Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the only one to have a world-shifting dream. In Daniel chapter seven, Daniel (in third person) records a very special dream of four beasts: "Daniel said: 'In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.' (2-3)"

"The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were plucked and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.(4)"

"And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, "Get up and eat your fill of flesh!(5)"

"After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a foul. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.(6)"

"After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast — terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.(7)"

You may be thinking, "Well, so what? What do these beasts have to do with me?" My friend, they have everything and more to do with you.

Further in the chapter, Daniel lets us know that each beast represents a king or a kingdom/nation. "He gave me this explanation: The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on the earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms...(23)"

So if each of these four beasts represents a nation that will appear on the earth, which nations do they represent?

This is where the fun begins!

Some people have interpreted the four beasts as the four nations Medo-Persia, Greece, Babylon, and Rome. But in Daniel chapter eight, Daniel interprets another vision saying that the kings of Media and Persia are depicted together by a two-horned ram and the king of Greece by a shaggy goat, so those cannot be the same kingdoms as these four beasts in Daniel seven. Plus, the Bible says that these nations will be present in the end time (the second coming of Christ), but Persia and Babylon have both been replaced by Iraq and Iran. They are no longer active empires on the earth.

Let's move back to the first beast, the lion with eagles wings. If you think for just a moment, in the world we live in today there is a nation that has the official symbol of the lion... Great Britain! The lion illustrates Great Britain!

The thoughtfulness of our Lord is amazing! He wrote these scriptures many years ago, and yet these exact symbols are in our world currently!

What about the eagle's wings on the lion's back? Simply apply the same tactic! Which nation has the official animal symbol of an eagle? As most of us can easily tell, it is the United States of America.

Daniel records that the wings were plucked from the lion. This in itself demonstrates the uprising and separation of the United States from Great Britain in 1777 with the Declaration of Independence. America came from Great Britain! See the connection? I hope so!

The next beast, the bear, represents the one and only Russia, whose official animal symbol is the bear, if you haven't caught up with the trend yet.

There are several different interpretations of what the ribs in its mouth and its standing on one side could mean, but I personally have not done any digging into that piece of it all. I read recently one person's thoughts on it, claiming that the fact the bear is standing on one side could illustrate that one side of the nation is going to become more powerful or influential than the other, which is convincing enough! Share if you have any ideas!

The four-headed leopard with wings of a fowl is similar to the bear with the eagle's wings in the way that it resembles two nations together. In this case, the leopard is representing Germany. However, this was not discovered through the animal symbol of Germany, as it is not a leopard but a bird. This was determined by a piece of military equipment that Germany has produced... called the Leopard.

The Leopard was a powerful and far advanced tank. Newscasts have called it legendary, and even America has attempted to recreate this great machine.

By now, you're more than likely eager to learn who the fowl wings represent. Well, I am also eager to tell you that they are France. And you guessed it: France's symbol is the fowl, or rooster.

The fact that these two - Germany and France - are placed together as one beast is meant to portray the strong alliance held between the two nations.

One last thing about the third beast I must mention... The leopard has four heads, and in the Bible, it becomes a well-established fact that each head on a beast is meant to represent the number of times that nation will rise and fall. Now, we have already seen some of these risings and fallings take place in Germany, the first one to come to mind always being Hitler's reign in the Holocaust, which killed nearly 11 million people. Others would be WWI and also WWII. The fourth I don't believe has taken place yet, but we cannot be certain.

I will reveal the fourth and final beast of Daniel 7 in the next chapter!

Oh, the suspense! Hehehe! 🙊

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