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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Daniel the Prophet: The Rise of the Beast

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

We're looking at Daniel 7 in our continuing series on the book of Daniel.

Daniel 1 through 6 is basically a collection of stories.

When you get to Daniel 7, there's a change of emphasis.

We're looking at the prophecies of Daniel now.

In Daniel 7, we're going to look at, among other things, the identity of the beast of Bible prophecy.

We'll see beasts that rise up out of the sea, horns and winds and seas and animals, symbols that help us to unlock the Bible's mysteries.

We'll see that Revelation builds on the book of Daniel and we'll identify the connection between Daniel 7 and Revelation 13.

And we're going to see that some of the interpretations of Bible prophecy that have been offered over the years have been creative.

You might remember people saying years back that the beast of Bible prophecy was Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now, he was the premier of the Soviet Union when Eastern European communism came to an end in the early 1990s.

Gorbachev had a prominent birthmark, often referred to as a port wine stain, on his forehead, which led thinking people, I kid you not, to decide that Mikhail Gorbachev was the Antichrist.

That mark on his forehead evidently had something to do with the mark of the beast.

He died in August of 2022 without ever really giving off Antichrist vibes.

Now, he did do commercials for Pizza Hut, but you'd have to really dislike pizza to think that that qualified him to be the Antichrist.

It's worth mentioning this confusion because it'll help us to study the Bible carefully, which we should.

And I have to say, I don't expect everyone will agree on any 1 interpretation of the Bible.

That the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

And that people are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Already someone's saying, but what kind of baptism?

So, given that there's agreement and disagreement, let's be gracious as we attempt to uncover the meaning of Daniel chapter 7.

We keep in mind that the first 6 chapters of Daniel are stories, but once we get to Daniel 7, we're now into prophecy.

Don't worry that prophecy is too hard to understand.

If you pray, think, read carefully and follow a few basic rules, you'll find the prophecies of Daniel can be understood.

So let's look at Daniel 7, starting in verse 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.

In Daniel 6, it said Darius the Mede was king.

But now in Daniel 7, we're back to Belshazzar being king of Babylon.

Now, that's because Daniel grouped the stories together in the first half of the book and then the prophecies in the second half of the book.

The book was not compiled strictly chronologically.

It's just the way the book was put together.

Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the 4 winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea, and 4 great beasts came up from the sea, diverse 1 from another.

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.

And behold, another beast, a second like to a bear, And it raised up itself on 1 side, and it had 3 ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it.

And they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

After this I beheld, and lo, another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it 4 wings of a fowl.

The beast had also 4 heads, and dominion was given to it.

After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly.

It devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it.

And it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it, and it had 10 horns." 4 beasts.

A lion, a bear, a leopard, and then something that Daniel can't classify, which has 10 horns.

Daniel said, "...I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were 3 of the first horns plucked up by the roots.

And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man and a mouth speaking great things." We'll find that that little horn and the Beast of Revelation 13, the 1 with the mark, the 1 the whole world follows in the end of time, we'll find that they are the same entity.

Back in 1999, the Los Angeles Times reported on the plethora of people identified over the years as the Antichrist, referring to the confusion on the subject as, pin the tail on the Antichrist.

They mention Bill Gates had been named by some, as well as King Juan Carlos of Spain, who abdicated the throne in 2014 amid scandals and allegations.

Studying the Bible isn't about making sensationalistic guesses.

We want to ascertain what the Bible is really saying by comparing Scripture with Scripture.

Daniel had his dream at the start of Belshazzar's reign around 540 BC.

Daniel said he saw the 4 winds of the heaven as they strove upon the great sea.

In prophecy, the sea or waters represents people.

Revelation 17.15, Then he said to me, The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.

Water, or seas, represents multitudes of people.

What Daniel saw was strife and warfare among the people of the world, opening the way for us to understand verse 3, "...and 4 great beasts came up from the sea, diverse 1 from another." So what are these beasts?

We have a clear answer from the Bible, from this very same chapter.

Notice what verse 17 says, "...these great beasts, which are 4, are 4 kings, which shall arise out of the earth." And to nail that down even tighter, we see verse 23, "...the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth." So, a beast is a kingdom, or you could say, a nation.

So, The power in Revelation cannot be Mikhail Gorbachev or King Juan Carlos of Spain or Ronald Reagan.

Some said former President Reagan was the Antichrist because his name was Ronald, 6 letters, Wilson, 6 letters, Reagan, 6 letters, Ronald, Wilson, Reagan, 6, 6, 6.

Now, that's not how prophecy is to be interpreted.

And it can't possibly be true because the beasts spoken of in Daniel 7 and therefore Revelation 13 represent a kingdom or a nation.

So Daniel here was seeing the rise and the fall of nations.

Verse 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." For the sake of time, let's take a shortcut and introduce a principle of prophetic interpretation.

Back in Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a statue constructed from various materials.

The head of the statue was made of gold, the chest and arms were of silver, the midsection was made of bronze, and the legs were made of iron.

Then there were the feet, which were made of iron and clay.

Those various metals represented kingdoms.

Medo-Persia, the belly and thighs of brass, Greece, and the legs of vine represented Rome.

That's the foundation in the book of Daniel.

And it resurfaces several times, even providing a platform for understanding the book of Revelation.

What follows in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation is built on that.

In prophecy there's a principle known as repeat and enlarge.

That's where God says something and then He says it again but enlarges upon it, giving more information.

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Daniel the Prophet: The Rise of the Beast

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