The Seven Beast Empires Of Satan

There are seven empires Satan has used to persecute Israel throughout its history. These empires are called beasts empires because primarily they are depicted as beasts in both Daniel 7 and Revelation 17, and secondly because of their satanically inspired obsession to destroy Israel and the Jewish people throughout history. The term beast is used, especially in the scroll of Revelation to describe the beast empires of Satan, and the leader of the Eighth And Final Beast Empire, the aniChrist. Sometimes, it is the context that reveals which usage is in view. Occasionally, the phenomenon of double reference may apply. In Revelation 17, the revelator John gives us an overview of these beast empires.

“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast”(Rev.17:3,9-12).

Introduction Of The Eighth Beast Empires Of Satan.

The passage cited above is critical to our understanding of the cosmopolitics and geopolitics of the world. The scarlet beast mentioned here with seven heads and ten horns is Satan. Satan is the ruler of this age. The seven heads are representative of the seven beast empires and their leaders he has used throughout history to persecute the Jewish people and Israel. The Eight Beast Empire is represented by the ten horns. The Eighth And Final Beast Empire will be ruled by one of the seven heads of the seven previous beast empires.

“And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast”(Rev.13:3).

“And the beast thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is”(Rev.17:8).

So the leader of the eighth head is a dead man who has ruled over one of the seven previous beast empires come back to life to rule over the 8th head. The first seven heads are representative of seven different kings in the past. These kings refer to kingdoms Or beast empires that satan has used in the past to persecute Israel and the Jewish people throughout history. At the time John the revelator wrote the Scroll of Revelation(ca. 90-96 AD), five of the beast empires were history. The sixth was then in existence. And the seventh was yet to come. The existence would be brief. Following the seventh, would be the Eighth and final beast empire. The Eighth And Final Beast Empire would be the one in existence during the last seven years of the present age, the 70th seven of Daniel. The Eighth and final beast empire is still future. It will consist of ten kings who shall receive power and authority with the beast at the same time. In other words, the ten kings shall be contemporaneous with the beast, the antiChrist.

The Five Beast Empires Of Daniel’s Dream(Dan.2).

In Daniel 2, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream of which he neither remembered the dream nor the interpretation therefore. His wisemen were called to tell him both the dream and the interpretation thereof. They could not. Eventually Daniel was called in, and he told the dream and the interpretation thereof to the King Nebuchadnezzar. The dream consisted of an image or statue, the head of which was of gold, and the arms and breast of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, it’s legs of iron, and its feet and ten toes partly of iron and partly of clay. The king watched until a stone cut out without hands hit the statue at its feet and it crumbled and vanished. But the stone that struck it became a great mountain and filled the whole Earth(Dan.2:1-35).

Daniel interpreted the dream as follows: King Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom represented the head of gold. After him shall arise another kingdom inferior to him. This kingdom is represented by the arms and breast of silver. After this is another yet inferior kingdom represented by bronze. The fourth kingdom which shall be as strong as iron is represented by the legs of iron. This kingdom shall be very strong and shall break, shatter and crush the other kingdoms in pieces. The fifth kingdom, represented by the two feet and ten toes, shall be partly of iron and partly of clay. It will be a divided kingdom. But it will have in it the toughness of iron, and the brittleness of clay. And in the days of those kings, the two feet and ten toes, the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break and consume all these other kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, five beast empires were identified. The fifth is diverse from the rest in that it comprises peoples with two different ideologies. This empire consisted of ten nations which were partly strong and partly weak. These beast empires covered the period from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar(605-562 BC) to the time of the Eighth And Final Beast Empire that shall dominate the world during the 70th seven of Daniel.

The Five Beast Empires Of Daniel’s Vision.

In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a night vision. Belshazzar was a vice-regent. The actual ruler of the kingdom was his father, Nabonidus, who was in self-imposed exile in the Arabian city of Tema for health reasons.

“Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld until the wings were plucked, and it was lifted from the earth, and made to stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. And hehold another beast, a second like a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, arise, devour much flesh. After this I beheld, and lo another, like leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast has four heads; and dominion was given it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and break in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. And I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things”(Dan.7:2-8).

There is correlation between the beast empires in the vision of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The lion corresponds to the head of gold, the bear to the breast and arms of silver, the leopard to torso of bronze, the strong beast to the iron legs, and the strong beast with ten horns to the feet and ten toes of iron and clay. God revealed to Daniel that these kingdoms will oppress Israel with increasing intensity. The worst of them will be the Eighth And Final Beast Empire of Satan, consisting of ten toes or ten horns, which shall seek to destroy Israel during the 70th seven of Daniel. In the days of these ten kings shall God Almighty step up a another kingdom of a different kind, which shall not be left to other people, but shall crush and put an end to all these other kingdoms.

“And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another kingdom shall arise after them: and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey. Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for Daniel, my cogitation much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart”(Dan.7:24-28).

The antiChrist and the ten kings under him shall attempt to annihilate the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. But at the end, the judgment shall sit, and his kingdom and dominion shall be taken away from him and given to the saints of the Most High who shall reign for ever and ever.

The Identity Of The First Six Beast Empires.

We shall now deal with the identity of these beast empires of Satan that were revealed in Daniel 2 & 7.

(1) Egypt.

The first of these beast empires in history was Egypt. The origin of this empire is Hamitic through Mizraim. Mizraim was the son of Ham, one of the three sons Noah(Gen.10:6). When God cut a covenant with Abraham, He informed him that his descendants shall be strangers in a land that was not theirs for four generations, but afterwards shall they come forth with great substance. Through Joseph, Israel came to dwell in the land of Ham. But a time came, when there arose a king who did not know Joseph. Because the children of Israel were multiplied, Pharaoh, the king of Egypt was afraid the Israelites might join their enemies in time of war. Therefore, he ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill the Hebrew babies at birth. Because the decree ordering the Hebrew midwives to commit infanticide was unsuccessful, Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew infants drowned in the Nile River(Exod.1:15-22; Acts 7:19,20). It was at this time that Moses was born. By a miraculous turn of events pharaoh’s daughter adopted him. Moses was brought up in the palace of pharaoh and was learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in word and indeed. It was this Moses that the Lord used to lead Israel out of bondage in Egypt and to forge Israel into a nation in the wilderness. He received the sacred Torah for Israel on Mount Sinai from God which set Israel apart as a theocratic kingdom. After the overthrow of pharaoh and his army in the Sea of Reeds, Egypt declined in power and glory, and never recovered.

(2) Assyria.

The foundation of the capital city of Assyria is Hamitic.

“Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a might hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of the land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city of Rehovoth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.”

Although Nimrod did not build Nineveh, the city which later became the capital of the Assyrian empire, one of his descendants did. The foundation of the empire however is Semitic through Asshur, one of the sons Shem(Gen.10:22). The national god of Assyria was named after their grandfather Asshur. It was a god of war and arrogant brutality. The Assyrians were known for their cruel treatment of war captives. It was the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V who led the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity in 722 BC. He settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes(2 Kin.17:6). He brought men and women from Cutah and Zepharvaim and settled them in the cities of the Northern kingdom of Israel. These intermarried with the poor peasants amongst the Israelites left in the land and gave rise to the Samaritans. The Samaritan therefore is a mongrel Jew, that is, a Jew of mixed blood. There are lots of variations in the Jewish and Samaritan Pentateuchs. Senacherib, the king of Assyria besieged Jerusalem in 701 BC, but withdrew after the angel of the Lord slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. Twenty years later, 681 BC, he was slain by his two sons Adramelech and Sharezer, while he worshipped in the house of Nisroch his god who fled to the land of Armenia, and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead(Isa.37:36-38). Assyria declined in power, and was defeated by the rising Neobabylonian empire at the battle of Babylon in 626 BC, and finally, twelve years later at the battle of Nineveh in 612 BC, and never recovered.

(3) Babylon.

Like Assyria, the foundation of the city of Babylon was Hamitic through Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. It was this Nimrod who instituted false human government and false religion, the mother-child worship vestiges of which is evident amongst all peoples of the Earth. It was that Nimrod who in defiance to God builded Babel. Following the confusion of languages at Babel(Babylon), the various descendants of Noah bore the vestiges of the religion founded by Nimrod to the various parts of the Earth as they migrated. Although the foundation of the city is Hamitic, the rulers of the Babylonian empire were Semitic. It was the language and literature of the Chaldeans that dominated the empire(Dan.1:4). The founder of the Neobabylonian empire was Nabopolassar. Abram the Hebrew was from Ur of the Chaldeans, a city about 160 km southeast of Babylon(Gen.11:31). Nebuchadnezzar IIwas his foremost general. He married the Daughter of Nabopolassar, Nitocrix. Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylon after the death of his father-in-law, Nabopolassar. Nebuchadnezzar defeated Egypt at the battle of Carcemish in 605 BC. Nebuchadnezzar II invaded the land of Israel in three waves in 606 BC, 596 BC, finally in 586 destroyed the Solomonic temple. Israel was in exile in Babylon for 70 years according to the words of he prophet Jeremiah, unto the defeat of Babylon by Medopersia in 539 BC at the battle of Babylon. Babylon is the head of gold of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

(4) Medopersia

The Medopersian Empire was founded by the Medes and the Persians, both of whom are the sons of Japhet, Medai and Tiras. The sons of Japhet; Gomer, and Magog, and Medai, and Javan, and Tuval, and Meshech, and Tiras(Gen.10:2). The Medes were the ones who founded the empire around 550 BC. They were later joined by the Persians. Once the Persians joined the empire, they became dominant and the empire expanded under their leadership. It was Cyrus the Persian who made a decree freeing Jews from exile in Babylon in 538 BC after 70 years of exile, according to the words of Jeremy the prophet(Jer.25:12, 29:10), after the Medopersian empire overpowered the city state of Babylon in 539 BC. Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of God by the mouth of Jeremiah the prophet might be fulfilled,……(Ezr.1:1-11).

It was a Median general Darius who whose army conquered Babylon. It was during the reign of Xerxes, in 474 BC, the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther that Hamman, the son of Hammendatha, the Agagite attempted to wipe out the Jews in the whole realm of the Medopersian Empire, 120 provinces that stretched from Africa to India. The attempt gave us the book of Esther and the Jewish feast of Purim. The modern Persian name of Khumeini is derived from the ancient name of Haman. It was during the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes Longimanus that the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem was given in 445 BC, marking the terminus-a-quo of the 70 seven of Daniel(Neh.2:5; Dan.9:24). Medopersia was the arms and breast of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan2:39), and the bear tilted on one side, with the three pronged ribs in its mouths in Daniel’s vision(Dan.7:5).

(5) The Greek Empire.

The Greek empire expanded rapidly under the military leadership of Alexander the Great, the son of Philip II of Macedon. Within a space of ten years, The Greek Empire extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. Alexander was born in 356 BC, in Pella, Macedon. His mother’s name was Olympias of Epirus. It is known that Olympias believed she was impregnated by a snake. So, Alexander is believed to be the son of a god. Alexander became the king of Macedon after the assassination of his father, Philip II of Macedon in 336 BC at the young age of 20. Alexander is known for his prowess in battle. He had unusual intelligence for military conquest. He is believed to have possessed a third eye which signal supernatural intelligence. Alexander overran the Medopersian Empire in 330 BC, was crowned king of Persia the same year after a series of battles at Arbela, Issus and Gaugemela between 333-330 BC. He invaded India in 326 BC. The battle with king Porus of India ended in a stalemate at the Indus River. Alexander withdrew after his soldiers mutinied. He died in Babylon at the young age of 32 in 323 BC.

After his death, his kingdom was divided amongst four of his generals called the diadochi. This is the four-headed four-wing leopard of Daniel’s vision(Dan.7:6). The ptolemies ruled Egypt, the Seleucid in Syria, Lysimachus ruled Greece and Asia Minor, and Cassander, Macedonia proper. Incidentally Alexander never oppressed the Jews. When he entered Jerusalem, the High Priest met him in full sacerdotal regalia. He gave the Jews a wide latitude of freedom. The problem began with Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the fourth Seleucid king who wanted to hellinize the Jews. Antiochus came to power in 175 BC, and almost immediately began to persecute the Jews(Dan.8:23-25; I Macc. 1-6). He plundered the temple treasury. Antiochus was a prefigure of the Antimessiah. His life and career paralleled that of the antiMessiah. After a failed invasion of Egypt where he was humiliated by a legate of the Roman senate, he stopped in Jerusalem, defiled the Jewish altar of holocaust by sacrificing a pig, an unclean animal on it. He brought a statue of the Olympian Zeus in the Holy of Holies of the temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. He demanded all peoples under his domain be one, by worshipping one god, the Olympian Zeus, the image of which was the burst of Antiochus himself, practise one culture and one custom. He demanded the Jews abandon the law of Moses. He built a gymnasium in Jerusalem where men exercised naked, disguising their circumcision. Jewish mothers who had their sons circumcised, had those children hung on their necks.

The kings officers sent to enforce the apostasy at the Jewish village of Modein were killed by Mattatias and his sons. Thus began the Maccabean revolt that resulted in the rededication of the temple in 164 BC and the Jewish feast of Hanukkah.

The Greek empire of Syria was the bronze of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream(Dan.2:39). The Greek empire was Japhetic through Javan(Gen.10:2).

(6) The Roman Empire.

The sixth empire according to chronological order is Rome. It is obviously of Japhetic descent. It is the fourth according to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar and the vision of Daniel(Dan.2:33; 7:7,23). Like iron Rome was very strong militarily. The two legs of iron speak to the two divisions of the empire which began during the reign of Constantine. The Eastern Roman Empire with capital in Constantinople, and the Western Roman Empire with capital in Rome. The patrician families that founded Rome as a republic in the plain of Latium were Japhethites from the lines of Magog, Meshech and Tuval. These were the nomadic Caucasians. But the Magogites were dominant in pushing out the frontiers of history. They also dominated Rome.

The Roman Empire covered more territory than any of the other previous five beast empires. It was also more ruthless and brutal in its persecution of Jews. Although Nero was not particularly antisemitic, for he hated all nonromans, he was the first Roman Emperor to severely persecute Jews. Claudius had earlier barred Jews from Rome(Acts 17:2). Nero declared Christianity illicit region( Religio illicito) in 64 AD. He committed suicide in 68AD. During the Jewish revolt of 66-74 AD in Palestine, the Roman general Vespasian was despatched to squelch the revolt. He landed at Sephorris on the Mediterranean in 67 AD., and began the invasion of Palestine, but was called back to Rome to assume the status of the Emperor following the demise of Nero. His son Titus continued the invasion. According Daniel 9:26, the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. It was the Roman general Titus who destroyed the second Jewish temple built by the returning exiles from Babylon on Mount Moriah and refurbished by Herod the Great in 70 AD. Over a million Jews were killed during the siege of Jerusalem. In the fortress of Massada, the last holdout of the Jews, almost a thousand men, women and children committed suicide as did also those at Gamla in the Galilee earlier on. Thousands were killed and crucified daily outside the wall of Jerusalem. Millions more were sold into slavery. Thus began the diaspora, the dispersion of the Jews around the globe. Although nominally, the diaspora ended when Israel regained her independence on 14th May, 1948, there are as many Jews still in diaspora as are in Israel today. The diaspora shall be officially terminated after the final ingathering of the Jews in the early part of the millennial reign of Christ. During the Bar Kochba revolt between 132-135 AD, during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, Jerusalem was ploughed with yokes of oxen after the defeat of the Jews. It was rebuilt and renamed Aelia Capitolina, and Jews were barred from it under the pain of death. Palestine was under Roman domination in days of Jesus. Rebellion was a frequent occurrence. Judas, the Galilean and Theudas led rebellions against Rome(Acts 5:36,37). The chief captain Lysias mistook Paul for that Egyptian who made an uproar and led thousands into the wilderness(Acts 19:38). There were some whom Pilate mingled their blood with the sacrifice(Luk.13:1). It is this sixth empire that was in existence at the time of John the revelator(Rev.17:10). It is during this same period that the Messiah was cut off in AD 33(Dan.9:26).

(7) Nazi Germany: The Mysterious Seventh Beast Empire.

The seventh beast was not revealed in the statue of the dream Nebuchadnezzar nor amongst the beasts of Daniel’s vision. It was hidden. The seventh beast empire ought to appear after the legs of iron but before the ten toes of iron and clay(Dan.2:40,41; Rev.17:11). It was only revealed to John the revelator in Rev.17:10-12. “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.” A biblical mystery is something that has always been part God’s plan, which was not revealed in the OT, but revealed in the NT, and is always known by divine revelation. The reason why it was not revealed to Daniel was that Israel had the option of accepting Jesus as their Messiah. Had they accepted Him, the Roman Empire which was in existence at that time would have morphed into the ten nation confederation, the final beast empire. But because they rejected Him, Israel had to go into exile. Israel was exiled in 70 AD. The diaspora was a consequence of the national sin of rejection of their Messiah(Deu.28:65-68). God knew exactly the choices Israel would make, and therefore made provision for the gap of time between the 69th and the 70th seven within which Israel would not exist as a nation and the seventh beast empire would come up. Nazi Germany persecuted Israel in exile during the gap of time between the 69th and the 70th seven of Daniel. It existed for a short period of 12 years(1933-1945). And it was vicious and brutal in its persecution of the Jews. Within this short period of time, 6 million Jews, including 2 million children whose lives were snuffed out in the embryo, were annihilated in the gas chambers and crematoria scattered all over Europe. It was the darkest hour so far in human history. Although the holocaust was the consequence of Israel’s rejection of their Messiah, the perpetrators were not thereby justified. The seventh beast empire has the following characteristics: it will come after the sixth beast empire, Rome; it would persecute Israel in diaspora; it would last for a very short time; it would be hideous and brutal in its persecution of Israel; it would become extinct before Israel regains it independence; must have existed between 70 AD and 1948 AD. Only one nation in history fits these criteria. Adolf Hitler, the founder and the absolute ruler of Nazi Germany was a consummate Jew hater, the ultimate antisemite. Adolf Hitler did not consider Jews as subhuman. He said that they are a bit more removed from animals than we are. Therefore his hatred of Jews arose out of inferiority complex. Hitler being the ultimate antiChrist was ambitious to establish a thousand year Reich, and to exterminate all Jews worldwide. Like the rulers of all the other beast empires that persecution the Jews throughout the 70 sevens or 490 years, the times of the Gentiles, Hitler is a Japhetite from the ancestral line of Magog. Originally from Austria, he became a German citizen. Austrians and Germans are the same people and speak the same German language. They are the leaders of Europe.

Avraham Shallom.