Daniel 8 gives more detailed information about the kingdom of Greece. Their great leader, Alexander the great, was “the great horn” on the goat (Dan. 8:21); this was broken, and four kingdoms arose out of that (Dan. 8:22). But out of them arose “a king of fierce countenance” who was to be “broken without hand” (Dan. 8:25). This is the very language of the entire image being broken by the stone cut out without hands, which speaks of the return of Christ to earth (Dan. 2:44). But at first blush, this seems out of chronological sequence- that a fierce king arising out of the breakup of the Greek empire [surely referring to Antiochus in its historical sense of fulfilment] should be broken by the second coming of Christ- many centuries later. But the problem is solved once we understand that the image stands erect and complete in the last days, in the sense that elements of all the previous empires and leaders would be incorporated in the final entity which shall be destroyed “without hand” by the return of the Lord Jesus.
Chapter 8: The Beasts of Revelation
The beasts of Revelation are built upon the beasts of Daniel. The various beasts are perhaps pictures of various aspects of the final beast. The beast of Rev. 13:2 was "like a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion". Here we see the elements of the various beasts of Dan. 7 and therefore the metals of the image of Dan. 2 all incorporated into this latter day beast. It is the equivalent of the image standing complete in the last days. It has "seven heads and ten horns" (Rev. 13:1)- which is the total number of heads and horns of the four beasts of Dan. 7. In harmony with this, Hos. 13:7 describes Israel’s latter day invader as a lion, bear, leopard and wild beast. All elements of the beasts are brought together in the final latter day invasion. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the first self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, said that Muslims should unite to capture Rome in order to "own the world". The significance of this is that the ten horn entity, the Islamic State, is seeking to incorporate an element of the previous metals / beast systems, i.e. Rome. This is what we would expect if the image is to stand erect in the last days. Source: McElory, Damien. "Rome will be conquered next, says leader of 'Islamic State'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
Revelation 13:2 is the key: "And the beast which I saw was like unto a Leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a Bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a Lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority". The beasts of Daniel represented empires, but this beastly empire in Revelation is a composite Leopard-Bear-Lion. It isn't just one of Daniel's three empires. It's all three empires rolled into one. In other words, this new empire is composed of the descendants of those earlier empires, in the same geographic location. Looking back at the history of the Middle East, we can now identify this new empire as the various powers that have
controlled the Holy Land whilst the Jews were established within it.
One feature of the presentation of the beasts is that both John and "the world" wonder at it and at the whore riding it (Rev. 13:3; 17:6,7). This matches with the stress in Daniel 7 that the fourth beast is strikingly different from all the other beasts. The world will be in shock and awe at the entity which will suddenly develop- and we see the beginnings of that with the awe and fear inspired by the IS. This speaks not only of the fear inspired by the entity in its enemies on the ground, but implies a watching world onlooking in awe and fear, unable to do anything against it: "Who is like unto the beast? And who is able to make war with him?" (Rev. 13:4). This in turn is based upon the prototype of Goliath the Philistine / Palestinian, who likewise had a mouth speaking great things against Israel and Israel's God. That similarity is continued by the description of the small, finally repentant remnant of Jews who overthrow the beast as being like David (Zech. 12:8). This is not to say that there will not initially be opposition to the beast- the horn recovers amazingly from a "deadly wound" which could likely refer to some form of Western operation against this entity (Rev. 13:3). Likewise the beast was, is not, and yet will be [Rev. 17:8- i.e. it will be revived after apparent destruction]. But the final picture is of the beast having free reign in the earth / land promised to Abraham. We must look, therefore, to Zion being forsaken of all her lovers, America particularly pulling out of supporting Israel. We already can see the beginnings of such a situation developing. The West will either collapse, perhaps financially, and become impotent; or will come to a policy position which refuses to support Israel nor get involved in on the ground operations within the land promised to Abraham. Their impotence is however described in terms of their 'worshipping' the beast and therefore fearing to make war with it (Rev. 13:4). The Greek for 'worship' can mean to cower or fawn before a person; the West may be forced to this position by Islamic elements within their own nations, by an oil and energy embargo, or something similar. Another option is that the 'world' spoken of in Rev. 13 is specifically the world around Israel; but in our days of a global village, that would still require that the West is left impotent to intervene. It has been their background support of Israel which has kept the current situation in balance so far. But Rev. 9:14 speaks of the hordes of enemies being bound at the Euphrates river, and then being released by Angelic action. This restraint which is released could well refer to an Angelically-orchestrated removal of the West's restraining power. With no such power broker in the region, the forces of Islamic jihad will without doubt burst forth over the Euphrates, the boundary of the land promised to Abraham, and surge towards Israel. Rev. 13:10 speaks of the final desolation of Israel by the beast in terms of 'leading into captivity', associated with the beast having power over "all kindreds, tongues and nations" in the earth / land promised to Abraham. The remaining Jews will be taken into captivity in those areas; and the attitude of the IS, ever seeking as they are to incarnate Israel's historical enemies, is such that this scenario is now quite imaginable.
