friends and get a wider vision of Jehovah’s people—happy, united, expanding on every side and advancing victoriously.

“So, Dad, those six months you prophesied have grown to twenty-eight years! And I am so glad that your attitude toward the New World society is now more friendly.”

“And you fellow New World society citizens, I hope that these few experiences will help you to feel something of what I feel—that Jehovah is by far the best Master to serve. Why get involved with worldly concerns, where one serves in a dead-end street? I can look back on many happy privileges in twenty-eight years of pioneer service, but the future is infinitely more glorious! Take up the pioneer service and enjoy that cup of future blessings to the last drop!”

Part 19—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”

Our semimonthly progress through the book “Your Will Be Done on Earth” has now brought us into its Chapter 8, entitled “The ‘Little Horn’ in Opposition.” This horn of world importance comes into view in Daniel’s prophecy, chapter seven, where Jehovah’s prophet describes the terrifying dream that he had in the first year of Belshazzar, the last king of the Babylonian world power. In this prophetic dream there rose up out of a sea stirred up by the four winds of heaven four unusual wild beasts, the first like a lion, the second like a bear, the third like a leopard, and the fourth like a terrible, strong animal that was different. Among the ten horns on its dreadful head there came up a little horn before which three of the other horns were uprooted; and, “behold,” says the prophet, “in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.”—Dan. 7:2-8, RS.

4. What did the angel tell Daniel that the four wild beasts pictured, and with what other symbolisms do these four correspond?

⁴ The world of today is familiar with the British “lion,” the American “eagle,” the Russian “bear,” the Chinese lung or “dragon,” and the imperial German two-headed “spread eagle.” But what do the four different beasts of Daniel’s dream prefigure historically? In anxiety Daniel asked an angel for us that we today might know the “truth concerning all this.” Daniel tells us: “So he told me, and made known to me the interpretation of the things. ‘These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth.’” Ah, then, the four beasts correspond with the four metals of the dream image that Daniel had interpreted to King Nebuchadnezzar more than fifty years previously. (Dan. 7:15-17; 2:31-45, RS) By means of two heaven-sent dreams the march of world powers from 607 B.C. down to modern times was to be made doubly sure, as by two witnesses.

5. In this vision, what does the sea picture, and what do the four winds picture?

⁵ Up out of a churning sea the four beasts arose, in the same way that hundreds of years later the apostle John saw in vision the seven-headed, ten-horned wild beast ascend out of the abyss of the sea, it being like a leopard, but having the feet as of a bear and a mouth as of a lion. (Rev. 13:1, 2) In Bible symbology the sea is used to picture “peoples and crowds and nations and tongues,” the vast body of mankind that cover the habitable earth as the waters cover the sea basins. They are all the people alienated from Jehovah God by sin and by the “ruler of the authority of the air,” Satan the Devil. (Rev. 17:15; Isa. 57:20, 21; Eph. 2:2) The four winds of the heavens stirring up the great sea to cause the four beasts to arise picture the “wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places” together with Satan, “the spirit that now operates in the sons of disobedience,” as all these together play their forces upon the sea of humanity exploited by Satan and raging against Jehovah God, in order that they may bring forth the world powers symbolized by the four vicious beasts.

6. How did this first symbolic beast arise, and how did it act like a lion?

⁶ Genesis 10:8-10 makes it plain that Babylon, which became the third world power, symbolized here by the lion that had eagles’ wings, arose, not from Jehovah’s people, but from Nimrod the “mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah.” Hence this symbolic beast “came up out of the sea.” The king for which it stood was the dynastic line of Chaldean kings of Babylon, from Nebuchadnezzar to Belshazzar. This Babylonian kingly power devoured nations and peoples like a lion, including Jehovah’s nation of ancient Israel.—Jer. 4:5-7; 50:17.

7. How did the plucking of its wings, the standing of it on two feet and the giving to it the heart of a man affect this symbolic lion?

⁷ As if aided with eagles’ wings, this symbolic lion speeds forward in aggressive war for conquest. (Lam. 4:19; Hab. 1:6-8, AV) Toward the end of its dynastic rule in King Belshazzar, Babylon had its wings plucked. It lost its speed to the attack and its lionlike ability to continue as king of the beastly world powers. It became relatively weak, like a man with no more rapidity of movement than that of two legs. It was given the “mind of a man” in a beast’s body and was not able to act like king “among the beasts of the forest”; it no longer had the “heart of the lion.” (Mic. 5:8, AS; 2 Sam. 17:10) It went down in defeat before the symbolic bear. It yielded world domination to Medo-Persia.

8. What was symbolized by the bear, its being raised up on one side, and its having three ribs in its mouth?

⁸ The ‘king’ symbolized by the bear was the line of Medo-Persian rulers from Darius the Mede to Darius III the Persian, from 539 B.C. to 331 B.C. This line of