TODAY'S TECHNOLOGY IN BIBLE PROPHECY
Lesson 6: A review of the historical fulfillment of the rise of the
first two beasts in Daniel's vision of the four beasts.
I Dan. 8:3-7 employs the use of symbolic beasts to
prophetically reveal the rise and significant history of
two ancient empires years in advance.
- A review of the historical fulfillment of this prophecy
provides a first step towards establishing the correct
interpretation of Daniel's vision of the four beasts.
3 Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there
stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the
two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and
the higher came up last.
4 I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and
southward; so that no beasts might stand before him,
neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand;
but he did according to his will, and became great.
5 And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from
the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not
the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his
eyes.
6 And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had
seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the
fury of his power.
7 And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved
with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his
two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand
before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped
upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out
of his hand (Dan. 8:3-7).
- After seeing this vision Daniel was told which nations
the two symbolic beasts represented.
20 The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings
of Media and Persia.
21 And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great
horn that is between his eyes is the first king
(Dan. 8:20-21).
A Daniel himself saw the fulfillment of the "ram pushing
westward" when Darius, King of Media, conquered Babylon.
B Cyrus the Persian, the son-in-law of Darius, denoted as
the higher horn which "came up last," completely united
the "high horns" into the powerful Medio-Persian empire.
C Alexander the Great, "the first king" of Grecia, depicted
here as the "great horn," "came from the west" and
conquered the Persian ram beast empire between 334 B.C.
and 330 B.C.
D What two prophetic precedents did the ram-goat prophecy
set?
1 The use of symbolic beasts to represent the rise of
future great world powers.
2 The use of horns to represent kings or nations that
join forces to form a greater power-sharing structure.
II The inherited interpretation of the four beasts vision.
A Daniel's vision of the four beasts also used symbolic
beasts to represent the rise of other beasts that would
come to power, at even more distant future times.
B Unlike the ram-goat prophecy, the names of the powers
represented by the four beasts were not given to Daniel.
C Daniel's (555 B.C.) vision shows the successive rise of a
lion, a bear, a leopard, and a fourth "exceedingly
dreadful" beast that will rule the entire world.
D The Ante-Nicene Fathers (A.D. 325) affixed the nation of
Babylon to the lion, Medio-Persia to the bear, and Greece
to the leopard.
E This view has since been published essentially unchanged
in countless religious books.
F What fundamental evidence reveals that the Ante-Nicene
Fathers interpretation of the four beasts vision can not
be valid?
1 According to Dan. 12:4 "But thou, O Daniel, shut up
the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the
end". . ., neither Daniel nor anyone else would be
able to correctly interpret any "time of the end"
prophecies until "the time of the end."
2 Therefore, since 1,675 years later we know A.D. 325
was not the time of the end, the Ante-Nicene Fathers
interpretation of Daniel's vision could not possibly
be correct.
G What other evidence demonstrates the incorrectness of the
Ante-Nicene Fathers' view?
1 According to 1 Cor. 14:33, "God is not the author of
confusion."
2 This means God would not define the ram to be
Medio-Persia and the he-goat to be Greece, in one
prophecy, and then use a bear and a leopard to
represent these same nations in another prophecy.
3 History confirms that there never was a connection
between Medio-Persia and the bear emblem, or Greece
and the leopard emblem.
4 In direct contrast, the ram and goat were recognized
national emblems of Persia and Greece, respectively.
a Persian monarchs wore a jewelled ram's head of gold
instead of a crown.
b Amyntas I of Macedon, upon being threatened with an
invasion, became tributary to Persia about 547 B.C.
c A Persian holding a one-horned goat in his left
hand records this history in one of the pilasters
of Persepolis.
d Archelaus of Macedon, 413 B.C., minted a one-horned
goat coin.
III Dan. 7:1-3 introduces several facts essential to determining
the correct interpretation of the four beasts vision.
1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel
had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he
wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters (Dan. 7:1).
- Daniel's insertion of the fact that this vision occurred
during the reign of Belshazzar, who was the last king to
rule Babylon, is essential to determining the correct
interpretation of the four beasts prophecy.
2 Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and,
behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great
sea (Dan. 7:2).
A The sea symbolically refers to the sea of humanity in the
world.
B Isaiah wrote "but the wicked are like the troubled sea,
when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and
dirt" (Isa. 57:20).
C The four winds of heaven represent four different winds
of political change and revolution that would sweep over
the peoples of the earth.
D This prophecy shows how these winds of change eventually
gave rise to powerful nations that bear their standards.
3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one
from another (Dan. 7:3).
- The four beasts represent four, completely different,
power structures that would arise out of the sea of
people in the future.
IV The Lion-Eagle beast.
4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld
till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up
from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a
man's heart was given to it (Dan. 7:4).
A The lion represents Great Britain, which has the lion as
her national emblem.
B The eagle's wings represent the 13 American Colonies that
were "plucked" from the British lion when the colonists
won their fight for independence in the American
Revolutionary War.
C The new nation of the United States "was lifted up from
the earth" by the colonists who fought for a democratic
form of government-"that stood on its feet as a man,"
with an elected president representing the heartbeat of
the nation.
D Uncle Sam represents the U.S. government elected by the
people.
E The British people eventually also established a
democratic form of government.
F The first wind of revolutionary change, therefore,
established a new democratic form of government on the
earth.
G Why is the seven year American Revolutionary War (1776-
1783) a remarkable fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy of
the Eagle's wings abrupt separation from the British Lion?
1 Consider England's prior history of warfare beginning
with the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453--116 years).
a The royal families of England and France fought
over England's holdings on the Continent.
b The English lost and had to surrender the bulk of
their domains on the Continent, but they did not
concede defeat for 116 years.
c Rival claimants of English throne then fought the
War of the Roses (1453-1485) for the next 32 years.
2 The rest of Europe's previous wars such as the Thirty
Years War (1618-1648) also dragged on for years.
a Began when Austrian Catholic Ferdinand II came to
the throne right after Czech (Bohemian) Protestant
nobles threw the king's imperial officials out of a
castle window into the moat some sixty feet below.
b The ensuing war engulfed much of Europe before it
ended thirty years later.
3 Thus, it was amazing that the Americans won their
independence from England in only seven years.
H What fundamental features of the Babylonian empire
categorically removes this ancient kingdom as a possible
candidate to represent the Lion-Eagle beast?
1 Babylon had a monarchial government, identical to the
kingdoms that preceded and followed it.
2 The kingdom of Babylon was not brought into being by
a "sea" of people inspired by a new political idea, or
wind of revolutionary change.
3 The prophecy demands that each of these political
"winds" of change will inspire a "sea" of people to
rise up and establish powerful new empires with very
different forms of governing instruments.
4 The Americans did just that when they established
democracy as a new form of government on the earth,
and later the British also became champions of
democracy.
V The Bear beast.
5 And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and
it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in
the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus
unto it, Arise, devour much flesh (Dan. 7:5).
A Why would the twentieth century Soviet Union be a likely
candidate for the fulfillment of the bear beast imagery?
1 For centuries the bear has been Russia's national
emblem.
2 The Russian-led 1917 Bolshevik Revolution marked the
rise of a second great "beast" world power that was
set up by the masses who were inspired by the world's
second wind of political change, communism.
B World War II in Perspective.
1 The Russian bear began to raise itself up "on one side"
with the signing of a ten-year nonaggression pact
between the Soviets and the Nazis on August 23, 1939.
2 A secret protocol signed at the same time divided
Eastern Europe into Russian and German spheres.
a All territory east of a line drawn from the Baltic
to the Black Sea was to be in the Russian sphere
and everything west of the line was to be left to
the Germans.
b This gave Russia a free hand in Finland, Estonia,
Latvia, Bessarabia, and the eastern half of Poland.
3 On Sept. 1, 1939 the German blitzkrieg struck into
western Poland.
4 Sixteen days later Russia moved into hapless Poland
from the east.
5 The Russian bear had the first rib in its mouth
"between the teeth of it," in the form of eastern
Poland.
6 The second rib suffered the same fate when Russia
invaded eastern Finland on Nov. 30, 1939.
a The Finns' surprised the world but were defeated
after two months.
b They lost the entire Karelian Isthmus and other
lands.
7 The Russian bear sank her teeth into the third country
when she moved into the two Rumanian provinces of
Bessarabia and Bucovina, in June of 1940.
8 Russia's quiet annexation (May 1940) of her former
Baltic provinces, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are
not considered one of the ribs since a rib signifies
a part of a country and not a complete country.
9 How does Russia's initial World War II territorial
conquests prove that the bear beast could not
possibly represent the Medio-Persian empire?
a Dan. 8 defined the Medio-Persian empire as a "ram
pushing westward, and northward, and southward."
b The historical record confirms the fulfillment of
the ram's territorial expansion in three directions,
not one, as specified for the bear that "raised up
itself on one side."
10 A secret treaty signed by the United States and
Britain at Yalta, in 1945, set the stage for the
Russian bear to "arise" and "devour much flesh" at
the end of WWII.
a Roosevelt and Churchill let Stalin devour Poland.
b The Soviet's agreed to enter the war against Japan if
Russia's status quo in Outer Mongolia would be
preserved, Kuriles transferred to Russia, and if they
got the largest portion of divided Germany and three
seats in the United Nations' General Assembly.
c Yalta set the stage for the Russian bear to "arise and
"devour much flesh" in Eastern Europe after WWII.
d The Kremlin extended its sway over 100 million people
after WWII.
C The second major wind of revolutionary change,
socialistic communism, was established by twentieth
century Russia.