The
In the first
part of Revelation chapter thirteen deals with the Antichrist who is there
called the first beast, and then starting in verses eleven goes to the second
beast. Some may wonder why in the world spend so much time on the Antichrist.
There are some great things to learn about human viewpoint thinking and the way
people respond to charismatic, human viewpoint, demonic leadership. It is not
just political, it happens in corporations, in businesses, and the more pagan a
nation becomes the more this kind of leadership rises to the surface. It is
operating on a complete fantasy of how life works. If we watch the news we see
evidence of this every day. The same dynamic occurred in the Old Testament with
Pharaoh. Pharaoh rejected God and sold himself and his thinking completely to
the paganism of the Egyptian religion. As God gave him ten opportunities to
change his thinking but each grace opportunity just hardened him further in his
rejection of God.
We are going to
see this a lot in the coming years. We will see the people who have rejected
truth become more and more mired in their hostility to truth, and as they
network on the internet and in other ways they realize that there are a whole
lot more of them than there are of us, and so we will become demonized more and
more by the culture. It is those people who just have such a view of truth,
that there is just one truth, that are viewed as the most horrible people in
the world. This kind of thinking is not new but it is new in our nation. It is
going to dominate more and more, and this is the same kind of thing that we are
going to see in the Tribulation: dominating the Tribulation, dominating the
thinking of the leaders, and it is encapsulated in the thinking of this one
person, the Antichrist. So there is an interesting psychological study, we may
say, of evil and evil leadership in the study of the Antichrist. We need to be
informed believers and not as Paul would say in some letters, “I don’t want you
to be ignorant, brethren.”
So as we get
into Revelation chapter thirteen it focuses on this first beast. As we have
seen, there is a textual issue in the first verse and it should read “and I,”
not “and he” or the dragon as seen in the
NASB. “I” is referring to John as he stands on the sand of the
seashore. The “beast coming up out of the
sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns” is, as we have seen, a
representation of the kingdoms of man and its final form in the ten-nation
confederacy of the Antichrist. The beast comes out of the waters, the nations,
and is of Gentiles origin, for the Antichrist. The Antichrist doesn’t have a
Jewish base. The false prophet comes out of the land, a term in reference to
The context of Daniel seven
is in the context of a section of Daniel beginning in 2:1 and going to the end
of chapter seven where Daniel is no longer writing in Hebrew, he is writing in
Aramaic. That is important because there are only a few other verses written in
Aramaic. It was the language of the Babylonians and the Persians later on, and
it is a Gentile language. It is important to note that the Bible now is no
longer written in a Jewish language but is written in a Gentile language in
these six chapters, 2-7, which focus on the rise of the Gentile kingdoms in
history and their dominion over
Chapter two of Daniel states
that God is in control of world empires. That is the chapter where
Nebuchadnezzar has the dream and see the statue with the head of gold, etc.,
and he sees this stone that demolishes the statue. The point of the chapter is
that God is in control of history, and the statue is a depiction of the flow of
history. Chapter three deals with the results of loyalty to God and His authority.
It is the chapter which describes the three friends who take their stand for
the Word of God. Even though it will cost them they refuse to bow down to the
statue that Nebuchadnezzar builds after he has seen this big statue in chapter
two and finds out that he is the head of gold. He builds a statue and makes
everybody in the kingdom worship him. In the fourth chapter we see the results
of pride and arrogance, the results of rejecting God’s authority. God strikes
him down and he becomes like an animal. Chapter five deals with the same issue
and it focuses on the whole situation with Belshazzar. Chapter six deals with
the plot against Daniel and the incident of the lion’s den. Again there has
been a power base shift; the Persians are now in control. Chapters seven and
eight are no longer in chronological order. In chapter seven we see that God is
in control of world empires; He oversees the flow of history.
Think about this from a
Jewish aspect. You are an individual Jewish believer, have lost everything,
have been taken out of the land God has promised you, and now you get this
information. This shows you that if you continue in your pride and arrogance,
As we look at chapter seven
the animals we see are animals that represent empires.
No matter how great a nation
is, ultimately it is going down just like every other nation because every
human nation is part of the kingdom of man. We are not going to get away from
it and it has been the target of Satan since the beginning to destroy any
nation that promotes freedom, promotes the Word of God, and protects
We will see how the image of
Daniel chapter two fits into chapter seven. First we have the winged lion of
H.A. Ironside’s commentary on
Daniel: In the second
chapter of Daniel he makes the observation about the Gentile kings; the
division in Daniel chapter seven is given to Daniel, a prophet, a man of God.
The image of man given to the Gentile [Nebuchadnezzar] king depicts these
empires by a stately and noble figure that filled him with such admiration he
set up a similar statue top be worshipped as a god. But in the opening chapter
of the second division, Daniel the man of God has a vision of those same
empires and he sees them as four ravenous wild beasts of so brutal a character
and so m0onstrous withal that no actual creature could adequately set them
forth.
This is an unflattering
picture of mankind. It is a picture of the human race as voracious, as violent,
as taking advantage of people, destroying people. It is the last thing that we
think of when we think of all of the great empires in history. What we see in
the contrast between Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 is that in Daniel 2 Daniel interprets
world history from man’s viewpoint. Man looks at what man produces and thinks
it is wonderful and great. But Daniel 7 is a picture that depicts human history
from God’s viewpoint that these kingdoms of man are not very good. They are
hostile and antagonistic to God and they are destructive of humanity.
We will see that there are
three basic divisions at the beginning of chapter 7, there is a setting
described in the first two verses, then the beasts are set forth in verses 3-7,
then there is a description of this boastful horn that comes up among the ten
horns of the fourth beast. Daniel is not left to guess as to the meaning of
these images. Daniel has seen everything by verse 15, he doesn’t understand it
but it has weighed heavy on his soul. Daniel
We are told in verse 1 that
this occurred in the first year of Belshazzar, about 553 BC. Daniel 7:1 NASB
“In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel saw a dream and visions
in his mind {as he lay} on his bed; then he wrote the dream down {and} related
the {following} summary of it. [2] Daniel said, ‘I was looking in my vision by
night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.”
The sea is the symbol of unstable human society in the kingdom of man. It is
the instability that results from man trying to rule himself apart from God.
Human history is at best chaotic and unstable. And four great beasts were
coming up from the sea, different from one another. The wind is a picture of
the spiritual forces at work which blend with the human powers to create the
flows of history, and we see this combination of the demonic with the
instability of man. [3] “And four great beasts were coming up from the sea,
different from one another.” These are each depicted as man-eating animals each
more dangerous as the one before carrying on the same characteristics. They
show these kings and kingdoms to be oriented to various world philosophies,
cosmic philosophies of the kingdom of man, and depict these kings and kingdoms
as destroyers of humanity, they don’t build humanity. So Daniel’s vision is of
the beastly nature of human kingdoms and we see a deadly combination when we
take fallen humanity plus satanic and demonic influence. It results in animal
behavior, man becomes inhuman.
Verse 3 talks about the three
beasts that come up out of the sea, and if we compare that with verse 17 where
we have the interpretation, the interpreting angels says, “These great beasts,
which are four {in number,} are four kings {who} will arise from the earth.”
The word “kings” can also mean kingdoms. The first creature is mentioned in v.
4 NASB “The first {was} like a lion and had {the} wings of an eagle.
I kept looking until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the
ground and made to stand on two feet like a man; a human mind also was given to
it.” It is interesting to watch what Daniel says about each one of these beasts
and how it works out in history. There is something that changes the bestial
nature of this kingdom from the normal human kingdom to being more manlike as
God created human beings to be. So he is made to stand on two feet and a human
mind was given to it. The plucking of the wings is what happened to
Nebuchadnezzar. This was fulfilled when God smacks him down and turns him into
an animal for several years. The irony is that after seven years of being a
beast he becomes a genuine human being. He trusts the Lord, he is no longer
arrogant, he recognizes that he is under the authority of God. This is when a
human mind was given to him and he becomes a more genuinely human leader. The
head of gold is now the two-winged lion. Lions were also used of