Daniel's Four Beasts and the Revived Roman Empire Explained

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, it's good to have everybody back, and once again, we're just going to jump right into the Word because this time just seems to get away from us. So no announcements or anything, we're just going to go right back to Daniel chapter 2 and continue on where we left off in our last program, that politically now, these great empires, the Nebuchadnezzar saw in symbolic language, you might say, of the head of gold and the breast of silver and the belly of brass and the legs of iron and then the final feet of that image made of iron and clay, and we pointed out how that politically every one of these empires will become more, how shall I put it, shall become weakened by the number of people involved in decision-making. Now we all know that we love democracy and it's the greatest form of government that has ever brought on the scene, no doubt about it. But when it comes to getting something done, it's probably the worst that was ever conceived. Now you see, when Christ sets up His kingdom again, that's why it's going to be so glorious. It'll be a kingdom of one. He will have absolute power. There will be no confabs. There will be no consensus. It'll be a glorious kingdom. Now had Nebuchadnezzar been a benevolent type individual, had he had the love and the graciousness of God, he could have had that kind of an empire, I guess, but no human has those kind of attributes. So Nebuchadnezzar, like any other great dictator, was a despot. He was a totalitarian. He had no concern about his subjects, but nevertheless his decision-making was within himself. And as we've seen now all through human history, that all these empires were inferior to the one before politically. But now over here, militarily, naturally, each one became greater until we get down to what we call the revived Roman Empire or our present European community, yet NATO and the various other military organizations have the tremendous power of nuclear weapons and the technology and all the other things that we've witnessed over the last few years. So keep this in mind, that as these empires came on the scene, they're all Gentile, but in every one of these empires Israel was connected. Every one of these empires included the land of Palestine and the city of Jerusalem. Now the iron and clay, the ten toes of the European community as yet, as yet do not have that kind of a relationship with the nation of Israel. It's mostly America that is keeping the little nation going. But never lose sight of the fact that the Antichrist is going to come out of the geographical area of the old Roman Empire. Now we'll see that in a few weeks when we get to Daniel chapter 9. I personally think he'll come from Western Europe. Others think he may come from the Middle East or the Mediterranean, but be that as it may, he's going to come from some place out of that old Roman Empire. And he's going to come in, as I was just looking at a verse during break time, in Daniel it says he's going to come in peaceably and with flatteries. Now you look at Europe tonight with all their turmoil, their ethnic problems, and their immigrant problems, and their political problems, their economic problems, if suddenly a man should come on the scene, especially in Europe, more so than any other place in the world tonight, if some man would come on the scene with the charisma of a John F. Kennedy, and with the diplomacy of a Henry Kissinger, and maybe with some of the other economic smarts of a Milton Friedman and so forth, if this guy could come on the scene with all these attributes rolled up into one, and seemingly have all the answers to their problems, you know what they would do? They'd fall on their knees and kiss his feet in a minute. In fact, maybe some of you heard it, I think it was on one of the news commentaries here in the last couple of weeks, where they were interviewing some of the German youth who were in some of these demonstrations and so forth. And in interviewing them, asking what they really wanted, one of them just said it right straight out. He said, if a man could come on the scene that would be a leader, we'd follow him in a minute. Well, the world is getting ready for that. And so as we see these empires, they've come and gone through history, but we are now down to the iron and clay toes of the Western Europe Consortium of Nations. Now, I think it is so perfectly illustrated with iron and clay. You know, being an old farmer, I can remember way, way back before farmers mixed their concrete with washed sand, they would use any kind of gravel they could get their hands on. Now, if you mix even the best of cement with just simply gravel, how long will that cement last? Well, not long at all, and it just starts crumbling because it just doesn't have the ability to cleave. Now, that's the way Europe is tonight. You've got all these nations that over hundreds and hundreds of years they've hated each other with a passion. That's why that's been a battleground for centuries. The Germans hate the French, and the French hate these, and the Spaniards hate the Italians, and what have you. And those hatreds run deep. And even though they have agreed to come together now in a political and an economic United States of Europe, yet the whole thing is so fragile because of those latent hatreds. And that, I think, is what's depicted here in the iron and the clay. It's got strength, but it's got that weakness. And so even though they are going to come together, and they were hoping, of course, to have it all done by the end of 1992, but it's going to happen. They're going to have a United States of Europe one day, and then out of that consortium of ten nations, I don't care whether it's twelve today, or fourteen, or eight, or nine, they're going to end up with ten, because the book says so. And out of those ten nations then will come the man, the Antichrist. And he will make that treaty with Israel, as we'll be seeing in a few weeks, that will trigger then God's time clock of prophecy once again, and those final seven years will click off. So anyway, if you'll come back to chapter 2, so we can wind up this vision with Nebuchadnezzar. Come down to verse 43, and Daniel says to the old king, Now whereas in that dream you saw iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, just exactly as Europe is doing tonight. But they shall not cleave one to another. In other words, there's not going to be a real political unity. The whole thing will be fragile. And for this reason, it's going to be so ripe for a one man to come on the scene. And I'll tell you what, we're getting close. Now I'm not a date setter, you know that. But I do feel that we are getting so close to the appearance of the Antichrist. And remember, before he makes his appearance, we have to go. The Lord's going to be taking us out. We're not going to see him. I don't think we'll even be able to put a thumb on who he is. We may have some ideas. And of course, those have come and gone, so we have to be careful. You don't just glibly say, Well, I think he's going to be the Antichrist. Because we don't know. And we're going to be gone before he comes. But when he comes, he's going to have the world literally falling at his feet. He's going to rule and reign for that seven years. Satanically, it's going to be the most awful seven years in all of the earth's history. I like to put it this way, the Holocaust of Nazi Germany will be a Sunday school picnic compared to those seven years. And it won't be limited to just Europe, it'll be worldwide. But then now you come into verse 44. You see, the sovereign God is in control of the whole thing. You know, that's why I like to start in Genesis, you know, the plan of God for the whole age of history. It's all architecturally drawn up from eternity past. Nothing takes him by surprise. Everything is right. In fact, again, I was thinking on the way up. I know my wife sometimes wonders why I don't talk much on my way from home to Tulsa for these tapings, but I'm thinking a mile a minute. And, you know, it's just so hard to comprehend how that a sovereign God preplanned everything that has happened, and yet he left man with a free will. Now that is hard to reconcile, isn't it? That a sovereign God lays it out, gives men and nations their free will, and they all meet at the end. I can't explain it, but I believe it, and you can see it happening constantly. I'm often told in my classes, you go back and you reread the history of World War II, and how some of our great battles in the Pacific as well as in Europe hinged on a change of the weather. Now, that wasn't just accident. That was a sovereign God, and so it is here. All these things, yes, men are operating under their free will. They don't have any idea that God's got a thing to do with it, but he's got everything to do with it. And then look at verse 44, and in the days of these kings, in other words, when these ten nations of Western Europe, headed up now by the Antichrist, have run their course of seven years, in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a what? See, there it is. What kingdom? Well, the same kingdom we've been talking about from day one, this kingdom that he's going to have on the earth. He will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. Now, you want to remember, the book of Revelation puts a time element on the kingdom. How long? A thousand years. Consequently, we get the term, the millennium. And even the world likes the year. Have you noticed lately, when they talk about the next thousand years as the millennium? Well, they're talking, of course, in secular terms of the next thousand years from two thousand to three thousand. But the thousand years that Scripture refers to, and we call the millennium, is that thousand years of rule and reign. But we know it's going to end by, again, the providential acts of a sovereign God, and everything is going to have to go through a great turmoil. But when the new earth and the new heaven come on the scene, it's going to be the same set of circumstances that we saw in that thousand years. Now, it took me a while to come to that conclusion, but I'm so convinced of it now, I speak it without apology, that the thousand-year reign of Christ is limited in time. Absolutely it is. The Scripture says a thousand years. But, in essence, that same kingdom economy is going to go right on into all eternity. That's why the language always speaks as it does here, that this kingdom shall never be destroyed. It'll never end. Oh, it'll be interrupted again. But it's going to come right back on the scene for eternity. Now, I've always gotten a kick out of seeing people light up when I explain to them that when we go into our eternal abode, in our eternal estate, we're not going to float around up on some ethereal cloud in some kind of an invisible spirit form and strum an invisible harp. That's not going to be heaven. Heaven is going to be a place of intense activity. We're going to be so busy. Now, you know, idle mind is the devil's workshop, so God's not going to have anything to do with idleness. We're going to be busy. We're going to have tremendous activity, and it's going to be glorious beyond our comprehension. Never lose sight of that. I tell men who love to fish, I don't know whether you're going to fish in that new heaven and that new earth, but there's going to be something even better than that. For guys who love to hunt, there's going to be something better than hunting. For those who love pro football, there's going to be something better than pro football. We're going to be busy. We're going to be active. And so this kingdom that is ushered in at the return of Christ on a glorious earth wherein the curse has been lifted, tremendous production, there's going to be tremendous population explosion. Now, I have to put everybody on television on hold on that. We'll explain that someday. But there's going to be a tremendous population explosion, tremendous production, and it's going to be glorious. But it's going to go on into all eternity. Now come back to the verse. And this kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms. In other words, all these great Gentile kingdoms that were precipitated and were based on nothing but greed. You know, I was so thrilled here, oh, several months ago. We came out of our class here in Tulsa and in the parking lot, one of the fellows said, Nancy, I think you were there when he said it. He said, I see it. I can see it for the first time in my life. Everything is based on greed. And you think about it. Everything, the whole ball of wax in which we're living today is based on greed. Every one of these empires, what are they based on? Greed. Little ole Alexander the Great grew up in Greece, the poorest part of Greece, up in Macedonia. They didn't have a thing. But what started to gnaw weight at him? Hey, I want more than this. And so the young fellow began to prepare himself, and he became the conqueror of the world. Why? Greed. Along comes the Romans, and they look at all the good things that those Greeks have got, all their beautiful architecture, all those smart philosophers, and what do they say? Hey, I want that. And boom, they go after it. Now, this is what scares me when they talk about disassembling our military. Hey, don't you know that the whole world sits out there and with that greedy look say, I wish we could have what those Americans have got. And you know what? If we'd let them have it, they'd take it in a minute, because that's what the whole world is greased on, is greed, see? All right, now let's go on. Time is flying. Let's move on over to chapter 7. Now, I'm going to skip chapter 3 and 4 for the time being at least, and maybe even chapter 5, because most of you know it, you know the context, and you've heard sermons on it. Now if you come to chapter 7, now Daniel has his own vision. And Daniel is going to see basically the same Gentile empires, only instead of seeing them come down the pipe as various metals of gold and silver and so forth, Daniel sees them as various wild beasts. But it's the same unfolding of history. Verse 1, In the first year of Belshazzar the king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed, and he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters. And Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven, the east, the west, the north, the south, they strove upon the great sea. Now, for those of you who haven't marked it in your margin, you might want to do so now. The sea here, again, is a symbolic term for humanity. See, most of you know that. And so the four winds are just striving upon the mass of humanity, even though at the time of Daniel there weren't that many. But nevertheless, it was still humanity. And verse 3, And four great beasts. Now here again, I'm always reminding my class people, don't let that word beast conjure up a vision of some seven-headed lion or anything like that. The beast term in Scripture is simply a government. It's just simply a government. Now the reason God has chosen the word beast is because all these great empires, as we're going to see here from Daniel's point of view, are bestial in their behavior, and again in their greed, and in the way they treat their subjects. Now I hope you all realize that all the way up through human history, unless you were fortunate enough to live amongst the very elite in the ruling class, what was life for the rest of the people? It was just existence, most of them under abject poverty, slavery, oppression, and it wasn't until the Magna Charta that came out of England in about, what, the 14th century, that delineated some human rights. Before that there was no such thing. There was no such thing as human rights. But since the Magna Charta came out, we've had, at least in our Western civilizations, a semblance of human rights. But even amongst our Western civilizations, how many people aren't still living in a downtrodden state? We're not in any utopia. Now we're certainly blessed as a nation, no doubt about it. But see, we've still got a lot of people that are groveling in poverty and have none of this world's goods. So anyway, Daniel sees these empires come out of the mass of humanity, bestial in their makeup, and he sees them in the same unfolding as Nebuchadnezzar did. Verse 4, the first one was like a lion. That's Babylon. Instead of the head of gold, Daniel see him as a lion. And he had eagles' wings. And then he had no more in seeing that come out of his dream, and he says, I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked. In other words, it was defeated, it fell. And it was lifted up from the earth and made stand upon the feet of the man, and a man's heart was given to it. And then, verse 5, as a result of that fall, what happened? Well, another empire. And another beast. Now we know it was the Medes and the Persians. And it was like a bear. And it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth, and they said thus, devour much flesh. And so the Medes and Persians took over the then known world. Verse 6, now this is history. After this, I beheld, and lo, another, another empire, another government, like a leopard. Now the leopard is one of the swiftest animals in the animal kingdom. And it depicts Alexander the Great, who was swift in his conquests. Alexander the Great could move his armies over territory that nobody else ever dreamed possible and in less time. He was known for it. And so consequently, he's pictured as the leopard here. And it had upon the back of it four wings. Now you remember I told you when we were studying over here, that when Greece conquered the then known world, Alexander died, and who took over? Four generals. Now what does Daniel see? Four wings. It's the same picture. That instead of having one great dictator, such as Nebuchadnezzar, now this third empire is divided into four. The beast also had four heads, see? Four generals who ruled it, and dominion was given to it. And then verse 7, after the Grecian empire falls, up comes the Roman, and Daniel describes it as dreadful, terrible, exceedingly strong. And we know the Romans were. The Romans had control of the then known world over the general population like no other empire before it. Had great iron teeth. In other words, it was strong politically. And it devoured and breaking pieces and stamped the residue with the feet of it. And it was diverse or it was different from all the empires before it. Why? Because like I said last week, it was the beginning of democratic form of government that had never been dreamed of before. And then you have a semicolon. And then what's the last part of the verse? And it had ten horns. Now, you see, as we look back on history, that semicolon jumped about 1,700 years of time, because we're coming all the way from the Roman empire, which ended between 300 and 400 A.D., up to the present time, and the appearance of the European community as the revived Roman empire. Ten horns. Now, the horns, again in Scripture, merely refer to kings. Ten horns. Now we've got to go back to Revelation again. Revelation, since we're now dealing with the kingdoms that will be on the earth at the time of the tribulation, we pick this up in the last book of our Bible, because the book of Revelation is the road map of the tribulation for the most part. Revelation chapter 13. I didn't give you the chapter, did I? We were here last week when we looked at the religious leader, but now we're going to look at these ten horns that will be the base of operation for this world ruler we call the Antichrist. And I stood upon the sand of the sea. What are we talking about again? The mass of humanity. And I saw a beast. What are we talking about? A government rise up out of the mass of humanity, and it has seven heads and what? Ten horns. See how that fits with Daniel? Seven heads, ten horns. Now, this isn't some seven-headed creature or anything like that. It's a consortium of nations. It's an empire. And upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy and the beast, this government. Now, it's going to be headed up in one man, remember, the Antichrist, was like unto a leopard, his feet like a bear, and his mouth like a lion. What does that tell you? What we just read in Daniel chapter 7. The very same things. Daniel saw Greece as a leopard. He saw the Medes as a bear, and he saw the Babylonians as a lion. See? Now John sees them in the same context. And the dragon, Satan, gave him, the Antichrist, the head of this final Roman Empire, the dragon, Satan, gives him his power, his throne, and his authority. And I saw one of his heads that were wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed. Now, here again, I wish I had more time. A lot of people think that the man Antichrist is going to be shot or something and then he's going to be brought back to life. I prefer to think that we're dealing with the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was the one that suffered a deadly wound. It died. It collapsed. It faded off the scene. And here we see it coming up again. Now, if you think I'm stretching the point about Western Europe being a revived Roman Empire, hopefully I've got time for this, here about two years ago in Insight magazine was an article on the European community, written by a lady, and why I didn't cut it out, I'll never know, but I didn't. But she was describing all the ins and outs of Western Europe, exactly like I shared a week ago. Their hatreds, their problems, and so forth. And yet the potential, they have got the biggest potential for gross national product of anything on earth. But she ended her article with this statement. Now, she says, it may seem odd to think that these nations who hate each other can come together and make a United States of Europe. But she said, let me remind you that every one of these have been in an empire together once before. The Roman Empire. And that's the way she ended her article. And so even a secular writer can see that what we're having come out of Europe now is the very outline of that same old Roman Empire. Just exactly as Scripture said it was. Then, oh, I won't have time, but I just wanted you to see that here you have the same language in Revelation as you have in Daniel. You have the ten horns. You have the aspects of his government is going to be bestial. He's going to have the power and the totalitarian exercise of it like Nebuchadnezzar. He's going to rumble over people like the old bear, the Medes, and the Persians. He's going to have the swiftness. He's going to have the tenacity of the leopard empire of Alexander the Great. And he's going to have all the residue of the ancient Roman Empire with a seeming democracy behind it. But he himself is going to be absolute. So this whole thing is coming together perfectly. And the closer we come to it, the more we're going to see how accurate this book really is. And so the head that was wounded, I think, is the old Roman Empire. Now all of a sudden it's alive and well. It's on the scene. And so I say watch Western Europe. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time.