The short answer, is "yes, it is." The longer answer is a bit more detailed. I thought I'd take some time to write a short article on why the two beasts are the same.

The beast the person is referring to in Daniel is of course found in Daniel 2. There, as we have noted, King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that troubles him and essentially needs to have someone interpret it, but first that person needs to be able to tell him what he dreamed. He either forgot the details of his dream or he simply wanted to ensure that no one was going to pull the wool over his eyes and make something up to save their skin.

The beast, as we've noted, looked to Nebuchadnezzar as a very large statue of a man, with sections of that man highlighted in different types of metals. It turns out that the very top - the head of the statue - was made of gold, which represented the Babylonian Empire. Successive kingdoms were the Medo-Persian (silver), Grecian (bronze) and Roman (iron, eventually mixed with clay). Each successive kingdom was more brutal than the previous but the value of the metal representing the successive kingdoms became less valuable.

The primary focus of Revelation when detailing the beast that comes out of the sea (Revelation 13:1-10), and the second beast that comes up out of the earth (Revelation 13:11-18) is on the final portion of the original statue that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed about. This beast that emerges from the "sea" is clearly metaphorical, presented with figurative language, however, it should be understood that figurative language still has only one meaning, not many.

The expression for instance, "Well, I never saw that coming" implies the person stating it was caught unaware by some piece of information or something else. That person is not implying that they expected to actually see something physical coming at them, which would have allowed them to jump out of the way. Or the phrase, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!" is of the same type of genre. It is an idiom or figure of speech that is normally taken to mean complete surprise or disbelief. Clearly, it does not mean that the speaker is saying he/she is actually related to a monkey.

So too with Scripture, figures of speech, metaphors and idioms are all present in many areas of text. It is our job to understand what they meant when they were first written, not what we understand them to be to us in our culture because meanings tend to change over time.

It seems clear that in the first portion of Revelation 13, this "beast" is a powerful system. Here is the description John writes for us.

• ten horns
• seven heads
• crowns on its horns
• resembled a leopard
• had feet like a bear
• mouth like a lion