In Tuesday's study we saw a beast (the Antichrist) come out of the sea, with the sea possibly symbolizing the Gentile nations. If this is the case, then we know the Antichrist is a Gentile. That makes sense considering what we've already learned regarding the hatred he will harbor toward the Jewish people. We were told that the beast has ten horns and seven heads. The ten horns represent the ten nations who will join with the Antichrist in the last days, according to what John will be told in Revelation 17:12-14. When we get to Chapter 17 we will receive a further explanation for why the beast has seven heads, for an angel will say this about them: "The seven heads are seven hills...They are also seven kings. Five are fallen, one is, the other has not yet come." (Revelation 17:9b-10a) Don't worry if this seems confusing right now. When we arrive at Chapter 17 we are going to discuss these things in detail and they will make more sense to us. Right now, in Chapter 13, John doesn't know what these things mean either. He's just describing for us what he sees.
He tells us: "The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion." (Revelation 13:2a) This description is closely connected to a dream the prophet Daniel had about four major world empires. He envisioned these empires as four beasts coming out of the sea. These four empires are Gentile empires, leading further credence to the theory that the Antichrist will be a Gentile.
The first beast Daniel saw was like a lion with the wings of an eagle. (Daniel 7:4a) This symbolized the Babylonian Empire who had conquered Judah and had taken Daniel and many of the citizens of Jerusalem captive. The symbol that the Babylonian Empire adopted for itself was the winged lion, and many examples of these winged lions have been found by archaeologists. I did a Google search for images of the Babylonian lion and came up with pictures of more artifacts than I had time to view, but they're worth looking at if you'd like to see an example of what Daniel may have seen in his dream.
The second beast Daniel saw looked like a bear. It was lying on one side and it held three ribs in its mouth. It was given the command, "Get up and eat your fill of flesh!" (Daniel 7:5) The second beast symbolizes the Medo-Persian Empire, the empire that conquered Babylon. The Persians were stronger and more plentiful than the Medes with whom they were allied, so Daniel views the bear as lying on its side as if one side of the bear has more strength than the other. King Cyrus of Persia, whose father was Persian and whose mother was Median, is the ruler who conquered the Babylonian Empire. Cyrus saw himself as a liberator and was in the habit of setting captives free. In that sense, he was given the command to, "Get up and eat your fill of flesh!" by being given power by God to conquer Babylon. The actions of Cyrus the Great fulfilled the prophecy that the captive people of Judah would be set free to go home and rebuild. The bear holds three ribs in its mouth to signify the three major regions conquered by the Medo-Persian Empire: Babylon, Egypt, and Lydia.
The third beast Daniel saw looked like a leopard. It had four wings on its back and it had four heads. (Daniel 7:6) A leopard is so swift and silent that it attacks quickly and without warning. The wings also indicate swiftness or flight. This beast symbolizes the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered most of the civilized areas of his portion of the world with stunning speed---by the time he was twenty-eight years old. The leopard has four heads because, after the untimely death of Alexander at the age of thirty-two, his kingdom was divided among four of his generals: Ptolemy, Cassander, Seleucus, and Lysimachus.
When John sees the beast (the Antichrist) coming out of the sea, he sees that it has things in common with three previous world empires. First, its body is shaped like a leopard's body, reminiscent of the beast that represented Greece, the nation that so swiftly conquered others. I think this indicates that the Antichrist's rise to power will take place rather rapidly.
Second, the beast has feet like a bear, reminding us of the bear that symbolized the Medo-Persian Empire. The Medo-Persian Empire conquered with overwhelming force because of the size of its armies. It did not conquer especially swiftly, but it relentlessly kept battering its enemies and laying siege to them until they surrendered. The Antichrist will at first come promising peace, but as we learned much earlier in Revelation, war will be in his heart. Those rulers and territories who don't surrender willingly to him will be forced to surrender because of the military might he brings against them.
Third, the beast has a mouth like that of a lion. The lion was the symbol of the Babylonian Empire. The king of Babylon during much of Daniel's lifetime was Nebuchadnezzar, who installed a ninety-foot statue plated with gold on the plain of Dura and ordered everyone to bow down and worship the image at its dedication ceremony. It is believed by most scholars that the image was of himself, although the Bible doesn't describe anything about it except its size and its materials, but Nebuchadnezzar previously had a dream in which he and his empire were symbolized by a head of gold upon a statue. This is why it is assumed that he fashioned an image of himself after being inspired by his dream. The image has never been found by archaeologists and I think that after the nation was conquered the statue was probably taken down and the gold removed from it. But the remnants of a very large statue base still remains on the plain of Dura where the Bible says the image once stood.
The Antichrist too will set up an image of himself, in God's very temple in Jerusalem, and he will command people to bow down and worship it. But his statue is going to have something Nebuchadnezzar's statue did not. It will have the ability to speak. We are going to talk about this in far more detail when we study the second half of Chapter 13, but I think the reason Daniel sees the Antichrist having a mouth like a lion has to do with the fact that he will set up an image of himself just like Nebuchadnezzar did. The image will have the ability to speak "proud words and blasphemies", as John will tell us later. He is going to say that the image has "breath", and we can speculate that the image will blaspheme and slander all that is holy, a thing that is also said of the Antichrist later in Chapter 13.
It's going to take more time to discuss the fourth beast of Daniel 7 than it took to discuss the other three beasts, so we are going to need to stop right here today and pick up where we left off tomorrow with the study of the beast that has iron teeth and ten horns.
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