DANIEL VII. will be divided into two lessons: (1) The Four Beasts; (2) The Little Horn. Read the first seven verses of the chapter in the center of this page. Let the vivid picture be stamped upon the mind.
The vision is given in the first year of Belshazzar, three years before Babylon fell, or B.C. 541. Belshazzar had just been appointed joint-ruler with his father, Nabonidus. The father was engaged in building temples and shrines to the gods; the son seemed to be the active public ruler.
On this occasion the dream and vision came to Daniel. “If there be a prophet among you,” the Lord declares to His people, “I Jehovah will make Myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.” God was speaking in His regular appointed way through Daniel, that the ages might know, that the people in “the latter days” might read of God’s foreknowledge and power, and thus learning, believe His Gospel and be saved. “Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.” Blessed is the man who yields to God’s holy purpose, that God may work in him His good pleasure, after the counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His grace.
Read again the vision of the four beasts. Let the whole scene enter the mind. Put yourself in the prophet’s place. See yourself the vision of God. You are standing upon the shore of the great sea, lashed into fury and made to boil in tumult by fierce and opposite winds. As you watch the raging waters, you see four wild beasts come up out of the sea, all alike fierce and cruel, yet totally different in form and kind. Each beast of the first three is unnatural, even of its kind, in form, in members, or in attitude.
By a great and magnificent image God impressed the mind of the idolatrous king Nebuchadnezzar. By wild and cruel beasts God revealed to His prophet and people the true nature of earthly empires.
What do these beasts symbolize? The angel of God answers the question: “These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.” (Read verses 15–17.) The Septuagint reads: “These four beasts are four kingdoms that shall rise up on the earth; which shall be taken away.” They represent the four great kingdoms of earth; the same four that had been revealed to Nebuchadnezzar in the four parts of the great metallic image—the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, and iron and clay. The great sea, the mighty, restless, surging water, is a fitting symbol of the restless, heaving, tossing tides of humanity’s great sea, divided among the nations and tribes of the earth. The winds are fitting symbols of the strife and war among nations and governments. As the result of the strife and war, four great kingdoms, or dynasties, appear.
The first of these beasts, the lion, represents Babylon, or Chaldea. So when Jeremiah saw in vision the army of Babylon marching upon Jerusalem, he declared: “The lion is come up from his thicket, and ‘the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way.’” And as to the eagle’s wings, the same prophet declares: “Behold, he shall fly as an eagle.” The lion with the eagle’s wings represented Babylon, that “mighty nation,” that “ancient nation,” the beginning of kingdoms. The word ancient means from time not known, whose antiquity is hidden. The record in Genesis clearly intimates that it was the very first city after the flood,—the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod, the first of the rebel kingdoms against God. Erech (Ur) and Accad and Calneh and Assyria and Nineveh came later. The first of all, the mother of all the cities of pride, was Babylon, who by the wine of her lustful idolatry hath “made all the earth drunken.” “Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.” The lion is the king of beasts; he borrows from no other, he imitates no other. The eagle is the king of birds; his habits, his heart, is changed by no other. Even so Babylon, in her distinctive character, has been molded by no other nation, but has molded all.
In all the ancient world it was the great seat of learning. Its universities surpassed all others. Wherever the mightier warriors might be, Babylon ruled. Assyria might be dominant in the martial field; Babylon reigned in character-molding power, in religious influence. The center of influence might sometimes change to some other great center for a few years or centuries, but in its origin it was Babylonian.
Until 1820, forgetting or not believing the Bible, men had supposed that Babylon was an empire which began at a late date in the world’s history; founded, in fact, on the ruins of the old Assyrian empire. In this conception they had ignored the Bible, and the State archives of Babylon and Nineveh had not yet been unlocked to the world. Now it is clearly seen by the historical records of Babylon that she was among the most ancient of cities.
The archæologists tell us that its first inhabitants were not Semitic, but called by some scholars Sumerian (from Shinar, as given in the Word), by others Accadian. One theory is that these were Mongols, others that they were a mixed people. Rogers tells us that, “The solution of the question is not yet found.” How much better it would be to go to the old Book, and find that the first builders of Babylon belonged to the Hamitic branch of Noah’s family, and that among the first cities built by them were Babel (Babylon), Erech (Ur), Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar (hence Sumer, Sumerians). Shinar was the name the land retained to Biblical times. Accadian, now considered a Sumerian dialect, was from the name of a tribal city.
From these Hamitic tribes came the cuneiform text, the perversion of true religion to nature-worship, and the inerasable scarlet of fornication,—unlawful union of religion with the State,—by which Babylon has stained all the nations of earth. Even the Assyrian kings, in the time of Nineveh’s greatest glory, honored Babylon, counting it one of the highest privileges to bow before the great god Marduk, and receive the kingdom from his hand. Rogers says:—
The origin of the city of Babylon is veiled in impenetrable obscurity. The first city founded upon the site must [?] have been founded fully four thousand [?] years before Christ, and it may have been much earlier. . . . From about 2300 B.C. the influence of the city extends without a break to the period of the Seleucides. No capital in the world has ever been the center of so much power for a period so vast.
Babylon’s reign as a world’s empire ceased with the joint rule of Nabonidus and Belshazzar. Darius the Mede succeeded to the throne B.C. 538, to be followed by Cyrus, the great Persian. A century and a half before his coming to power, Isaiah, by the inbreathing of God, predicted the fall of Babylon and the deliverance of God’s people through him. In that deliverance he was the type of the greater5Deliverer, from a greater captivity, even that of sin. Here is a part of the record:—
“Thus saith Jehovah thy Redeemer, . . . I am Jehovah that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth; . . . that saith of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall perform all My pleasure; even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith Jehovah to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings, to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before thee, and make the rugged places plain; I will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron; and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I am the Lord, which call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel. For Jacob My servant’s sake, and Israel My chosen, I have called thee by thy name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me.”
Immediately on his coming to the throne Cyrus issued his decree for the release of the Judean captives and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Here expired the seventy years’ captivity foretold by Jeremiah. This was God’s object-lesson of the glorious Gospel.
Under Cyrus were united the two kingdoms of the Medes and Persians, extending “from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces.” Cyrus was killed in a battle with Tauranians, B.C. 529, and was succeeded by a most unworthy son, Cambyses, known in Ezra 4:6 as Ahasuerus.
The great Persian empire held sway till the battle of Arbela. In the year 335 B.C. Darius Codomanus, or Darius III., came to the throne. In his second year a new figure appears in Persia. Alexander the Great had crossed the narrow strip of water which separates Europe from Asia with but 30,000 foot and 5,000 horse, for the purpose of conquering a world empire. He met the Persian forces at the river Granicus, and defeated more than five times the number of his army. The next conquest, the year following, came at Issus, where Alexander defeated a Persian army of 600,000. The next year Darius mobilized an army of 1,000,000 men, but was utterly defeated at the battle of Arbela, B.C. 331, the end of the Persian empire. Medo-Persia is well represented by the slow, tenacious, but not less cruel bear. Raising itself up upon one side indicates the manner of its coming up, one part, the Median, coming to power first. The three ribs in the bear’s mouth, represented as saying to the bear, “Arise, devour much flesh,” are thought to refer to the provinces of Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt, which Medo-Persia greatly oppressed, the evil acts of which incited it to more cruelty.
Grecia is symbolized by the swift leopard, with its soaring wings, indicative of rapidity of conquest and soaring pride. The four heads symbolize the four divisions into which Grecia divided soon after the death of Alexander. After a few brief years of strife, and plot and counterplot (B.C. 301), the great Grecian empire is found divided as follows: In the north, Thrace, Bithynia, and some smaller provinces of Asia Minor; in the east, Syria and the country to the Indus; in the south, Egypt, Libya, Arabia, and Palestine; in the west, Macedon and Greece; ruled respectively by Lysimachus, Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Cassander.
The fourth beast, “dreadful and terrible,” finds no symbol in nature, not even with unnatural additions, to adequately represent the empire it symbolizes. From Revelation 13 it seems to be a combination of the lion, the bear, and the leopard, with the addition of the ten horns. It was more cruel than all the beasts before it. What it did not break in pieces and devour, it trampled underneath its feet. The symbol can apply to but one power, namely, Rome. Every specification fits Rome, and no other. Note the following:—
1. It was a power to succeed Grecia. This was true of Rome.
2. It was more oppressive and cruel, especially toward the saints of God, than all that were before it. This is pre-eminently true of Rome in both Pagan and Papal forms.
3. It had ten horns, symbolizing ten kingdoms. Rome was divided into ten kingdoms by the incursions of the northern barbarians between the years A.D. 351 and 476, as follows: Allemanni, Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, Suevi, Visigoths, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Heruli. There were not less than ten; there were no more.
4. This nondescript, terrible beast was to be “the fourth kingdom ‘upon earth,’” a positive proof that Assyria and Egypt are not counted among its predecessors. It is (1) Babylon; (2) Medo-Persia; (3) Grecia; (4) Rome.
5. This kingdom lasts in one form or another to the end, when it is destroyed in the fierce wrath of the day of God, to be succeeded by God’s everlasting kingdom. Truly it is a part of the Gospel of the kingdom to know that these cruel kingdoms will not stand forever, but are to give place to the righteous kingdom of peace.
The next article will be a consideration of “The Little Horn.”