I do not believe this has been discussed. So I thought I would pose the question that got me thinking.
Daniel and Revelation talks about ten kingdoms. There's been a lot of debate about what the ten kingdoms might be. Is it talking about the whole world? If it is, how could it be with only seven continents? Would some some of the continents like Europe and Asian be broken up?
So what could Daniel and Revelation be referring to when it talks about ten kingdoms in the last days?"
The ten kingdoms refer to apostate Israel (northern 10 tribes aka Ephraim/ Samaria/ 'Israel') or the enemies of Israel as from the Psalm 83 coalition: Edom, Moab, Ammon, Ishmaelites, Tyre, Assyria, Gebal, Amalek, Philistia, Hagrites. Basically, it represents internal and external enemies.
Seven heads refers to external enemies such as the Gog coalition (Meshach, Tubal, Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, and Beth-Togarmah) and also apostate Israel (again).
This is because there are multiple phases to the Revelation narrative. Both the faithful and unfaithful are present during this narrative (there is no whisked away rapture). For the faithful, God will go forth and defeat the faithful's enemies (which include both external enemies and the unfaithful).
Deut 28:
7 “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
For the unfaithful, God will defeat them and scatter them seven ways.
25“The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them.
For example, that is why the four angels bound at the Euphrates (Rev 9:14) come at Israel one way (the east) and then are scattered into seven. These four angels are the Daniel 7 four beasts. Does the Leopard have 1 or 4 heads? At the beginning, it has 1 head, and then at Rev 9:21 when those events are done, it splits into 4 so that they 'flee in seven directions': 1 lion head, 1 bear head, 4 leopard heads, 1 fourth beast head = 7 heads.
When Daniel 7:
8 says that there are ten horns (which represents potential ten tribes of apostate Israel or ten external enemies of Israel)
, it is indicating that the 11th horn, the little horn, has either defeated unfaithful Israel and/ or the external enemies of Israel (because the three horns that are defeated leaves a total of seven horns that can flee).
While I was contemplating the horns, suddenly another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like those of a man and a mouth that spoke words of arrogance.