God's View Of World Empires Series

Daniel 7: 1 – 7

God’s View Of World Empires

1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head while on his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. 2 Daniel spoke, saying, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea. 3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. 4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. 5 “And suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And they said thus to it: ‘Arise, devour much flesh!’ 6 “After this I looked, and there was another, 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. 7 “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.

If you have been with us since we began looking at the book of Daniel then we are now ready to look at our Precious Holy Spirit’s enhancement of His message to Daniel. Now what do I mean by this statement? The prophecy that our Holy God gave Daniel is now about to be repeated and explained in more detail.

Do you remember back in chapter 2 when Nebuchadnezzar had the dream about the statue? It measured 666, that is, a combination of height, width, and girth. This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

We learned that these 4 precious metals represented mankind’s view of the 4 world empires. Now, our Holy Ancient of Days, our Father God, has given Daniel a dream and visions in which He gives us His identification of the four world kingdoms. How does He look at these kingdoms? He looks at them as ‘beasts’.

In chapter 7 here then our Great God repeats the information that was given in chapter 2 and then expands the information to make it more clearly to us as to what will take place.

You may be saying right now, ‘that is not the case for me. In fact the more information that our Wonderful Holy Ghost gives me the more confused I get. I can see the point about how the 4 beasts represent the same four kingdoms listed in chapter 2, but when you now start talking about a horn that has eyes and a mouth that speaks now you lost me. How come John didn’t just describe these points without all the mystery?’

Well, I could take a guess as to why he did write the things the way he did, but I believe the best reason is because this is the way our Holy God wanted Him to write these things down. In the book of 2 Peter chapter 1, “for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

You might now be saying, ‘Well thanks but that still doesn’t make any of the Scripture easier for me to understand.’

It’s okay. We are going to take our time as we go through these chapters of Daniel to hopefully make it quite clear for you. So, in today’s study we are going to just cover the five kingdoms. Yes, I said five. If you look back to chapter 2 we tend to focus on the four worldly kingdoms. However, the fifth Kingdom is the best because this is going to be ruled by the King of kings and Lord of lords. Many times too often we spend too much time looking at the ones that are all going to be burned up while we miss studying the one where we will be able to enjoy realistically and personally.

In this study we are also going to begin to look at the reference to this little horn that arises out of the fourth kingdom. Remember, this significant point. With all the mentions of beasts, antichrist, etc. remember that it is all part of the 4th kingdom.