“Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. 12 (The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time.)
Daniel continued to watch the vision with rapt attention as the scene of God’s final judgment unfolded. He heard the little horn speaking “boastful words.” It is clear that there was something ungodly about those words, since they brought down God’s judgment on the fourth beast and on the horn. The beast’s body, including the horn, was destroyed and thrown into the fire. This is to be understood not as annihilation but as everlasting punishment.
Nothing has been said about what happened to the other three beasts, the ones symbolizing Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece. Daniel’s vision had revealed only that each was in turn succeeded by another empire. Now that the awful end of the fourth beast has been described, Daniel tells of their end. They had been stripped of their authority, but each had been allowed to continue for a period of time. Now that time extension had come to an end.
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
A new figure appeared to Daniel in his vision. It was the promised Messiah, the God-man, the Savior of the world. Some of the details from Daniel’s description that help us to identify this figure as Jesus Christ are the following:
1. He is called “one like a son of man,” a human being, not another in the series of frightful beasts. We know from the New Testament that Christ, who frequently used Old Testament terminology in speaking of himself and his work, referred to himself as the “Son of Man.” The humble appearance of Jesus on earth as the lowliest of humans emphasized that it was not his purpose to frighten us or to overwhelm us but to gain our confidence, to win us by his self-sacrificing love.
2. He is pictured as “coming with the clouds of heaven,” not arising out of sea, as the beasts did, or standing on earth, as we do. Here we think of Jesus’ own words: “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).
3. He was given absolutely unlimited dominion—over all people, and for forever—in contrast to rule over a particular area of the world for a measured period of time.
4. All people acknowledged his rule. Daniel’s vision pictured the fulfillment of the prophecy of the apostle Paul that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10,11).
The final goal of all of history is described here as the Messiah’s taking up his eternal rule among the people whom he has purchased with his life’s blood.
15 “I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. 16 I approached one of those standing there and asked him the true meaning of all this.
“So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: 17 'The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth. 18 But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever.’
Daniel was shaken to his very roots by what God had shown him about the future. In his dream he had seen the rise and fall of world empires. He had witnessed blasphemy and rebellion against the Lord and the very climax of history in the eternal rule of Jesus Christ. “I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit.” The Lord’s prophets, the men who spoke for God and wrote the books of the Old Testament, were not automatons; they were not simply voiceboxes and writing instruments totally without emotions. They were human beings who had strong feelings. Here Daniel felt an inner hurt when he got a glimpse of the political turmoil soon to engulf the world.
Daniel could probably have guessed at the meaning of his vision, since it so closely paralleled Nebuchadnezzar’s dream that he had interpreted. But he wanted to know the complete and authoritative meaning of the vision God had given him. In his vision he therefore approached “one of those standing there,” apparently one of the angels surrounding God’s throne, and asked for an explanation of what he had seen. The heavenly interpreter gave a brief summary. He first defined the beasts as kingdoms.
What God showed Daniel was the rise of four different world powers, as well as their ultimate destruction, together with the establishment of God’s eternal rule of glory. The angel also explained that when the promised Savior would take up his power, he would share his rule with his saints, those who through faith possess the forgiveness of sins and are considered holy in God’s sight. “If we endure, we will also reign with him,” Saint Paul assured Timothy (2 Timothy 2:12).