When reading the book of Daniel, we realize very quickly that he was given a lot of prophetic symbolism that we, the reader, have to parse through. Thankfully, the book also provides the interpretation of what those symbols mean. For example, when reading chapter two (i.e., Nebuchadnezzar’s dream), we are told what the multi-metallic statue is meant to represent – actual, literal, kingdoms.
- Babylon – head of gold
- Medo-Persia – shoulders and arms of silver
- Greece – abdomen and waist of bronze
- Rome – legs of iron
- Future kingdom – feet of iron mixed with clay
Likewise, in chapter’s seven & eight, we are shown what Daniel saw in his vision, as well as the angel coming after explaining what these visions meant. Again, these were the same kingdoms, just from a different vantage point. From man’s perspective, these kingdoms were an imposing and even majestic- looking statue. From God’s perspective, they were simply wild, ferocious beasts.
From www.gotquestions.org:
The first of Daniel’s four beasts is “like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle” (Daniel 7:4). As Daniel watches, the wings are torn off the beast, and the creature stands erect like a man, and a human mind is given to it. Later, the angel who interprets the dream tells Daniel, “The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth” (verse 17). This first beast is representative of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Its rise to human-like status reflects Nebuchadnezzar’s deliverance from a beastly existence and his insight into the true nature of God (Daniel 4:34–35).
The second beast in Daniel’s vision is “like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth” (Daniel 7:5). A voice tells the second beast to devour flesh until it is satisfied. This beast represents the Medo-Persian Empire; the raising up of one side of the creature indicates that one of the kingdom’s parts (Persia) would be dominant. The three ribs in the creature’s mouth symbolize nations that were “devoured” by the Medes and the Persians. These three conquered nations are known to be Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt.
The third of the four beasts is “like a leopard,” except it has four bird-like wings on its back and four heads (Daniel 7:6). This beast is given authority to rule. The third beast represents Greece, an empire known for the swiftness of its conquests. The four heads are predictive of the four-way division of the empire following Alexander the Great’s death. Daniel’s vision of the ram and the goat gives further details of the second and third kingdoms (see Daniel 8).
The final beast that Daniel sees rising from the sea is the most dreadful—”terrifying and frightening and very powerful” (Daniel 7:7). This fourth beast has “bronze claws” (verse 19) and “large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left,” totally annihilating its prey (verse 7). The fourth beast has ten horns. This creature represents the Roman Empire, a mighty kingdom that indeed crushed all its foes. – end source
However, since the final kingdom has yet to appear, its keywords and clues alluding to its exact background and/or nature can be somewhat confusing still. However, I think one of the key aspects of being a good observer of the times is the ability to recognize when a teachable moment arrives to reinforce something already taught in Scripture. I believe we are in one of those moments.
“After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns” (Daniel 7:7).
Most prophecy students and scholars would conclude (based off Daniel 9:26-27) that this final kingdom is some version of a revived Roman Empire. Since the Roman Empire was vast, determining what the nature of this final Gentile kingdom will be exactly can be challenging. All we know is that it comes out of the boundaries of the old Roman Empire and has some corresponding nature to both Rome and Greece (Dan.7:19).
There is also the passage above (7:7) that speaks to the ‘different’ or ‘diverse’ nature of this beast. Given the previous descriptions of these hybrid-beasts (mixing of different animal species), it is hard to imagine how much more “different” this final one could be. So let us set aside its physical (and fantastical) symbolic attributes for a moment and focus in on what makes this one so different from the others.
Assessment
“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings…” (Acts 17:26).
All the kingdoms before this final one were military and political powerhouses in their own right. Each ruled their respective geographic areas with absolute authority. Still, before the advent of the Internet and digital currency, it would have been impossible for any of them to control their subjects any other way other than through political subterfuge and military might. They certainly had economic might but not total control over all buying and selling. At the height of Nazi power in Europe during the late 1930s, even they could not control ALL the buying and selling in the lands they controlled.
Another aspect to this is information. From the Egyptians through the Romans, all of them had great military might but were still limited to the speed of horses and sailboats. If a king or governor died in a land, it could be days before word of his/her death reached areas outside of their immediate surroundings. In 68AD, Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide, thus sparking what has been coined the year of the four emperors. Even being the most powerful empire on earth at the time, it still took days and sometimes weeks for news to reach the forces in the outer reaches of their empire.
What we can conclude from both is that pure military power (such as Babylonians or the Persians) is one-dimensional. Military power mixed with political prowess, such as the Greeks and Romans, is two-dimensional. Military power mixed with political prowess and economic might is three-dimensional. Military power mixed with political prowess, economic might, and information control is four-dimensional. Interestingly, Satanists proclaim the fourth dimension as the ‘astral plane,’ by which they communicate telepathically with the spirit world when they are in an altered state. More on this in a bit.
However, this final kingdom will be a technological and economic superpower. While many prophecy scholars rightly note the final kingdom will be a three-fold government, encompassing military might, economic power, and global religion, it does not fully encapsulate its true nature.
The final kingdom, and its ruler, does not start out as a powerful militaristic force. It starts out small, and in fact, comes up through the ten regions (presumably) growing like cancer. It is not until he (the Antichrist) arises does he subdue three to consume the rest with an iron fist. Consider these verses when put together:
- “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay” (Daniel 2:41-43).
[Mixing weak and strong causes confusion]
- “I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words” (Daniel 7:8).
[Out of the confusion arises someone no one saw coming]
- “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie…” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-11).
[He uses the confusion and satanically charged deception to seize control]
- “And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his nam Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666″ (Revelation 13:15-18).
[Once he has that power, he uses it to control the whole world through deception and technology]
That is how it is different from the others before it. Before this final empire, no singular world power could control all buying and selling. No singular empire could censor entire populations with the stroke of a key. No other empire in history could control the flow of information the world has become hopelessly dependent upon. Yet, this final kingdom does, and we are seeing it begin to blossom right before our very eyes.
We just got a glimpse, a brief example, of this kind of power through the monstrous abuse of power by the ruling technocracy, which has been arising silently over the past few years. As we have come to find out during the Cold War, information is power. The power to censor (or silence) people(s), even the President of the most powerful nation in history, is power indeed.
The power to de-platform a rising conservative, pro-1st Amendment app like Parler by way of Amazon and Twitter, likewise, is power. Whether its social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, and Facebook, or its gatekeepers of information flow like YouTube, Amazon, and Google, information is not only power but also a multi-trillion-dollar industry. You and I must come to grips that we are no longer living under the antiquated constraints of the 20th century. We are no longer lounging gracefully in the shallow end of the pool; we are fully submerged into the deep end of the Age of Information.
Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum elitist club have dubbed this arrival as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. One look at their website, in which they openly promote this Orwellian takeover as a positive thing, and you can see they have their tentacles into EVERYTHING. Even war is moving online. At least half of all defense industry jobs today are cyber in nature.
(screenshot: https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1Gb0000000pTDREA2?tab=publications)
However, the power to control information, much like electricity, could not be harnessed until the proper technology was in place. Not only do you need the technology to exist, but also you need people to believe they cannot live without it. For example, let us say the Internet was magically transported back in time to the year 1980. Let us also say every website and online service we have at our disposal today was also available for those ancient peoples.
Let us further pretend some megalomaniacal terrorist group was threatening to shut down the Internet; would anyone back then care? Would whole industries shut down or riots break out in cities when no one could access their bank accounts or favorite social media apps? Hardly. I think 99.9% of the people back then (outside of a handful of military personnel, academics, and scientists) would even know or care.
Now imagine someone doing that in the year 2020; all hell would break loose.
Without the technology and platforms being in place, and more importantly, the demand for the Internet to exist, the loss of it would not be much of a threat. Now we live in a world hopelessly at the mercy of the Internet for pretty much everything. The COVID-19(84) plandemic, if anything, only expedited our necessity for everything being accessible online by some 4-6 years. I believe this will continue to trend in this direction (everything moving online) for the near future.
Furthermore, we see fiat currencies around the globe in varying stages of either failing or on their deathbeds due to the massive national debts governments around the world have accrued. Again, COVID-19(84), having shut down the global economy for nearly a year, has only expedited the amount of debt nations are going into just to keep their people safe. Having just witnessed the largest and last beacon of freedom in the world willingly fold in on itself over a very survivable strain of influenza, we should rightly conclude that our currency is the next and final straw that breaks the back of America.
Most of you already know this, but for those who are new to this topic, the United States was the last roadblock against global government. Having successfully stolen this last election through a complex and staggering effort, the globalists (who are backing the Democrats), as well as the technocracy (who are enabling and financing it), were finally able to push the U.S. over the edge. If our dollar collapses, our Constitution collapses. The minute we hand over the production and/or validation of our currency to some transnational or international organization, we are no longer sovereign. We have to play by their rules because they control the purse strings. The U.S. will have to fall in line under this new (presumably) regionalized global system.
Even assuming we don’t collapse first (economically), all it takes is one medium-sized industrial nation to fall, and it will trigger a domino effect. However, we could very well collapse first, and if we go, the world economy goes down with us. What is frightening is that we can see our collapse on the horizon. It no longer stretches the imagination to see how any number of scenarios could do it. With breakthrough technologies like bitcoin or other digital blockchain technologies already in play (i.e., the technology and platforms now exist), dumping the old fiat system is becoming a matter of when not if.
Conclusion
Jesus, in His seminal treatise on the last days, mentions deception no less than four times as being the first and key indicator (or marker) of the last days. As mentioned earlier, it is difficult, nigh impossible, to commit widespread deception without a way to transmit it. Let us take a quick trip back to 1938.
On Halloween morning, 1938, Orson Welles awoke to find himself the most talked-about man in America. The night before, Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria. By the next morning, the 23-year-old Welles’s face and name were on the front pages of newspapers coast-to-coast, along with headlines about the mass panic his CBS broadcast had allegedly inspired. (Source)
If Orson Welles could prompt a nationwide hysteria over a fictionalized radio broadcast, how much more could it be done today? Especially with how widespread our smart devices are and the technology capable of creating deep fakes, CGI, and other forms of mind-altering manipulation. Deception on a global scale, like digital currency, requires technology with a global reach. In fact, deception requires information, albeit false information (or fake news) in order to convey a message. We are now in the Age of Information.
My theory on how all this shakes out is that we will continue on the path of global crises for the foreseeable future. Satan needs all of these crises to expedite the emplacement of his demonic chess pieces for these final ten kings to arise. These crises will most likely not be real crises but manufactured for the sole purpose of putting everyone under this web of control. However, the Rapture of the Church is (in my opinion) the real crisis that will upturn the global applecart and be the true cause for all the geopolitical re-shuffling of power structures in the world. This is why no one can know the day or hour. God is playing this one close to the vest.
After the Rapture, the world will, for a brief period, break apart into these ten regions, each with a leader of some sort. It is here that the Gog-Magog coalition (all the nations listed will be outliers to newly forming regional powers) comes against Israel in the chaos and confusion and is soundly destroyed by God. In the aftermath of this war, we see the strengthening of the Ten and the political, economic, and military neutering of Russia and Islam. Here is where we see the Antichrist begin his ascent to power by toppling three other leaders somehow.
Once in control of the majority, the Antichrist and the False Prophet begin fast-tracking some new digital-ID/Passport (biometric) for all the citizens of their member states. This new system, which will include access to a digital currency, will be operated through a super-powerful, 5G, quantum-based Internet system.
It is at some point that this system is thought to become “self-aware” and/or sentient but, in reality, is possessed by either some high-ranking demon or Satan himself (hey, if a demon can possess a person, it can possess a system). When the Antichrist is “assassinated,” we will see this false resurrection by them putting this AI system into his slain body, supposedly giving him immortality. He will then have the devil incarnate inside him and demands everyone takes the Mark, or if they refuse, they lose their heads.
This mark will be a direct, cyber-physical connection from Satan (i.e., fourth dimension/astral plane) to those who bear his mark and will be relentlessly controlling them until they die. They will be under this compulsory delusion and unable to come to the truth so as to be saved because Satan will alter their ability to reason and understand. This is presumably why those who take the mark are doomed forever.
As much as we want to think we are in the Tribulation now – especially under a Biden/Harris administration – we aren’t. The bad news is, we are seeing the finishing touches on the beast’s final kingdom happening in real-time. The good news is, if you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, you won’t be here for any of it.
“Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth” (Revelation 3:10).
Maranatha!