This can be a very complicate and confusing subject to discuss-especially in this manner. Consider what the Bible says carefully and compare it to world history.
...... The seventh head of the beast had now emerged as the Anglo-American World Power. This is also mentioned in Revelation 17: 10: “…the other has not yet arrived.”
Here is a
partial narrative from within my commentary on Daniel chapter 7.
Reflective Narrative:
Hidden in the Feet, Revealed in the Horns: God’s Law and God’s People and the coming little horn
In the grand statue of Daniel 2, four earthly kingdoms rise in succession—each one revealed by God as a separate layer of different metals. But it's the fourth kingdom, made of iron, that demands our closest attention. This kingdom, which we know as pagan Rome, was powerful and unrelenting. And yet, God showed that something radical would take place within it.
At the feet of this statue—where iron is strangely mixed with clay—something extraordinary happens. A Stone, not cut by human hands, strikes the image at its feet (Daniel 2:34). This Stone is Christ, and His crucifixion marks the turning point of history. From that moment, the iron-and-clay mixture in the feet is broken apart. It’s a spiritual event, not a political one—the clay, which had been bound inside the empire of Rome, is now separated. But who is the clay? The answer lies in how God is revealing His plan of restoration and salvation—not simply recounting the rise and fall of earthly kingdoms. Through prophetic symbols, He is telling a much deeper story: one centered on His people, their return to Jerusalem, and the arrival of the Messiah. At the heart of this plan is a group described as “pottery clay”—a symbol of the faithful Jews who accepted Jesus after the cross and were filled with His Spirit. Before the cross, they were held within the iron of the fourth kingdom—pagan Rome—hidden and oppressed. After the cross, the separation of iron and clay in the feet symbolizes not only judgment, but freedom. The pottery clay is released—and with them, the Gospel begins to move outward. But they were not alone.
Alongside the clay were the ten toes that had also been bound within the feet of the fourth kingdom. Before the cross, these toes were united with the clay under Roman oppression. After the cross, they too are set free. They no longer remain hidden or passive. In Daniel 7, they appear again—but this time as ten horns growing out of the fourth beast. Horns represent power, and these ten horns reflect the spiritual authority and influence that would now spread through the lands once dominated by Rome.
This tells us something profound: the ten toes, now symbolized as ten horns, were present both before and after the cross. Prior to Jesus’ sacrifice, they were intertwined with the Jewish people (clay), held within the iron structure of Rome. But after the cross, they rise out from within that fourth kingdom—not as victims, but as forces. Their transformation from toes to horns symbolizes a shift from hidden potential to active power. The Gospel has gone forth. The truth has broken free. And these ten horns, empowered by the same Spirit that filled the pottery clay, now carry influence throughout the Roman world.
Here the mystery comes into focus: these ten toes and ten horns are not random digits or animal features; they represent the Ten Commandments of God—once bound up with a captive people, now lifted up as living standards of His kingdom. God is not only restoring His people—He is reordering history. What was once encased in darkness is now brought into the light. What was once trampled under iron is now standing tall, proclaiming the risen Christ and the hope of eternal life. The story of the ten toes becoming ten horns is part of the larger story of transformation: of clay set free, of truth challenging empire, and of God’s law—His Ten Words—unfolding His plan across every nation touched by the fourth kingdom.
When the Stone strikes the feet, it does more than chip iron and clay—it breaks an invisible bondage. At the cross, the Messiah enters the fourth kingdom at its weakest point, not to topple Rome with legions of angels, but to sever what no earthly army could touch: the spiritual captivity of His people. In that moment, the iron can no longer hold the clay together. Those who receive Him—those who recognize the rejected Stone as their promised Messiah—are no longer merely subjects of Rome or keepers of an external code. They become pottery clay in the truest sense: softened, yielded, reshaped by the hands of the living God.
From that fracture point, something begins to happen that Daniel 2 anticipates and Daniel 7 unfolds. The same people who once carried the Law within the confines of a single nation now step out into a pagan world with a message that is both old and new. Old, because the Ten Commandments have always revealed the character of God. New, because the cross has now revealed the heart of God—His willingness to bear their condemnation so that His Law might be written not on tablets of stone, but on hearts of flesh. The pottery clay does not abandon the Ten Words as it leaves the feet of the statue; it carries them, now joined to the Gospel of a crucified and risen Christ.
This is why, in Daniel 7, both the people and the commandments appear to “come out” of the fourth beast. The saints do not rise in their own strength, and the ten horns do not represent a new law. Rather, what was hidden inside the feet—clay joined to iron, commandments held within a captive people—is now visible on the outside. The Ten Commandments, once contained within Israel under Rome’s heel, emerge as ten horns: visible, active, exerting spiritual authority in the very world that crucified their Author. The same Spirit who softened the pottery clay now empowers them to go into all nations, teaching everything He has commanded.
So the cross is not merely the moment when the Stone touches the statue; it is the turning point where the story of the toes and the clay becomes the story of the horns and the saints. What God once protected inside a small, oppressed people, He now presses outward into the highways of the empire. Synagogues, marketplaces, prisons, and palaces become new “hills” on which His Law and His Gospel are proclaimed. The ten horns, as the Ten Commandments, no longer lie hidden inside the feet of a single nation. They stand exposed on the outside of the fourth beast, confronting kings, governors, philosophers, and commoners alike with the unchanging standard of God’s kingdom.
In this way, the Stone’s first strike does not yet grind the statue to powder—that is the work of the final judgment—but it does begin a quiet revolution. The clay is freed from iron’s grip. The Law is freed from national confinement. The Gospel and the commandments go out together, carried by men and women who have seen the crucified Messiah and cannot remain silent. The transformation from toes to horns, from captive clay to commissioned witnesses, is the story of how God turns a crushed people into a conquering testimony—one that will continue to challenge empires until the Stone fills the whole earth.
