The Beasts of Daniel 7
Daniel was a man who saw things no one around him could see. He lived in Babylon, served in the court of pagan kings, and was given visions so disturbing that they troubled him in his spirit for days afterward. He was not a sensationalist. He was a man who took what he saw with absolute seriousness. And what he saw in Daniel 7, written around 550 BC, reads like a description of the world we are living in right now.
In this first episode of Bible Prophecy, Islam and Communism, Dan Murphy sat down with me to open the book of Daniel 7 and show us what is inside. Four beasts rising from the sea. A bear raised up on one side with three ribs in its mouth. A leopard with four wings and four heads, moving with terrifying speed. A fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, with iron teeth and ten horns. And then, among those ten horns, a little horn with eyes like a man and a mouth speaking great things.
Dan walked us through each image carefully and without sensationalism. He sees Russia in the bear, raised up on one side and carrying three ribs, three nations it has devoured and holds. He sees Islam in the leopard, spreading with the speed and reach that four wings suggest, with four heads representing four major streams of Islamic influence across the world. He sees China in the fourth beast, the most terrifying of all, dreadful and terrible and diverse from all the others, with iron teeth that devour and break in pieces everything they touch.
And then there is the little horn. Dan described this figure carefully, connecting him to the antichrist figure who appears across Daniel and Revelation. He rises from within the ten-horn system. He speaks great things against the Most High. He thinks to change times and laws. He is given into his hand for a time and times and the dividing of time, three and a half years, that number again.
What stayed with me most from this conversation was not the geopolitical identification of the beasts, as extraordinary as that is. It was something Dan said near the end about Daniel himself. He said that Daniel was grieved in his spirit by what he saw. He did not find these visions thrilling or exciting. He found them heavy. And Dan thinks we should carry them the same way. Seriously, with sobriety, and with the knowledge that the One who showed Daniel these things is the same One who holds the outcome.
I asked Dan how he sits with this kind of material without it becoming overwhelming or fearful. He said something I want to carry into the rest of this series. He said that the visions were given to Daniel not to frighten him but to prepare him. And they are given to us for the same reason. We are not meant to be paralysed by what is coming. We are meant to be oriented by it.
What does it do to you to read Daniel 7 knowing that it was written twenty-five centuries ago? And what does it mean to you that the One who gave Daniel those visions already knows how they end?
YouTube: Watch the full Episode HERE.
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Buy the Book – Entering the Covenant: Books.by.