2-2 Babylon as Capital of the Beast
The image of Daniel 2 must stand complete in the last days- the whole image, not just the toes, are to be broken in pieces “together”. Babylon, the head of gold, must therefore rule over the system which the image represents. Daniel 7 depicts the various metals of the image as various beasts. The final beast of the last days incorporates all the elements of the previous beasts. But her head will be Babylon, replete with a latter day Nebuchadnezzar. Note that the first three of the empires of Daniel’s image had Babylon as their capital. It is appropriate that the latter day revival of the image and beast has Babylon likewise as it’s capital. It surely cannot be accidental that in Babylon today, “the ancient temple of Ishtar has been rebricked, replastered and whitewashed…carved into the bricks are reliefs of oxen and a mythical beast called the mushrishu, with the head of a serpent, body of a fish, front legs of a lion, and back legs of an eagle” (
Chattanooga New Free Press, April 5, 1987). Latter day Babylon chooses to identify itself as an amalgam of beasts! 2 Thess. 2 says that the man of sin will sit in the temple of God showing himself to be God. This exactly fits what we would expect of an Arab dictator- Nebuchadnezzar carried the vessels of Yahweh’s temple into his own temple, setting himself up as God Himself.
Habakkuk speaks of how Babylon will be headed up by an individual- he speaks sometimes of “he”, sometimes of “they”; the RV cp. AV interchanges the pronouns. Babylon will be headed up by her charismatic ruler, who will “gather to himself all the nations and take captive all the people” (Hab. 2:4,5). This is just the picture in Ez. 38- the ‘chief prince’ of Gog / Assyria / Babylon will be like an iron guard around the other nations which will come up with him. The Babylonians are raised up as an “hasty” people- i.e. the whole time scale will be limited. He will sweep across the whole earth / land in a kind of blitzkrieg. His cavalry will “fly”- the whole impression is of a lightening rise to power and invasion. It won’t be something that can be predicted and mapped out over decades of ‘signs of the times’ articles in Christian magazines. Hab. 1:15 describes him as fishing with a drag net, gathering men of all nations- exactly the same image used by the real Christ in describing His saving work, as opposed to the destructive work of this Arab / Babylonian antichrist. Note too how Nebuchadnezzar was described as a lion, with eagle’s wings, eating grass like an ox, his hair like an eagle, with the the heart of a man. In him were manifested the four faces of the cherubim: lion, ox, eagle, man. He was a fake manifestation of God, just as antichrist will be.
