The Crazy Beast! The Vision of Daniel 7

Daniel 7 has the same message as Daniel 2 (see the article here). But, whereas Daniel 2 quickly sketches God’s victory over Babylon, Daniel 7 expands the message by way of more fantastic visions. It’s like how Genesis 2 expands on Genesis 1.

But as we sit comfortably—far removed from the anxious times in which God revealed these visions to Daniel—we can make a mistake. We can obsess over unimportant details and miss the larger point. God didn’t give us these incredible visions so we’d bog down in irrelevant questions. Obsessive focus on the identity of the four beasts might be interesting and profitable, but they’re not the point. God gave this vision to Daniel as hope for desperate people—so what’s the point of this vision?

Daniel’s angelic guide tells us plainly: “¹⁶So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: ¹⁷The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth. ¹⁸But the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever” (Dan 7:17-18). The point is that God wins. He wins big. And even the most fearsome nations will fall before Him. Whatever else you take away from Daniel 7, make sure you get that right.

Daniel 7 easily divides into two sections; (a) the dream (Dan 7:1-14), and (b) the interpretation (Dan 7:15-28).

First, here is the cast of characters from the vision with my identification for each:

• Beast 1: the lion with wings. This is Babylon/Nebuchadnezzar.
• Beast 2: the lopsided bear. This is Persia—the nation in which Esther lived, and from which Cyrus let the Jewish people return home, etc.
• Beast 3: a leopard with four heads. This is Alexander the Great and the kingdoms belonging to the four generals who succeeded him after his death.
• Beast 4: iron teeth + ten horns + one little horn. This is the Roman Empire in three derivative phases; (a) the historical kingdom of Jesus’ day, (b) the interim period of nations which in some way derive from the historical Roman Empire, and (c) the kingdom of antichrist of the last days, which grows from among the nations from the interim phase.¹
• Ancient of Days: God the Father.
• Son of Man: Jesus—this is his favorite way to describe Himself.

Second, forget the first three kingdoms. Daniel is simply not interested in the first three kingdoms in this vision—he only asks the angel for clarification about the fourth (Dan 7:19-20)—so they are not relevant. I believe the “four beasts” in Daniel 7 are parallel to the four-fold statue at Daniel 2, which means the first kingdom remains Babylon (Dan 2:36-28; cp. Dan 7:2-4, 17-18). A different vision addresses the second and third visions (Daniel 8), but they are not the issue here. So, this article will not address the first three kingdoms at all.

Third, focus on the fourth kingdom. The remainder of the article will do just that.

The fourth kingdom is “terrifying and frightening and very powerful.” Like the character Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me, it has “large iron teeth.” It crushes and gobbles up everything in its path. It also has ten horns (Dan 7:7), about which the angelic guide later explains.

As Daniel stares at this awful creature, pondering the meaning of the 10 horns, “there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it” (Dan 7:8). This “little horn” emerges from among the 10—it is not an outsider. Whatever this “little horn” is, it doesn’t represent a revolution from without but the gradual rise of a new power-center from within. This last horn “had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully” (Dan 7:8). The angelic guide will soon elaborate on this, but we get the impression of intelligence, shrewdness, and arrogance.²

As Daniel looks on in horror, he spies another vision in the heavens above. This one seems parallel to the rise of the fourth beast—it takes place at the same time. “[T]hrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat” (Dan 7:9). This is a solemn, choreographed event. The Ancient of Days has snow white hair, a flaming throne with wheels ablaze, a river of molten fire flows from the chair, and “thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened” (Dan 7:10). This is the same imagery Ezekiel used (Ezek 1), and that the apostle John later re-purposes (Rev 5:11, 20:11-15). In other words, the Ancient of Days is God, and the setting is a courtroom.

Then, like a person watching two screens at once, Daniel looks back to the first vision “because of the boastful words the horn was speaking” (Dan 7:11). He keeps looking “until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire,” (Dan 7:11). Its doom resembles that of the antichrist from John’s apocalypse who is tossed into the lake of fire at Jesus’ second coming (Rev 19:20).

Daniel now looks back at the second “screen” depicting the heavenly courtroom. He sees “one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven” (Dan 7:13). “Son of man” is a woodenly translated phrase which means “person” or “human being.” Jesus often identifies Himself as this mysterious human figure in the context of His triumphant return to this sphere (Mt 16:27, 24:30; Lk 17:30). Once the Son of man arrives, He receives His eternal kingdom: “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Dan 7:14). Jesus is the rock from Daniel 2 which smashes the evil kingdom and fills the whole earth (Dan 2:34-35, 44-45).

Christians have strong opinions about when this happens—at His ascension or later? The evidence suggests both are correct.

Jesus hints that He arrives at the holy court immediately after His death (i.e., at His ascension).³ He tells the Sanhedrin that “from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt 26:64). Jesus says His “arrival” to rule His kingdom will be a reality from here on out, and this “seeing” is repetitive—“from here on out, you’ll be seeing …”⁴ That is, the Sanhedrin will be seeing Jesus rule and reign “from now on.” The irrefutable evidence will be that the good news about His kingdom cannot be stopped. This is the comforting vision Stephen saw just before he was murdered (Acts 7:55-56)—meaning it’s a reality right now.

Yet, in Daniel’s vision, the Son of man arrives in the divine courtroom to receive His kingdom after or as the terrible beast is slain—suggesting an enthronement in the last days. This is the future great arrival for which the apostle Paul waits (1 Thess 2:19, 4:16-17)—meaning it hasn’t yet happened. The apostle John refers to this Daniel passage as a future event: “Look, he is coming with the clouds …” (Rev 1:7) and pairs it with a Zechariah quotation about a divine victory over evil (Zech 12:10)—an event that closely resembles those of Revelation 19 (cp. Zech 12:10–13:6).

Evidence suggests:

• Jesus arrives in heaven after His ascension to take the throne, and immediately makes His authority known to those on earth.
• Yet, sometime in the future when the kingdom of darkness is at its zenith—the terrible fourth beast of Daniel 7 and the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2 (cp. Rev 17:1-13)—Jesus will return here to destroy evil and establish His kingdom on earth.

The distinction is like an incident from World War 2. Admiral Chester Nimitz took over his duties as Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Fleet in December 1941—just after the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor. His headquarters remained at Pearl Harbor, HI. However, as the war went on, Nimitz’s Central Pacific campaign re-took territory the Japanese had captured earlier in the war, and he became further and further removed from the center of action. Eventually, Nimitz moved his headquarters from Pearl Harbor, HI to Guam in January 1945. He had always been the Pacific Ocean Area theater commander, but his move to the scene of action allowed him to exercise more direct and convenient control over his forces.

In a comparable way, while God declared Jesus to be His eternal Son and King at His ascension (Acts 13:32-37; cp. Ps 2, 110), the time will come when Jesus moves His headquarters from heaven to earth. Unlike Admiral Nimitz, Jesus is not hindered by distance, but the concept is similar. He wants to be with His people—it’s why one of His titles is Emmanuel (Isa 7:14, Mt 1:23). His people are here, and so when the time comes Father, Son, and Spirit will shift their flag to Jerusalem.

Daniel is confused. He asks the angel who (as we saw earlier) gives him the bottom line: “¹⁷The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth. ¹⁸But the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever” (Dan 7:17-18).

But Daniel is still troubled. The fourth beast terrifies him. Who is it? What does it mean? When will it happen? It’s so fearsome—what does it signify (Dan 7:19)?

We’ll turn to that question in the next article.