What does Daniel 7:12 mean?

Daniel's prophetic dream featured four animal-like beasts representing different nations (Daniel 7:3–7, 17). At one point, Daniel's vision includes the sight of God sitting on a fiery throne of judgment (Daniel 7:9–10). The fourth beast is incinerated. In this verse, the other three are allowed to continue. Since each represents a successive empire in the Mediterranean region, this cannot mean they all existed at the same time.

This part of prophecy deals with the ultimate ends of those empires. Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece fell as empires but transferred that power to a later earthly power. Those who lived during the transition from one kingdom to the next lived more or less as they had before. The last "beast," controlled by a figure symbolized by a blasphemous "little horn" (Daniel 7:8, 20, 25), is annihilated entirely. When God judges that nation, nothing will then remain.

Revelation 19:11–16 pictures Christ at the end of the tribulation. He returns to earth in a blaze of glory and strikes down the followers of the entity represented here in the book of Daniel. This is the world government represented by the fourth beast, which some interpreters associate with a "Revived Roman Empire." Even their dead bodies will not remain intact. An angel will invite scavenging birds "to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great" (Revelation 19:18).

This destruction of the final "beast" comes before a famous part of Daniel's prophecy. In the next verses he describes a coming figure "like a son of man," a title which will be applied to Jesus Christ (Daniel 7:13; Matthew 26:2; Mark 14:61–62; Revelation 14:14).