hotcoffee
New Member
Daniel 7:2 Daniel said: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. 3 Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.
Have you ever gone to sleep thinking about work? You know how work gets into your dreams?
It appears to me, Daniel had this dream after Nebuchadnezzar passed away. He could see the changing of the leadership and what it was doing to people. God gave him the vision of what had been and what was to come. I love how he makes each government into a beast. Government does seem to be a beast, wouldn't you agree.
Notice, though, that Daniel sees God is involved in the governments. After all God had been waiting for the Jewish rulers to get involved. God didn't want the people to have kings. He knew it was trouble from the beginning. He wanted people to follow Him. But they wanted kings and those kings, being human, decided they knew best. So after waiting 600 years for humans to come to their senses, God intervened, and gave Jerusalem over to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar.
God stirs up the sea of humanity and the beast of government spills out.
Remember Jerusalem, Daniel's home, had been conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. I'm sure that Daniel, after being taken from his home and castrated as a young boy, would consider Nebuchadnezzar a beast. It's also fair to say that the government leaders who put his friends in the smelting furnace would have appeared to be animals as well.
Now Nebuchadnezzar's heirs were on the thrown. Stupid self centered men, who wouldn't learn from their ancestors. They took the artifacts from the Temple to play party games.
So according to the commentaries.... these four beasts are really governments over four periods in time. Much like the dream Nebuchadnezzar had, where each part of the statue has significance, each beast will have significance. The commentary displays the comparison.
