The dream reminds Daniel of his first but this time he seems to be personally involved as it starts in verse 2 by explaining that he saw himself beside a cannel where he saw before him a ram with two long horns. The horns represent the kingdoms of Medes and the longer horn Persia. The dream shows the ram charging west, north and south and nothing was able to stand in its way. He did as he was pleased and became great.

This knowledge of future events would have given Daniel some boldness when address the king in his year of downfall discussed in chapter 5; it seems that the writing is already written on the wall for these empires.

While Daniel is pondering the ram, a goat appears travelling across the world without touching it and with one horn between his eyes. In a great rage the goat attacks the ram shattering the two horns. The large horn became very powerful but suddenly it broke off and 4 horns took its place. 3 things stand out: 1) the extra-ordinary speed that the goat was travelling at, 2) the ferocity that the goat overwhelms the ram, 3) the dramatic breaking of the large horn and the emergence of the other horns.

The goat represents the Greek empire with the large horn begin fore filled in Alexander the Great (not just a bad film, an actual guy) who became a world conqueror between the ages of 21-26, then dieing at 33. His empire split into 4, represented by the new horns.

From one of the horns came another which started small but grew in power towards the Beautiful Land. It�s thought the beautiful land is near Palestine where it sounds like some serious blasphemy took place, pigs on alters, banning of circumcision and some human sacrifices.

Needless to say the dream is fairly disturbing for Daniel; he was exhausted and lay ill for several days. A lot of talk about different kingdoms here but the thing that stands out is that worldly kingdoms come and go but the Kingdom of Heaven is everlasting and here to stay. God�s Kingdom outlasts all and is available to you, me and everyone around us, pretty exciting.