Sermon Tone Analysis

Daniel 7 - Part 1/2

OPENING REMARKS

The message I have for you today is both sobering and yet greatly encouraging.

Sobering because we are drawn by our text today to consider what will transpire here on earth in the last days.

Encouraging because we will see again that the Lord reigns; that He is sovereign over every event that happens both in heaven and here on earth and even over the devil himself.

Among many things of note, there are two characters who stick out to us in Daniel chapter 7. Firstly, there is this character here named as ‘the little horn’, who we are told ‘speaks great things against the Most High and shall wear out the saints of the Most High.’

Then there is the Son of Man who is ‘given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.’

I hope to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the identity of both of these characters; that this shadowy figure named ‘the little horn’ is in fact none other than the Antichrist, the Beast of Revelation 13.

And that this Son of Man is in fact our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today we will focus on the four beasts of Daniel’s vision and the identity of this ‘little horn.’

There are often raised eyebrows when a Pastor chooses to teach on matters like these.

Why talk about such negative, dark stuff?

Stick to the promises of God, the love of God and the gospel, we don’t need to hear about the antichrist!

Keep it positive!

I believe this is one of the root causes of the current malaise in western Christianity.

Christians have been selectively fed from the pulpit, they have been given what the Pastor feels they should have to eat, not what the Holy Spirit has ordained should be their diet.

Consequently, the church has grown weak and flabby through not being fed on the whole counsel of God.

We teach this stuff because it is what the Holy Spirit has preserved for us, the saints in the Holy Scriptures.

For centuries the church was taught about the end times, she has been warned about the coming antichrist, by the apostles, Paul and John, by the Church Fathers; Irenaeus and Cyril of Jerusalem and by the Reformers and Puritans.

They believed they were in the last days and that this teaching was essential for the Church, how much more then should we be learning about these things in the year 2022?

It should also be mentioned that what we are studying today is prophetic revelation, it was divinely revealed to the prophet Daniel in a dream over 2 and a half thousand years ago.

When we are interpreting prophetic revelation such as this it can be tempting to run away with ourselves and enter into all kinds of wild speculations.

There are many teachers of the end times today who have done just that, who have gotten fanciful with their interpretations, or have begun to read into these passages what they want to see.

We must resist this temptation.

What I am going to teach you today on this passage has stood the test of time; it is an interpretation which has been taught down through the ages by men of far greater learning and expertise than I.

THE TIMING OF THE DREAM

This chapter bears an uncanny resemblance to chapter two of Daniel.

As we have said before; chapters 2-7 of Daniel have a kind of symmetry to them.

Chapters 2 and 7 both feature dreams sent by God; one is had by Nebuchadnezzar and the other by Daniel.

Both dreams feature four earthly kingdoms which will rule on earth.

Both also speak of the final victory of the Kingdom of heaven over all these four Kingdoms.

Both dreams leave the respective dreamer unsettled.

Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzars dream as a youth in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

Daniel has his dream in the first year of Belshazzars reign, nearly 50 years later.

This dream happened before the Lion’s Den, it happened before Babylon had fallen into the hands of the Medo-Persian empire, I want for you to remember that.

THE DREAM ITSELF

In the first scene of the dream Daniel sees four beasts rise out of the sea; each beast is unique and frightening in appearance, the fourth beast more than all of them.

In the second scene Daniel sees into heaven and witnesses the ancient of Days on His throne and one like a son of man being given a Kingdom.

In the third scene, Daniel asks someone in his dream what it all means (perhaps an angel?) and he is given the interpretation of all that he has seen.

Daniel doesn’t tell anyone about this dream, he was greatly alarmed by it and kept it to himself at first, but he did write it down so as to record it.

The Winds of Heaven & The Great Sea

Daniel sees the four winds of heaven stirring up the waters of the great sea.

What is this?

Well firstly this stirring of activity upon the sea is being caused by the winds of heaven.

This is showing us that these events are stirred up by heaven, by God Himself.

Again this is revealing the sovereignty of God over world affairs, that He isn’t suprised by these four beasts that come up from the sea but that He actually causes them to come up.

In prophetic scriptures, the sea, especially a violent sea usually speaks to us of chaos or disorder.

So we could say that these four beasts that arise out of the sea come in a time of chaos.

The Great Sea is usually the name given in the Old Testament to the Mediterranean sea.

So these beasts which arise must be in some way related to the Mediterranean region.

The Four Beasts

These four beasts come up out of the sea one by one, each different from one another.

This prophetic imagery of beasts arising out of the sea is mirrored in the book of Revelation chapter 13, which we will return to later.

The first beast was like a lion but had eagles wings, it then had it’s wings plucked off and was made to stand on two legs like a man and was given the mind of a man.

The second beast was like a bear, it was raised up on one side with three ribs in it’s mouth and it was told ‘arise devour much flesh’.

The third beast was like a leopard but with four wings like a bird on its back.

It also had four heads and dominion was given to it.

The fourth beast we are told was terrifying, dreadful and exceedingly strong.

It has great iron teeth and we’re told it devoured and broke in pieces stamping what was left with its feet.

However we’re also told that this beast had 10 horns and that as Daniel watched another ‘little horn’ came up amoung them and three were plucked up.

This horn had eyes like a man and became greater than the other horns and had a mouth speaking great things.

Who are the four beasts?

Most throughout church history have held that these four beasts representing four Kingdoms are the same Kingdoms represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2; Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.

There are some others who have a different view, but this is the majority view and I think it carries the most weight.

The Lion/Eagle - Babylon.

Interestingly as the ancient site of Babylon has been excavated they have found all over the walls images of Lion’s with eagles wings on their backs.

The lion is known as the King of the jungle and the eagle as the king of the air.

This beast was a picture of the regal greatness of the Kingdom of babylon which had lost some of it’s glory since the death of Nebuchadnezzar shown by the wings being plucked off.

The Bear - Medo-Persia.

The bear is a ferocious, lumbering beast of an animal.

Savage and strong.

The medo-Persian empire immediately followed the Neo-Babylonian empire, conquering Babylon in 539 BC and is well known to history.

The armies of the kings of persia were known for their vastness; some historians number their troops in the millions.

The armies of the Persian king Xerxes being famously and fancifully depicted in the movie 300 was a depiction which was in part built on what history tells us about the incredible power and brutality of the Persian military.

The three ribs in it’s mouth most believe are the three great triumphs of the Perisian armies; Babylon, Lydia and Egypt.

The Leopard - Greece.

In the year 331 BC a young Greek man from Macedonia rose to greatness; known better to us as Alexander the Great he conquered much of the known world by the age of 28, conquering all the lands of the Medo Persian empire.

He had been educated by none other than Aristotle, the famous philosopher and was a genius on the battlefield.

By the time he died at the age of 32 his empire stretched from India in the east to Greece in the West, covering even large parts of north Africa.

The leopard with four wings signifies the speed at which the Greek empire spread.

The four heads most believe represent the four governments that ruled the empire once Alexander had died.

It’s important that we note the imagery here; that heads usually represent headship or forms of government within an empire.

The empire is the beast, the heads are the ministrations of government and the horns are kings, individual men who rule within these empires.

The Horned Beast - Rome.

In 31AD the Roman empire finally conquered all of the lands formerly belonging to the Grecian Empire under the emperor Caesar Augustus, arguably one of the greatest leaders of all history.

This beast has iron teeth, like the iron legs of the statue in Nebuchadnezzars dream, it is terrible and also has 10 horns on it’s head with another ‘little horn’ which rises up and displaces three of the other horns.

Each of these Kingdoms ruled over the area surrounding the Meditteranean sea, and each Kingdom came one after the other.

Whatever we say about these kingdoms we cannot believe that one is the Incan Empire, or the Mongolian Empire, or America, since none of these empires came successively after the Babylonian Empire or ruled over the same lands that Babylon ruled over.

The Little Horn

As we have seen, horns represent kings.

And the fourth beast has 10 horns, but as Daniel is watching a little horn comes up and displaces three others.

What does this mean?

That in this Roman empire there will be at some stage 10 kings who reign at the same time.

This empire will devour the ‘whole earth’.

Then at some point a new king will arise, who at first seems insignificant he is the little horn, or little king.

He will depose three of the existing kings and will become greater than the remaining 7.

This king, represented by the little horn has eyes like a man, which speak of intellect, or understanding, and has a mouth speaking great things.

This means that this king will be something of an orator, his speech will be very impressive and his intellect greater than all the other kings.

He will speak against God, and will make war against the church and prevail over them, wearing them out.

We’re told in verse 25 Daniel 7:25