Daniel 7:12 – Why was only the fourth beast destroyed and the other 3 beasts had their lives prolonged for a season of time?
This verse is given as a contrast to verse 11 (I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame.) When each of the first three Gentile kingdoms fell, they were not totally destroyed. Each was absorbed into the next kingdom which conquered them and continued to exist as part of the new expression of Gentile world dominion. In that sense the Babylonian, Medo-Persian and Greek kingdoms would continue to live for the entire period of time that God appointed for Gentile world dominion. By contrast, the fourth kingdom (the Roman Empire) would be totally destroyed in its fall. It would not be made part of the kingdom of Christ on earth. When God destroys the last Gentile empire, that judgment would also be the end of the 3 earlier empires as well (cf. Daniel 2 when the stone crushed the feet of the statue, the entire image was destroyed with including the parts representin
