Daniel 7 Little Horn Prophecy: Who Is It?

Daniel’s vision names no names. It describes a boastful persecuting power that arises among the horns of the fourth beast and attempts to alter “times and laws” (Daniel 7:25). Critical or Antiochene, papal-historicist, futurist, and idealist readers identify the symbol differently. This page states why the book follows the papal-historicist reading and where that reading depends on inference.

The argument concerns an interpretation of institutions and symbols, not the standing before God of individual Catholics or other Christians.

The Prophecy in Daniel 7

In the traditional Christian and historicist reading, the four beasts represent Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome; the ten horns then represent successor kingdoms after Western imperial fragmentation. Many modern critical interpreters instead read the sequence as Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece and identify the little horn with Antiochus IV. Futurists retain a Roman setting but expect a final ruler, while idealist readings treat the horn as a recurring form of blasphemous empire.

Among these ten horns, a different power emerges:

"I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things."

Daniel 7:8

Daniel then receives more detail about this horn's activities:

"And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."

Daniel 7:25

The Identifying Marks

Daniel supplies features that every proposed identification must explain. The right column gives the historicist papal correlation adopted by this book; it is not a neutral transcription of the symbol:

Daniel's Description

  • Comes up among the ten horns of the fourth beast
  • Is different from the first horns
  • Three of the first horns are "plucked up by the roots"
  • Has eyes like a man and a mouth speaking great things
  • Speaks "great words against the most High"
  • "Wears out" the saints
  • Thinks to "change times and laws"
  • The saints are given into its hand for "a time and times and the dividing of time"

Historicist Papal Correlation

  • A Roman ecclesiastical institution within post-imperial Europe
  • A religious body that also exercised political power
  • Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths used in the traditional three-horn scheme
  • A visible episcopal head associated with extensive jurisdictional claims
  • Documented coercion by Christian states and tribunals in some eras
  • Sunday defended through resurrection, apostolic practice, and church authority
  • A retrospective 538–1798 correlation used by Adventist historicists

Changing Times and Laws

The Aramaic phrase translated “times and laws” can concern sacred times and covenantal regulation. The Fourth Commandment specifies a weekly day:

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy... the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God."

Exodus 20:8, 10

Historicists connect Daniel’s phrase with later Christian Sunday authority. A series of 1893 editorials in the Catholic Mirror, a Baltimore diocesan newspaper, argued:

"The Catholic Church... by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday."

The Catholic Mirror (Baltimore), the official paper of Cardinal Gibbons's archdiocese, September 1893

The quotation documents that newspaper’s Catholic apologetic; it is not a universal magisterial decree or a confession that the Church fulfills Daniel 7. Catholic and Orthodox accounts ground Sunday in the resurrection and apostolic Tradition. Antiochene readings connect “times and laws” with Antiochus IV’s interference in Jewish worship. Daniel itself names neither the Sabbath nor Sunday, so the application must be argued from a wider historical and theological case.

The 1260 Years

Daniel gives “a time, times, and the dividing of time.” Historicists relate the expression to Revelation’s forty-two months and 1,260 days, then extend the day-for-a-year correspondences in Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6 to symbolic apocalyptic time. Those passages use a day for a year in particular settings; they do not announce a universal conversion rule.

The calculation:

The correlation is a prominent Adventist form of historicism. Earlier Protestant papal-Antichrist readings were broader and did not all depend on these exact endpoints.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the little horn in Daniel 7?

Daniel does not name the little horn. This book follows the papal-historicist identification; Antiochene, futurist, and idealist readings offer different accounts of the same marks.

What does Daniel 7:25 mean by "change times and laws"?

The phrase can concern sacred times and covenantal law, but Daniel does not name the Sabbath or Sunday. Historicists make that connection through a wider argument about ecclesiastical sacred time; Antiochene readers connect it with Antiochus IV.

How long would the little horn have power?

Historicists relate the three-and-a-half times to 1,260 prophetic days and then read those days as years. Adventist historicists commonly correlate 538 and 1798; Scripture supplies neither endpoint, and the significance of 538 is disputed.

Did the Reformers believe the little horn was the papacy?

Major Reformers and later Protestant confessions identified the papacy with Antichrist prophecy. Earlier writers such as Hippolytus and Jerome read Rome as the fourth kingdom, but their schemes were not identical to the later papal or 538–1798 interpretation.

Go Deeper

The Full Picture

The Evidence

The Sabbath Connection

Examine the Evidence

Daniel’s symbols demand interpretation. Compare the readings and test the evidence.

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