Beast of Revelation.pdf - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

Chapter 2
a dynasty that ruled Greece and Macedonia until the Roman conquest
of 168 B.C. absorbed this area into the Roman Empire.
Lysimachus, who seized Asia Minor and proclaimed himself
king in 305 B.C., was eventually defeated and slain at the Battle of
Corpedium in 281 by his former ally, Seleucus. Eumenes I, the
Seleucid governor of Pergamum in Asia Minor, succeeded in
becoming virtually independent of the Seleucids by about 260 B.C.
By 230, his successor had taken the title king. When Attalus II died
in 133 B.C., he left his kingdom of Pergamum, which now encompassed
nearly all of Asia Minor, to the Romans in his will. Thus
Rome had now absorbed the second head of Daniel’s leopard.
Seleucus established his kingdom stretching from Syria in
the west to India in the east. The Seleucid dynasty that sprang
from him continued until 64 B.C., when Roman General Pompey
made Syria a province in the ever-expanding Roman Empire.
Three heads down—one to go.
The Macedonian general Ptolemy took the title king at the
same time as Cassander, Lysimachus and Seleucus. His kingdom
was centered in Egypt and continued, under the rule of his
descendants, until 31 B.C. That year, the forces of Ptolemaic
Queen Cleopatra and her Roman consort, Mark Antony, were
defeated at the Battle of Actium by Julius Caesar’s nephew,
Octavian (later known as Augustus Caesar). Egypt was then
absorbed into the Roman Empire. “This brought to an end the last
of the Hellenistic monarchies” (Langer, p. 97). Now all four
heads of the Greco-Macedonian leopard were an integral part of
the Roman Empire, the fourth beast of Daniel 7.
Our story is not over. In the next chapter, we will look at a
similar prophecy in the book of Revelation. There are more
beasts, horns and other strange symbols to come.
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