31 - The Little Horn and the Beast of Revelation

R/Dean Daniel Lesson 31

The Little Horn and the Beast of Revelation – Daniel 7:8

We have been looking at the flow of human kingdoms in this chapter; they are portrayed as beasts because of the fact that man at his worst, as God sees him, is bestial when he operates on the sin nature.  It is not a complimentary view of man.  So let's go back and begin at the beginning of the chapter and we'll just quickly run through the opening verses.  Daniel 7:1, "In the first year of Belshazzar," so this is some 14 or 15 years before the events in Daniel 6, "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 my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea."

And we saw the four winds of heaven represent angelic forces, most likely demonic forces, having their impact on human history.  And the "great sea" pictures the mass of fallen humanity and out of this mass of fallen humanity is going to arise four kingdoms and these kingdoms are represented as four great beasts and there is a tremendous amount of symbolism in this chapter but we're not left to guess as to what these symbols mean on our own.  This isn't some sort of exercise in subjectivity.  God intends to communicate something clearly to us and He does so and in a case like this He provides an angel for Daniel to give him the correct interpretation.  So we're not left guessing as to what these symbols refer to.

Daniel 7:3, "And four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another.  [4] "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.  [5] And behold, another beast, a second one, resembling a bear.  And it was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth; and thus they said to it, 'Arise, devour much meat!'"  Verse 6, "After this I kept looking, and behold, another one, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird; the beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it." 

Now back at verse 3 when we see that these four beasts come up from the sea, this is explained in verse 17 as four kings who will arise from the earth.  These are four successive empires, four successive kingdoms what will follow one another and they all followed one another in the ancient world.  "The first was like a lion and had the wings of an eagle."  This is representative of Babylon; this is typical, both the Assyrian and Babylonian art, to have winged lions and this was a symbol, just as an eagle is a symbol of the U.S., lion is a symbol of Great Britain, this is also a symbol of Babylon, a lion with the wings of an eagle. 

The Babylonian Empire covered a large section of what is now the southern part of Turkey, Syria, they had conquered Israel, sections of Egypt, portions of what is now present Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, and pushing over towards modern Afghanistan and Pakistan.  This first kingdom is the same as the head of gold in the statue in Daniel 2 so we're going to have to do two significant things in our study which will help pull a lot of prophecy together.  One is correlating Daniel 7 to Daniel 2 and the other is correlating Daniel 7 to events in Revelation and this will allow us to build when we get into Daniel 8 so that we can understand…with each chapter it's as if the focus becomes narrower and narrower as the writer begins to hone in on just exactly what God's plan is for Israel.  And Daniel 7 is the last chapter in Daniel that's in Aramaic, and therefore the last chapter that deals with history from a Gentile perspective.  Starting in Daniel 8 the focus will shift back to God's plan from a Jewish perspective. 

Verse 5 focused on the bear, that was raised up on one side, indicating an imbalance in the bear and that is representative of the weaker Medes joined with the greater Persians.  The three ribs represent the conquest of Lydia, Egypt and Babylon, and it is told to "devour much meat."  This is correlated with Daniel 8:3-4 as well as verse 20 where you have the Medo-Persian Empire represented by a ram.  This Medo-Persian Empire is representative of the chest and arms of silver in Daniel 2. 

Then in Daniel 7:6 we read: "After this I kept looking, and behold, another one, like a leopard" the leopard has four wings and four heads, and the leopard represents speed, the speed of conquest with which Alexander the Great conquered much of the ancient world, Greece, Egypt, modern Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, all the way to the Indus River.  The four wings and four heads represent the division of that empire after his death when he was in his early 30s.  This further developed in Daniel 8:5 under the imagery of a male goat.  There Daniel writes:  "While I was observing, behold, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground, and the goad had a conspicuous horn between his eyes," so the shaggy goat in 8:21 represents the kingdom of Greece." 

Now there are four horns in Daniel 8:22, four horns that replace the one that was broken off, represent four kingdoms that emerged from this nation but will not have the same power that Alexander had.  This is a picture of the ancient world: you had one division which went to Lysimachus over here in Greece; the western part of Turkey, and the Syrian empire here went to the Antiochene kings, the Seleucids, and then in Egypt, that went to the Ptolemies. 

Then we come to Daniel 7:7 where you have the fourth beast, "After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth."  Last time I wanted to focus on this as the fourth beast being Rome.  And I said what's unique about this beast is it has these iron teeth, and if you skip down and look at Daniel 7:23 you read that it is a fierce veracious beast, it devours the whole earth, treads down and crushes it.  Daniel 7:19, it has teeth of iron and claws of bronze. 

Now the difference in this creature and the other beasts is that part of this creature includes something that is manmade; both iron and bronze have to be refined by man, so this not natural.  There is something added to this beast that makes it terrifying; it is not its natural beastly quality that makes it terrifying, it is this manmade addition that makes it terrifying.  See, man thinks that the human race is basically good and basically kind, but this is God's picture of mankind when he is left without God and without doctrine, and apart from salvation that man is inherently evil because every human being is born with a sin nature.  That's why Jesus Christ had to come at the First Advent in order to die on the cross for our sins, and it's only when mankind is regenerated that he has a new capacity.  But this is a picture of the human race in rejection of God, rejection of the Bible, and we have him at his worst.  He is terrifying, he's strong, he is vicious because of this human element.  Last time we surveyed the history of the Roman Empire and of this particular beast. 

Now at the end of Daniel 7:7 we read that this beast "devoured and crushed, and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from al the beasts that were before it," so that's referring to something unique, a unique quality of the beast in its latter manifestation, "and it had ten horns."  We'll come back and look at the significance of those ten horns in a little bit.

Revelation 17:1 expands this a little bit.  We read, "And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, 'Come here, I shall show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters.'"  Now the great harlot represents the thought system of the world in the midst of the Tribulation.  And so John is going to have an interpretation given to him from an angel so he understands the vision that he is seeing.  God doesn't leave it up to John or to us to try to figure out what these things mean.  Revelation 17:2, this is the great harlot "with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality."  So this is a picture of how the nations in the world have imbibed human viewpoint philosophies thinking they can have success apart from God, and that is their unfaithfulness to God.  They have rejected God as Creator, rejected God as sovereign and as the authority and they have set themselves up as the ultimate authority in human history.

Then Revelation 17:3 John says, "And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns."  Now the ten horns here are the same ten horns that are mentioned in Daniel 7:7 but the seven heads are different, and we'll come back and look at that in a minute.  We have to discover who these seven heads are; they are different from the ten horns.  They are not the seven horns that are left over the little horn takes over the other three horns, I'll tell you that right now.

Revelation 17:3 states, "And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns."  And then in Daniel 7:25, "And he will speak out against the Most High," and this is referring to the little horn, "he will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time."  Now pay attention to Daniel 17:25, there are three things this says about the antichrist.  First of all, he's going to speak out in an arrogant and blasphemous manner against God, Most High, and he is going to be assaulting the saints of God on the earth.  Second, in his arrogance as a human ruler he is going to attempt to make alterations in times and in law.  We will see that this same thing is asserted in Daniel 7 and there we will see that this has to do with the Jewish ceremonial calendar and the ceremonial system.  And then third, this power is temporarily given into his hand for three and a half years, that's the sense of time, times and a half a time.  Remember in Daniel 4 when Nebuchadnezzar was going to be turned into an animal it was for seven times, seven periods of time, so that tells us that time represents one year.  So this is time, one; times, two, that's three, and a half a time is a half a year.  We'll look at another way of arguing for that a little later on; it's equivalent to 42 months, three years is 36 months, a half a year is another 6 months so that is equivalent to three and a half years.  So that refers to the second half of the Tribulation. 

We looked at three questions last time:  What is the manmade factor of the fourth kingdom that's pictured in the refined iron teeth and in the refined bronze claws and we saw that that had to do with man's arrogance, setting himself up as the ultimate authority.  Prior to Rome, prior to the Roman Empire, even though you had emperors who were set up to be gods they were seen as incarnations of the god and no matter what they did, what they believed, or how true or false it was, they all thought that law came down from the gods.  Starting with the Roman Empire because of what they inherited from Plato and Aristotle, they saw themselves as the ultimate source of law under both Aristotelian and Platonic thought the Greek ideal was the city-state and in this city-state if everything was perfect man could achieve his ultimate potential.  So Rome took that, blended it with their own efficiency, their own background, and set themselves up as the ultimate and final authority.  This is what leads to the oppressive nature of the fourth kingdom is that no longer is God the ultimate source of absolutes, but man becomes the source of those absolutes.  So once man becomes the source and you have a finite reference point as the source of absolutes, then your absolutes can shift.  And that means that reality shifts; absolutes are directly related to reality.  If your absolutes are not grounded in something outside of man and it's grounded in something in the creation, then it's manipulable by man and man tries to manipulate reality and manipulate history for his own purposes and you lose all sense of objectivity. 

We see an example of it on the news with this photograph that was taken on September 12^th of the three Caucasian firemen raising a flag.  That's what happened, that's what history records, only 3% of the New York fire department happen to be black, and that happens to be the reality, but what's happening is, for the sake of political correctness which is man's attempt in 20^th century, in order to reshape reality according to his own autonomous standards, what's happening is they want to create this statue that's going to have one Caucasian, one Hispanic, and one African-American.  I don't have a problem and none of us should have a problem if they want to create a statue that represents the cultural racial mix of New York and of the United States, but to shape and change history like that is to say that there are no absolutes, that reality is determined by what we think and not what happens.  And so once a nation begins to divorce itself from an absolute concept of reality, then they can no longer make good decisions because a decision is good only when it is based on reality but once you think you can change reality by your own thoughts, change reality according to your own value system instead of Gods, then you can no longer make decisions that are consistent with reality.  Once you start making decisions apart from reality then you're going to start making bad decisions and that leads to the internal collapse of a nation. 

The same thing was seen in the Roman Empire and last time we went over the Roman Empire and I wanted to give you some dates this time.  I broke the history of Rome down into four periods and I want to review that.  The first period is called the pre-civil war period from 509 BC to 272 BC.  This is the early stage, it used to be referred to as the time of the Roman Republic and it was the time that Rome was establishing herself on the Italian Peninsula.  It was a time when they were developing their military and their unique military tactics and strategy.  Starting in 272 BC you have the period of expansion, when they went from the first Punic Wars, which were the wars between Rome and the Carthaginians in North Africa where they were fighting with Hamilcar Barca and later his son, Hannibal, and ultimately, finally Scipio, the younger defeats them in 146 BC at the end of the third Punic War.  That basically leaves Rome in charge of the Mediterranean. 

Then you had a period of internal strife, a period of civil wars in Rome, for over a hundred years, a time of instability as different people are vying for power and that doesn't come to a close until August becomes Caesar in 30 BC, when he sets up a new administrative system for ruling the ancient world.  So that establishes the empire which lasts from 30 BC on into the…depending on whether you want to track it through the western empire or eastern empire, on into the AD period, but that just covers the early outline of Roman history.  That ought to bring us up to date; a good 20 minute review so we know where we've been. 

Now let's look at the understanding of these ten horns.  One of the things I keep thinking about, especially in light of everything that's happening, we live in what appears to be perilous times right now.  If you look at the news, yesterday the Palestinians, who incidentally have no historical right to the land, the Palestinians are just migrant workers that were brought in in the last hundred years, they do not have a historical presence in the land, they do not have a historical right to the land.  For years most of us have been taught that the term "Palestinian" comes from the old Hebrew word for the Philistines, but that's not true.  I have a friend, Randy Price, he's done some remarkable work on this and in the Greek Septuagint, when the Jewish rabbis translated the term Philistine into Greek they did not use the Greek word that's the root of Palestine, they used a transliteration, it's still basically the same, Philistino, and what happen is that the Greeks who loved word games…loved puns and word plays, used a word, Palesteuo, which means to wrestle. 

Remember Jacob got his name, Israel, because he wrestled with God at Peniel, so they chose a name, "wrestler," in order to describe the land of Israel and that term not only described Israel but they chose it because it sounded like Philistine, but it was used by people like Josephus and other Jews throughout the period from the 1^st century BC on into the 1^st century AD, to describe the land that belonged to Israel.  So the term "Palestine" itself does not belong to anybody other than the Jews.  In fact, in recent history there was a Palestinian brigade that fought for the British during World War II and it was all Jewish.  And the term "Palestinian" was used by the U.N. to describe Jews up until the mid 1960s, it was only when this group of ragtag nomads who refused to stay in the land, Israel gave them every opportunity to stay in the land after 1948 but they refused to, they were too afraid and then the surrounding Arab countries, like Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia would not allow them to come into their countries because they wanted to use them as a wedge against Israel that this group of people called Palestinians were basically invented by the Arabs in order to use them against the Jews in order to evict the Jews from the land, and that is their goal, despite whatever Arafat, who is one of the greatest terrorists of all time, despite what Arafat says when he gets on the news in English, what he says in Arabic is that the Palestinian will have as its capital Jerusalem, they will take over all the land and there won't be a single Jew left alive in it.  Of course the western news media never reports that.

So we live in perilous times because of what's going on with Islam right now and we hear many things coming out of the Middle East about what the terrorists are planning, what Al-Qaeda is planning and on various news sites yesterday and today there warnings about terrorists attacks coming our of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, an attack on Israel, and there is a tremendous amount of instability there.  There was a 70-year old man who was hung yesterday, lynched by a bunch of Palestinians outside of Bethlehem and the Palestinian naval police just stood by and watched and let it happen, didn't do a single thing about it.  As these things go on there is a tremendous amount of anxiety and we ask the question, just exactly what is going on and how does this plug into prophecy.  We can't say with certainty but it seems to me that when we look at the scenario that's presented in this chapter and chapter 8, what you have at the beginning of the Tribulation is an extremely strong western European power.  That's the ten horns that are mentioned here.  You do not have a western power that is allied to the Middle East, to an Arabic block or to what would be the heirs of Islam.  In fact, what you have at the beginning of the Tribulation when the antichrist signs a peace treaty with Israel is that the antichrist is going to allow Israel to rebuild the temple on the temple mount.  The temple mount is the key issue right now.  That's why Bin Laden and other heads of terrorist's network signed an order for a jihad against the United States and Israel in 1998; they cited that the main issue was to protect the temple mount and to bring it back under complete Arab control. 

Now if you have a picture at the beginning of the Tribulation that Israel is going to be allowed to rebuild the temple, then how in the world can the PLO, how in the world can Al-Qaeda, how in the world can Saddam Hussein be exercising the level of power and fear tactics that they do today.  Something has to happen to humble them, and what that might be we'll look at a little later on but it seems to me that in terms of the current scenario, if the Lord's return is near, something has to happen to humble Islam before that will happen.  Now it can happen at the end of the Church Age, it can happen after the rapture in the interim period between the rapture and the beginning of the Tribulation, we don't know, but it's clear from the Scriptures that there is going to be a strong power base in the west and it doesn't appear that this power base is going to be wiped out by some Islamic Jihad. 

Now who are these ten horns?  To understand them we have to get some New Testament perspective from additional revelation.  And so we go to Revelation 13:1 and there we see a picture, a vision that John had that is somewhat similar to Daniel's vision in Daniel 7.  "And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten crowns, and on each head a blasphemous name."  We've already seen in Daniel that Daniel saw these beasts coming up out of the sea, so this is the same scenario, this beast comes out of the mass of Gentile humanity and he had ten horns and seven heads.  I think this beast here is a little different; I don't want to put the beast as the presence of one personality just yet.  That comes, I'm not saying he's not, but notice, the beast comes out of the sea and the beast has ten horns and seven heads.  The seven heads are not the same as the ten horns.  In fact, what we will see is that the seven heads represent seven successive world empires that dominate Israel.  The beast has seven heads; so the beast here is a personification of Satan who is the power ultimately behind all of these human kingdoms as he is seeking world domination in his attempt to demonstrate to God that he, as the prince of the world and the prince and the power of the air, can rule creation on his own.  We have this beast coming up, ten horns and seven heads. 

Now in Daniel 7:8 we read, "While I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it; and, behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth uttering great boasts."  Now the picture in verse 8 is that after the original ten horns are in place and in power, there then arises this little horn.  He doesn't seem to be nearly as significant as the first one but he does have power.  And he attacks and physically, militarily, destroys or defeats three of those horns.  And what you're left with is seven horns plus the little horn.  Now the seven horns are not the seven heads; we have to keep our symbols distinct.  So when we get over to Revelation 13 I don't want you to make the mistake of looking at the ten horns and the seven heads as being a reference to the ten horns and the seven horns.  This is the ten horns and it's the same ten horns that we have in Daniel 7, but the seven heads are distinct. 

In Revelation 13:2 we have another connection to Daniel 7.  "And the beast which I saw was like a leopard," this was the third beast we saw, the four-winged and four-headed leopard, but it had "feet that were like those of a bear," that was the second beast we saw, Medo-Persia, "and his mouth like the mouth of a lion."  So this beast incorporates all of the strengths of these earlier empires.  Now one of the things we're going to note as we come to the end of this and the judgment on the nations is that Daniel 7 makes the statement in Daniel 7:12, "As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but an extension of life was granted to them," now the extension of life that is granted to these beasts is that they have certain cultural developments, certain ideological and political developments that are allowed to continue in human history, despite the fact that that nation is destroyed. 

So that the Persians made a contribution and that continued in history after they were defeated.  The Greeks made certain contributions; that continued in history.  The Romans made contributions and that has continued in history.  If you study the history of the United States and go back and read what took place during the Continental Congress in the 1700s, they modeled their thinking on thinking they derived from the Romans.  It wasn't until the 1800s or the 19^th century that the model for understanding the United States shifted to a Greek model.  The Greeks were not the focus of education in the 1700s; the Romans were.  So you look at the United States and our ideological base for much of our political thinking derives from the Romans, and then secondarily from the Greeks.  That means that we are the heir to the third empire and the fourth empire, from the Greeks and the Romans.

That's one reason why when you have the Revived Roman Empire with elements made up of the old Roman Empire, the heirs, the ideological political heirs of the Roman Empire, you'll find some people, and maybe you've been taught this in the past, that the United States really isn't pictured there, we weren't part of the old Roman Empire so somehow the United States has to collapse before the scenario in the Tribulation.  I do not agree with that scenario.  We are a product, and ideological child of Roman and Greek thought.  We are just as much an heir to the old Roman Empire as anyone in Europe today because that is our historical base.  So I think that the United States may very well maintain its strength; I think it will lose a lot at the rapture because of the loss of so many believers, but if anything diminishes its power it will be the rapture, not some internal collapse and not some external military defeat. 

Now we see this beast has an amalgamation of all of the strengths of the previous empire; the leopard, the bear and the lion.  And the real power behind the beast is the dragon.  The beast is really a picture of the human race and the kingdom of man and all of its ferocity.  The dragon is what gives the beast its power.  The dragon, of course, is Satan.  The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 

And then in Revelation 13:3 we read that one of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.  "And the whole world was astonished and followed the beast."  Now this always raises a few questions as to just exactly what that fatal wound is, and you hear people who, every now and then they'll come up and say well, JFK is going to be miraculously brought back from the dead, or some other conspiracy theory.  They think of this in terms of the fact that the individual, some individual is going to be shot or assassinated and this fatal wound is going to…he's going to be miraculously healed and resurrected.  This is not talking about the fatal wound of a particular individual but of the beast itself.  So we have to understand all of this.  We have to first ask the question: what are the seven heads that are mentioned here in Revelation 13:1 and 13:3. 

What are the seven heads?  So we go to Revelation 17:9, where we read, "the seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits," and the woman is the ideological religious system that governs the final manifestation of the Revived Roman Empire.  Verse 10, "they are also seven kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come."  So that gives us a clue that these seven heads are seven kings, seven empires.  And these empires are all various manifestations of the kingdom of man in human history, so they all follow the same ideology that supports the woman that's mentioned here in 17:9 which is just a personification of the cosmic system.  Verse 10 says, "they are also seven kings; five have fallen," past tense, "one is," present tense, and "the other has not yet come." 

Now what are these seven kingdoms because they are kingdoms that have held power over Israel during the times of the Gentiles,* and this began in ancient time.  The seven kingdoms that have held power over Israel: Egypt; second, Assyria; third, Babylon; fourth, Persia; fifth, Greece."  I misspoke a minute ago; *I said during the times of the Gentiles, the times of the Gentiles did not begin until Babylon.  Seven kings over Israel, starting with Egypt, then Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia, and then the Greeks, all of those were past in 90 AD when John wrote Revelation 17.  And then he said that "one is," "five have fallen, one is," present tense.  Rome was the power that was presently active in 90 AD.  Rome now is, and then one that "has not yet come," this is the Revived Roman Empire that will be resurrected in the future.  None of the other empires come back; Rome, though it was defeated and disappeared, there was an attempt to resurrect it under the Holy Roman Empire, its ideology, its thinking continued, its legal precedence was continuously the model in many western European countries, there was always the ideal to try to get back to the glories of Rome through the Middle Ages.

Now the fatal wound, I think, refers to the fact that the Roman Empire existed at the time of the New Testament up until about the 6^th or 7^th century, and then it disappeared from history, but it will be resurrected in the form of the Revived Roman Empire and that is what will astonish people, when we have a new Roman Empire that is going to be grounded in these ten nations in western Europe.

And then Revelation 17:11 states that "the beast who once was and now is not, is an eighth king, he belongs to the seven, and is going to his destruction," and that eighth king refers to the antichrist.  This is a reference to the final world ruler, the leader of the western alliance of ten nations.  "He belongs to the seven," that means he follows in their footsteps and he is one of them ideologically, he is part of the kingdom of man and the kingdom of man is man seeking to establish political dominion and success, where he can have economic success, world peace, do away with poverty, do away with crime, all on his own apart from God. 

Now let's go back to Revelation 13:1, we have the emphasis on the ten horns, the seven heads; the ten horns are the ten nations and the seven heads are the successive manifestations of the kingdom of man in human history, empires that ruled and dominated over Israel.  We looked at the head one; now we look at the result of this in verse 3, that "the whole world is astonished and follows the beast," so this indicates that he has world dominion.  There will be a global unity for a time and we see this today, everywhere we look people are moving towards a global economy, global information system, computers have provided a global language that breaks down the barriers created by the tower of Babel.  Just try to go to some other country where they don't speak English and try to teach and preach, and you watch people, all the facial expressions are the same and everything else, you just can't understand a thing coming out of their mouth.  The tower of Babel really messed everything up.  "The whole world is astonished" and the whole world "follows the beast." 

Back to Daniel 7:7.  As I stated a moment ago, at the beginning of the Tribulation we do not have a western king that has been destroyed by Moslem radicals; Western Europe is not brought to its knees, in fact what we have a picture of is a humble and impotent Islam.  Now there are a couple of possible explanations for that which I hinted at earlier.  The first is that Islam is destroyed in the Gog invasion of Ezekiel 38 and 39.  Now traditionally, and I don't know what you were taught at some time in the past but traditionally dispensationalists, at least of an earlier generation, took Ezekiel 38 and 39, this invasion from the north, as the first stage in the battle of Armageddon.  However, things have shifted among traditional dispensationalists and most scholars now think that this takes place early on, either right after the rapture, between the rapture and the beginning of the Tribulation, and some would even say it takes place right at the end of the Church Age.  I tend to think it probably takes place during that time gap between the rapture and the beginning of the Tribulation and it is that invasion and that war that catapults the antichrist into a position of power because he is going to be able to bring peace to the nations.  It's going to be a time when, if Islam is still a power base, it will be humbled and defeated and will not have a power base and the center of that battle…[tape turns]

And I think that one possible scenario is that out of sympathy for Israel and all that they've gone through they're going to be allowed to rebuild the temple.  But that's speculation.  Another explanation is that there is a humiliation of Islam before the Tribulation and that could be part of what's going on now, is that we, the United States, is being used by God to humiliate Islam and to defeat it at some level, because the Islamic forces… this is the agenda of fundamentalists literal interpreters, people who are literally interpreting to Koran, this is their agenda, is to have world domination.  That's what their mission is given them by Allah, is to bring the world into submission.  So that is one possible explanation, but we have seen that there is a power base in the west.

Now as we look at Daniel 7, something else occurs and that is that we see that there is a prophetic gap, you see this, now and then, in Daniel, that Daniel will be talking about something that happens and then something that happens subsequently but there's a gap of time that comes about in between.  And we see this beast and it later develops ten horns.  There seems to be a gap between its first manifestation and its second manifestation of ten horns.  For example, in Daniel 7:23-24 we read, "Thus he said: 'The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be different from all the other kingdoms, and it will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it."  That happened in stage one.  Verse 24, "As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise," future tense, so that makes a time distinction between verse 24 and the earlier manifestation in verse 23.  Verse 24 goes on to read, "and another will arise after them," so this little horn comes up after the ten kings, "and he will be different from the previous ones," notice that, there's something different about the little horn.  What it is we're not told, but there's something that's going to set him apart as unique from the previous kings, and he "will subdue three kings."  This is a reference to the little horn.

Now what do we know about the little horn by comparing Daniel with Revelation?  He's going to rule, in verse 25, for "time, times and half a time," and we've already seen that that refers to three and a half years.  And then after that "the court," that is the divine court of heaven, the Supreme Court of heaven "will sit in judgment," and take away his dominion," that's in verse 26.  Now we have to ask the next question, that is: is the little horn in Daniel 7 the same as the beast in Revelation 13.  So let's do a little comparison.  I have a chart comparing the little horn in Daniel with the beast in Revelation.  In Daniel 7:8 we're told that "another horn, a little one, came up among them," that is among the ten horns.  In Revelation 17:12 we're told that "the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, who have not yet received a kingdom," so John, writing in 90 AD says that these ten kings still haven't happened yet.  And then he goes on to say but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. 

And Daniel 7:25, regarding the authority of the little horn, this authority will be given into his hand for three and a half years; Revelation 12:6 and Revelation 12:14 demonstrate that time, times and half a time are equivalent to 1,260 days or three and a half years.  And then in Revelation 13:5 we're told that the beast was given to exercise his authority for 42 months, so this connects the little horn and the beast with the same time frame for their authority. 

Then in Daniel 7:21 we're told, "I kept looking, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them."  Then in Revelation 13:7 we're told he was given power "to make war against the saints and to conquer them," so both the little horn and the beast execute a holy war in reverse against the saints of God. 

Next, in Daniel 7:11 and 26 we're told that God interrupts the reign of this little horn in order to establish His eternal kingdom; God is going to judge the little horn and establish his own kingdom on the earth, and the same thing is said of what happens to the beast in Revelation 19:19-20.  So the reign of the little horn and the reign of the beast are both interrupted, ended, and God established His kingdom. 

So what are some of the things that we learn about the beast or the little horn by studying Daniel 7 and Revelation?  First of all we learn that he rises to power from within the fourth empire, and an empire made up of ten nations.  So this is a revival of the old Roman Empire; these ten nations are elements of the ancient Roman Empire.  He comes out of that environment. 

Second, when he arises, these ten kings are already in place.  Now right now we have 13 nations in the European community, that fluctuates every now and then, so we don't know, you can't identify the European economic community necessarily with this ten nation confederacy, although I have seen, but I haven't been able to track it down so I can get a picture of it, I have seen a symbol for the new EEC, and it is a picture of Europa who was a goddess astride the earth, which is a picture like the woman astride the beast, she is astride the beast, she's riding an ox I believe or a bull.  And that is the symbol for the new EEC and I have seen pictures of it but I'm trying to get something on the internet where I can download it to show that, but this is a picture of the woman astride the beast in Revelation 17 that we've already seen.

Third, there is some unique quality about the little horn that sets him apart from all previous world rulers.  We don't know what that is but probably some unique quality that's given to him because he is indwelt by Satan, empowered by the dragon. 

The fourth thing we learn is the he is arrogant and challenges the Most High with…it's literally great statements, great words in the Hebrew, it's the Hebrew adjective rab, it's translated boastful in some versions, but he continues to blaspheme against God as is indicated in Revelation, but three times in Daniel; Daniel 7:8, Daniel 7:11, Daniel 7:20, we're told about his arrogance and his challenge to the Most High God. 

The fifth thing we learned is that he persecutes tribulational saints and for a period of three and a half years he is given the ability and given the freedom to overwhelm the saints.  He is going to martyr many tribulation saints.  Now one of the things that's important, when the Bible used the word "saint" it's a generic term for any believer in any dispensation.  So just because you see the word "saint" doesn't mean it refers to a Church Age believer.  You have to look at the context to determine which saints we're talking about.  If you don't understand that then you're going to end up with the Church in the Tribulation and you're going to end up with the Church in the Old Testament, but the term "saint" is simply a term for those who have been set apart by God. 

Sixth, in Revelation 13:7-8 we're told he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.  So this is a global empire, it is not just the king of the west but he manages to subdue the entire earth and unify it for a short time.  All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast and establish his global government.  So that's in Revelation 13:7-8, he establishes a global government.

The seventh thing we learn from Revelation 13:16-18 is that he is going to force everyone to take a mark on their right hand or on their forehead so that no one is able to buy or sell unless they have the mark.  Now there's a lot of suggestions as to what this is, whether it's an implanted computer chip, whether it is a tattoo, there are almost weekly you find out about some new technology, some new smart card, some new thing that makes this possible, so we're definitely living in an age when this is not beyond the realm of possibility.  And no one is going to be able to buy or sell without this mark.  Just think about the fact that four years ago, I've been here almost four years, when I moved up here they had this thing in the grocery stores, where if you didn't get the little check cashing card in the Stop and Shop or wherever you had to have their card, you couldn't pay with a check, you could pay cash but you couldn't write a check.  Within a month or so they had that down in Houston in most of the stores, but they were in that transition.  So five years ago you could go into any grocery store and write a check on your driver's license or credit card or some other system, but you couldn't even take advantage of the sales now at a grocery store unless you have one of these cards so we're definitely moving in this direction, or have the technology in place for it.

Point eight; the antichrist will gain control of the world for only three and a half years.  The first three and a half years is his period of ascendancy when he is gaining and consolidating control and his power base only lasts for not quite three and a half years because it starts to fall apart toward the end as the world makes its way towards the battle of Armageddon.

Point nine; he will precipitate a war that is so ferocious that Matthew 24:22 states that if those days had not been cut short no one would survive.  So it will create a war that is beyond anything we've ever imagined.  The events of September 11 will happen every day, ten times greater, and the news of wars and famines and biochemical warfare and death, probably 60-70% if the earth's population will be destroyed during the seven year Tribulation.  Now think about it; the earth's population now is somewhere around seven billion and if you take away 60 or 70% of the earth's population, that means about four or five billion people are going to die in a seven year period. 

Point ten; halfway through the Tribulation he will commit the abomination of desolation when he turns the new temple on the temple mount into his own personal place of worship and he desecrates the holy place. 

Point eleven; we learned that he lives in a day when Israel exists as a nation and the temple has been rebuilt, so that is yet future. 

Point twelve; he will seek to change the Jewish ceremonial calendar, change times and change laws. 

And finally, point thirteen; during his reign God ends human history as we know it and will establish the kingdom of God, the millennial kingdom of Jesus Christ for one thousand years on the earth and then that will blend on into eternity.

This is where we'll start next time, when Daniel looks up and sees this judgment coming in verse 9; when he looks up and sees the ancient of days taking his seat at the judgment bench in order to judge mankind.  We'll come back and start with the understanding of who the ancient of days is next time.