Daniel 7:24

ten horns—answering to the ten "toes" (Daniel 2:41).

out of this kingdom—It is out of the fourth kingdom that ten others arise, whatever exterior territory any of them possess (Revelation 13:1; Revelation 17:12).

rise after them—yet contemporaneous with them; the ten are contemporaries. Antichrist rises after their rise, at first "little" (Daniel 7:8); but after destroying three of the ten, he becomes greater than them all (Daniel 7:20-21). The three being gone, he is the eighth (compare Revelation 17:11); a distinct head, and yet "of the seven." As the previous world kingdoms had their representative heads (Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar; Persia, Cyrus; Greece, Alexander), so the fourth kingdom and its Antichrists shall have their evil concentrated in the one final Antichrist. As Antiochus Epiphanes, the Antichrist of the third kingdom in Daniel 8:23-25, was the personal enemy of God, so the final Antichrist of the fourth kingdom, his antitype. The Church has endured a pagan and a papal persecution; there remains for her an infidel persecution, general, purifying, and cementing [CECIL]. He will not merely, as Popery, substitute himself for Christ in Christ's name, but "deny the Father and the Son" (I John 2:22). The persecution is to continue up to Christ's second coming (Daniel 7:21-22); the horn of blasphemy cannot therefore be past; for now there is almost a general cessation of persecution.