Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 5 of 5
Devotional: May 7th

Daniel 7:1-14

Let us keep in mind the outline of this Book of Daniel. In the first six chapters we see the life of this man of God. In the last six we hear his prophecies.

It is Daniel’s turn to have a dream, of which the general subject is the same as that of Nebuchadnezzar in ch. 2. But this time the four successive kingdoms of the times of the Gentiles are seen in the likeness of beasts. Babylon is featured as the lion with eagle’s wings (cf. Jeremiah 4:7; Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 49:22; Jeremiah 49:30); Persia is represented by the bear, fierce and rapacious; the Grecian empire by the leopard, swift and impetuous. As to the fourth beast that emerges, "dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly", there exists nothing in all the animal creation monstrous enough to lend its name to it (Daniel 2:40). It represents the Roman empire, particularly in the form that it will assume in the future: that of ten horns (or ten kings), with a little horn predominant. This last represents the head of the empire, a vassal of Satan, a man of unparalleled intelligence and insight, serving a boundless ambition, uttering blasphemies.

"I beheld till . . ." (v. 9; cf. Daniel 2:34). "The Ancient of days", God Himself, will suddenly destroy this incarnation of the spirit of evil, before giving to the Son of Man "dominion, and glory, and a kingdom" (v. 14).