Let’s Look Closer: This chapter begins a new section of the book. To this point, it’s been stories about Daniel and his friends. But here, in chapter 7, we start seeing Daniel’s dreams and visions of future events.
This chapter contains a vision that tells the same story as chapter 2. A series of kingdoms will follow the current one, but God’s kingdom will defeat them all and continue forever. The critical difference is the additional detail regarding the fourth kingdom. Ten toes become horns representing kings and one of those kings directly attacks God and His people.
The first three beasts/kingdoms can be identified historically as Babylon, Persia, and Greece. The fourth could be the Roman empire, but it’s challenging to connect the details of the ten horns to past events. The events described may still be in the future for us. It’s certainly true that God’s kingdom hasn’t taken over the entire earth for all eternity.
Takeaway: That means that the kingdoms and nations we live in today still fit within Daniel’s outline of the future. We live under governments and within cultures that God will eventually destroy. We can’t expect them to be perfect and shouldn’t be surprised or angry when they fail to live up to God’s standards. That’s a reality yet to come. We must patiently wait for it to arrive and serve our ultimate King in the meantime.