. 19-27). If preceding empires in chapters 2 and 7 were Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece, then the fourth beast (7:7-8) corresponded to the fourth metal (2:33, 40-43) and thus represents Rome, although that has been disputed.
Walvoord called the identification of the fourth beast in chapter 7 “the crucial issue in the interpretation of the entire book of Daniel” (Walvoord, John F. Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation, p. 159).
In contrast to Greece, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire was slow. It began in 241 B.C. with the occupation of Sicily. Gradually it expanded throughout the whole Mediterranean world: western Europe, including Britain, Gaul (modern France and Germany), and Spain; and western Asia, as far east as the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Its western branch formally ended in A.D. 410, when the Visigoths sacked Rome. But the eastern part of the empire lasted several hundred years later.
The other composite animals (a winged lion, a bear with ribs in its teeth, a winged four-headed leopard) were menacing in Daniel’s descriptions, but he highlighted the ferocious nature of the fourth beast even more: “Behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet.” This was a most terrifying picture of the cruel, crushing nature of the Roman empire. Daniel was truly horrified by what he saw. There had been nothing like it in all of history.
As Leupold states, referring to the iron teeth, “That must surely signify a singularly voracious, cruel, and even vindictive world power. Rome could never get enough of conquest. Rivals like Carthage just had to be broken: Carthago delenda est. Rome had no interest in raising the conquered nations to any high level of development. All her designs were imperial; let the nations be crushed and stamped underfoot” (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Daniel, pp. 297-298).
It was the Roman empire that crucified our Lord, that crucified Peter and beheaded Paul. It was Rome that banished John to the Isle of Patmos and butchered countless men, women and children who were followers of the Way. Obviously human culture and political systems are not evolving into something better and better, but getting worse and worse.
This depiction recalls the fourth part of the man of metals in chapter 2, representing a kingdom as “strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these” (2:40). The similarity of 7:7 to 2:40 further confirms a correspondence between the two visions. As one commentator wrote, “Rome showed itself to be the first truly universal empire of antiquity. Rome was characterized by its conquering and crushing power and by its ability to consolidate the territories which it seized” (Edward Joseph Young, The Prophecy of Daniel: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1953), 288).
Daniel described the fourth beast as “different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.” This description surpasses those of the previous beasts, who were not pictured as having horns.
Daniel did not compare the fourth beast that he saw to any known animal. It was unique. It was dreadful, terrifying, and extremely strong. Its large iron teeth chewed up what it attacked, and its feet crushed and trampled everything left by the former beasts.
On the other hand, the makeup of this beast does incorporate language used for the previous three. It had feet (7:7), like the first (v. 4); it had something plucked (v. 8), like the first (v. 4); it had teeth (v. 7), like the second (v. 5); it devoured (v. 7), like the second (v. 5); and it exercised relentless dominion (v. 7), like the third (v. 6).
As Daniel considered the “ten horns” of the beast, “There came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots” (v. 8). This activity is not paralleled by any previous beast (cf. vv. 4-6).
Iain Duguid acknowledges how dreadful this all must have been, suggesting “spending a night in a den of lions would be a comfortable prospect compared to the prospect of confronting these outlandish and dangerous beasts!” (Iain Duguid, “Daniel,” in The Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 110).
Who are the “ten horns”? Are they to be taken literally or figuratively? If we follow the normal hermeneutic and acknowledge that every other number in the book is taken literally, then the “ten horns” must refer to ten rulers.
Gleason Archer Jr., says, “There is an unmistakable correspondence between these horns and the ten toes of the dream image (ch. 2), and the mention of iron in the teeth suggests the legs and toes of iron in that image.”
Tom Constable says, “Most premillenarians believe that the 10 horns describe 10 rulers who will arise in the future and reign simultaneously. This seems unlikely to many, since the Roman Empire is no longer in existence, at least in the form in which it existed in ancient times. However, there seem to be indications in Daniel and elsewhere in the Bible, which I will point out later, that God will reshape or revive the Roman Empire in the future. It may not be called “the Roman Empire,” but it will have connections to the old Roman Empire. Darby referred to it as “Europe.”
Then who are the “three horns”? In verse 8 Daniel noticed an eleventh horn arising among the 10, which displaced three of the 10 horns. Unless we adopt a figurative approach and say it doesn’t really matter, the three horns must be a subset of the 10 horns, the ten rulers in the last days.
Auberlen says, “Here for the first time in the development of revelation, the idea of Antichrist is clearly unfolded, because here for the first time the entire course of the development of the godless and God-opposing world is clearly surveyed down to its end” (Carl Augustus Auberlen, The Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelations of St. John: Viewed in Their Mutual Relation, With an Exposition of the Principal Passages, p. 39). Culver reminds us that the kingdom of the Messiah is “specifically predicted to appear after the appearance and destruction of Antichrist, and only after the appearance and destruction of Antichrist” (Robert Culver, Daniel and the Latter Days, p. 131).
This little horn had “eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.” The first beast was given the mind of a man (7:4), while this fourth beast has the eyes and speech of one. If the beast was truly as fearsome as Daniel described, then the “great things” the little horn was “speaking” were surely alarming. We will consider interpretations of this “little” horn during the exposition of verses 15-28.
Why did Daniel stop here? History did not. This world has existed more than 1500 years after the demise of the Roman Empire (A.D. 476)
Consider this: Rome was the last empire to rule the whole known world. Listen to the words of Daniel 2:39-43:
After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron —for iron breaks and smashes everything — and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. (emphasis added)
Rome was a strong world empire, strong as iron, that smashed everything, but it had internal weaknesses, feet of clay, due to the mixtures of people that eventually spelled Rome’s doom. Rome was later invaded by the barbarians and fell in A.D. 476. Never again were there nations like Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome that ruled the whole civilized world. Even modern armies have only subdued small portions of the whole civilized world.
https://www.worldhistory.org/image/15518/map-of-the-provinces-of-the-roman-empire-under-aug
The second and more important reason that Rome was the last kingdom mentioned is because of the main point of the vision of Daniel 2. Something very unusual, very important, and completely divine was going to occur when the fourth kingdom came on the scene.
In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands — a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. (Daniel 2:44, 45)
During the rule of Rome (not some other empire), the kingdom of God would come to earth in the person of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
This vision in Daniel 7 is an explanation of “end times Rome,” that rising again of the Roman Empire in some form. The description in verse 8 is a reference to the Antichrist, the “little horn” that speaks “boastfully.” James Montgomery Boice says, “This seems to be the first biblical reference to the individual later described in the Bible as the Antichrist. He appears in 2 Thessalonians 2 as “the man of lawlessness…doomed for destruction” (v. 3) and is seen again in Revelation” (Daniel: An Expositional Commentary, p. 75).
Wiersbe reminds us that our Antichrist comes from Greek and the prefix anti- can either point out “against Christ” or “instead of Christ.” Both ideas represent the stance and modus operandi of the Antichrist. He comes in all ways in rebellion against God, but in the eyes of man he comes as an alternate Christ, a supposed Messiah, a false Savior.
Grace Still Amazes 
