Daniel 8 a king of fierce countenance

Chapter 7-1: Daniel 8

Daniel 8 gives more detailed information about the kingdom of Greece. Their great leader, Alexander the great, was “the great horn” on the goat (Dan. 8:21); this was broken, and four kingdoms arose out of that (Dan. 8:22). But out of them arose “a king of fierce countenance” who was to be “broken without hand” (Dan. 8:25). This is the very language of the entire image being broken by the stone cut out without hands, which speaks of the return of Christ to earth (Dan. 2:44). But at first blush, this seems out of chronological sequence- that a fierce king arising out of the breakup of the Greek empire [surely referring to Antiochus in its historical sense of fulfilment] should be broken by the second coming of Christ- many centuries later. But the problem is solved once we understand that the image stands erect and complete in the last days, in the sense that elements of all the previous empires and leaders would be incorporated in the final entity which shall be destroyed “without hand” by the return of the Lord Jesus.