The fourth beast in Daniel 7 is the Roman Empire.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to determine whether the Antichrist is Greek or Roman.

Daniel 2, as discussed in a previous article, uses the parts of a statue of a man to symbolize four successive empires, from the time of the Babylonian Empire until Christ returns. It identifies the first as the ancient Babylonian Empire, which reigned in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C. 🔗

Daniel 7, also already discussed, uses a series of animals to symbolize the same four empires. The fourth empire fragments into 11 concurrent kingdoms. 🔗

Daniel 7 and 8 describe the same Antichrist. Both chapters symbolize it as a horn. It would be God’s great enemy and will only be destroyed when Christ returns.

In Daniel 7, the Antichrist is an 11th horn growing out of the 4th animal. The purpose of this article is to determine what that 4th animal is. Some believe it represents the Roman Empire. In that case, the Antichrist would be Roman. But others believe that the 4th animal represents the Greek Empire, which would mean that the Antichrist is Greek.

Both Daniel 7 and 8 use animals as symbols for empires. But while Daniel 7 does not explicitly name any of its animals, Daniel 8 identifies its two animals, a Ram and a Goat, as Medo-Persia and Greece, respectively (Daniel 8:20, 21). The current article identifies the four animals in Daniel 7 by comparing them to the animals in Daniel 8. In other words, this will identify the empire out of which the Antichrist grows. This will also begin to identify the Beast of Revelation, because, as stated in Revelation 13:2, the Beast inherits aspects of the four animals in Daniel 7.

Competing Interpretations

From the time of the prophet Daniel, the nation of Israel was subject to four empires: the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and the Roman Empires.

Both Conservatives and Liberals interpret the first animal in Daniel 7, the Lion, as the ancient Babylonian Empire. However, they differ with respect to the other three animals:

While Conservatives hold that the second animal in Daniel 7, the Bear, symbolizes Medo-Persia, Liberals believe that Medo-Persia is symbolized by BOTH the second and third animals, the Bear and the Leopard. Liberals identify the second animal as the Medes, and the third as Persia.

Consequently, in the Conservative interpretation, the 3rd animal is Greece and the 4th is the Roman Empire. That means that the Antichrist arises from the Roman Empire. But, in the Liberal interpretation, the 4th is the Greek Empire. Consequently, the Antichrist is a Greek king.

The two competing systems may be compared as follows:

Daniel 7	Conservative	Liberal
Lion	Babylon	Babylon
Bear	Medo-Persia	Medes
Leopard	Greece	Persians
Fourth	Rome	Greece

The Liberal Rationale

Liberals are unable to accept that the Book of Daniel contains real prophecy. Since the book explicitly mentions the Greek Empire, Liberals argue that the book must have been written AFTER the Greek Empire already existed. On that basis, the best explanation of the Book of Daniel, which they can find, is that it was written in the 2nd-century B.C. by some unknown Jew, describing history in the form of a prophecy. Specifically, in this view, the focus of the Book of Daniel is the persecutions of the Jews by the 2nd-century Greek king Antiochus IV. As such, they identify the Antichrist, the evil 11th horn of Daniel 7, as Antiochus. It then follows that the fourth beast, out of which the 11th horn grows, must symbolize the Greek Empire.

But then they have a challenge with respect to the previous empires in Daniel 7. They accept that the first empire is Babylon. However, in history, there was only one empire between Babylon and Greece, namely, Medo-Persia, while there are two animals between the first and fourth animals in Daniel 7. To solve this problem, they divide the Medo-Persian empire into two empires, the Medes and the Persians. Therefore, they align the prophecies as follows:

Daniel 2	Gold (Babylon)	Silver	Brass	Iron
Daniel 7	Lion	Bear	Leopard	Dreadful Beast
Daniel 8		Ram (Medes)	Ram (Persia)	Goat (Greece)

The Animals Compared

This section identifies the fourth beast in Daniel 7 by comparing the beasts in Daniel 7 to those in Daniel 8.

The Ram (Medo-Persia)

The first animal in Daniel 8 is a Ram, explicitly identified as “Media and Persia” (Daniel 8:20). It has two horns, one higher than the other. The higher horn came out last. The Ram charges in three directions: the West, the North, and the South (Daniel 8:3-4). To which animal in Daniel 7 does it relate?

The Ram is like the Bear of Daniel 7:

Firstly, both are higher on one side. While the Bear is “raised up on one side,” the Ram has two horns, one longer than the other. The two sides symbolize the composite nature of the empire formed by a fusion of the kingdoms of Media and Persia. The Ram’s horn that came out last, but became longer, and the higher side of the Bear, symbolize the Persians. Initially, the Medes dominated Persia, but Cyrus reversed the relationship so that Persia dominated the Medes when their combined forces conquered Babylon.

Secondly, both conquer three things. While the Ram charges in three directions, the Bear has three ribs between its teeth (Daniel 7:5). Since animals symbolize kingdoms, ribs may represent kingdoms or territories conquered. The three ribs between the teeth of the Bear may be taken as representing the three major conquests of the combined forces of the Medes and Persians in the sixth century BC: Lydia in the north in 547, Babylon in the west in 539, and Egypt in the south in 525.

Given these similarities, the Bear of Daniel 7 seems equivalent to the Ram in Daniel 8, explicitly identified as “Media and Persia.”

The Ram is unlike the Leopard.

In the Liberal interpretation, the Ram of Daniel 8 also includes the Leopard of Daniel 7. However, there is no similarity in their descriptions. On the contrary, they clearly differ. Daniel’s prophecies use heads and horns of animals to indicate divisions of empires. While the Ram has two horns, meaning it has two divisions, identified as the Medes and Persians, the Leopard has four heads, meaning that it has four divisions (Daniel 7:6).

The Goat (Greece)

The second animal in Daniel 8 is a Goat, explicitly identified as Greece (Daniel 8:21). It comes from the west without touching the ground. It has one great horn, but the great horn was broken off while it was still strong. In its place came up four horns to the four directions of the compass (Daniel 8:5, 8).

The Goat is like the Leopard.

Firstly, both are fast, indicated by the four wings of the Leopard, while the Goat flies. The speed of its conquests refers to the speed at which Alexander the Great conquered the known world.

Secondly, both have four parts. The Leopard has four heads, while the Goat has four horns. The four heads and four horns symbolize the four Greek Empires formed after Alexander’s death at age 33.

These similarities imply that the Leopard is equivalent to the Goat, explicitly identified as Greece.

The Goat is not like the Dreadful Fourth Animal.

In the Liberal interpretation, the Goat of Daniel 8 is equivalent to the dreadful fourth beast of Daniel 7, both symbolizing Greece. However, nothing in their descriptions confirms that. On the contrary, while the Goat first has only one horn and then later four, the Fourth Beast first has ten horns, then an 11th comes up, ‘plucks out’ three of the 10 horns by their “roots,” leaving 8 horns standing. Since horns symbolize the divisions of kingdoms, the Goat and the Dreadful Fourth Beast are not related.

Conclusion

Since the Bear is Medo-Persia and the Leopard is Greece, the Dreadful Fourth Beast of Daniel 7 must be the next empire in the series, namely, the Roman Empire:

Daniel 7	Daniel 8	Empire
Lion	–	Babylonian
Bear	Ram	Medo-Persian
Leopard	Goat	Greek
Fourth	–	Roman

This confirms the Conservative view. It means that the Antichrist arises out of the Roman Empire.

Medo-Persia

As stated, to make their interpretation fit the text, Liberal scholars propose that the author of Daniel divided Medo-Persia into two empires, one represented in Daniel 7 by the Bear and the other by the Leopard.

Critics propose that the author of Daniel inserted the Medes as a separate empire because of the predictions in Isaiah and Jeremiah, which state that Babylon would fall, not to a Medo-Persian Empire, but to the Medes. Critics propose that the author of Daniel, whom they regard as uninspired and uninformed, mistakenly thought that the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to the Medes under Darius the Mede, BEFORE the reign of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great (Daniel 5:30-31; 6:28; 10:1).

However, another argument against the Liberal interpretation is that this is not consistent with either secular history or with the Book of Daniel:

Historically, the Persians conquered the Medes around 550 BC, and, 11 years later, the joint forces of the Medes and Persians conquered Babylon, with Cyrus the Great as their supreme king.

It would also be inconsistent with the Book of Daniel itself. Daniel always refers to the Medes and Persians as a single empire. For example:

He prophesied that the joint forces of the Medes and the Persians would conquer Babylon (Daniel 5:28).

He referred to the unchangeable law of the Medes and the Persians (Daniel 6:9, 13, and 16).

He identified the Ram as “the kings of Media and Persia” (Daniel 8:20).

Furthermore, the author of the Book of Daniel would have been inconsistent if he described Media and Persia as a single beast in Daniel 8, but as two different beasts in Daniel 7, and as two different metals in Daniel 2.

Final Conclusion

As a final conclusion, then, the fourth beast in Daniel 7 is the Roman Empire, which means that the 11th horn of the fourth beast, which is the Antichrist, is Roman in origin. The next article in this series identifies that Antichrist. 🔗