MONDAY, MAY 21
Daniel 7:7, 19-25
Daniel 2:33, 41-42

“He hath also prepared for him
the instruments of death …”

MORE ABOUT THE FOURTH BEAST

As shown in yesterday’s reading, the last world empire is clearly of two parts, an initial part and a final. Today, let us focus our attention on the final or end time appearance of the Roman Empire. Ancient Rome ceased to be a world empire long ago but its civilization, culture, language, legal system and ethnic roots persist in the countries and peoples of Western Europe. So while the old empire as an entity is no more, a new grouping of the nations of Western Europe has gradually taken shape.

The concept of a United States of Europe had caught the imagination of men like Winston Churchill in Britain and others in Europe. The benefits from such a geographical and political grouping are beyond esteem. Politically, a banding together of Western Europe’s 200 million people will create a formidable power bloc to counterbalance the Communist bloc (Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia). Economically, the grouping will bring enormous advantages and benefits in finance, commerce, trade and industry. Since World War II this idea had gained increasing acceptance among the free nations of Europe.

By the 1958 Treaty of Rome, the blueprint for an economic federation of Europe was created. As a result the European Economic Community was born. Then on 1 November 1993, the European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force. Are these developments prophetically significant?

Such economic groupings may be seen as Rome revived: the final part of the fourth beast (the ten horns), corresponding to the feet and toes of the great image in the first dream. But there are inherent weakness in it as seen in the feet and toes of iron-clay mixture (Dan 2:42) and the ten horns which could not withstand the little horn (Dan 7:8, 20). We watch the future of the situation in Europe, and the world at large, with closest interest.

THOUGHT: Not all would agree with the interpretations of the fourth beast. Do I?
PRAYER: Father, grant me understanding as I read Thy Word.