-------
“Three errors there are that forever are
found
On
the lips
of the good, on the lips of the best;
But
empty
their meaning, and hollow their sound,
And
slight is
the comfort they bring to the breast.
So
long as
man dreams of a time in this age,
When
the
Right and the Good will all evil subdue;
For
the Right
and the Good war ever will wage,
And
ever will
Evil and conflict renew.
So
long as men hope that Mammon will live
Like
a bride
with her lover, united to worth;
For
her
favour, alas, to the mean she will give,
And
Virtue
possesses no title to earth.
So
long as
man thinks that to mortals a gift,
The
Truth, in
her fullness of glory will shine;
For
the vail
of the goddess no mortal may lift,
And
all that
men do is to guess and divine.”
-
SCHILLER.
-------
PREFACE
The
Book of Daniel was written to prefigure, in
outline, the course of history from the Babylonian exile to the second
coming
of Christ, and to reveal the age of
millennial glory “underneath the
heavens,”
following that event. It,
therefore, exhibits the character of our own times, as part of the “Times of the Gentiles,”
which is really the
title of the whole book. As
in the
prophet’s day so in ours the
It
was consideration of events current in our
own day, and viewed in the light of the “sure
word of prophecy,” that induced the writer, though in the
midst of
much mental and physical suffering, to gather up some results of his
past
labours, and with the impressions received from recent events present them in a series of articles, to
the editors of “Our
Hope,” who generously allowed space in
their publication in the Monthly, devoted to the movement in behalf of
Israel,
not alone in New York, but in both hemispheres. That movement, based upon
the
recognition of the fact that the divinely established distinction
between Jews
and Gentiles, nationally, is a standing one in the New as well as Old
Testament
history; that there is yet a glorious
future for the ancient people of God; and that the turning of Israel to
their
own Messiah, “even Jesus,”
strikes
the hour of His appearing to them, and brings the emancipation of the
nations
from the politics and power that now enthral them, meets by decided
approbation
as it wins my heartiest sympathy.
To enlist a deepened interest in
an enterprise so worthy of support, and so ably conduced by the
scholarly and
self-denying editors of “Our Hope,” and
encourage the study of
Daniel’s book in its relations to Israel, the nations, and the [millennial] kingdom
of God, also led to the exposition of the prophecies here given, and
the offer
of them to the Monthly just
named. A general
desire on the part
of the readers, to see the exposition in book form, is the reason of
the
present volume.
The
book of Daniel consists of twelve chapters
– as we have it – of which five are historical, viz., 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and seven
are prophetical, viz., 2,
7, 8, 9, 10-12, each a distinct prophecy, yet
all organically one. It
is with the
prophetical part, alone, the exposition has to do; and the object has
been, not
to give the tedious and oftentimes painful process connected with the
study of
the text – a thing impossible in a space so brief, and withal
uninteresting
to the majority of readers – but the results of the processes, in a
popular and intelligible way, and so assist the understanding of the
prophetic
contents scope and aim of the book, and its relation to all prophecy. These predictions set
forth, by means of
symbols and their interpretation, the political and religious struggles
of the
Jews with the empires of the world, and the outcome of both, in greater
clearness, definiteness and unity, than are seen in all other prophets. They
are designed to be a book of comfort and hope for the Jewish people,
supporting
their Messianic expectations, and also a warning to the kingdoms of the
world. Their scope
extends beyond
the times of Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C.175-164, and beyond the times of
Titus,
A.D.70, reaching to the second coming of Christ and the millennial
kingdom. They
pertain less to the contemporaries
of the prophet than to the generation following.
They span all that remained of the Old
Testament time, and the whole New Testament also.
The “Last
Things” in them are the end of our age, the Antichrist,
the great
tribulation, the second advent, the [first]
resurrection, the deliverance of
The
amount of labour done in the critical and
exegetical study of the book in our generation has been very great;
much of it
virulent [i.e., highly
poisonous] and
unscientific. The
defence has been both scientific and
triumphant. It is
impossible to
give even a summary of the bibliography.
The writer has spared no pains to make himself acquainted
with the
latest results of the modern criticism, as far down as to 1897,
including the
polychrome edition of Daniel by Professor
Kamphausen, and his formal attack upon the book, previously
issued. It is a
comfort to know that the book
still remains an anvil on which all hammers are shattered. We may admit a Maccabean
editorship,
without any difficulty, even as we admit an editorship of our English
Bible. This is very
remote from
saying that the book is a Maccabean composition, or half and half so. In the light of all
criticism, we still
agree with Henstenberg that “to refer the composition of the book to
Maccabean times will
remain false so long as God’s word remains true; therefore, to all
eternity.” And
with Sir Isaac Newton we can say
that
“to
reject Daniel’s prophecies is to reject the Christian religion; for
this
religion is founded on his prophecy concerning Christ,”
a
statement ridiculed by Dean Farrar
who first distorts the words of
It
is customary to appeal to the fact that
certain evangelical scholars, like Delitzsch,
Kahnis, and others, have conceded to the critics the
Maccabean origin of
the book of Daniel, or at least a portion of it.
The appeal is worthless.
Jerome
tells us “the whole church woke
up in the fourth
century to find itself Arian.”
The Middle Age found it Papal.
In the last century
“I lived in times of doubt and strife,
When
child-like faith was forced to yield,
I
struggled
to the end of life.
Alas,
I could
not gain the field!”
But
there are scholars, as well as scholars,
whose words are not to be set aside by the sneers of second-hand
imitators of
unbelieving criticism. It
is Kaulen who testifies, “After the
most thorough investigation I am certain that the writer of the Book of
Daniel
shows a most intimate personal acquaintance with the
In
a few pages, the results of a study of the
different problem of the “Seventy
Weeks,”
are given. Since
the publication of
my work, “Studies in Eschatology,”
the whole subject has been reviewed in the light of volumes not then
accessible. The
whole history of
their interpretation has been carefully gone over, from 200 years
before Christ
to the present time; (1) the pre-Christian period, ending with our
Lord’s
Olivet discourse, A.D.33; (2) the period of the first two Christian
centuries,
including both Jewish and Christian interpretation, ending A.D.190; (3)
thence
to the close of the fifth century, A.D.490, from Clemens
Alexandrinus to Ammonius;
(4) the middle-age period to A.D.1250, from Severus
to Aquinas; (5)
thence to the sixteenth century, or reformation times; (6) thence to
the
present time* [*i.e., 1898]. The independent
conclusions, previously
reached, have all been confirmed.
In this vast field of inquiry nothing has been left undone
by Reusch who has given the
Patristic
interpretations, or by Calovius who
has given the Mediaeval, or by Rohling
who has given the Modern, or by Fraidi
who has reviewed carefully all these labours, or by D’Envieu
who has supplemented them. Time
has added nothing, not even through
the Higher Criticism, beyond what the ingenuity of men devised during
the first
four centuries. In
general the four categories into which the
various
interpretations fall are (1) that Messiah appeared within the
seventy
weeks, the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D.70, being the end of the 70th
week:
(2) that Messiah appeared near the end of the 69th week, and was cut
off in the
middle of the 70th, the end of the 70th being the transition of the
gospel to
the Gentiles; (3) that the two Little Horns are the same, and the
seventy weeks
ended with the times of Antiochus, B.C.164, a view most rigorously
repelled by
the church; (4) that the Messiah appeared at the end of the 69th week,
that the
interval of the Roman times of the Gentiles lies between the 69th and
70th
weeks, and that the 70th week is the
last – Antichrist’s week – a view held by the ablest exegetes
of the first three centuries.
Delightful is the view held by Raymund
Martini, A.D.1350, and by Solomon
Levy, “a born Jew,” that “Prince Messiah” is not
Cyrus, nor is “Messiah cut off” Onias III., but that “Gabriel
to Daniel, and Gabriel to Mary, prophesied of the same Messiah, even
Jesus
Christ;” that Daniel, influenced by the Messianic hope and deliverance
of
Israel which Isaiah seemed to connect with the return from Babylon,
supposed
the time of the hope might be at the close of “Jeremiah’s seventy
years,” and that, as Gabriel had already in 7 fixed the
time of the second
advent, so did he fix the time of the first in
9,
and led the prophet to look
out into the “Times of the
Gentiles”
to find both advents; and specially that Messiah must come between the
completion of the second temple and its destruction by Titus.
The
one satisfactory result of the whole study
has been to see how certainly the ablest church exegetes, in early
times,
contended, and successfully, that the 70th week is the Antichrist’s
week,
at the end of the “Times of the
Gentiles,” The
interval between the third and
fourth weeks was hidden from their eyes, and has remained undetected
till the
present time.
No
apology is needed for another work of the
book of Daniel, nor ever will be.
I
hold it to be unassailable that our Lord had the whole book of Daniel,
and
especially the vision of judgment, at His second coming, Dan. 7, directly in His
mind when He uttered His
great Olivet discourse concerning the end.
And I hold it to be indisputable by any mind not warped by
false
criticism, that the oracle in Daniel, and especially the vision of
judgment, at
His second coming, Dan. 7:
4, 8, foretelling
the study of Daniel’s book in the “Time
of
the End,” refers not only to its study in Maccabean times,
B.C.168
to 164, at the end of the third prophetic empire, but to the “Time of the End” of the
fourth, in its divided
state, i.e., to our own times and
immediate future. The
oracle
belongs to the great concluding prophecy in 10.-12. concerning
the “Warfare Great,”
whose climax is
the solution of the “Eastern Question.”
And because this concluding prophecy, 10.-12.,
is but the expansion of what is given in the closing part of 9,
it involves the study of the “70th
week,”
therefore of the “70 weeks;”
and since 10.-12.
is again but the expansion of 7. and 2.,
therefore the oracle, 12: 4, 8,
predicts the intense
study of Daniel’s whole book, and the understanding of it, as a sign of
the end of our age. This
renders
all apology for such study unnecessary and justifies the interest felt
to-day
in
In
order to keep the unity and aim of the book
before the mind of the reader, the exposition is woven around the
central theme
of the book, viz., that the kingdom foretold by the prophet cannot come
to victory
“underneath all heavens,” until the
second coming of the
Son of Man. A
further help to the
reader to grasp the contents of the prophecies is to remember that all
the
matter of the predicted history falls under these seven rubrics – the
Jews, the Four Empires, the Two Little Horns, the Seventy Weeks, the
Warfare
Great, the Messiah at both advents, the Kingdom.
As
to the study of the Jews, the histories by Edersheim,
Milman, Adams, and Josephus,
A
late
writer of much ability, dismayed at the aspect
of Christendum, and little anxious as to the inspiration of God’s Word,
or the old faith, proposes the doctrine of “our spiritual
conceptions,” and of “evolution spiritually,” as the quickest
way to bring in the golden age and the triumph of the kingdom of God. Hypothetically, he says,
“If the
world, the flesh, and the devil are at way with righteousness, once for
all,
that we must look to convulsive overthrow of its establishment – to
some
millennial transition waited for so long in vain, and hidden so
thoroughly out
of sight in the events around us.”
Again, “No matter how many convulsive changes and
millenniums
religion may promise itself,
we see that they do not
come. Our Christian
faith, amid all
its prophetic gleams, has travelled a weary way in which nothing has
been
gained save in the slowest manner.”
If this is not “pessimism,” it is hard to tell what is. The statement is
historically
untrue. The rapid
extension of
Christianity in the early ages is one of the best established facts of
history. The rapid extension of missions since the close of the
last century, and of
the translation of the Bible into almost all languages, are
not less
so. And as to
“spiritual
evolution” in the “scientific sense,” the gradualism of the Darwin, Lyell, Huxley and Spencer,
repudiating all catastrophe
and cataclysm, what else but “slowness” is the progress through
interminable stages? The
whole
“pessimism” rests on the denial of miraculous intervention which
accomplishes more in one hour than preceding centuries could achieve. It is precisely by means
of
“conclusive overthrow,” after long yet imperfect development, the
To
one point I desire to call special
attention. It is
remarkable how the
critics and the commentators have failed to see that by the words, “the Scripture of truth,” Dan. 10: 1, is meant
nothing less than Daniel’s book, and
not the unwritten book of “God’s providence,” or of the
“divine decrees,” or the “Old Testament.”
Orthodox interpreters have been blinded
here, and every sharp-sighted critic,
without exception, persistently evades the true interpretation, aware
of its
destructive force against the false theory of the book if once the fact
is
admitted. The
admission of that
fact forces the alternatives, either the writer of the book of Daniel
was a
guilty forger, whose crime can never be excused by “the custom of his
times,” or Daniel, the prophet of the exile, was its author.
The
chapters on the Type and Antitype, the
Transition-Section, the Great Interval, in 11:
39, 40, the Antichrist’s Last Campaign, and the concluding
Summation
– not published in “Our Hope”
for want of space – appear in the present volume.
Some sections, also, omitted from the
other chapters for want of space, are here supplied.
This
little volume is sent forth with the earnest prayer that God will bless
the
“Truth” of Daniel’s
book to
the souls of all the “Wise”
who, as
the “Time of the End”
draws near,
will study it with diligence, and find it a light to their
understanding and a
bulwark to their faith and hope. It
is well to remember that the
May
the
prophet’s word be a stimulus to work and pray for
Nathaniel
West.
Clifton
Springs, March, 1898.
-------
“The
prophets of the Old Testament in a
marked and special manner looked forward into the future. They personated and
expressed the Hope
of Israel and the
- Dean
Stanley.
-------
DANIEL’S
GREAT PROPHECY
-------
CHAPTER
1
(General
introduction.
– Character of the Book of Daniel; World-Power; Scope of the Book;
Daniel’s
-------
“By the rivers of
The
canonicity and inspiration of the book of
Daniel are established by testimonies more numerous and varied than can
be
claimed for any other sacred writing.
They come from the pens of inspired prophets and
historians, and from
the whole body of Jewish literature subsequent to the close of Old
Testament
prediction. Chaldaean,
Persian,
Greek, and Roman authors have confirmed its statements.
Centuries have verified its
prophecies. The lips of Christ, Peter, Paul, John and the
evangelists, have borne
witness to its truth. The
entire New Testament is effulgent [brightly
shining]
with its eschatology. The
early church teachers, with rare devotion, applied themselves to search
diligently and understand its contents, and held it aloft as a shining
proof of
the Christian faith. Schoolmen
and reformers studied it with deepest interest.
Jews, Christians and Mohammedans,
Catholics and Protestants alike, have vied [striven] with each
other to explore its mysteries. From
B.C.534 to A.D.1998, through 2,400
years, more than ten thousand volumes have been written as a tribute to
its
worth and world-wide significance, and, in our generation, the
movements of
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Armenia and Egypt, have united to do it
honour. Holy men
to-day realize the fact that in
this book was concealed a sun of surpassing brilliance, whose light
should
burst forth in the “Time of the
End”
and irradiate with its splendour the eyes of all those blessedness it
is to
seek it. And yet,
no book of the
Bible is more distasteful to the unbelieving criticism of our times, nor does it find enemies more dangerous
than many who profess to be defenders of the truth, degrading its
dignity and value
to the level of mere apocryphal production.
Its offence is the manifest presence of
the supernatural in every page. It
claims to be a faithful chronicle of events transcending the
possibility of all
ordinary occurrence, a revelation also from heaven, and, in large part,
a word
spoken by angels. In
it we read
histories the most marvellous, the prophecies whose far-sightedness
outstrips
the utmost reach of human genius, forecast and sagacity. It provides the most
brilliant
confirmation of the inspiration of the prophets.
It discloses the only true philosophy of
history, unveils a procession of the ages, publishes an almanac of time
and
sets before us a moving panorama of marching empires and of rising and
falling
kingdoms, covering already nearly 2,500 years.
It foretells a hundred events,
three-fourths of which have been [literally] fulfilled.
It supports its omniscient predictions by omnipotent deeds
placed
alongside of them as pledges of their accomplishment, the supernatural
in the
one case, the proof of it in the other.
In an honest mind un-swayed by prejudice and false science
it compels
belief. Its grasp
is the grasp of
the Almighty.
Great
moral and dogmatic truths are guaranteed
by miracles speaking to the eyes, concerning the true God, the true
religion,
the true people of God, and the world’s destiny, confronting all the
idolatries of the nations. Like
a
blazing head-light cast across the centuries and illuminating the whole
track
of time, shines the announcement that human history is the result
neither of
chance nor fatality, nor of man’s will alone; that the events of
nations
and the actions of men, although the product of their own free will,
are yet
pursuant of a predetermined plan of God, Most High, who “removes and sets up kings, gives wisdom
to the wise and
knowledge to them that understand; who reveals secrets, knows what is
in the
darkness, and in whom light dwells;” that history has an
appointed
goal to which it must attain, and that the rise, rule and revolution of
empires, their apogee [topmost
point],
decline and fall, have already been decreed and
recorded, and must eventuate according to the will of God. In the most solemn manner,
it emphasizes
the truth that God, Most High, is “Governor among the nations,”
greater than
Bel, Nebo, Istar or Merodach, or all the gods of the heathen, a Power
superior
to all the “Powers,”
a “Power, not ourselves, that
makes for righteousness,”
and walks through history: that while rewarding the good He punishes
the evil;
that for every crime committed by nations, governments or men, for
every wrong
abetted or inflicted, for every unrighteous deed, for every policy of
pride and
greed, of selfishness, oppression of the poor and the weak, for every
indifference to distress, for every act of cruelty and ambitious lust
of
territory, wealth and supremacy, Justice will exact a righteous
retribution;
and that the one consolation left to sufferers amid all the
complications that
perplex the diplomacies of nations, retard the relief of un-avenged
humanity, and
try the patience of God’s children, is the deep conviction that such
will
be the case.
No
sublimer moral truth ever passed the lips of
any writer. What
the Greek tragedy
attributed to blind “Justice” standing behind every scene, and to
“Necessity” behind Justice, the prophet describes as the work of a
free, intelligent and over-ruling Power, “God
Most High,” omnipotent and irresistible.
Wickedness may seem to triumph for a
time, and the prayer of outraged and enslaved communities meet only
disappointment,
but, sooner or later, judgment must strike the guilty.
Nor
is it an abstract proposition this great
truth is asserted, but is illustrated as a concrete fact in history, by
the
rise and fall of empires, states and kingdoms, on whose sepulchres the
one
epitaph stands written, “Dead for want of Righteousness!” that
the lesson
of the book, a theodicy that justifies the ways of God, vindicates His
long-suffering and discipline. His
last destructive stroke, and the setting up of His own kingdom where
the “will” of God
shall “be done on
earth
as it is in heaven.”
National sin must be punished, the governments of earth
must be
destroyed, and the nations judged, in order to their salvation. Not monarchs, nor empires,
but “The heavens do rule!” God alone is the ground of
the universe,
and His righteousness, truth, mercy and holiness, His will His
judgments, are
the establishment of His throne.
Might does not make right, but the nature and will of God. Right is not the enactment
of the
State. The maxims
of expediency and
selfish interests are not law. The
will of princes, cabinets and counsellors is not the measure of
obligation. The
right of rule rests
not on human conquests, nor is the power to rule the creation of a
people. God alone
is the ground and source of
all. Such the
doctrine and the
lesson of the book.
Among
the things that excite our curiosity and
arrest our attention, as we read the book, are the metallurgy
and zoology
of its predictions, representing four great empires in succession – two
Oriental, the Babylonian and Medo-Persian; two Occidental, the
Graeco-Maccedonian and the Roman.
The representation is made first by means of specific
metals, gold,
silver, brass and iron, mixed with clay; next, by four wild beasts, the
lion,
bear, leopard and the untamed ten-horned monster, or megatherium. The second two are again
represented by
two domestic animals, the ram and rough goat.
A colossal statue of human form, bright
and terrible, its head gold, its feet iron and clay, stands erect as the symbol of the whole organized political
power of the world in unity, including its various
governments and
policy, its material strength built upon the products of the mines, its
laws of
degeneration, disintegration and division; in short, the entire
development of
the world-power, through a succession of empires, the last of which
survives in
its fragmentary state until the Lord comes.
The
whole symbol is a picture lesson and divine programme of the
world-power
advancing systematically and organically in definite periods of time to
a goal
fixed in the counsel of God, that goal the
absolute destruction of all Gentile governments, policies and power, and
the
erection of the
As
to the inner spirit, essence, nature and life
of the world-power, it is symbolized by that of four predacious [predatory] beasts,
whose ethics are those of the jungle, viz.: the physically “fittest to survive,” the
Rob Roy ethics of
“The
simple plan
That
he may take who has
power,
And
he may keep who
can.”
The
motto for one the same for all, “Arise,
devour much flesh!” This
is further illustrated by the
action of the two domestic cornuted [horned] animals,
butting and rebutting one another.
The stronger devour the weaker, in every
case for selfish interests and increase of power.
Governed by savage, sensuous, impure,
sinful and brutal impulses and passions, it perpetuates its right to
rule over
man by military violence, plunging horns, teeth and iron heel, into
every tribe
or people that opposes. In
short,
the whole world-power, from first to last, is constitutionally beastly
and
metallic, and continues so down to the
end of its existence, and this notwithstanding the progress of the
nations in
culture and civilization, and in spite of every influence of
Christianity upon
it. It
cannot be otherwise, for
selfishness and jealousy are its inner principles.
Down to the end of Gentile rule, the
motives and the policies that actuated Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar,
Cyrus,
Alexander and Caesar – heathen motives – are the back-lying springs
of action that will govern the whole world-power, and every form of it,
whether
“I the King” or “We the people.” Never
can the religion of Jesus Christ celebrate a universal victory under
the whole
heaven until the heaven-descending “Stone”
grinds to powder the proud Colossus, and the Son of Man annihilates in
person
the last anti-Christian ruler.
The life of all the first three beasts passes into the
fourth, more
terrible than all before it, even in its divided ten-horned state, grim
with
iron armament, while among these separate horns and kingdoms an
eleventh
arises, plucking up a “Dreibund” in its way, thus himself becoming
“an 8th” “stouter than his fellows,” acquiring the
power of all the rest, anti-Christian to the core, the persecutor of
the saints
of God, and bent on universal empire.
That is the last picture of our modern culture and
so-called Christian
civilization, a picture “Modern Progress” is determined not to
believe, but which God is determined it shall believe, when its
haughtiness is
laid low, its loftiness bowed down, and its books of sorcery, like
those of
Diana-worshippers at Ephesus, are given to the flame.
The
fate of the persecuting Horn, the last representative of Gentile
progress,
science and culture, and that of his kingdom, and of the whole
world-power, is
destruction. On
their grave rises
in beauty and glory, the
Wonderful
prediction which hatred of its truth makes
men deny, and refer the whole to
the dream of a disappointed Maccabean Jew, the guilty forger of the
book of
Daniel’s name 400 years after Daniel’s death!
Wonderful beyond imagination!
The
prophet traverses the march of world empires and kingdoms from his own
time to
the end of our present age, the second coming of Christ. He foretells the conduct
of the
world-power, and illustrates its madness by the mania of Nebuchadnezzar
and the doom of Belshazzar. Running down the centuries
he introduces
us to Cyrus, Cambyses,
Darius, Xerxes,
Artaxerxes, to Alexander
and his successors, the struggles of
As
to the mission of Daniel, it was, in many
respects, like that of Joseph and Moses at the court of Egypt, and
again like
that of Paul to the Gentiles. He
was a “chosen vessel”
ordained of
God to bear “His name before
Gentiles and kings,
and the children of Israel,” – not only to take part in
the
great events of the Babylonian and Persian empires, but to represent in
person,
to the kings who ruled them, God’s ancient people and the true
religion;
to fortify the captives my miracles and prophecies, confound the
heathen wisdom
and idolatry, and maintain the truth
concerning the coming Messiah and His kingdom. To disobey the orders of
the court with
absolute impunity, and yet maintain his position in spite of the king
and the
satraps, to defy the sword, the flame and the lion’s den, and compel
decrees in favour of “God Most
High,”
this was the privilege of the prophet and his three companions. The wise men of the
world-power, the
Magi of the East, believed that they alone had wisdom and had derived
it from
their gods, whose images and temples towered high over all heathendom. The powers of the world
believed that
they acted independently of Jehovah.
The God of Israel, for them, was no more than Moloch or
Astarte, the
tribal deity of nomads, less civilized than themselves – powers who
imagined that they governed the world according to their will, and that
the
future was in the hands of them and their gods.
It was Daniel’s mission to
dissolve this delusion, and prove to them
that they were but instruments in the hand of “God Most High,” who ruled
the whole course of
history according to His own will, that the whole future lay before Him
like a
map prepared by His own hand, and that He who knows the future must be
the
Ordainer and Disposer of all events, a Power personal, intelligent,
all-wise,
holy, and the Almighty whom neither the kings nor the nations could
resist
without punishment. It was in the mission of Daniel to
humiliate, shame, and abase the pride of all world wisdom and world
power, and
exalt the God of Israel.
By
such means could he prepare the vast peoples of the
The
wonder is that this book began to be written
by a young man eighteen years of age, a captive at the court of
Babylon, and
hostage for the good behaviour of the vassal king of Judah; a youth of
royal
blood and a holy celibate for the kingdom’s sake.
Before he reached his majority he
reproduced and interpreted the monarch’s dream, and because of his
piety,
learning, genius and fear of God, grew to become the prime-minister and
master
of the magi in the realms of
In
view of what is yet to follow, and in place
of a refutation of modern false criticism, not possible here to be
made, I
assume at the outset, (1) the genuineness and authenticity of the book
of
Daniel; (2) its Messianic character; (3) its eschatological scope; (4)
that its
five great prophecies are one prophecy, and that its miraculous
narratives were
intended to be pledges of their fulfilment; (5) that the Medo-Persian
empire,
viz.: that of Cyrus, is the second, and the Roman empire is the fourth
of the
four prophetic empires in the Colossus, this fourth one now divided
into the
separate and independent kingdoms of the modern European state’s
system,
and destined to pass away; (6) that the term “kingdom”
is meant both a reign and a realm, and
ON THIS PRESENT EARTH; (7) that the fulfilment of so much
already of what Daniel
foretold is a guarantee that the rest will be accomplished. And our
thesis is this, that the Fifth Kingdom to rise on the ruins of all the
rest of
the kingdoms of Christ in immediate and universal victory, and which
(1) never
as yet so risen, (2) never can, and (3) never will so arise, till the
second
coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, to put down all
Gentile
politics and power, and introduce His universal reign of
righteousness and
peace. Herein,
I afford
occasion for the taking of offence without, however, giving any, by
modern
church-wisdom which, instead of studying the book of God, invents a new
revelation for His benefit, removing far from the heart of the church
THE HOPE
that should lie nearest to it, and assigning to the church a mission
nowhere
assigned to her in the Scriptures – an invention which apart from the
revelation God has given, the empirical proofs of nineteen centuries
have shown
to be false, and the error of which nineteen more, should they come,
would only
redundantly confirm. This
attitude, however, is a necessity, while any offence taken on its
account is a
mere contingency. The
unity,
harmony, consistency and organic self-interpretation of the Scriptures
are the
evidence of their infallibility and a bulwark of defence confronting
every
human theory. The “sure word of prophecy” is
not darkness, but a
“light shining in a dark place,
unto which we do
well to take heed.”
And the certitude we seek is assured by the fact that “no prophecy of the Scripture is of any
private interpretation
(of what God’s mind is), nor
came in old
time by the will of man, but men spake from God, being borne along by
the Holy
Ghost.”
-------
“It
is undoubted that in the remarkable
human form of the Collossus, seen by the Chaldean king, and interpreted
by
Daniel, the history of mankind, especially of the world-power in its
imperial
forms, and the kingdoms derived from it, has been unveiled, from Daniel’s time to the second
coming of Christ and the establishment of the Millennial reign. The best and most learned
investigators
of the Scriptures, to-day, are unanimous herein, viz., that the first
empire,
the head of gold, is the Babylonian, the silver is the Medo-Persian,
the brass
is the Graeco-Macedonian, the iron is the Roman, and the clay feet and
toes the
modern European States-system, including Syria, Egypt and Greece. We
have only to wait till Jesus Christ, the Corner-stone of His church,
and now
the Top-stone in heaven, shall come and destroy the dynasties of this
world,
and bring His own kingdom to victory everywhere.”
- Muhe.
-------
CHAPTER
2
(Israel’s
place in
history; Babylon’s Place; The Fundamental Prophecy; Law of Prophecy;
The
Colossus; Impact of the Stone; Rationalism; “The
Days of those Kings;” The Rolling Stone; False
Interpretation; The
True; Honour of Daniel and Glory to God.)
-------
The
proof of our thesis found at the close of
the previous article, rests on a clear understanding of
When
Daniel wrote, the historical situation was
deeply significant. In
spite of the
light of nature, the whole world was wrapped in spiritual gloom. The period preceding the
exile, B.C.606,
had been one of sanguinary [courageous] conquest,
and
At
such a time Daniel enters into history,
B.C.606, a captive at the centre of all world movements. God causes the Babylonian
king, as He
did Pharaoh, Alexander and Pilate’s wife, to “dream a dream,” the dream
of the great monarchy
image, in chapter 2,
and also to forget the
dream. This dream
and its
interpretation are the fundamental
prophecy of all the
prophecies in the book of Daniel.
All else is supplementary to this.
Chapter 7
repeats and enlarges this,
under new symbols, in order to bring out something new in the
development and
character of each of the four empires.
Chapter 8
repeats again the second
and third empires, and yet other symbols, again to develop something new. Chapter 9
returns to the fall of
We
are ready now to see the proof of our thesis,
given at the close of the previous article.
The monarch’s dream is in 2:
31-35, the interpretation in 2: 36-45.
The point of chief interest is the Impact of the Stone on the toes
of the
statue or image, i.e., the destruction of the Gentile World Power to
which
Israel is now subject in every nation under heaven, and
has been since the crown passed from the head of Zedekiah and
Gentile sceptres have ruled God’s ancient people. The prophet reproduces and
interprets
the forgotten dream of the king.
Coming to the explanation of the “toes”
of the statue, he says, “And as
the toes of the
feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, the kingdom
(the fourth) shall be partly
strong and partly broken. And
whereas thou sawest iron mixed with
clay, they
(the toes, i.e., the kings of the ten kingdoms) shall mingle themselves with the seed of
men, but they shall
not cleave one to another (royal and political alliances
will be broken)
even as iron is not mixed with
clay. And in the days of those kings,
shall
the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed and
the
kingdom shall not be left to other people, but shall break in pieces
and
consume all these
kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest
that the stone
was cut out of the mountain without hands, and brake in pieces the
iron, brass,
clay, silver and gold, the great God hath made known to the king what
shall
come to pass hereafter, and the
dream
is certain, and the interpretation is sure.”
Among
the secrets of the future, the prophet,
therefore, reveals (1) the total destruction of the statue, i.e., of
the
politically organized gentile power, and the substitution of the
Kingdom of God
in the stead of all earthly kingdoms, forever,* and (2) that the time of
this world crisis is
“hereafter,” even “in
the days of those kings,” the toes, therefore, in the last
days of
the “kings,” who
are the heads of
the separate and contemporaneous “kingdoms”
into which the fourth, or Roman, empire will be divided. By the iron he means the
hard and strong
imperial, and by the clay the weaker, more plastic, and popular,
element in
human governments, seeking vainly to combine [democratically] and cohere
in political unity; absolutism
repelling popular freedom, and constitutionalism, and reversely the
latter the
former; mixed monarchies, where the popular will [of
the people]
wars against the imperialism of
crowns [and
governmental authority]
and defies the will of the crown; a
state of political insecurity and
instability. By
the mingling of
the kings with the seed of men, royal alliances and intermarriage of
royal
houses to strengthen dynastic interests, is meant.
By the “Stone”
cut out from the mountain without hands, and falling upon the toes of
the
statue, is meant the descent of Jesus Christ from heaven in judgment to
smite
the kings of the earth and dash the nations in pieces.
By the fall of the statue, the
destruction of the whole world power is signified, and by
the stone becoming a “mountain”
filling the whole earth, is meant the world-embracing, universal,
indestructible and everlasting*
kingdom of
Christ, set up in victory, ON THIS PRESENT EARTH, on the ruins of all
existing
governments, in the last days of the last kingdoms into which the old
Roman
territory will be divided.
Rationalistic
dislike of supernatural and
far-reaching prophecy attempts to show that the book of Daniel was
composed in
the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C.175-164, nearly 400 years after
Daniel was
dead, and that the “Ten Toes”
represent not any contemporaneous kingdoms to be formed out of the
Roman
empire, but are ten individual successors of Alexander the Great – the
kings, not contemporaneous, but in line.
Still more, those “kings” do not mean
“kingdoms,” and that the fourth empire in the statue is not Roman
but the Graco-macedonian. Words
need not be wasted. Hereafter
we
shall see that the book of Daniel was composed by Daniel during the
Babylonian
exile, and under the reign of Cyrus; that the fourth empire is the
Roman, and
that the “Ten Toes”
are so-existing
kingdoms formed out of it.
Furthermore, in prophecy the terms “kings”
and “kingdoms” are
convertible. The “kingdoms”
are represented in the persons of their kings, and the kings represent
their
kingdoms. The Four
Beasts are
called both “kings”
and “kingdoms,” Dan. 7:
17. the
Ten Toes are also
called both “kings”
and “kingdoms,” in
the same verse, 2: 44.
“Kings”
and “kingdoms” are
identical in 2: 38, 39.
The vain attempt to exclude the Roman empire from the
statue, and so
exclude the birth of Christ from the development of the prophecy;
further on,
His crucifixion, the destruction of
The
question as to the time
point of the impact
is vital. The
prophet nowhere
teaches that this impact occurs at the junction of the knees with the
thighs of
the statue, where the
The
efforts of post-millennialists
to
break this exposition are vain.
Nothing is clearer than that the empires symbolized in chapters 2 and 7
are the same, and therefore the “end”
in each the same, viz., the end of the fourth divided empire. Indisputable is the fact
that the
“ten toes” and the “ten horns” represent the
same kings and
kingdoms, and that the destruction of the one is the destruction of the
other. Conscience,
honesty, truth,
cannot otherwise hold. Therefore,
again, nothing is clearer than that the days here mentioned as the
days of
the toes (2: 44)
are the “1260 days,”
or “time,
two times and half a time,” of the horns in 7: 25, i.e., the last 1260 days of the 70th week of Daniel, as seen
in 9: 27 and 12: 7. Post millennialists have
no option
here. With
pre-millennialists they
firmly hold that Daniel has unfolded not merely the future, like other
prophets, but has given the date of the first advent of Messiah, then
the
crucifixion and next the destruction of Jerusalem, followed by the
times of the
Gentiles, Dan. 9: 26, Luke
21: 24, and
closed by the restoration of Israel and overthrow of Gentile
governments. They
admit that the prophet has given us
not merely the time-point for the setting up of the Messianic kingdom
in
humiliation, as a kingdom of the cross, viz., the first advent, but
also of the
setting of it up as a kingdom of THE CROWN
- [But
“Few,” ‘post’
or ‘pre-millennialists’ however, ‘admit’ a
kingdom specifically for
those from amongst His redeemed people, whom He deems worthy to rule
with Him,
(Luke 20: 35; Matt. 16: 27.
cf. Rev.
3:
11)]
- in glory at the second, and
that he has taken off the dark veil that obscured the future and
unrolled to
the eyes of His people the whole partway of their sorrows, their
glorious end
and the doom of their oppressors.
They admit more; they admit that he has connected all this
with a scheme
of chronology in chapter 9
which locates the
time-point of the final deliverance at the close of Gentile times, and
at the
close of the last half of the 70th week.
Misfortune, indeed, immense and
protracted, that for so many centuries this 70th week should have been
regarded
as immediately succeeding the 69th, therefore as following the birth of
Christ. But
now that this great
error has been destroyed, and the 70th week shown to be the antichrist
week at
the end of our [evil]
age, the last ground of objection is removed.
The “ten
toes” being ten “kingdoms”
and “king,” and
their last days
being the days preceding the impact of the stone, who is Christ in
judgment, it
follows that “the days of those
kings”
are the last “1260 days”
of the 70th
week of Daniel. They
are still
future to us and have nothing to do with the first advent.
But
conclusive beyond all is the New Testament
light upon the whole question. On
all hands it is admitted that the “ten
horns”
of the beast in Rev.
13 are identical with the ten horns of the beast
of Daniel
7,
and that there, as here, “1260
days”
are the days assigned as the days of the fourth empire.
And as the horns are the toes, and both
are the kings, it follows that “these kings”
in Dan.
2:
44 are precisely the “ten kings”
in Rev.
17:
12, whose
alliance with the Antichrist or little horn of Daniel 7
endures 1260 days,
and whose
destruction with him is the
work of the Son of Man, the Stone, Jesus Christ, at His second coming. The impact of the stone is,
therefore, at the second advent and was not at the first, and the
kingdom set
up as a result of that impact is not yet
established in the form predicted, nor can it till the Lord
Himself comes.
It
is true that nothing is said or seen in chapter 2
of the Antichrist, the Son of Man, or the clouds of heaven, for the
simple
reason that it is Nebuchadnezzar’s
dream the prophet interprets and to
the heathen king God made no revelation of the Antichrist, the Son of
Man, the
second advent or of Israel’s deliverance, but only in the course and
doom
of Gentile kingdoms and power.
It is in the next vision where the symbols are changed in
order to bring
out something
further and new that we meet these things. Chapter 2 is
the fundamental and general
vision. All that
follows is
supplementative and more minute [and] unveiling.
Such is the law of progress in divine revelation. As the tree branches and
buds, so does
prophecy. The
impact of the stone
is eschatological. All
that is said
of the first coming of Christ in the book of Daniel is found in chapter 9, viz., that
His birth should occur at
the close of the 69th of the seventy weeks there foretold and His
crucifixion
precede the destruction of
One
further point, by both pre- and
post-millenarians. The
idea of rolling has been introduced
into the text. They
speak of the
“rolling stone.” By
post-millenarians this is done to evade
the chiliastic doctrine, the doctrine that the kingdom cannot come to
victory
over all the earth till Christ comes.
Prejudiced by early education,
false teaching and declamation of good men, trained to
spiritualize the prophecies
and deny to Israel a national future, or a millennial
age on this
present earth, after our own, and before the final
new heaven and earth,
they must find some way to break the force of the stone’s destructive
impact, and make the “days of
these kings”
mean 2,000 years at least, if not 20,000 more! The stone “rolls,” and the
“rolling” is an evangelical process, peaceful, missionary and full
of music and love, with now and then some transient friction by way of
occasional
wars and rumours of war, with here and there a famine, earthquake or
pestilence, which, however, only assist the rolling.
The grinding is gradual, caused by the
progress of Christianity, education, culture and civilization. By religion, better
politics, vespers,
ethics and love, human governments, especially those of the Christian
Europe
and the
It
is a customary method, among the ordinary
expounders of Daniel’s
book, to represent the impact of the Stone in the following way: “these
empires have all passed away, already, and the kingdom hewn out of the
hard
quarry of sin-petrified humanity by divine grace, has already been
established
in the Christian church. During
her
history empires and thrones have risen and fallen, and nations have
rushed to
arms and swept, as with a tornado of blood, the surface of the earth,
then gone
to rest, but the kingdom stands.
Age after age the arrows of ridicule and scorn have been
shot at its
subjects, the artillery of infidelity has attacked its strongholds, the
sharp-shooters of wit and genius have sallied forth against its unwary
hosts,
and every description of opposition has been leagued against the Lord
and His
Anointed. But the
kingdom
stands.” Thus, after
“all
these empires have passed away” and “no
place was found for them,” they still
exist, and (to quote another word) “the armies of
the Lord press
on to victory!” The
Stone is
rolling still from the “quarry” across the imagined plain in order
yet to reach the Toes of the statue – non-existent yet existing. Sobriety
might well inquire whether a little grammar, logic, and study of
Daniel’s
book, might not have spared the public exhibition of a rhetoric so
self-contradictory and amusing?
The
most common defence of this presentation is
to say that the “kingdoms”
in the
statue only heathen kingdoms are meant, and, as a matter of fact, the
prophecy
in large part has been already fulfilled.
The misfortune of that answer is two-fold, (1) that three
of the empires
– Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greek – had passed away
before the “Stone”
was born,
and that instead of striking the fourth, the fourth struck it, and laid
it in
its grave, and that now, though ascended to heaven, it cannot descend
from the
mountain till the last days of divided Roman empire; and (2) that it is
precisely on Christian toes and Christian horns the “Stone” falls, and it is
Christian kingdoms,
so-called, that are ground to powder.
The impact of the Stone is a judgment not on heathenism,
but on
Christendom, after the gospel has been given to all nations. It smites the “Christian
Powers” that be, in order to make room for the
Some
pre-millennialists
introduce the “rolling,” but in order to show “two
stadia” in the kingdom set up.
These they call the “Kingdom of the Rolling Stone,” and
the
“Kingdom of the non-Rolling Mountain,” the one dating from the
first advent, the other from the second.
By this means two separate functions are assigned to the “Stone,” (1) that of
“rolling” for
2,000 years or more, (2) that of impact at the end of these years. All
this springs from the fact that the time of the first advent is assumed
as the
“time of the days of these kings,”
which it is not. Even
on the
supposition that the Stone rolled on a plain, what impression
could it
have on the statue? None! The moment it strikes the
toes the
statue falls. The
stone does not “roll”
after its contact with the toes.
The church-period does not follow the impact, but precedes
it. The toes are
the end of
the fourth
empire. It is true
that
Christ’s kingdom makes progress in this age by extension of the gospel,
but the church period and the progress of Christianity are precisely
two things
that nowhere enter into the visions of Daniel.
No “woman”
is seen in his perspective as in John’s.
He has nothing to do with the
development of the church.
And
such was the view of the holy prophet who
spake by inspiration of God. He
humbled the monarch’s pride by teaching that Israel’s God was not
defeated because Israel had been delivered, for [wilful] sin, to
Gentile hands, but still lived as
“God Most High,” a
Revealer of
secrets, Almighty to save, righteous in punishing sin, [no
respector of persons in judgment], yet
watching in love His people; that, one day, Gentile power should perish
forever, and the kingdom of God be set up in victory everlasting*
from
pole to pole. The
rise and fall of
successive empires, of which the fourth is the Roman, was shown to the
monarch,
the far “end,” the
doom of
man’s governments, the establishment of the government of God, AND ON THIS PRESENT EARTH, when God’s
will [shall]
be “done on earth as it is in heaven.” Then God’s people, heirs
of the
kingdom, will be free from the despot’s chain, and humanity cease to
groan beneath a burden no power but God’s could remove.
So preached the great pre-millennial
prophet of the exile in the ears of the king of the greatest kingdom on
earth. A doctrine whose teaching to-day THE CHURCH
DISHONOURS. To
the monarch it came as a message from
God by the mouth of a seer who declared that “the
vision is CERTAIN and the
interpretation is SURE.” It impressed the soul of
the king. It
brought glory to God; to Daniel, great honour, abundant gifts, a
seat in the
gate of the king, as primate of all the realm and master of all the
wise, and
to Daniel’s friends, dignities next to his own. May the vision be soon
fulfilled!
And
such was the view of this prophecy taken by
great church teachers in early times, of whom two remain unsurpassed,
the one, Irenaeus the Great; the
other, his
greater disciple, Hippolytus, the
first saying, “At the end of our age the Stone will strike the
statue,” and “Jesus Christ is the Stone;” the second saying,
“At the end of our age the Stone grinds to powder the kingdoms of this
world.” Nor will
the prophecy
admit any other interpretation.
-------
IMPORTANT
FOOTNOTE
*
“If
Messiah’s kingdom is ‘Eternal,’
it is also ‘Temporal,’ If
it is of unmeasured duration, not merely indefinite but absolute,
transcending all
temporal limits, it is no less a kingdom of measured duration,
restricted to
temporal limits, and bounded by great historic events.
One
in essence, it is many
in
forms. Its organic
growth, from a
seed to a tree, necessitates this.
And this was the Hebrew faith.
It is the biblical view also. The word ‘Olam,’
‘Ever,’ does not,
of itself, and by
fixed necessity, always denote the annihilation of time, but as
frequently, in
Hebrew usage, denotes simply unbroken
continuance up to a special epoch in history, or to a certain natural
termination. It has a relative as well as an absolute
sense, a finite as well as an infinite length. It means ‘Here’
as well as ‘Beyond,’
and applies to
a [Messianic,
Millennial] kingdom
that comes to an ‘End,’
- [“Then the End
will come, when he (Christ) hands over the
kingdom
to God the Father after he has
destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
For he must reign (upon this
earth) until he
has put all his enemies under his feet:” (1
Cor. 15: 24, 25, N.I.V.)]
– as well
as to one that has ‘no End.’ For this reason, a great
World-Period,
or “Age,” is called
‘Olammim,’ and in order to express
infinite time, the
reduplication is used, ‘Ages of Ages,’
‘Olammim
Olammim.’ It is therefore a false
conclusion to
say that because the term ‘Le Olam,’
‘Forever,’
is applied to the Messianic kingdom, therefore the Hebrews contradicted
themselves, when they assigned to it limits at the same time. Messiah’s kingdom is
Temporal and
also Eternal, and in
both senses, Olamic.
The bondsman’s free covenant to serve his master lasted ‘forever,’ in its present
form, but that only
means ‘till He comes.’ True to this view, the
Jewish teachers
ever held to a
-
Nathaniel West, D.D.
-------
“Imperial
powers must
sink when virtue fails,
And
selfishness with
pride alone prevails;
He
argues ill who from
its fortune draws
The
goodness or the
badness of a cause;
Success
on merit does
not always wait;
Remember,
too, old
Through
prosperous crime
the ancient empire fell;
Ambition,
bloodshed,
guilt, their funeral knell;
Unerring
law, with its
resistless force,
Mapped
out for each its
swift and downward course;
A
ruling power defined
their years, their pace,
The
road that led to
judgment and disgrace;
Were
not events by Him,
Most High, controlled,
How
could their certain
order be foretold?
How
could the prophet
sing of future doom,
Or
in the present read
the age to come?”
-
Crell.
-------
CHAPTER
3
(Daniel, Chapter 7. –
Critical Question; Vision of the
Four Beasts; The Fourth Beast and its Horns; The Little Horn; Vision of
the Judgment
of the Horn and the Nations; An Ancient of Days; Son of Man; Overthrow
of
Kingdoms and Sultanates; Chiliasm; The Kingdom given to the Saints;
Time of the
Judgment, Place of the Judgment; The Ten Horns; The Criminality of
modern
World-Powers; Their Doom.)
-------
A
critical question of importance confronts the
student of this prophecy, and involves the veracity of the whole book
of
Daniel. A word,
therefore, is
necessary as to Daniel’s historical reliability, with which his
prophecies are so intimately connected.
The date of the vision and its writings are said to be in “the first year of Belshazzar, king of
The
testimony of
the Babylonian cylinders of Cyrus
and Nabonnaid, and the annalistic tablets of the time,
have successfully repelled this assault on Daniel’s
credibility. The
name Belshazzar has
been discovered under the form of “Bel-sar-usur,” the
“Ha-bal-sarru” of the Chaldean army, the “Vice-king”
and “eldest son” of Nabonnaid, the last king of Babylon, who
reigned 17 years, B.C.555-538, this “son” being co-regent during
the last three years of his reign, i.e. three years next preceding
Babylon’s fall, 538. The
monuments still further establish the facts that to “Bel-sar-usur”
was entrusted the defence of
The
inscription on the great Cyrus-Nabonnaid
Cylinder closes its
account of the capture of
And
now for the prophecy itself. In
chapter 2
the monarch of
The
vision of the Fourth Beast makes an
unparalleled advance in the mode of prophetic representation, by
introducing a
solemn assize, in which “One
like the Son of Man”
comes with clouds, to destroy the last Antichrist and all Gentile
politics and
power, and to erect a fifth and universal monarchy “underneath all heavens.” It is the high-point of
Old Testament eschatology. There
is nothing like it anywhere else
in all the prophets. It
is
paralleled only by the scenes in the Revelation given of God to Christ,
and by
Him through His angel to John. As
a
picture of the advent it is without a peer in the Old Testament,
transcending
all other representations by its solemnity, sublimity, and majesty, its
dynamic
power and its terror. It
enters
more largely than any other scene into the New Testament prophecy, and
forms the
basis of all the New Testament representations of the End. Twenty-one out of
twenty-eight massive
verses are here given to the fourth, or
The
prophet beholds four empires emerging, one
after another, out of the billowy sea of the heathen world. The surging waters are an
emblem of the
heathen nations in tumult. The
Beasts correspond to the metals in chapter
2,
and in the order of their appearing.
The strength and swiftness of the Babylonian empire and
its ferocity are
represented by a Lion
with eagle’s wings.
The loss of its plumage denotes the
cessation of its conquests, and its change of posture from that of a
beast to
that of a man, and the gift of “a
man’s
heart,” the moral effect produced by the recovery of the
Chaldean
king from his seven year’s mania.
Dan. 4: 16;
25-37; 34-37. The
Bear’s elevation,
lifting
itself with its paw “on one side,”
marks the superiority of the Persian to the Median element in the
Medo-Persian
empire of Cyrus. The
“three ribs” in its
mouth are his conquests of
The
“Fourth Beast”
is that which attracts the prophet’s special notice; a Beast, dreadful,
exceeding strong, terrible, with iron teeth, devouring, breaking in
pieces,
stamping, diverse from all the rest.
“Ten horns,”
the symbols of
kings and kingdoms together, surmount the head of the Beast, among
which the
“eleventh” rises,
having “eyes like a man,”
denoting its intellectuality
and human personality, and a magniloquent mouth blaspheming. Uprooting a triple
alliance that stands
in its way, it acquires the power of all the horns, because “stouter than its fellows.” Three years and a half it
persecutes the
“saints of the Most High,”
[Christians
and] the
Jewish people, changing their festive times and ritual laws, subjecting
them to
great tribulations. At
the end of
this period a Judgment scene breaks in, and terminates the mad career
of the
Horn. Thrones are
placed, (not cast
down) in the heavens immediately above earth, for judges to sit upon,
in the
midst of which the “Ancient of
Days”
(Hattiq Yomin), the “delayed”
one,
sits, venerable to behold, arrayed in white vesture, “white as snow and the hair of his head
like the pure wool.”
Pavilioned in flame, streams of fire
proceeding before Him, ten thousand times ten thousand angels
attending, He
presides over the heavenly Sanhedrin come for judgment.
“The
Judgment sits and the books are opened.”
The effect of the judgment is
stated. The Beast,
the personal
Eleventh Horn, who, by acquiring all power, had become the whole Beast
in his
own person, is taken and slain, and his body given to Tophet, the
burning
flame. The rest of
the Beasts
survive a brief season, after their dominion is taken away, and are
destroyed. But this
is not all. Though
God the Father, the “Ancient of
Days,” presides, yet “Another,”
to whom “dominion and glory”
are given, i.e., the right to judge, rule
and receive the honour, as well as the kingdom, suddenly appears in the
midst
of the scene. “I saw in the night visions, and behold,
One like a Son of Man
came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and
they brought
him near before Him. And
there was given to him dominion, and glory,
and a kingdom, that all peoples, and nations, and languages, SHOULD
SERVE HIM;
His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and
His
kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” It is the “Parousia” of Christ we have
here, the second advent of the
Son of Man, to whom the Father has committed all judgment, that all men
should
honour the Son even as they honour the Father. John
5: 22, 23. It
is
The
prophet was impressed and perplexed by the
solemn vision, and “would know
the truth of all
this” that he had seen, “the
truth
of the fourth beast”
especially, “and of the ten horns,”
and yet more especially
“of the other that came up,
before whom three
fell,” “the horn
that had eyes, and
a mouth speaking very great things, and whose look was more stout than
his
fellows.” He
is
intensely curious and particular in his specifications.
An angel explains. After
briefly describing the all-conquering
character of the Roman empire, (7:
32) he
says, “And the Ten Horns thou
sawest out of this
kingdom (the Roman) are
Ten Kings that shall
arise, and another shall arise after them, and he shall be diverse from
the
first ones, and shall subdue three kings.
And he shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High,
and think to change
times and laws. And
they (the
saints) shall be given into his
hand until a time, two
times, and the dividing of a time (1260 days). But the Judgment
shall sit, and they (the Ancient of Days, the Son of Man,
the angels) shall take away his
Sultanate to consume and destroy it to
the end.” (7:
24-26.) And
now comes the grand announcement of
the outcome and goal of the prophecy, the companion-piece precisely of
that in chapter 2: 44,
viz., “And the kingdom, and the
Sultanate, and the greatness of the
kingdom underneath all heavens, shall be
given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose
kingdom is an
everlasting kingdom, and all Sultanates
shall serve and obey Him” (7: 27).
Here, the “kingdom”
is set up ON
EARTH by the “God of heaven,”
at the
second coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, to destroy the last
Antichrist,
and demolish all gentile politics and power.
Here
is found the much-despised “Chiliasm” (Pre-millennialism),
indestructible as the truth and throne of God! As face answers to face in
water so Dan. 7: 27
answers to Dan.
2: 44, an invulnerable demonstration that the
Great
and solemn as is this vision, it is not, however,
a vision of the last judgment which occurs at the close of the
millennial age,
and brings the “new heaven and
earth.” It
is the Messianic judgment, placed by all the prophets at the end of our
present
age, when Gentile Times expire and new-born
The
Time
of the Judgment.
It
is at the “end”
of the 70th week in Dan. 9:
26, 27, the
close of the Times of the Gentiles, the end of the last 1260 days of
Antichrist’s persecuting reign as lord of ten monarchies in one, and
the
holder of Jerusalem, yet coming quickly to his own “end” with none to help him.
Dan. 11: 45; Zech. 14: 1-5;
Rev. 14: 14-20; 19: 11-21.
It closes the horn’s career, Dan. 7: 21, 22. The final conflict
terminated by this
judgment includes the “Day of
the Lord upon all
nations,” preceded by that final spell when the powers
that be and
society at large, as in Noah’s day, shall be intent on architecture
commerce, trade and all domestic pleasure, singing the siren song of “Peace and Safety,” as did
the false prophets of
old, unconscious that “sudden
destruction”
is near. 1
Thess. 5: 3; Jer. 8: 11, 15, 16; 14: 13; 23: 17-30. That will be the Concert
of Europe and
the world! The
political hypocrisy
of the time will betray itself in this, that while affecting
arbitration of
international disputes, new ambitions, new international complications,
and new
oppressions and aggressions will be devised, the whole world arming for
war. Joel
13: 9-11. The
alliances of
Christian governments with those that are anti-Christian, for the sake
of gain,
the extension of territory, wealth and power, the oppression of the
weak by the
strong, the spectacle of massacre allowed by Christian nations, the
hollowness,
the treachery to treaties and to covenants, the concert of Christian
powers in
a code of international authority, founded neither on the principles of
justice
nor of humanity, but on the will of the strongest, and violated in the
interests of the strongest, will so affect, disgust and exasperate
mankind,
that, once more, as in the days of Robespierre and Voltaire,
Christianity
itself will be scouted in the circles of the learned, and by the
masses, and
the very foundations of civil, social and religious order be broken up. Protestism can no more
accuse
Popery. At such a
time the “Little Horn”
will come, and run his career
unchecked by anything “withholding,”
2 Thess. 2: 6-12,
till checked by the
counter-coming of the Son of Man.
That second coming is the glorious, visible and public
Parousia of
Christ – His appearing in the clouds of heaven, as the vision shows,
for
both judgment and salvation, its one time-point, the close of the Great
Tribulation. It is
the same
time-point as in Matthew
24: 29, 31; 40 - 44; 25:
1; 2 Thess. 1: 6, 7; 2: 1 - 8; Rev. 11: 15 - 17; 19: 11 - 21,
and prior
to which heaven receives and retains Him in His Father’s throne. Acts 3: 19-21,
(R.V.) It is the
high-point in the
“Day of the Lord”
which begins
before the Advent and continues after it, the Day “in the which” the Lord
comes, and not before it:
Matt. 24: 42, 44, 50; Luke
12: 39, 46; 17: 30; Acts
17: 31; Rom. 2: 16; 2 Thess. 1: 10; 2 Tim. 1: 18., as in
all prophecy,
so here, Judgment and salvation go together, “as
it was in the days of Noah,” and “of
Lot,” and the “coming
out of Egypt.”
The
New Testament fills in the details
unmentioned in Daniel’s vision, viz., those of international war and
strife. The
kingdoms will have
prepared for themselves the instruments of their own destruction. The logic of the situation
will have
caused already an effect to reintergrate the jarring nations into one
vast
empire, as the best solution of the problem of government, a
world-empire free
from Christianity and bound alone to a religion of humanity, in which
the
world’s last leader will be the chief object of worship, the
world’s new Messiah. The
temporary realization of that scheme with all its wickedness, will
provoke the
last heaving of the nations and call into being the “Day of the Lord.” Supernatural terrors will
break in on
the new order of things, more void of order than all preceding times. “Heaven, earth,
sea and the dry land will be shaken,” Hagg.
2: 6, 7. It
will be a time
of tribulation and anguish, of slaughter and gloom, and of persecution
of
God’s saints, a time when the sickle, the flail, the fan, and the fire,
will do their work, a time when the harvest is ripe, and the vintage so
full
that the vats overflow, “because
the wickedness
is great.” Joel 3: 13.
The struggle for supremacy will bring the “War of the Great Day of God Almighty,”
Rev. 16: 14,
when the horn prevails against the saints
and seeks to build his new empire on the destruction of all
Christianity in
human governments, and on the extirpation of the Jews.
To that, the kingdoms of this world will
come, till the Lord comes to destroy their power.
Then, what Daniel saw in vision will
become a fact in history, the nations gathered together against
2.
The Place
of the judgment.
So
far as the “thrones”
are concerned (7: 9),
it is aerial, in
stormy and fire-lit clouds, overhanging the earth, and visible to all. “The
heavens declare His righteousness, for God Himself is Judge.” Ps. 1: 6. The diurnal rotation of
the planet on
its axis will make the visibility a universal necessity, “Every eye shall see Him.” Rev. 1: 7. But, so far as the special
vision of Daniel 7
has to do with the destruction of the
Antichrist and his empire, and
3.
The Parties
in the Judgment.
Already
mentioned in general, it is necessary
still to speak of them in particular.
They are (1) the Fourth Beast, (2) the Ten Horns of
Kingdoms, (3) the
Little Horn, (4) the Ancient of Days, (5) the Angels, (6) the Son of
Man, (7)
the Saints of the Most High, or the people of the Saints of the Most
High. With the New
Testament development of
this vision by our Lord, in His assignment of the Christian church to
her place
alongside of
As
to the “Fourth
Beast,” a word will suffice.
Everything said previously concerning the fourth empire is
here
applicable. It is
the
As
to the “Ten
Horns.” Everything
said previously concerning the “Ten
Toes”
is applicable here, since both are identical.
They are neither ten Ptolemies, nor ten
Seleucids, the successors of Alexander, nor ten Caesars, nor ten
provincial
governors of the empire of Nero’s time, but are ten separate,
independent
and contemporaneous kingdoms with their kings, in Europe, Asia and
Africa,
formed within the limits of the old Roman territory, East and West, in
the last
days of their existence.
Nevertheless, it is one of the most remarkable phenomena
in all history,
that, for 1,300 years, last past, twenty-six catalogues of the kingdoms
formed
in the Western empire, each catalogue covering a half century, show the
number
“ten” as that to
which these
kingdoms, as imperial powers, have, with few exceptions, uniformly
gravitated. While
this is true, and
true to-day, that Great Britain (including Egypt), part of Germany,
France,
Spain, Portugal, Austro-Hungary, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and part of
Russia,
occupy the territory of the old empire, yet good reasons exist for
holding that
a further distribution will be made, by the sword or by diplomacy, in
the time
of the “end.”
Among
these are the facts (1) that the ten toes
are identical with the horns, and both with the ten horns in the
Revelation by
John; (2) that the toes, therefore the horns, lie not in the western
territory
of the empire alone, but in the eastern as well; (3) that in John they
appear
discrowned, quasi-kings, whose power has gone to the Beast for a time
and
special purpose, i.e., Rome’s destruction; (4) the impossibility of
showing, how, which of all the kingdoms of Europe, Asia and Africa the
final
ten will be. Concede
to Preterism
and Prescentism all they affirmatively claim and can demonstrate
validly from
history: that Nero was an Antichrist, the Pope another, the one a
pagan, the
other an ecclesiastic, and also, that, while the Papacy is Western
Antichrist,
Islam is Eastern, the one ruling as “Vicar of Christ,” the other as
“the Shadow of God,” still to Futurism must be allowed the
unconquerable answer that the harlot, Rome, the horns and little horn,
exist
till Christ comes to destroy them, and the Jews wage their last
conflict with
the last Antichrist, in times immediately preceding the second advent. Therefore, the final
distribution of the
kingdoms is still before us.
Remarkable is the statement of Hippolytus,
Bishop of
It
is worthy of note that one of the types
of the last Antichrist (Antiochus) rose out of
territory now occupied by the king of Italy.
The dividing line, between East and
West, ran ideally, north and south, through
4.
The Duration of the Judgment.
This
is nowhere defined in the Scriptures,
unless we take the close of the Great Tribulation or end of the 1260
days of
the horn’s career as its commencing point, and the close of the 1335
days, as its concluding point: Dan.
7: 25; 12: 12. Two
months and a half exhaust the
period. In a wide
sense the “Day of the Lord”
which begins before the advent
and continues after it, is called a “Day
of
Judgment,” and during it the last Seals are opened, the
Trumpets
sounded and the Vials poured with all their terrible phenomena. But the final judgment on
the Horn and
his allies, and the final stroke on all Gentile politics and power
begins with
the Advent itself, and must close before the “Blessed”
time. Swift and
severe, it will be
a “short work in righteousness,”
shaking together “heaven, earth,
sea, dry land
and all nations” (Hagg.
2: 6, 7; Heb.
12: 26, 29), for the Lord will “finish the
work and cut it short in righteousness; because a short work will the
Lord make
upon the earth,” Rom.
9: 28
– “sudden destruction,”
1 Thess. 5: 3. The supernatural phenomena
which
precede, increase, intensify and melt into the “Day
of the Lord,” will reach their culmination with the Advent
itself. And, as
Zechariah informs
us, Joshua’s long day – “neither
day
nor night” – will be repeated in the final crisis. Zech. 14: 6,
7. The
kingdom of the Horn
will be “consumed and destroyed
unto the end.”
Dan. 7: 26.
The
solemn thing here is that the “ten
horns” are all Christian kingdoms which have
become politically, in their governments, apostate from Christianity,
and
represent a civilization of culture and mammon, and a policy of crime
at war
with moral righteousness. They
are
the “Powers” of a
hard-hearted
military Christendom, politically de-Christianized, the very “horns” in John’s apocalypse
and, in their
last state, allies of the Antichrist in the persecution of God’s
saints. And so much
an outcome
present signs are not wanting. The
championship, by Christian governments, of anti-Christianity, even of
an empire
historically organized to shed Christian blood; the championship of a
power
whose chief sits at the Golden Horn as the “Shadow of God,”
“Lord of two continents,” and “Kings of Kings,” to whom
“Allah” has committed the rule of the world, an Antichrist, a hater
of Christians, open rejector of Christ, and the divine and eternal
relation of
the “Father” and the “Son,” whose ritual is the stated
massacre of God’s saints, whose reward for massacre is a sensual
paradise, whose alternatives to all mankind are the “Koran of the
Sword,” – is enough to make the “fury” of God rise in
His face. Since the
world began, no
greater crime has been committed – save the crucifixion of Christ –
than the introduction of this organized anti-Christian power, in 1856,
into the
family of civilized and Christian nations by the so-called “Christian
Powers” themselves, at a cost of 300,000 lives and 300,000,000 of
money,
and in the face of gigantic massacres whose atrocities made the blood
of
mankind run cold. And
all the more
unutterably guilty have been the “Powers” since the subsequent
massacres in 1860, 1876 and 1894-1897, in south-eastern Europe, Crete,
Greece,
Armenia, with the slaughter of 130, 000 Christians, and a total since
1822 of
162,000, and the destruction of the homes of 1,000,000 sufferers, and
the
agonies, tortures and dishonour of mothers, daughters and babes, have
been
allowed by the “Powers” to pass un-avenged – Russia now
consenting – all the “Christian Powers” shelling with their
fleets (1897) defenceless Christian fighting to secure their freedom
from the
Turks! Immeasurable,
save by God
Himself, is the unforgotten crime of Christendom, since, shamelessly as
openly,
by “concert of the Powers” the championship of the “integrity
of the Ottoman Empire” is justified by the doctrine of the “Balance
of Power,” the “Peace of Europe,” the “Interests of
Bondholders,” and the “Necessities of Commerce and Trade,” in
short, “Business Interests” which England’s Premier has told
the world are “paramount to mere religious feeling and to all
considerations of mere humanitarian sentiment!”
A compact such as this, by the so-called
“Christian governments” of Europe, which hereby prove themselves to
be a federation of stock-jobbing companies of royal birth,
intermarried,
wearing crowns on their heads and backed by the standing armies and
fleets,
ruling the world, is enough to excite universal anarchy and revolution,
and is
a challenge to God to vindicate His Word.
These
lines are not forgetful of Papal massacres
in history, outstripping far the pagan.
Not do they decide the question whether the last
anti-Christian “Horn”
shall be an apostate Pope as many have
supposed, or a Sultan as still others think, or “some other
man.” It is enough
that the
“Ten Horns” have
already been
formed, though not in their final arrangement.
The “what
withholdeth” or “hinders”
the appearing of the last Antichrist in God’s counsel, is the
politically
organized Gentile power, or combination of civil powers professedly
Christian,
ordained of God “not to bear the
sword in vain,”
but to execute justice, to repress crime, conserve in righteousness the
civil
and social order, and promote the triumph of the kingdom of God. False to this high trust,
their right of
existence is forfeited. When
once
it is evident that these “Powers”
are instruments of oppression and persecution, leagued to promote
injustice,
despotism, inhumanity, and every evil work in the name of Christianity,
and
bent chiefly on self-aggrandizement, increase of commerce, trade,
wealth,
extent on territory, and supremacy each over the other, the result can
only be
an insurrection of the more and more educated masses, a reaction
against both
Christianity and the civil order, and an explosion of universal
revolution. It is
then the “foundations will be
destroyed,” the “let”
removed, and the last Antichrist
appear. Christendom
will be responsible
for it, and the penalty of her treason against the law of God, the
Gospel of
Christ, and the common principles of natural justice, will be the
righteous
annihilation of all Gentile politics and power, in the midst of
unparalleled
tribulation and distress. It
is the
lesson of the book of Daniel, as of all the prophets, and of John’s
apocalypse. It is,
moreover, the
very word of Christ. To
modern
rulers thus leagued, under the common sceptre of mammon, and to all the
world’s financial strength, God has said, “Your
covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell
shall
not stand.” Isa. 28: 18.
As a party in the judgment the kingdom and marching to
their last
division and their doom, and calling for their last leader. The “Horns”
need a master and will find one “in
the time
appointed.”
“Bondholders”
hungering after
“dividends,” and the Governments in partnership with them as their
police, must reckon with Him to whom God will “divide”
a portion with the great, and he will “divide”
the spoil with the strong, and the last “Concert of Europe,” when
the “kings and princes, and the
chief captains,
and the rich, and the strong” shall invoke the rocks and
the
mountains to “fall”
on them and hide
them “from the face of Him that
sitteth on the
throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.”
Rev. 6:
15-17. Broken
shall be the
whole “commercial system” of the world, now ruling all governments
and nations. Ezek. 27: 1-36; Rev. 18: 1-24; Isa.
24: 1-2. Then
the Horn will be judged, and the colossus
become “as the chaff of the
summer threshing
floor.” A
NEW AGE will heave into history,
and the
“Kingdom” come. Truth will spring out of
the earth and
Righteousness look down from heaven, and HERE
ON THIS PRESENT EARTH, as in heaven, God’s will shall be done.
It is
the vision we have been considering, and the Vision is true, and the
interpretation sure.
-------
“When the Son of
Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, THEN shall He sit upon the throne of His
glory; and before Him shall be gathered all the nations; and He shall
separate
them from one another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the
goats. And He shall
set the sheep on His right
hand, but the goats on His left. … Then
shall He say to them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father; inherit the kingdom
prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. … Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren,
even
the least, ye did it unto me. … Then shall
He say unto them on the left hand, Depart ye cursed into everlasting
fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels. … Inasmuch
as ye did it not unto one of these
least, ye did it not unto
me. And these (on
the left) shall go away into
everlasting punishment, but the righteous
(shall come) into
life everlasting.”
- Our
Lord.
CHAPTER
4
-------
(Daniel, Chapter 7
continued. – The Little Horn; His
Names; The Great Tribulation; Witness-bearing; The Ancient of Days; The
Judges
in the Judgment; Angels; Books Opened; Complete Retribution; The Son of
Man;
Efforts to evade the Chiliastic Doctrine of the Book; The Monarch of
the Fifth
Empire; the Kingdom and the People of the Saints.)
-------
As
to the “Little
Horn,” in 7:
8, 11, 20, 21-26,
it is evident that he is the chief party among all the criminals
arraigned in
the judgment. Like
the rest, he is
a king, the head of a kingdom, both symbolized in one.
Bad as the rest have been, this one is
worse, transcending them all in his crimes.
The hostility of all the ancient empires
to
The
different names under which he is known are
many. He is “the prince that shall come on wing of
abomination, a
desolater,” 9:
26; the
concluder of a treaty or “covenant”
with the masses of the Jewish people, for “one
week,” and breaker of the same, permitting their ancient
worship,
then causing it to cease in the middle of the week, 9:
27; one who set up “the
abomination”
that causes desolation, foretold by our Lord, Matt.
24: 15; “that wicked”
in Isa. 11: 4;
the “enemy
that invades like a flood,” Isa. 59:
19, and whose end is in the “overflowing,”
Dan. 9: 26, 27;
he is “the King”
who comes to his end at Jerusalem with
“none to help him,” Dan. 11: 36, 45; he is
Paul’s “man of sin,”
to whom the apostle applied the
title given by the Maccabees to his prototype – “sinful man,” a “root
of sin,” 1
Macc. 1: 10; 2: 62; 2
Thess. 2: 3. He
is “the Antichrist”
of John, 1 John 2: 18;
the personal “beast”
that “ascends out of the
bottomless pit,”
wars with the saints and slays the
“two witnesses” of Christ, Rev.
11: 7;
“Apollyon,” the
destroyer, Rev. 9: 11;
the “beast”
in Rev. 13: 5,
to whom Satan gives his
“power, throne and great
authority;”
a mysterious person, of whom it is said that he once
“was” on this earth,
but “is not” now,
yet “shall ascend out of the
abyss,” “be present,”
then “go into perdition,”
Rev. 17: 18,
a very “son of perdition;”
a “lawless one,”
whose coming is with all the
“energy of Satan,”
and “with signs and lying
wonders, and with all deceit of
unrighteousness for them that perish,” teaching “the lie” that both Christ
and Christianity are a
fraud, 2 Thess. 2: 9-12,
and whom “the Lord Jesus shall
slay with the breath of His mouth, and
destroy with the brightness of His coming,” 2 Thess. 2: 8. as by plucking up “three” of the Ten Horns, he
thereby became
“an eighth,” so is
he described
again as “an eighth”
in Rev. 17: 11,
one who stand out above all his
fellows in bad pre-eminence, as not only a “Beast”
and a “Devil,” but
as a “god,” sitting
“in
the temple of God” in Jerusalem, “showing
himself that he is god,” the self-exalting “opposer” of God, 2
Thess. 2: 4; Dan. 8: 11; 11: 36, but is
a “Man” whose secular and
anti-Sabbatic monogram is
“666,” the “number of his name,” Rev.
13: 18. Such
the “Little Horn” Daniel saw in vision – a
satanic
re-appearing military leader, atheist, antichrist and supreme imperial
ruler of
the last times, in whom, by consent of the Horns, is vested the whole
power of
apostate governments in Europe, Asia and Africa, within the limits of
the old
Roman territory; himself and his allies the destroyers of Rome, Rev. 17: 12-18, and
whose last campaign, following
Rome’s destruction, is his vision of the Holy Land where he comes to
his
end, Dan. 11: 40-45; Rev.
19: 11-21.
And
complete will be the retribution, unto ages
of ages. There is
an eternity in
justice, and the protest of right against wrong, of innocence and
weakness
against oppression, and the call for a long-delayed satisfaction, are
immortal. No law or
prescription
exempts from doom the nominally Christian yet actually de-Christianized
nations
and governments of the earth. It
is
not impossible that the Horn and his hosts shall be victorious in the “War of the Great Day of God Almighty.” Such victory would be out
of harmony
with the epoch of Judgment, the law of righteousness, the destiny of
This
Horn is the Hero of the “Great
Tribulation” foretold not only in Daniel, 7: 25; 12: 2,
but also by Moses, Deut.
32: 36-43; Balaam, Numb.
24: 23, Isaiah, 26: 12-21, Jeremiah, 30: 7, our Lord, Matt. 24: 15-21 (and
parallels), by Paul, 2
Thess. 1: 6, 7; 2: 8-12; and fully pictured by
John, Rev. 3: 8, 9; 6:
9-11; 7: 14; 11: 2, 7; 12:
6, 12, 14, 17; 13: 1-18; 14: 12; 20: 4.
It will be a tribulation sorer than any yet
preceding under Manasseh, Antiochus, Nero, the Caliphs and Popes, or
Sultans of
modern days, a time of world-wide trial and sore temptation for the
people of
God, a time of suffering, death and martyrdom of Jesus’ sake, a time
“such as never was since there
was a nation, even
to that same time,” Dan.
12: 1,
“such as never was since the
beginning of the
world, no, nor ever shall be,” Matt.
24: 21. By
such intense
expressions, so indescribably solemn, and full of faithful warning, we
learn
the unparalleled importance of this epoch for the
God’s
true people everywhere will be
called to their best witness-bearing and most honoured trial of their
patience [perseverance] and
faith in behalf of Christ.
Intensity of suffering, however, will not avail to divert
them from
their fidelity. As
in the
Manasseh’s day, in Maccabean times, in Nero’s day, in Moslem and
Papal times, and as in Bulgarian, Armenian and Cretan times, so, once
more,
will their steadfast love, their endurance and martyrdom only prove
that He who
calls them to such a trial has “COUNTED THEM WORTHY OF THE
KINGDOM OF GOD,” 2
Thess. 1: 5. The
patriot’s consecration of his
life as an offering on the altar of his country will be more than
supposed by
that ardour of love for Christ which will made His saints “rejoice” even to be “killed all the day long”
for His sake, and to
“glory in tribulation,”
Rom. 8: 36.
“Here is the
patience of the saints.”
“Here are
they who keep the commandments of God” in opposition to the orders, and
“hold fast the testimony of Jesus” in opposition to “the lie,” of the
Antichrist, Rev. 12: 17;
13: 10’ 14: 12. Divine
grace supports their souls with
strength according to their day, and confirms thief faith by rich
promises of
glory and honour MADE TO THE OVERCOMER,
by the example of Christ, the memories of the past, the sealing of the
Spirit,
the election of God and the certain knowledge that the Coming of the
Lord is
near. The sweetest
of all the notes
they will sing is this:-
“Oh,
what, if we
are Christ’s,
Is
earthly shame or
loss?
Bright
shall the crown
of glory be
When
we have borne the cross.”
As
to the “Ancient
of Days,” literally “One
ancient in
respect of Days,” older than all the late-made gods of the
heathen, transcending all time, He is “Jehovah”
Himself, the Eternal, in the absolute Unity of His essence, God. It is He, according to Old
Testament
representation, who constitutes the Judgment (1) by descending from
heaven to
earth, (2) by placing the thrones, (3) by seating the judges upon them,
(4) by
opening the books. The
white
garment denotes His majesty, rank, holiness, righteousness; the white
hair His
antiquity, even Eternity; the throne of enveloping flame His avenging
justice;
the revolving wheels of fire the rapidity of His advancing judgments,
and the
stream of radiating flame the persistence of His judicial activity till
His
strange work is done. It
is said,
He “did sit,” but
only after He
“came,” 7:
9, 22. This
is of first
importance for the interpretation, as we shall presently see. It is not needful to say
that the
“Ancient of Days”
came “in clouds”
since that is the Old Testament view
of the descent of Jehovah to judge the nations and His people. He is always spoken of as “coming down” in glorious
epiphany with fire-flame and “in
clouds,”
and attended by “angels,”
Exod. 19: 16; Ps. 47:6;
Zech. 9: 14; Isa. 27: 13; Exod.
3: 2; 19: 18. “He bowed the heavens also and came down,”
Ps. 18: 9-15.
“He came down on
As
to the Judges who sit on the thrones, the
vision is silent, because the New Testament church was not yet a fact
in
history, although there is enough in the Old Testament, elsewhere, to
indicate
who some of the Judges are, Ps.
1: 5. It
is in the New Testament, however, we
learn without mistake who the co-assessors are.
In the Revelation to John which develops
the Judgment-Scene in Daniel, the Second Coming of Christ is placed
under the
Seventh Trumpet and after the Sixth Vial, at which time the RESURRECTION OF THE HOLY DEAD occurs, Rev. 11: 15-17; 16: 15, 16,
therefore before the
judgment upon the Antichrist, the Beast.
It is immediately before the final slaughter in the
As
to the Angels, the whole angelic world is
here as “executors”
of the Judgment
by the Son of Man, Jude 14,
15. Their
innumerable number is given as
“10,000 times 10,000 and
thousands of thousands,”
Dan. 7: 10; at
the very least 204,000,000,
but more, since the extent of the multiplication is impossible, “a multitude that no man can number,” Rev. 5: 11; 7: 9; Heb. 12: 22,
because of
the indefinite terms “thousands
of thousands.” All
these, seen standing before the
throne, wait on the “Ancient of
Days”
to minister judgment on the allied millions of the “Horn,” “angels of
might,” 2
Thess. 1: 7. Already
they have reaped the righteous - [i.e., not referring
to the imputed righteous of Christ, but to those whose behaviour is
deemed by
Christ to be righteous, (Matt.
5: 20; 1 Thess. 4:
17. cf. 2 Cor. 2: 17)]- and now
they stand ready to reap the wicked, and “take
out of the kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity,”
Matt. 13: 41. Gabriel is there, and
Michael is there,
erect for Israel in the last crisis, Dan.
12: 2;
Rev. 12: 7, and Raphael, Israfil, Ithuriel and Uriel
standing in front
of the light of the sun, Rev.
19: 17. Over
against the wailing concert of
Europe the embattled hosts of God will stand, ready to make the last
charge
with “lightenings and thunders,”
“hailstones a talent’s weight,”
“snares, fire, brimstone and a
horrible tempest,
the portion of the wicked,” and turning the swords of the
wicked
“against themselves,”
will approve
the righteous judgment of God.
Solemnly they will intone the words, “Righteous
art Thou, O Lord, who wast and shall be, because Thou hast thus judged;
for
they have shed the blood of saints and of prophets, and Thou has given
them
blood to drink!” Rev. 16: 5, 6. “Fowls of
the air, come, gather yourselves together to the great supper of the
great God,
that ye may eat the flesh of kings and of captains, of mighty men, of
horses
and riders, free and bond, small and great!” Rev. 19: 17, 18. This apostate
Christendom’s cup!
– blood for blood, massacre for massacre, the righteous judgment of
God,
the end forever of bloodshed and war!
The
solemnity of the scene is augmented by the
fact that “the Books were opened,”
Dan. 7: 10.
These “Books”
are the records
of the crimes of the Horn, the Beast and his allies, the sins of the
ten
confederate kingdoms of the last times in Europe, Asia and Africa, and
the sins
of which they are heirs at law, the sins
of misgovernment, the sins committed against the saints of
God. Wherever else
the judgment will strike
so far as this particular scenes is concerned, it strikes the nations
of
Christendom within the limits of the old Roman territory ruled by the
Horn. They are the
records of the
living nations, of the kings, judges and rulers of the earth, Ps. 2: 10, who have
taken counsel against the Lord
and His Anointed, Ps. 2: 2,
- the books,
papers, files of their Gentile cabinets, their concert and their
ruptures,
their treaties and diplomacies, their guilty apathy, procrastination
and
venality when action was demanded in vindication of the right, their
deeds,
words, joint-notes, protocols and scheming policies, the motives of all
supporting or opposed to the Horn.
They are the archives, angel-kept, wherein are registered
the noon-day
iniquities and secret midnight work and devices of the “powers,” whose conduct
paved the way for the
“Great Tribulation,”
and made
imperative a judgment to punish, in order to save, the nations and
rescue the
kingdom of God from extinction. The
whole history of the Last Times is here: the encouragement of
anti-Christianity
for the sake of gain, the coalition of Christian governments with the
guilds of
Mammon against justice, truth, religion, humanity and liberty; their
covenants
made and broken; their rivalries and envies, highway robbery and
rapacity,
their greed of gold and lust of supremacy; their defiance of Christian
sentiment and of every appeal to virtue; their despotism, pride,
misgovernment,
duplicity, oppression of the weak and guilty trade with the strong, -
and most
of all, their shedding of innocent blood.
All are here recorded with a pen unerring.
No injustice is forgotten, no massacre
of devastated homes, no crimsoned fields strewn with the unturned faces
of the
dead. Nor is the
name of one who
took part in producing such scenes, or consented to the wrongs that
begat them,
misspelled, or the place of his residence misread.
The whole apostasy of Christendom, the
Horn’s loud-mouthed arrogance and the words of the cry, “We will not have this Man to reign over
us,” are
written in the “Books,”*
and
judgment by the records must pass on the kingdoms whose boast was their
Christianity, culture, civilization.
Such the solemn scrutiny.
[*
Note. “Books,”
in this context and at this time, are not the same as the “Books” which will be opened
at the end
of the Kingdom Age, and at the time of the Great White Throne Judgment:
Rev. 20: 12.]
Our
Lord’s description of the separation
of the nations gathered against Jerusalem, and the decision that fixes
the
destiny of their individuals, according to their conduct toward
converted
Israel in the tribulation, leaves little doubt that the “throne of His glory” at
that time will overhang
the Mount of Olivet, facing Jerusalem, where the delivered Jews will be
gathered nearest to Himself.
Geographically, northward toward the mountains, on the
right, the
“righteous,” while
southward, on the
left, through the valleys of Hinnom and Jehosaphat.
The scene in Matt.
25: 31-46, is but the development of the scenes in Joel 3: 12-17; Zech. 14: 1-5.
[
Sub-title, ‘Effort to Evade the Chiliastic
Doctrine of the Book.’.]
As
to the “Son of
Man” (Bar Enash), to whom the “Ancient
of Days” commits this judgment, modern criticism has
attempted to
show that the expression, “One
like a Son of Man,”
imports no more than a figure of speech, “personified Israel,” or
“the personified people of the Saints”; at best the abstract
“Idea” that the kingdom of the Saints will be humane in contrast
with the beastly kingdom of the Horn.
By such means the doctrine of the literal, personal Advent
of Christ to
gather His saints, redeem Israel, destroy the Antichrist, judge the
nations and
introduce the millennial age, is sought to be set aside, and His Second
Coming
declared a spiritual one, already a fact in history.
This dust is easily swept away.
The word “like”
in no way denies a proper personality, but simply states in what form
the
object seen in the vision appeared to the Seer. So
the Chaldean king saw “four men”
walking in the furnace, and “the
form of the fourth was like to a Son of God,”
Dan. 3: 25. In the one a human, in the
other a
superhuman of Divine personality is seen, and these two are one. Our Lord’s identification
of
Himself under the most solemn adjuration before the supreme council of
His
nation, with the “Son of Man”
in
this vision, and as “coming in
the clouds of
heaven,” Matt.
26: 63-67, and
again as the “Son of Man,”
to Whom
the “Father hath committed all
judgment,”
John 5: 22, 23,
and the whole New Testament
use of this phrase when dealing with the “Last
Things,” Matt.
16: 27; 24: 30, 31; 26:
64; Acts 1: 9-11; Rev. 1: 7; 14: 14, rebukes sufficiently
this assault
on the vision which is the Old Testament source of the title. The Glorious Person who
appears in the
scene is none other than the Son of Mary, Son of David, Son of Abraham,
the
Incarnate, crucified exalted
The
Sanhedrin and the whole Jewish nation so
understood it. Before
the Lord made
use of the title the “Book of
Enoch” called Messiah “Bar Anani,” the “Son of a
Cloud.” The Targum of Jonathan called Him
“Bar Nibli,” the “Son of a Cloud.”
Jacchides
said, the “Son of Man in the clouds is Messiah our
Righteousness.” To
the
question, who is Bar Enash (the Son of Man), Rabbi
Simeon answered, “He is Messiah of whom it is said, He
came with the clouds of heaven.”
It was to Him, a frail man, yet begotten by the Holy Ghost
and born of a
virgin, Jehovah said, “Sit thou
at my right hand,”
Ps. 110: 1. David’s Son was David’s
Lord, God and Man, two natures on One Person forever!
It is He who comes to judge the Horn,
the nations and the world, and deliver
Post-millennialists
have undertaken to show
that the Judgment-Scene here “has nothing to do with the Second
Advent,” They take
their
stand on the preposition “to”
in the verse, “One like a Son of
Man came with
the clouds of heaven, and came to
the Ancient of Days, and they (the clouds)
brought him near before Him,” 7: 13,
and maintain that what is here meant is the Ascension of Christ in
clouds “to” the
Father at the close
of His First Advent and ministry.
By this means it is hoped to destroy “the doctrine of the
pre-millennial coming of Christ.”
It is clearly seen that the “Kingdom,”
as predicted, comes to victory ON
THE EARTH and is given to the Son, Dan. 7: 14,
and the Saints, 7: 27,
only AFTER the
Son has “come with the clouds of
heaven,” and that, if by
this coming the Second Advent is meant, the doctrine of the
pre-millennial
advent of Christ is irrefutable as the word of God.
The effort, therefore, is to show that
the expression, “came to the
Ancient of Days,”
is meant the Ascension
from the
What
we have here, therefore, is the glorious [Messianic]
King of the
As
to the last party named in the
Judgment-Scene, they are called the “Saints,”
with whom the Horn “makes war,”
7: 21, 25, the “Saints
of the Most High” who receive the kingdom, and “possess the kingdom forever, even for
ever and ever,”
7: 18, 22, the “People of the Saints of the Most High,”
to whom
is given the kingdom and the greatness of the kingdom, not in a
super-earthly
or celestial sphere, but “underneath all heavens,”
7: 27.
Incontrovertibly, these are Daniel’s people, the Jews,
whose land
the Horn has invaded, and who have suffered under Antichrist during the
great
Tribulation. It is
their fortunes
the prophet foretells, their relation to the world-power from the time
of their
captivity till the Son of Man comes.
For them, pre-eminently, this Old Testament apocalypse was
given,
forecasting their sinful and weary way, and the glorious end of the
election of
God, 12: 1. They are New-Born Israel
of the last
times, “delivered”
when the Son of
Man comes, the converts from apostasy in Jacob, saith the Lord, Isa. 59: 20; Rom. 11: 26. Their holy dead have
already [will
be]
raised up from their tombs, and made co-assessors with Christ on His [millennial] throne. To the holy living,
reserved in
God’s counsel to be the local and sustaining centre of the Messianic
Kingdom in victory on the earth, and whose “representation”
is to be as “life from the dead”
to
the nations, Rom. 11: 15,
and their “fullness”
the greater “riches to the
Gentiles,” and answered for their
conduct.
And
this has ever been the one interpretation of
the best Hebrew Doctors in all ages of the world.
“The time
will come,” said David
Kimchi, “when Jacob shall prosper and be redeemed and
exalted, though
now he is scattered and is very low, and a wonder to the nations. When the nations are
gathered against
Involuntarily
we turn to that beautiful scene of
the Sun-clothed Woman in Rev.
12: 1-6, the
daughter of
-------
“Allah! perchance
the secret word might spell;
If
Allah be, He keeps
His secret well.
What
He has hidden, can
we hope to find?
Shall
God His secret to
a maggot tell?
The
Koran! Well, just
put me to the test;
Lovely
old book,
although in error drest,
Believe
me, I can quote the Koran
too;
The
unbeliever knows the
Koran best.
And
do you think that unto such as you,
A
maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,
God
tells
the secret, and denies it me?
Well,
well, what matters it, believe that too.”
- Omar Khayyam.
CHAPTER
5
(Daniel, Chapter 8. – “Time
of the End” of the Third Empire; The Kingdom not
mentioned; Date
of the Vision; Place of the Vision; The Vision itself; The Eastern
Question;
The Ram and Rough Goat; Cyrus and Alexander; Antiochus Epiphanes;
Vision of
Horror at Jerusalem; Angelic Dialogue; Apparition of a Man; The 2300
Evening-mornings; Interpretation of the Vision; Time of Fulfilment Vain
Efforts
to identify the two Little Horns,; Similarities and Dissimilarities;
Grounds of
the same; Purpose of the Vision.)
-------
DANIEL,
CHAPTER 8. – THE EASTERN QUESTION.
RAM AND GOAT.
Chapter
8
contributes another
striking proof of the truth of our thesis, viz., that the
As chapter 7
was supplementary to chapter
2, so chapter 8
is supplementary to both. Great
space was given to the affairs of
the fourth empire, the Roman, in chapter
2
and chapter 7,
while only four verses had
been given in both to the second and third empires (2:
32, 39; 7: 5, 6), the Persian and Grecian.
The vision, therefore, in chapter
8, treats more largely of these, yet
rapidly runs over them in order to reach the “Little
Horn” of the third.
Hence forth the whole interest of the book of Daniel
circles around
Messiah and His relation to those Two Horns, and to the Jews. As the Horn in chapter
7 is the last Gentile oppressor of
1.
As to the Date of the vision.
It
is in “the
third year of the reign of the King Belshazzar,” 8: 1.
Assuming that Belshazzar is the “Bel-sar-usur”
of the monuments, and according to Oriental usage, a “King,” the date of the
vision is B.C.538, the
year of Babylon’s fall and of his feast, 5:
1-30, the first year of Darius, the Mede, to whom Cyrus
had given the
rule over Babylon, the year when Daniel was thrown to the lions’ “Den,” the second year
before the edict of Cyrus,
B.C.536, releasing the Jews, sixty-eight of the seventy years of the
captivity
having passed away.
2
As to the Place of the vision.
The
prophet, though bodily in
3
The Vision Itself.
It
is no less than that of the “Eastern
Question,” a vision of confliction civilizations, the Asiatic and
European struggling for the mastery of the
Lifting
his eyes, entranced, the prophet sees
the two-horned Ram standing in front of the Ulai on its opposite side,
the
horns of unequal height, the highest nearest the stream, denoting the
superiority of the Persian over the Median element in the Medo-Persian
empire
of Cyrus. The
duality of the
dynasties is merged in the unity of the empire.
The Ram’s motion indicates the
conquest of the whole Medo-Persian succession, for two hundred years. Invincibly the Ram butts
westward,
towards Babylonia, Lydia, Asia Minor and Greece; nothward toward
Armenia, the
Caspian, Bactria, Scythia; southward toward Egypt, Lybia and Ethiopia, 8: 4.
A bounding goat with projecting horn, intraocular, comes
leaping from
the West, and with unexampled speed skipping across the face of the
earth, as
if spurning the ground, rushes with irresistible and mad onset into the
Ram,
breaking his horns, casting him down, stamping upon him; no allies able
to save
him out of the goat’s power.
That “Notable Horn”
is young
Alexander, first king of the Graeco-Macedonian empire, but twenty years
of age,
whose first leap at the Ram was across the Hellespont, B.C.334, with
40,000
men, and whose rapidly-fought battles from the Granicus, 334, to the
Arbela,
331, thence to the banks of the Indus and the Nile, thence again to
Shushan,
325, and dying at Babylon, 323, broke the horns of the Ram, cast him
dawn,
stamped on him, paid him in full for his invasion of Greece, and ended
forever
the Medo-Persian empire. “Notable Horn!” In the words of Napoleon, “Alexander deserves all the
glory the world has
given him,”
By such symbols the Holy Spirit foretold the
fortunes of the
Persian and Greek empires.
While
the prophet is gazing he sees a notable
horn “broken,”
reads therein the
premature death of Alexander, and beholds the “four
notable horns” rising in its place, towards the four
points of the
compass. They are
the four kingdoms
into which Alexander’s empire was parted,
The
vision presents to the eye of the prophet a
scene of sacrilegious horror enacted in the temple-court and city of
Jerusalem;
an attempt to exterminate the holy people and the religion of Jehovah,
and
substitute for both a heathen colony and the Greek idolatry; the first
attempt
ever made in history to force a people to forswear their faith, or
suffer death
for disobedience. The
God-defying
insolence of the Horn was, till then, without a parallel. Other conquerors of the
Jews had, at
least, respected their religion.
This one had no respect.
Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus and Alexander, paid homage to “God, Most High,” and bowed
before the holy
oracles. This one
pays none, and
tramples the “Truth”
to the
ground. With
self-magnifying
egotism he invades the Holy Land, and raging in hate against the Holy
Covenant,
takes the
4
The Angelic Dialogue.
While
the prophet was gazing at the horror,
suddenly he hears “One Holy One
speaking, and
another Holy One saying to the Certain Holy One,” as yet
unknown
– “Palmoni,” or “Peloni Almoni,” that “Some
One or Other,” a “Wonderful
Numberer” – “How
long the vision of the Daily, and the transgression of
the desolation, giving both the sanctuary and the Host to be trodden
down?” 8: 13.
We have here a glimpse into the angel
world, which rationalists use to discredit the Book of Daniel as a
spurious
production, deriving its angelology from the Zoroastrian system with
its
“Amshaspands,” or fairy beings, analogous to the Sylphs and Fauns
of the Greeks! Nothing
is more
false. The Biblical
angels are the
“Holy Watchers,” Dan. 4: 13, 17-23; 6: 22;
whose vigils remain
unbroken, the sleepless sentinels of heaven who take interest in all
the
affairs of the earth, among whom the Un-slumbering Keeper of Israel
presides, Ps. 121: 4.
Daniel hears Gabriel asking Palmoni “how
long” the horror shall be, Palmoni answering: “Until 2,300 evening-morning; and the
Sanctuary shall be
justified.” i.e., restored to its lawful use, since so
long as
profaned it lay under condemnation.
The dialogue is evidently meant for the benefit of Daniel,
to whom the
vision was given. If
the “2,300 evening-morning”
are whole days, they are
six years, four months, twenty days; if half days, the recurring times
for
morning and evening sacrifice, they ate three years, two months, ten
days, the
time of the Maccabean tribulation, B.C.168-165, at whose close the
sanctuary
was “cleansed” by
Judas Maccabaeus,
and the Jewish worship restored – the death-year of Antiochus being 164.
5
The Apparition of a
The
holy prophet is still perplexed. He
betrays his confusion and anxiety to understand
the “meaning” of
what he had
seen. It was not
enough that the
duration of the horror should be determined.
He would know the import of the scene
itself. “I, even I, Daniel, would know the meaning.” The Lord regards his
distress and
commands immediate relief. “That Certain Saint,” the “Holy Some One or Other,”
“Palmoni,”
as yet unseen, utters his voice.
With a tone of superior authority and dignity, such as
belongs only to
One made higher than the angels, He bids the questioner in the dialogue
[to]
make known the “meaning”
to
Daniel. If we
really desire to know
the “meaning” of God’s revelation, God will grant our
desire. From
between the banks of
the Ulai, where hovered the form mysterious above its waters, the order
comes,
“Gabriel, make this one to
understand the vision.”
Holy angels are admitted to the secrets
of God, and reveal to mortals His mind.
The prophet, affected by his environment, and overborne by
more than
magnetic power, and weak as a child, passes into a “deep sleep.” The angel “touches” him, imparting
strength to stand erect and receive
the revelation. Gabriel
bespeaks
his closest attention, since the vision relates to the “Time of the End” and God’s “Last Indignation” against
6
The Interpretation of the Vision.
Much
of this has already been anticipated.
First of all, the “Ram”
and the “Goat”
represent the kingdoms and kings if the Medo-Persian and
Graeco-Mecedonian
wmpires, These are
the second and
third, and correspond to the Silver and Brass of the Colossus in chapter 2, and to the
Bear and Leopard (or
Panther) in chapter 7; 8:
20, 21. Here
we have Divine authority against
the rationalism that substitutes wrong empires in the sacred text. We know that the first
empire in the
Colossus is that of
Five
different expressions are used to mark the
time when the vision would be accomplished.
(1) The “Time
of the End,” 8:
17; (2) the
“Last End of the Indignation”
of God
against Israel’s apostasy, 8:
19; (3)
the “Latter Time of their
Kingdoms,”
i.e., the time of the decline of the four kingdoms into which
Alexander’s
empire was divided, 8: 23;
(4) “when the transgressors are
come to the full,”
i.e., when Israel’s apostates have filled up the measure of their sins;
(5) “for many days,”
i.e., years
preceding; a long time elapsing between the giving of the vision and
its
fulfilment. Here is
proof
conclusive that the prophecy was not written in Maccabean times, by a
Maccabean
Jew, but long years previously. 12: 4; 7: 1; 11: 21. The phrase “Time of the End” is a
technical expression in
prophecy, indefinite and general in itself, including (1) a near
horizon of
fulfilment, and (2) a horizon more remote, as in all typical prophecy. Here, it denotes, first of
all, the
“2300 evening-morning”
at the close
of the third empire in its four-parted state, “the
latter times of the four kingdoms,” when the Jewish
apostasy would
come to its height in pre-Christian times – “many days,” i.e., 370 years
after the date of
the vision. History
has proved the
truth of the prediction. On
the
other hand, the “Indignation”
is a
technical term in prophecy, denoting God’s judicial wrath against
Israel
for their transgression of His covenant, and the “Last End of the Indignation”
that final stroke of punishment
on all apostates from the covenant immediately preceding the final
deliverance
of the Jews, Deut. 32: 35-43,
and of which
the previous strokes, Isa.
10: 23; 28: 23;
and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, Rom. 9: 28,
are types. It is
the period of the
“Great Tribulation,”
Dan. 7: 1; Matt. 24: 21;
Rev. 7: 14; 13: 5. It
is clear, therefore, that not only
was the period B.C.168-165 not the “Last
End of
the Indignation,” since the Jews “filled
up the measure” of their fathers’ sins by crucifying
Christ,
Matt. 23: 32,
and the “Indignation”
again fell upon their city and upon
themselves, but that, once more, in the far “Time
of the End,” it will fall upon them in the last crisis of
their
history, 7: 26; 9: 27; 10:
14; 11: 40-45; 12: 1, 7,
9. Therefore
the “meaning” of
the prophecy is not limited to the
times of Antiochus, but looks to the close of the last 1, 260 days of
the Horn
in chapter 7. In this sense, again, the
vision is
“for many days.” Every
child of Abraham knows the “meaning”
of the great phrase “the Time of
the End.” It
is the time of the cessation of
Modern
false criticism has laboured hard to
identify the two “Little Horns”
of chapter 7
and 8
in order to arrest the scope of Daniel’s predictions at B.C.164, and to
deny the Messianic character of the book, and its eschatological value. Vain effort has been made
to equate the
1, 150 days of Antiochus with the 1,260 days of the [last] Antichrist,
and to insert an independent “
The
deep ground of the
“Similarities” lies in the fact that the Ages and Ends are all
prearranged in the counsel of God, each a mirror in which the other is
seen,
and that the World-Power is an organic growth of essentially the same
nature in
every age, and producing essentially the same characters at the end of
each
age, only in higher development. It
lies in the fact that a law of degeneration runs parallel with a law of
improvement, evil ever waxing to its height, coming into closer and
deadlier
antagonism with the good that seeks to restrain and hem it in. The more energetic the
forces of good,
the more powerful and persistent the aroused and excited forces of
evil, and
but for the intervention of God, the evil overcoming finally the good. Sharper, and deeper, and
wider becomes
the conflict. Wholly
by the
supernatural power of God is the life of His Kingdom maintained. Its supremacy is not due
to human
agencies. Civilization
is not
grace. Ethics,
better laws,
science, sociology, never eradicate sin, bind Satan, or remove the
material
objects that tempt men and nations to aim at self-aggrandizement
regardless of
justice, truth, humanity and liberty, and the equal rights of the weak
and
opposed. The moral
wickedness of
the World-Power in its social, civil, political and international
relations,
its lust after wealth and supremacy, its opposition to the spirit [or Spirit] and
the truth of God, and its alienation from righteousness, precipitate
the last
struggle between evil and good, and make the dissolution and the “End of the Age” a
necessity, in order to save
the Kingdom of God. And
with the
“Time of the End,”
the old
personalities reappear, according to an ever unerring law of history
and of
nature, like producing like, deepening opposition to God and His
Kingdom here,
intenser devotion there, the world-kingdoms ever more deaf to the
appeal of the
people of God. And
the nearer the
“End” of any
dispensation, age, or
period, to the “Last End,”
the more
“Similar” to the last Antichrist appears the one that preceded him
– Belshazzar pointing to Haman to Antiochus, Antiochus to
Antichrist. Such is
the law of
development along the ages, and such the grounds of the
“Similarities” between the two Horns.
Only with the ruin of the last, and of
all Gentile politics and powers, come
This
vision was given to unveil the future of
the Jewish people subsequent to their return from Babylonish exile, to
ward
apostates and prepare and comfort the faithful in view of the
tribulation to
come upon them. It
is a signal
proof of the fidelity, care and compassion of God.
Though severe, yet the tribulation
should be short, and the outcome as glorious as the conflict was
painful. In any
case, “the righteous are in the
hands of God,” and
“their blood is precious in His
sight.” The
vision is elaborated in chapter
11, where the several campaigns of the
Syrian tyrant are exhibited and the grand resistance of the Maccabean
heroes is
immortalized: a resistance in behalf of the “Truth”
and “Covenant” of
God, which, with a
perfect knowledge of their history, fired the soul of Paul to
re-immortalize
their deeds, and celebrate their faith as worthy to stand beside the
faith of
an Abel, Enoch, and Noah, an Abraham and all the patriarchs, a Moses,
Joshua
and all the Judges, supported alone by the promises of God, and cheered
by the HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION [out] FROM THE DEAD.
But for this prophecy, the history might
have been otherwise. It
shows what
a power the hope of Messiah’s Second Coming had even with Old Testament
saints. And how the
example of the
Maccabees inspired New Testament believers to witness a good
confession,
“looking unto Jesus,”
the words of
Paul suffice to show. They
are set
forth as an example for us. “They, without us, are not made perfect.”
-------
“The
earliest attempt to interpret the
seventy weeks was in Maccabean times.
Ignorantly, the Two Little Horns and the prince that shall
come were
identified, and a perverted reckoning was accepted by the Alexandrian
amenders
of the Septuagint. Both
the
reckoning and the Septuagint were repelled by the post-Maccabean
Palestinian
Jews and by the Christian Church which adopted the text of Theodotion.
Our
Lord’s use of the expression, ‘abomination
of desolation,’ Matt. 25: 15, applying
to the future times beyond
His own day, proves that He interpreted Dan. 9: 26,
27, as a double prophecy, pointing first to the
destruction of
Jerusalem, and next to the 70th week that closes the Times of the
Gentiles. His own prophecy thereby became a double one,
and for this reason
the admonition is given, ‘Let
him that readeth
understand.’ Clearly,
His mind was resting on all the places in Daniel where the expression, ‘abomination of desolation,’
is used, or the idea is
given, viz., Dan. 9: 27; 11: 31; 12:
11; the times of Antiochus being regarded as typical of the last times. Here is seen that law and
delay in
prophecy and history by which the end of one age becomes the type of
another.”
-
Fraidi.
-------
CHAPTER
6
DANIEL,
CHAPTER 9. –
THE SEVENTY
WEEKS.
(Daniel, Chapter 9 – The
Seventy Weeks; General Remarks;
Place of the Prophecy; Occasion of it; The Prophecy Itself; Its Correct
Translation;
Covers the Prayer; Exposition of the Seventy Weeks; Their
Sub-distribution: The
Two Intervals; No Year-day Theory in Daniel; The Seventieth Week; The
Four
Great Ideas of World-view, World-history, World-judgment and
World-chronology;
The Interpretation sure; The Secret disclosed; The reasons of the False
Interpretation; The Jews as Reckoners of Time; Gentile Confirmation;
The
Jurisdiction of the Seventy Weeks over all New Testament Prophecy; It
fixes
absolutely the Time-point of the Second Advent.)
-------
Chapter
9 affords
a fourth and
signal confirmation of our thesis, viz., that the
1
As to the Date of the Prophecy.
It
was “in the
first year of Darius, the son of Ahashuerus of the seed of the Medes,”
9: 1, who was “made king,” by Cyrus, “over the
realm of the Chaldeans,” 9:
1, 2,
and from whom he “received
(not “took”) the kingdom”
when
2
As to the Place of the Prophecy.
That
it was Babylon is clear from the fact that
the exiles had not yet been released from captivity, that in this year,
under
Darius, Daniel was thrown into the Lion’s Den, and that the whole
prayer
of the prophet assumes his presence in the heathen capital on the banks
of the
Euphrates, pleading for the restoration.
3
As to the Occasion of the prophecy.
It
was the fact (1) that Babylon had fallen, (2)
that 68 of the 70 years of the captivity had expired, (3) that Daniel
had
betaken himself “by prayer and
supplications with
fasting and sackcloth,” 9:
3,
to plead with God, if so be that He might advance the hour of Israel’s
deliverance, and not delay their release, and (4) that, although he “understood,” from Jeremiah
and the sacred books,
“the number of the years the
Lord would
accomplish,” even 70, “in
the
desolations of Jerusalem,” 9: 2,
yet, peradventure, the time might be conditional in God’s purpose, and
even now, end the captivity; all the more since Babylon had already
fallen! He knew
well the enormity
of
4
The Answer to the Prayer, the
Prophecy
Itself.
It
is in the last four verses of the
chapter. It came at
3 o’clock
in the afternoon, or “about the
time of the
evening oblation,” 9:
20, 21. At
such a time “Gabriel,”
whom he “had seen in the vision,”
in chapter
8, “being caused to
fly swiftly,”
sped his way through the constellations, entered the earth’s
atmosphere,
and alighted near Daniel, with a message from the throne of God, and “touched” him. He accosts him: “O Daniel, greatly beloved!”
– [a] man filled
with holy desires AFTER THE
Verse
24, “Seventy sevens (of years) are
decreed upon thy people (the Jews) and upon the
holy city (Jerusalem) to
finish the
transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to cover over iniquity,
and to
cause everlasting righteousness to come, and to seal
(verify) vision and prophet,
and to anoint a holy of holies.”
Verse
25, “Know, therefore, and discriminate; from
the issuing of a word
to restore, and to built Jerusalem, unto Prince Messiah, shall be seven
Sevens
(of years), and Sixty and Two
Sevens; she shall be
restored and built as to street and rampart (street and
wall), and in distress shall be
the times.”
Verse
26, “And after those Sixty-two Sevens,
Messiah shall be cut off,
and there is not to Him (no guilt and no just judgement); and the city and the sanctuary shall
they destroy,”
viz., “the people of the prince,
the one that is
to come, and his end shall be in the overflowing; and unto that end
shall be
war, a decree (measure or limit) of desolations,”
Verse
27, And he (the price to come) shall
cause to prevail a covenant for the many, One Seven; and he shall cause
sacrifice and offering to cease, Half of that Seven; and upon wing of
abominations (he shall come) a
desolater, even
until the consummation and (until) that which is
decreed (God’s wrath) is
poured upon the
one desolating.”
This
marvellous prophecy and answer to the
prayer covers every point made in the prayer itself, as to the Jew,
5
The Interpretation of the “Seventy Weeks.”
The
understanding of the weeks is indispensable
to every student of prophecy.
Neither our Lord’s Olivet Discourse concerning the End,
nor
Paul’s Thessalonian letters concerning the Tribulation and the
Antichrist, nor John’s Apocalypse can be understood without them. It is no objection that
men have failed,
so long, to understand them. They
were given to be understood; “Know,
therefore,
and understand,” 9:
25. The
angel declares that in the “Time
of the End” they shall be understood, 12: 4.
From the bosom of the prophecy a sun-burst of surpassing
brilliancy will
break forth, as
The
“Seventy
Sevens,” or “Weeks,”
selected from the whole course of time, as weeks relating entirely to
Jewish
affairs, are Weeks of Years, each seventh part being literally one year. As seven days constitute a
week, so
seven years constitute the prophetic week.
All the weeks are of equal chronological measurement, each
week
consisting of seven literal years, or 2, 520 literal days. The sum is, therefore, 490
years. These weeks
are distributed into three
divisions of 7, 62, 1, that is, into 49, 434, 7, years respectively,
and,
excepting Babylon, span the whole height of the Colossus in chapter 2, and the
lives of the Four Beasts in chapter
7, i.e., from B.C.535, to the second
coming of Christ. They
cover the
whole subsequent period of
[*
That the Jews will build their
The
sum of the Interval, 30+21+6 is 57
years. The
Restoration-period was a
Double-period, the total secular time being 106 years (21+57+28+106) of
which
21 and 28 were the first “Seven
Weeks,”
or 49 years, assigned of God for Restoration-work, the uncounted
Interval being
one of open apostasy from His covenant.
The diagram of the time stands thus:
THE
RESTORATION PERIOD.
B.C. -
3 - B.C.
(Interval)..- B.C. -
4 - B.C.
536 -
21 - 515..(57 years) -
458 - 28 -
439
The
first section, that of the days of
Zerubbabel,” Neh. 5: 14; the last that of the “Days of Ezra the Scribe and Nehemiah,”
Neh. 13: 6, 7.*
[* Note. “Silently the book of Ezra
passes
over the time following the dedication of the second
“The
times of Zerubbabel are not connected
with the times of Ezra, in the book of Ezra, except by the phrase “after these things,” Ezra 7: 1,
i.e., after the dedication of the
After
patient study, I have been led to this
solution of this age-long problem, and have given it in full discussion
in a
previous work. Reviewed
widely, and
accepted by all who have tested the proofs, it remains un-assailed from
any
side. See “The Thousand Years in Both Testaments,”
by Nathaniel West, Pref. 7., pp 152-161, 175-197.
It has remained a secret, till now, that
the Interval, here mentioned, lay concealed by the angel in the bosom
of the
first seven weeks. -
Nathaniel
West.]
The
rest of the interpretation is not
difficult. The 62
weeks reach from
the close of the Restoration to the birth of Christ, A.D.1. These united to the seven
preceding are
69 weeks, or 483 years, to which adding the 57, the result is 540, the
excess
of four years due to the error in our common Dionysian reckoning, the
true date
being B.C.536. Thus,
by the
discovery of the interval of 57 years was really concealed in the
breast of the
“Seven Weeks,” the
perplexing
problem, unsolved for 2,200 years is satisfied at last, and Biblical
and
secular chronology brought into perfect harmony.
The
second Interval lies between the 69th and
the 70th weeks, with two great events at its head, the Crucifixion of
Christ, A.D.30,
and the Destruction of Jerusalem, A.D.70.
It is called “Unto
the End,” Dan.
9: 26; interpreted by our Lord as meaning,
“Until the Times of the Gentiles
be fulfilled,”
Luke 21: 24. During this period, 1,826 [now 1,938]
years have passed away since the legions of Titus camped on Mount
Olivet,
Jerusalem has been “trodden down
of the Gentiles,”
unable to rise to her glory because of the unbelief of her sons, and
the
occupation of the Holy Land by a “European Concert” that gives to
the Turk his power. Upon
the Holy
City “war and desolations”
are
decreed and upon the people “dispersion”
till the “End” of
their weary way,
when, under the providence of God, yet after severe conflict, Palestine
will
become the asylum of the Hebrew race, reclaimed from Gentile hoofs, a
land
“married to the Lord,”
her city a
“city ought out, not forsaken,”
her
people “the redeemed of the Lord,”
a
holy nation of which it is said, “In
righteousness shalt thou be established; thou shalt be far from
oppression, for
thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come nigh thee.” Isa. 60:
1-22; 61: 1-11; 62: 1-12; 54: 1-17.
But
prior to this glorious outcome, lies the
“70th week.” It coincides with and
closes the “Times of the Gentiles.” It is the last “7 years,” or “One week,”
in Daniel 9: 27,
the Antichrist’s
week, the week of the “Little
Horn”
in chapter 7,
the week of “the prince that
shall come on wing of abomination,”
9: 27, invading
the Holy Land, and swooping
like a vulture on its prey. His
last campaign is given in Dan.
11: 40-45,
and elaborated in Zech. 12:
2-8; 14: 1-4; 12: 15,
and in Joel 3: 9-17. The week is opened by the
advent of the
Antichrist and his “covenant”
with
the Jewish masses, Dan. 9:
27, a treaty
whereby the power holding
[*Note.
– No “Year-Day”
theory
exists any where in Daniel. The
word to Ezekiel, “Son of Man, I
have given thee
each day for a year,” was not spoken to Daniel. His “Sevens”
are not seven days put
for years,
but seven years
of 360 days each, prophetic time – a year for a year, and in each year
a day for
a day,
and not a day for 360 years. The
70th Week in Daniel 9: 27
is not 2,500 years,
but twice 1,260, or 2,520 days. The 1,260, or “time two times, and a half,”
are not 1,260
years, but three and a half years.
Otherwise, the 69 Weeks would be 173,880 years! All the weeks are
commensurate.]
It
is the final testing of both Jews and
Gentiles who believe in Christ, the “Great
Tribulation” spoken of in Jer.
30: 7,
as that of “Jacob’s trouble,”
in Matt. 24: 15-28,
as that of “Christ’s Elect,”
in Rev. 7: 14,
as that out of which the election of
Israel, 7: 4-8,
and the election of the
Gentiles, 7: 9,
shall come; and in Dan. 12:
1, as that which is followed by
Israel’s deliverance and the RESURRECTION OF THE HOLY
DEAD. The close of
the last 1,260 days of this week is the close of the “time, times, and dividing of a time,”
i.e.,
three and a half years, in Dan.
7: 25; 12: 7,
which is signalized by the overthrow of the Antichrist at the Second
Coming of
the Son of Man. The
same scene of
the Lord’s intervention is pictured in Joel
3: 16, 17; Isa. 59: 19-21; 63: 1-6; 66: 14-16; Zeph. 3: 14-20; Zech.
14: 1-5. with
these mighty events the “70th
week” terminates, viz., with the
New-Born Israel, the Second Advent, the Resurrection of the Holy Dead,
the
Destruction of the Antichrist, the Downfall of the Colossus and the setting up of the
Here,
then, in chapter
9, we have attained a view of the world framed in a
chronology of the
world, in connection with the Jewish race, and their relation to the
empires
and kingdoms of the world, which entitles Daniel to be the proud
distinction of
being the founder of the true philosophy of history, the first writer
on universal
history itself. The
four great
conceptions of “Welt-Anschauung,”
“Welt-Geschichte,” “Welt-Gericht,” and “Welt-
Chronologue,” are here represented.
The second, third and fourth empires,
Israel’s pathway full of sorrow, and Israel’s end full of joy, the
doom of Gentile politics and power,
and the kingdom of God in victory, all are here. In the most solemn manner
Gabriel
informs the prophet that the history of God’s people courses its way
through different periods of time, all determined by the immutable
measurements
of God; that as the road-surveyor determines his track with culvert,
tunnel,
curve, and grade, or a landscape painter sketches his plan on the
canvass,
draws its lines, fixes its measurements, projects the long perspective,
the
gloomed defiles and shining end, so God has constructed here the way
for
Israel’s feet to walk and reach their rest.
For wisest reasons, one point, alone, is
undefined, impossible by us to be determined, until we come to it, the
point
when the “What withholdeth”
is
“taken out of the way,”
and the 70th
week begins, 2 Thess. 2: 7. Still, all is “Nihtak,”
decreed, determined, decided of God; the 70 weeks, the 7, 62, and 1,
the 2,300
evening-morning, the twice 1,260 days, and, as we shall see, the 1,290
and 1,
335 days, 12: 11, 12 all measured by Palmoni,
the Wonderful Numberer, that Certain Holy One, whose voice came from
between the banks of the Ulai, 8:
13. To
“know”
and “understand”
the true
interpretation of the 70 weeks is the first necessity of the student of
Old and
New Testament prophecy, and apart from which, ignorant of God’s plan,
he
will founder and wander in darkness, the victim of a hundred false
time-reckonings, and of expectations borne of enthusiasm worse than
these.
With
perfect confidence we may rest in this
interpretation. Great
diversity of
opinion has existed during the last 2,200 years as to the proper
reckoning,
owing (1) to defective chronology and history, and (2) to the unseen
gap
between the third and fourth weeks.
Le Long enumerates 56
different views, Graetz 107, as far
as to the 15th century, and Reusch,
Fraidi and D’Envieu, have
tabulated all the views of the church fathers, the middle age, and of
modern
times. Three
different hypotheses
exist as to the scope of the 70 weeks, (1) that they end with the times
of
Antiochus, B.C.164, (2) with the times of Titus, A.D.70, (3) with the
Second
Coming of Christ to destroy the Antichrist.
The first is impossible, since our Lord
declares that Daniel predicts the Roman fall of
[*
“After the most thorough investigation,
all modern scholars are agreed that the suffix ‘o’ in the Hebrew
‘qetstso.’ Dan.
9: 26, is masculine and refers to the ‘prince
that shall come,’ and who is the subject of the verb ‘confirm.’ And that ‘his end’
is the correct rendering.”
“It refers neither to Antiochus, Christ, or
Titus.” Fraidi, Die Exrgese der siebzig Wochen, p. 68. “The suffix and its noun
can only
be rendered ‘his end,’
viz., that of
the hostile prince, and at
The
use of the definite article “the”
in the phrase “the one that is
to come,” i.e., after the
destruction of the city by Titus, points back to the “Little Horn,” in chapter
7, as to a character already well-known to Daniel, and
which was the
object of his interest in a previous vision.
The translation “his
end,” instead of “the
end thereof,” and “unto
the end, war,” instead of “unto
the end of the war,” in 9:
26, rest upon an absolutely correct text, and
are now conceded by all exegetes.
The sudden spring from
While
it is true that, for 2,200 years, none
have seen the gap between the third and fourth weeks, yet nearly all
the early
church fathers saw the gap between the 69th and
70th
weeks. Of this the
vast majority
were certain, viz., that the 70th week is the
last
Antichrist’s week, at the “End”
of Gentile times, and that the starting-point of the 70 weeks is either
the
“first Darius the Mede,”
or “first Cyrus as sole king of
Babylon.” So
Justin,
Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Eusebius in one
of his
calculations, Origen, Hippolytus, Hilary,
later on Polychronius, and Bruno of Asti; still later, Calvin, Oecolampadius, Bullinger, L’
Empereur, Coccius, Bervaldus, Dathe, Blayney, Uri; later
still, Jungman, Koch, J. D. Michaelis,
Pringle,
Hauenkamp, Velthusen; yet later, Kliefoth,
Kiel, Kock, Christiani, Fraidi, D’ Envieu, Tiefenthal, Dornstetter,
Dusterwald and many others, Briggs holding
also the Cyrus date. Farrar’s distortions of the
evidence, and his special pleading, only repeat, second-hand, the
efforts of
the Higher Criticism to limit the prophecy to the times of Antiochus. It was not till the fourth
century that
the Artaxerxes date, invented previously by Africanus, was fastened
upon the
church, viz., 20th Artaxerxes as the beginning
of the 70 weeks, and
the “lunar” reckoning adopted, supported by the mistranslation of
the word “decreed,”
“determined,” in chapter
9: 24, as if it meant “abbreviated,” a retrograde mode of
reckoning from the crucifixion of Christ, working backward on the
theory that
the “middle of the 70th week” means the death of
Christ!! It was
meant also to close
the Gap between the 69th and 70th
weeks, unmindful of the
fact that our Lord had opened it out so luminously in Luke
21: 24, when interpreting the words, “and
unto the end, war,” in Daniel
9: 26
(R.V.), and thus to smite
“Chiliasm,” held by some Judaizing sects, abusing the true
doctrine, assisted the anti-chiliastic movement.
The spiritualizing method of
interpreting
Old Testament prophecy, applying all the “curses”
to the Jew, and all the “blessings”
to the Church, came into vogue. A
Pope of
[*
The following speaks for itself as a specimen
of American imitation of the foreign Higher Criticism.
“There is one particular term of
seventy Weeks at the end of which something is to happen; and it
is
explained that these are weeks of years … There is nothing in the world
to hinder anybody from putting the terminus a quo at the time of the
Battle of
Waterloo, or the landing of the Pilgrims, and then looking for something
very important to happen at the end, four hundred
and ninety years from
this time. And
Farrar –
always Farrar – is quoted, saying in his way, that the Christian
Fathers
leave us “Weltreing
in a chaos of uncertainties and
contradictions.”
If
ever any people on earth kept time, they were
the Jews. From
Daniel’s death
to Maccabean times there was no possibility of ignorance as to the
number of
years elapsing. The
date of the
completion of the second temple was imperishable.
The long-aged High Priests made daily, monthly,
and annual observations, and registered the years, as part of their
official
duty. Still more,
the Seleucid Era,
B.C.312, they knew occurred in the 25th of the
70 weeks of Daniel,
reckoned from the Edict of Cyrus, B.C.536.
That Era was accepted by them.
It is the only Era from which the reckonings are made in
the Maccabean
Books. Still more,
the
assassination of the High Priest, Onias III., impressed the whole
nation
profoundly, and its date was never forgotten, B.C.170.
It was the 45th of the 70
weeks. The
continuity of the
priesthood was unbroken, and its official relation to the calendar and
to
history made its entries authoritative and conclusive.
The chain of tradition was
complete. Nehemiah,
when young,
knew Daniel, and lived to a “high old age.”
The high priest Alexander, when young,
knew Nehemiah, and also lived to be “very old.”
Simeon, who held the infant Jesus, had
known many men whose fathers had seen Judas Maccabaeus.
The same was true of Zacharias to whom
Gabriel came. It
was also true of
the teachers of Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul.
All knew, perfectly, that the 69th week
did not end in the times of Antiochus, much less the 70th
None of the blessings in Daniel 9: 24, had been
realized. Messiah
Himself had not come; how could
they be? They knew
perfectly that
the awful vision concerning Antiochus, in Daniel 8:
9-14, and 11:
21-35, had been
fulfilled, and as certainly they knew that the prophecy in 9: 26, 27, had not been
fulfilled. They
knew that no such campaign as that
described in Daniel 11:
40-45, ever occurred
in their history. When
Caesar was
assassinated, in B.C.44, they knew it was in the 62nd. of
the 70
weeks, reckoning from B.C.536. When
Augustus was made emperor, they knew it was in the 66th week, B.C.28,
and but
three more weeks had to run “unto
Messiah the
Prince.” Carnal
Judaism was in revolt shouting for a Maccabean Caesar.
The few who were godly, like a Simeon
and Anna, waited in hope for “
That
the 69 weeks ended with the birth of
Christ, is confirmed by the world-wide expectation of His coming – an
expectation held by Jews and Gentiles alike.
It pervaded pagan literature as well as
Jewish. It found an
echo in the Sibylline
books, and was sung in the “Secular
Song” of Horace, and in the 4th Eclogue of
Virgil – a
Christmas carol before the time. It
was discussed in the Senate House of Rome by Lucius Cotta and the
friends of
Caesar, insisting that the “King”
predicted in the oracles was Caesar himself, and resisted by Cicero and
Brutus
to the last extremity. By
order of
the Senate, the Sibyl was remanded to her chest, under lock and key,
the
question left undecided, till the Star shone over
Finally,
the jurisdiction of the doctrine of the
seventy weeks is absolute over both Testaments, New and Old, and
determines for
us the time-point of both Advents with unerring certainty. For this purpose it was
given. The angel
reveals the Parousia in
Humiliation, Dan. 9: 26,
the Parousia in
Glory, Dan. 7: 13,
and assigns to each its
own time-point in the calendar of history.
The first occurs at the close of the 69th, the second
(after the
Interval “unto the End”)
at the
close of the 70th week. As
to the
close of the 69th week all the prophets looked, even though to Daniel
it was
reserved to furnish chronology, so to the close of the 70th week they
all
looked from Moses (Deut. 32:
36-43) to
Malachi (4: 1-6),
as did the evangelists and
apostles from Matthew (Matt.
24: 15-31) to
John (Rev. 19: 11-21). Here, as everywhere in
prophecy, the way
of simplicity is the way of truth.
Nowhere in all the Word of God is there any First Advent
for any
purpose, prior to the close of the 69th week.
Nowhere, in all God’s Word, is
there any Second Advent, for any purpose, prior to the close of the
70th
week. In every
representation, in
both Testaments, the Parousia in Glory follows the Parousia of the
Antichrist,
and occurs in order to terminate the Great Tribulation (1) by the
Resurrection
of - [out from,
(Luke
20: 35; Phil. 3: 11)] - the holy
dead
and rapture of the Church, and (2) by the Destruction of the Antichrist
and the
judgment of the living nations, 2
Thess. 1: 6-10. Clear,
simple, uniform and persistent is
this divine revelation of the time – a rock of truth against which all
the wild theories of men dash themselves into foam.
By no vain dream of an imagined “special
revelation” to Paul, in 1
Thess. 4: 14-18;
by no perverted exegesis of Matt.
24: 29- 31, or of
1 Thess. 4: 14-18; 2 Thess. 1: 6-10; 2 Thess. 2: 1-8, or
any other
texts, can this remarkable decree of God be set aside.
In the Old Testament this Parousia in
Glory, at the time-point stated, as a Parousia to raise the holy dead,
destroy
the Antichrist, deliver Israel and judge the nations, is everywhere
exhibited
as one that is a “Shining,” an “Appearing” of Jehovah, for
His saints, with His saints the holy angels.
It is enough to cite Ps.
1: 1-6; Isa. 66: 5; Dan. 7: 13; 12: 1-3; Zech. 14:
1-6. In
the New Testament
that great and definite event is exhibited under three different terms,
all of
equivalent signification, viz., Parousia, Epiphancia, Apokalypsis,
i.e.,
“Arrived Presence,” “Appearing,” “Revelation.”
All are one and inseparable, one
conception in three relations – the first relating to Time, the second
to
Space, the third to Circumstance and Condition, the close of the 70th
week
dominating all. The
first marks the
time-point of the personal arrival of the Son of Man in the clouds of
heaven,
viz., at the close of the “time,
times, and
dividing of a time.”
The second denotes the out-bursting splendour of His
presence, the glory
radiating into space. The
whole
expresses the fact that He who so long has been concealed is now no
longer so,
but openly revealed. It
is the same
everywhere in the New Testament.
The hope of His “appearing”
is the one hope to which the faith of all believers is directed, and
not to any
invented unseen secret unseen advent prior to the close of the [Great]
tribulation. Had
our Lord and His
apostles taught otherwise, they had arrayed against themselves the
whole body
of the Old Testament prophecy, put the New Testament in opposition, and
involved both it and themselves in irreconcilable contradiction. But “the
Scripture cannot be broken.”
On the doctrine of the 70th week, the Interval between the
69th and 70th
week itself, all the devices of
interpretation which torture the word of God to support a vain theory
of
exemption of the Church from the [Great]
Tribulation, are forever shattered.
The Lord identifies His Second Coming
for the Resurrection of the holy dead and the Rapture of the [‘left’]* of the
Church, Matt.
25: 29-31, 40, 41, 42; 25: 1; [1 Thess. 4: 17]
with the time-point at the close of the 70th week in Daniel, for the
Resurrection of Israel’s holy dead and the destruction of the [last]
Antichrist. The
Parousia in Dan. 7: 13; 12:
1-3 is the same Parousia at the
same time-point as in Matt.
24: 29-31. The
resurrection of
It
is remarkable how plainly the 70 the week
dominates the structure of our Lord’s Olivet-Discourse from Matt. 24: 15 to Matt.
25: 40. He
addresses the
four apostles Mark 13: 3,
as representatives
of “the twelve,”
and of the whole
Church as a corporate unit surviving
till He comes – the “Ye”
and “You” of the
great commission
– and answers the questions as to “When”
and the “What,” the
Time and the
Sign of His Second Coming and of the End of the Age.
He first of all describes the painful
and chequered “Times of the
Gentiles,”
down to the “End”
the Interval
between the 69th and 70th weeks, yet covering silently the 70th week
itself,
even to the “End,” 24: 4-14.
He then reverts to the middle of the 70th week, when the “abomination” will “stand in a holy place,” 24: 15,
and proceeds to describe the great Tribulation, or last 1260 days of
the
Antichrist, 25: 15-29. At the close comes His
Parousia for His
saints, precisely as Daniel had pictured it, Dan.
7: 13, 25-27; 12: 1-3.
He
calls it the “thief-time” after the 6th Vial, Rev. 16: 15, which with
the 7th closes the
Tribulation at the last loud sound of the 7th Trumpet, Rev.
11: 15-18. He
makes the
Resurrection and the Rapture the first acts of His coming, the
gathering of His
elect by His angelic ministry, 24:
30, 31, 40, 41,
44’ 25: 1. He
next
pictures the judgment of the living nations, 25:
31-46, gathered, as they will be, at Jerusalem, in their
last conflict
with Israel, His throne of glory overhanging Olivet in front of the
city, the
nations separated right and left, converted Israel holding the city
delivered
by His hand. In
that Judgment the
Antichrist is destroyed. He
points
to New-Born Israel, the nearest His throne, and calls them “these my brethren,” 25:
40 – Daniel’s “people
of the
saints,” Dan.
7: 27. He
makes their deliverance immediately
subsequent to the rapture of the church, this occurring at 24: 30, 31, 40, 41; 25: 1;
that at 25: 40;
and, like Daniel, crowns the whole scene
with the destruction of the wicked, the salvation of the righteous, the
“Kingdom” and the “Life
everlasting,” Matt.
25: 34, 46; Dan.
12: 1-3, 13. From
first to
last the book of Daniel is His guide.
He simply puts together the events in the Ends of Daniel’s
book, chapters 2., 7., 9.,
11 and all of 12.,
the events of the 70th Week, and assigning
the church to her place, “ye”
and
“you,” in the same
perspective,
adding parables and admonitions, concludes His answer to the questions
proposed. He
separates
It
is needless to say that the Apostles followed
their Master’s teaching, and took
His Olivet discourse as the text-book of their eschatology. It ruled the whole faith
of the early
church. It
settled every heresy
as to the time of the advent. It
corrected the Thessalonian error as to the “any moment view.” Paul appeals to it to
decide the
question. He calls
it the “Word of the Lord.” He had it on his table
when he wrote
both letters to the Thessalonians.
He uses its very language.
The 70th Week covers his own words in 2
Thess. 2: 1-8. John
reproduces it in full, in its two haves of twice 1,260, and gives its
middle
point as that of the slaughter of the “Two
Witnesses” in
The
doctrine of the Seventy Weeks provides us
the only data in connection with the “signs
of
the times,” as foretold by our Lord, for any approximate
determination of the nearness of the advent.
How
much of the interval between the 69th and 70th weeks remains to run is
known
only by God. When
the
Antichrist and the Jews are in “covenant,”
at the beginning of the 70th week, and clearer still, when the breach
occurs
between them at the “middle of
the week,”
then the determination of the year, perhaps the month, but never of the
“day or hour,” will
be certain, i.e., to all
believers. To watch
always and wait
patiently is the believer’s privilege.
Prophetic nearness is one thing,
chronological nearness another, and yet faith and hope overleap all
intervening
events. The
relatively brief
remainder of the interval, and the Antichrist, are what is immediately
before
us, and with all sobriety we can say that it is this that lends an
interest, so
solemn and absorbing, to the attitude of the nations, the extension of
missions, the Jewish movements, the Eastern Question, the crimes of
Christendom, and the current events in both hemispheres of the world.
-------
“Here
we have a true Apocalypse. The
Glorious One who sways over the
Hiddekel is the ‘Alpha and Omega’
who appeared to John upon the island of Patmos in the Aegean sea not
far from
Ephesus, and is the ‘Son of Man’
whom Daniel had already seen in the vision of Chapter 7; - there, in
a night-dream; here, in
open day; - there, in one form; here, in another.
He is the same whose back part Moses saw
from the cleft of Horeb, and Isaiah saw high and lifted up, and Ezekiel
saw
above the firmament, and whose fear fell upon them.
Unable to endure the sight or the voice,
Gabriel interposes to strengthen and compose the shattered frame and
mind of
the prophet, and restore him to his strength.”
- Fehrmann.
CHAPTER
7
DANIEL,
CHAPTERS 10-12
– VISIONS OF THE
“TIME OF THE END.”
(Daniel, Chapters 10-12.
– One Prophecy: The Theme, the
“Warfare Great;”
The Eastern
Question; Nature of the Revelation; Date of the Prophecy; Place and
Time of the
Vision; Occasion of the Vision; The Vision itself; The Christophany;
The
Persons in the Scene; The Effect of the Vision; Prostration of the
Prophet, and
Flight of his Companions; The Recovery of the Prophet; The Comfort;
Israel
under the guardian Care of Angels; Daniel’s Book, a “Scripture of Truth;”
Warning against the false
Criticism of the Book.)
-------
These
chapters form one continuous prophecy, the
longest in the book, and furnish the last and crowning proof of the
truth of
our thesis, viz., that the
Chapter
10,
which gives us the
Christophany and a wider glimpse than before into the unseen world, is
the
Prologue, or introduction to 11. and 12.,
which contain the proper “Revelation”
made to the prophet concerning the
“Time of the End,”
including the
near and far horizons of the third and fourth empires.
The Epilogue is 12:
5-13. The
theme of the
prophecy is the “Warfare Great,”
the
Eastern Question and its solution.
Each of the chapters, 10., 11.,
12.,
forms a general separate section of the
whole prediction, the first
verse of 11.
properly belong to the close of 10.
All the way from 10:
4 to 12: 13,
we stand on the banks of the Hiddekel, see
the vision, watch the actions of the prophet hear the Lord, the Angels,
and
Daniel talk, and listen to the revelation given.
At 12: 4,
the scene changes, final explanations are made, and the prophet is
dismissed to
his rest.
1.
As to the nature of the Revelation
itself. The prophet
says, a “Thing,”
literally a “Word,”
was revealed to him by means of a “Vision,”
and that the word was true, and related
to great and long-continued military struggle.
The translation of the clause in the
King James’ Version, “and the
time
appointed was long,” is simply a defective paraphrase of
the
Hebrew text. The
correct rendering
is, “and Truth is the Word, even
Warfare Great,”
i.e., the Revelation he records is that of Israel’s long struggle with
the World-Power in its successive empires and kingdoms, from the third
year of
Cyrus down to the final deliverance of the Jews from Gentile hands, and
the
consummation of the Kingdom of Christ at His Second Coming. In a somewhat similar
manner Virgil and
Homer began their great epics with “Arms and the Man I sing,” and Theirs and Macauley their
histories with “I propose to
write” so and so. If,
imitating the title to John’s Apocalypse, we might affix one to this
section of Daniel’s book, it would be this: “The Revelation of the
Angel of Jehovah which God gave to Him to show unto His servants the
things
which must come to pass in the latter days, concerning the destiny of
Israel
and the World-Powers; and He told this word by His angel Gabriel, whom
He sent
to His servant Daniel, commanding him to shut up and seal the book unto
the
Time of the End. Blessed
is he who
waits and comes to the end of the days.”
2.
As to the Date of the Prophecy. According
to Babylonian reckoning, the
“first year of Cyrus”
was that of
the overthrow of
3.
As to the Place and Time of the Vision.
The place was by the banks of the river
Tigris, whose Accadian name was “Iddiklat,” called biblically
“Hiddekel,” the
third of the four
great rivers into which the river of Eden parted, “that which goeth toward the east of
Assyria,” Gen.
2: 14.
Daniel’s definite statement, “I
was
by the side of the great river Hiddekel,” taken in
connection with
his description of the conduct of his companions, “the men that were with me,”
makes it certain
that the prophet was not visionally transported there, but was bodily
present, 10: 4, 7.
The Euphrates and Tigris,
[*
As the waters were divided, so will it be
again, Isa. 11: 15; Rev.
16: 12. As
the walls of Jerico fell, so shall it
be again, Isa. 2: 15; Rev.
15: 19. As
the mountains were rent and skipped,
so shall it be again. Ps.
114: 4, 10; Rev. 16: 19.
As hailstones fell at Bethoron, so, with
mightier force shall it be again, Rev.
16: 21. As
the transjordanic regions,
4.
As to the Occasion of the Vision.
It was the sad intelligence received
concerning the state of affairs at
5.
The Vision itself. It
is a
Christophany, or appearing of the Angel of Jehovah in human form. The prophet lifts his eyes
and sees in
open day a “Certain Man”
of
supernatural presence hovering over the waters of the Hiddekel, a man
wearing
not the “Talar,”
but the shining
linen apron garment of a Jewish High-Priest, his loins cinctured with “gold of Uphaz,” his body in
colour like a
“Tarshish,” or
brilliant Chrysolite
such as sparkled in the pectoral of Aaron, his face “flashing like the lightening,”
his eyes like
“torches blazing,”
his arms and feet
like “polish brass,”
and his voice
as “the voice of a multitude,”
10: 5, 6; or,
as the word imports, like surges
breaking on the shore, or the noise of shouting armies in the distance,
or as
of deep, low, bustling thunder.
Omnipotence and sublimity are here.
It is a vision of Jesus Christ before His incarnation, yet
symbolized in
the dignity of His royal, priestly and prophetic offices, in the terror
of His
judical majesty, the forecast splendour of His exalted humanity, and
the glory
of His deity; a “Man,”
both Man and
God, incomparable in the majesty of His person and His natures – a face
above the brightness of the sun, a voice vocal as the thunder. His transparent body means
His sanctity
and glory. His
white robe means
that He is a priest, His golden girdle that He is a King, His uttering
voice
that He is a prophet. His
eyes like
searching fire mean omniscience.
His arms and feet, like burning brass, mean judgment of
His enemies. His
face effulgent means that God is
there! Elsewhere in
the book of
Daniel this same glorious person, who is the central figure of it all,
is
presented as the “Stone”
detached
from the mountain, 2: 34, 45;
“One like a Son of God,”
3:
25; a “Watcher and
Holy One,”
who cares for Israel, 4: 13;
“One like a Son of Man,”
coming in the clouds, 7: 13;
a “Certain
Holy One, Palmoni, Wonderful Numberer,” whose voice Daniel
heard
coming from between the banks of the Ulai, 8: 13,
15, 16; “Messiah”
born and
crucified, 9: 26,
and now the “Linen Clothed Man”
hovering sublime above the
Hiddekel. In all
these forms and
relations He appears as the Crusher of the Colossus of earthly politics
and
power, the Champion of His suffering saints in the furnace and the den,
the
Judge of all the earth, the Measurer of the Ages and the Ends, the
Seasons and
the Times, the Revealer of the truth and Unveiler of Israel’s pathway
and
goal, the atoning Redeemer of His people, the Destroyer of the
Antichrist, the
Deliverer of the Jews, the immortal Monarch of the Fifth Empire, and
Bringer of
the Kingdom of God to victory over all the earth.
Here, in the present vision, 10: 5, 6, He appears in
His greatest splendour and
is that Glorious One John saw “in
the isle that
is called Patmos,” 630 years later; the Walker in the
midst of the
golden candlesticks, the Lamb on the Throne, the many-crowned Warrior
on the
white horse, and, as in Moses and John, so here, the Oath-Swearing
Angel with
uplifted hand to heaven, Deut.
32: 40; Rev. 10: 5,
6; Dan. 12: 7. He
is the
“Angel of the Covenant,”
6.
The Persons in the Scene. They
are (1) the Linen Clothed Man, (2)
Daniel and his companions, (3) Gabriel, (4) Michael, and (5) “Two
Others,” referred to in chap.
12: 5, 6. Whether
the companions of Daniel were
Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi, or Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, or
some
servants of the prophet, is indeterminable.
Conjectural is every view as to who the
“Two Others” are. Michael is expressly
named, 10: 13, 21.
Gabriel is not named, but the characteristic mode of
addressing the
prophet as a “man greatly beloved,”
and of “touching”
him to strengthen
him, and the fact that he who addresses and touches is the revealing
angel,
leaves no doubt that the “hand”
in contact
with the prostrate prophet, 10:
10, 16, 18,
is not that of the Linen-Clothed Man, 10:
5, 6,
but is the “hand”
of Gabriel. Compare
chapter
9: 21-23, with 8:
15, 16. There
is nothing in the expression,
“one like the similitude of the
sons of Adam touched
my lips,” 10:
16, to indicate
otherwise. The
expression is not
the same as that in chapter
7: 13, “One like a
Son of Enash,” coming in the clouds
of heaven. The
action and speech of
the angel in chapters 8
and 9 and
here in chapter
10, in connection with all these prophecies, prove that
Gabriel is the
Toucher, the Speaker and the Revealing Angel, all the way from Dan. 10: 10 to 12: 4,
and – save chapter 12: 7,
where the
Linen-Clothed Man answers a question – is the Speaker and Revealer of
the
whole prophecy. The
prophet does
not say that the Linen-Clothed Man laid “His hand” upon him, as John
says of Christ in Rev. 1: 17,
but simply “a hand” touched me, Dan.
10: 10, viz., the hand of Gabriel.
7.
The Effect of the Vision on the Prophet and
his Companions and the Circumstances of his Recovery.
(1) On his companions.
Like those of Saul, when the Lord
appeared to him on the way to
He
describes his condition. Pathetically
he narrates that his
“strength” had
departed, his “comeliness”
been turned to “corruption,”
and that, as soon as he heard the
“voice of the words”
of the
Linen-Clothed Man he was thrown into a “deep
sleep,” prostrate, his “face
toward
the ground” 10:
8, 9. Haggard,
withered, disfigured, the
freshness of his countenance gone, stupefied, overpowered by the Divine
presence, he fell comatose and heavy to the earth.
The awful splendour and voice of Jehovah
had shattered him. Once
before,
under a vision less powerful, he says he was “astounded,”
“fainted,” and was “sick for many days,” 8:
27. Nevertheless,
the power
that prostrated him re-invigorated and recovered him.
The mysterious Form that hovered over
the Hiddekel withheld himself now from the eyes and ears of the prophet
unable
to endure more, and sent an angel to succour and support him. Thrice the prophet is “touched” and addressed by
Gabriel 10: 10-18.
At the first touch, 10:
10, he is
raised from the ground, resting on his “knees”
and the “palms of his hands.” Like a quadruped, he
stands on all
fours. His
crouching position is
that of one endeavouring to rise but too feeble to succeed. The angel comforts and
instructs
him. “O, Daniel, man greatly beloved!”
tells him he has a message
for him, desires him to understand it and bids him “stand upright.” Weak, yet obedient, the
prophet
rises. “When he had spoken this word to me, I
stood, trembling”
10: 11.
The angel assures him that, from the first day he had “set his heart to understand and
chastened himself before God,”
his prayer had been heard, and that now, in answer to prayer for his
sake, he,
Gabriel, had come to him, 10:
12. He
explains the delay and gives the
prophet a glimpse into the conflicts of the unseen world, showing what
interest
the angels, good and evil, take in the affairs of human governments. He says that for
twenty-one days
following the beginning of Daniel’s prayer, he had stood at his post
counteracting the influence of the evil angel-prince of Persia, who was
responsible for all the mischief and machinations at Jerusalem, and for
the
cunning schemes to change the Persian policy adversely to the Jews;
that
Michael, the guardian prince of Israel and commander of the heavenly
hosts, had
come to his help, that both had won a victory over the evil influence
at the
Persian court, and that thus relieved from his watch he, Gabriel, had
hastened
as rapidly as possible to cause the prophet to understand not only this
but
future things, 10: 13, 14. Herein the prophet is
assured, first of
all, that, in spite of all the opposition, the Temple should be built,
although
in troublous times, and, so far, the prophecy in chapter
9: 25 be fulfilled; that the lost edict of Cyrus would yet
be discovered
and reinforced by a new decree of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, and the
court-demon, whether at Babylon, Shushan, or Achmetha, be foiled, Ezra 5: 13, 17; 6: 1-7, 8-12, 15-22. Here was comfort indeed. But, as the prophecy in
both chapters 8
and 9 looked
into future times beyond the Persian rule, even into Greek and Roman
times, and
on to the end of Israel’s long pathway, even to the 70th.
Week
in chapter 9,
so had he hurried specially to
tell the prophet what should “befall
his people
in the latter days,” 10:
14. He
uses an expression – “acharith hayyimim,”
“the afterness of the days”
–
well known to Daniel, a technical expression including all near and far
horizons, but eminently the remote, Dan.
8: 17, 19,
23; 2: 28. He
tells him, in
sum, that the message he brings is no less than a prophecy in detail of
“Warfare Great,”
10:
1, covering all Persia, Greek and Roman times, reaching to
the last
crisis and the last deliverance.
This
solemn word is too much for the trembling
prophet to endure. If
indeed he had
been confronted and strengthened somewhat by the angel’s word and
touch,
yet deeply affected by what he now heard, he seems to relapse. The thought of further
tribulation for
the people overcomes him. He
becomes dejected again and “dumb.” “When he
(the angel) had spoken such
words to me, I set my face
to the ground, and I became dumb,” 10:
15. A
second time the angel
commiserates his frailty and touches his “lips,”
signifying that he wishes him to speak.
The prophet opens his mouth and pleads in plaintive tones
his
incapacity, “O, my Lord, by
reason of the vision
my pains come upon me, and I retained no strength.
For how can the servant of this my Lord
talk with this my Lord, for, as for me, no strength has remained in me,
no
breath left in me,” 10:
16, 17. Stricken
prophet! Old man,
weak from years and from
fasting, overpowered by the sight above the Hiddekel, and now weighed
afresh
with the burden of
(1)
That, as in the past, so in the future,
Daniel’s people are under the special guardianship of the angels of
God. In the midst
of their trials,
angelic power shall defend the faithful.
For this reason, Gabriel informs him that he must “return” to the Persian
court to maintain the
advantage already gained, 10:
13, and continue
to “fight with the angel-prince
of Persia,”
10: 20, during
the whole period of the
Persian supremacy, and so incline the kings of Persia to favour Israel
–
a fact made evident in all the Persian history and particularly so in
the times
of Esther. He adds,
however, that
there will be a time when, after he is gone away and is at his post of
watchfulness, another enemy, the evil “angel-prince
of Grecia shall come,” 10:
20. The
Persian supremacy will pass away,
the Jews shall fall under Greek dominion and again experience
tribulation. Nevertheless,
the angel will stay long
enough to “show,”
i.e., explain, to
the prophet “what is noted in
the Scripture of
Truth” concerning not only the times of Persia and Greece,
but the
end of Roman times also, even the end of the “Warfare
Great.” He
further
adds that, although the sufferings of the Jews will be severe, yet the
outcome
will be victory for the people of God.
All the more evident is this since but twenty-one days
ago, he, Gabriel,
stood up against the evil angel-prince of Persia and foiled the
intrigues at
the Persian court, 10: 13;
Michael, his only
help, and “none but Michael,”
the
archangel and guardian prince of Israel, was needed then or would be
needed
hereafter, to “exert himself
against these,”
i.e., the powers of Persia and Greece, or against the “Powers” in the closing
struggle of the “Warfare Great,”
10:
21. No
human allies will be
needed even in
(2)
The final comfort given is the solemn
Sanction of the angel, soul-assuring and inviolable, to all the
revelations
Daniel has received, and to the “Book”
in which, from the first, he had recorded them.
He calls Daniel’s book the “Kitab
Emech” or “Writing
of Truth,” i.e., “The
Scripture.”
And not fiction, 10: 21,
and in 12: 4,
calls it “Hassepher,”
“The Book.” This “Writing
of Truth” is not any unwritten book of God’s decrees, nor
of
His providence, nor is it the “book
of life,”
nor of “God’s remembrance,”
nor any archives of angels in heaven, but is the visible and manual “Scripture” of the
revelations given and recorded
by Daniel in human alphabetic characters, Hebrew and Aramaean. It was something in
Daniel’s
possession – a “Sepher,”
or
“Book” which when
completed, was to
be placed among the “Sepharim”
or
canonical “Books”
of the Jewish
people, like the “Sepharim”
or
“Books” in 9:
2, of which “Hassepher,”
“Book” of Moses was
one, Exod. 17: 14; Dan. 9:
11, 13. Already,
from B.C.603 to 533, the
prophet had received various revelations, viz.: those in chapters 2, 7, 8, and 9,
and with the histories connected with them, 1, 3,
4, 5, 6, had faithfully recorded them in “the
Book,” 12: 4. He “wrote”
them, 7: 1, at
the time of their occurrence,
as did other prophets, Isa.
7: 3; Jer. 19: 14; Hos.
1: 2, and “shut up
the vision,”
8: 26, and he
tells us, as a prophet, and in
view of his account, that what he wrote was “Truth,”
not fiction, and “Truth”
given by an
angel from heaven, and by the Spirit of God, in answer to prayer, 2: 17, 18; 9: 4; not a
human invention, or
production of his own will, or private interpretation of the mind of
God;
nothing of a psychological genenis, or even of a logical conclusion
from any
premises, nor a pious imagination, but an “Apocalypse,”
a “Secret Revealed”
by the “God of Heaven,”
2:
18, 22, 27, and much of which he could not understand, 8: 27.
These revelations contain the forecast outline history of
the
World-Power and of the Jews, with a chronological clock of the Ages
down to the
Second Advent of Christ – an apocalypse in which the Holy Land, the
Holy
City, and Israel, the Holy People, endure persistently, from first to
last, in
spite of all adverse fortune, reserved for a glorious destiny in the “Time of the End.”
And
now the angel comes to add one more “Revelation”
and “Word
of Truth,” showing
more particularly
certain great events on Persia, Greek and final Roman times, to be
added to Daniel’s
“Book,” so
completing it, sealing it
officially and transmitting it to be read and studied in the “Time of the End,” 12:
4. This
final revelation the
prophet solemnly declares is “Truth”
because the angel so declared, 10:
1-21. Gabriel
also calls Daniel’s whole
“Book” a “Kitab Emeth,” a “Writing”
or “Scripture of Truth,”
not
fiction. By friend
and foe alike,
the unity of the book and its authorship is conceded.
Upon the supposition of the
author’s piety and honesty, his repeated statements that the
predictions
were a “revelation”
from God at the
dates and places specified, and than an angel from heaven pronounced
the words
he brought, to be “Truth,”
and
Daniel’s book a book of “Truth,”
its prophecies to be fulfilled only “after
many
days,” 10: 14;
12: 4; upon this
supposition the modern critical hypothesis, that it originated near 400
years
after Daniel was dead, and was composed by a Maccabean novelist, is
entirely
excluded. Otherwise,
no man more
wicked, sacrilegious or insane, than he who, making such statements as
the
author of this book has made, and knowing them to be mendacious, would
palm
them off as true. Doubly
insane,
and cruel with a mocking sympathy, for writing a book like this,
January,
B.C.164 – as the critics say – after
the tribulation was past and
gone, December 165 B.C. – the Temple cleansed – in order to arm
beforehand and comfort with a fiction, God’s people, in view of that
same
tribulation yet to begin B.C. 168! – still more, attributing the book
of
Daniel who, for the Maccabean writer, was no more than a myth! Therefore, did the Holy
Spirit use,
purposely, the designation “Scripture of Truth,”
warning against the false criticism which, in all ages, would assail
the
“book,” and
especially in ours, when
the time for its last fulfilment approximates.
Knowing that the scoffer would come in
the last days, curling his crest against the Pentateuch, the Prophets,
the
Sacred Books of History, and eminently against the Book of Daniel, the
wisdom
of God fore-issued this divine declaration against the unbelief that
would
account it a “fiction,”
and so
would fortify God’s people everywhere in opposition to a scientific
scepticism that sports with a “Revelation”
from heaven, an angel-spoken “word
of Truth,”
recorded by a holy “prophet,”
and sanctioned by Christ and His apostles. “O,
Daniel, greatly beloved, be strong and be strong!”
-------
“The
Eastern Question is not a question of
to-day, nor of yesterday. When history first began
to be written,
it was already there. When
it is re-opened,
all the world is
concerned. It is
Occidentalism in its inevitable
conflict with Orientalism. Who
is
to be the champion or leader of Occidentalism, now – the Anglo-Saxon or
the Slav? The world
is arraying
itself in two camps. It
is no
longer a question who shall hold Constantinople, or control the Suez
Canal, or
command the pass of Thermopylae, or dictate the oracles of
-
Wheeler.
CHAPTER
8
DANIEL,
CHAPTERS 10-12.
– TSABA GADOL. WARFARE
GREAT.
MACCABEAN
TRIBULATION.
(Daniel, chapters 10-12,
continued. – Chapter 11:
1-35, “Tsa-ba Gadol,” the
“Warfare Great;” The Chapter assailed as a
Spurious Production;
Reply: Geography of the Prophecy;
The Eastern Question; Division of Chapter; The Persian
Succession; the
Greek; The Diadochian Kingdoms; Ptolemies and Seleucids; the Intervals
in the
Prophecy; Wars of Syria and Egypt; Antiochus Epiphanes; Campaigns
against
Egypt; Campaigns against Palestine; The Maccabean Tribulation; The
Martyr-Roll.)
In chapter 11
the angel resumes and unfolds the prophetic history of the Medo-Persian
and
Graeco-Macedonian empires, and, after a transition-section, in which
both type
and anti-type are blended, springs from the “Time
of the End” of the 3rd. empire to
the “Time of the End”of
the 4th., i.e.,
from Antiochus Epiphanes to the last Antichrist.
Such the manner of prophecy.
By this means he brings the close of his
“Revelation”
concerning the “Warfare Great”
into harmony with the close in 2,
7, and 9,
and terminates in 12
his amazing apocalypse
of the future of the Jews and of the kingdoms of the world. Chapter 11
therefore, busies itself with (1) the Ram and Rough Goat of 8, expanding their
history; (2) the Two of the
Four Horns by which the Notable Horn in 8
was succeeded; (3) with the Little Horn that rose out of one of the
Four, viz.:
the last Antichrist represented here as “the
King,”
11: 36, the
Antitype of Antiochus. Thus
the angel “shows,”
i.e., explains, by amplification,
“what is written in the
Scripture of Truth.”
It is not possible to imagine a more
powerful proof of the truth of our thesis.
The “Warfare Great”
continues
till closed by the destruction of Antichrist.
The
Modern
criticism has specially attacked this
chapter, (1) on account of the minuteness, multiplicity and exactitude
of its
details, and (2) on account of its perfect historical fulfilment, as
far as 11: 35,
and partly as far as 11: 39.
It is regarded as a spurious production, the work of a Jew
who, under
the mask of prediction, wrote the history of his own times, nearly 400
years
after Daniel was dead, attributing the same to the prophet of the exile
who,
for him, had no existence.* The
clearness and precision of the prophecy are used as arguments against
its
genuineness and authenticity, and the perfection of the prophecy is
made a
ground of objection against its inspiration.
This modern reproduction of Porphyry,
“the bitterest enemy of
Christianity,” B.C. 233-303, 1500 years ago, met its unanswerable
refutation in the same antiquity from the pens of Jerome, Eusebius,
Apollinarius, Methodius, Chrysostom and others, as it has again from
the most
eminent scholars who have replied to the modern assault.
[*
The criticism decides that there is nothing
genuine in 10-12:
except 12: 1-4,
and annexes these four verses to 9.
That is, all after 9, save these verses, is a “Maccabean
interpolation!” And
9 and 12: 1-4
end with Antiochus! It
is
worthless. Ecclesiasticus,
B.C.
180, or 16 years before B.C. 164, when the critics say Daniel’s book
was
composed, recognizes Dan.
10: 13, 20, and
imitates the texts. The
Septuagint,
begun B.C. 281, or 177 years before 164, recognizes the whole book of
Daniel. Meinhold has critically proved that the
book was in existence from
B.C. 250-300 before Christ. But,
more than all, by friend and foe alike, the unity of the authorship of
the book
is confessed. The
concession to the
critics, here, by Zockler in Lange, is unfortunate.
Kamphausen has trumpeted the most
vigorously.]
The
criticism is worthless when once the reason
of the prophecy is remembered, in connection with the fact that
precisely for
want of further details the vision in 8
was
“not understood,” 8: 27: that, because of
the suspended work at
Jerusalem, the prophet had “mourned
and fasted”
and seemed to think that the prediction in 9
might not be fulfilled, 10:
2, 3; and that
having now received the details he declares that he came to “understanding of the vision,”
10: 1.
If such statements are the fabrications of a novelist it
is a crime to
retain the book in the canon, and, moreover, the whole New Testament
eschatology founded upon it is false.
They are not fabrications.
The reason of the prophecy is all-sufficient. It was in the purpose of
God that
prophecy should cease with Malachi, and that during 400 years, next
ensuing, no
prophet should arise to guide God’s people in a crisis that threatened
to
sweep away their new-built city, temple, religion, and even their
existence. What
wonder, then, that,
commiserating the plaint of the prophet who desired more details
concerning the
future, and knowing well the thunderbolt that would strike the Jews for
their apostasy,
the Lord, in 11,
should repeat and amplify
what had been begun in 8,
just as He
repeated and amplified in 8
what had been
begun in 7 and
2? What wonder that He should
thus forewarn
the faithful against the sophisms and seductions with which the spread
of Greek
culture would ensnare them, and by the very details of forerunning
events cause
“them of understanding among the
people,”
11: 33, to see
approaching danger, and so
prepare and arm the faithful with the courage and the constancy that
made the
Maccabean victory so glorious? The
forecast events, as year after year, they were realized in history and
the day
of trouble drew near, could only incite those “who
feared the Lord to speak often one to another,” Mal. 3: 16, and confirm
their own and their
children’s faith. And
so to
the far-off “End”
on which the hope
of Israel rested, what other termination could be given to this
prediction of
the “Warfare Great,”
than that which
crowns the whole complex prophecy of this “Book”
with Israel’s ultimate and full deliverance, connected with the
Resurrection
of the holy dead at Messiah’s Second Coming?
In both respects, 11
and 12 are
an illustrious proof of the love and care of God for His people, the
moment of
His unchanging faithfulness to all generations.
The objection to minuteness and
multiplicity of details may be brought with equal force against the
prophecies
in 2 and 7 concerning
the close of the 4th. Empire, and in 9
concerning the chronology and close of the 70 Weeks.
It is wholly worthless.
It would rule out the apocalypses of
Ezekiel and John, and the minute predictions of all the prophets.
It
is no man-made narrative, under the mask of
prophecy, we have here, but true prediction, the tone, gaps, leaps,
style and
manner of prediction, its organic and typical relations. It is a prophecy of “Warfare Great” not only
between the nations, but
between
The
geography and the prophecy is easily
determined. It is
that of the empire
of Cyrus, eight times greater than the empire of Babylon, stretching
from Tibet
and the Indus to the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, and from Danube,
Black Sea,
Caucasus, Caspian and the Jaxartes, to the Indian Ocean, Persian Golf
and the
deserts of Arabia and Nubia – the empire of one who struck the fetters
from the Jews, restored the exiles and enabled them to build their
temple and
their city. It is
the empire of
Alexander who carried his conquests still further southward to the
cataracts of
the
But
come back. It
belongs to the very perfection of the
prophecy, whose compactness and lapidary brevity are without a
parallel, that
volumes of detail can be crowded into its exposition.
It is a “Scripture
of Truth” covering the fortunes of the Jews in contact with the nations,
from 3rd. Cyrus, B.C.534, to 11th.
Antiochus Epiophanes,
B.C. 164, a period of 370 years, together with the scenes and events
preceding
and during the 70 Weeks in chapter
9, the
near horizon of the 3rd. empire, a type of the
far horizon of the 4th.
GENERAL
DIVISION
The
division of the chapter is not
difficult. It falls
into the
following sections; (1) verses
2-4; (2) verses
5-9; (3) verses
10-20; (4) verses
21-35; (5) verses
36-39; (6) verses
40-45.
Verse
2-4. The Persian and Greek
supremacies. The
angel first of all unrolls the
Persian succession after Cyrus, as far as the fourth in the line. Three kings, the false
Smerdis omitted,
shall rise after Cyrus, the fourth one the proud invader of
(1)
Cyrus to Cambyses,
B.C.538-529. [9
years]
(2)
Cambyses to Darius
Hystaspes, 529-521. [8
years]
(3)
Darius Hystaspes to
Xerxes, 521-480. [41
years]
(4)
Xerxes, Invasion in
5th. Year, 480, a period of 5 years.
Overleaping
next a period of 146 years, filled
by a succession of eight Persian kings, he unveils the empire of
Alexander the
Great and his counter invasion of
(1)
Alexander’s
empire, B.C. 334-323. [11
years]
(2)
Alexander’s death,
323.
Overleaping
a period of 21 years, he unveils the
quadripartition of Alexander’s empire, B.C. 323, into the
DIADOCHIAN
KINGDOMS
(1)
(2)
North Syria ruled by
Seleusus.
(3)
(4)
These
four generals of Alexander are called
“Diadochi” or “Successors,” yet “not
of his posterity,” 11:
4. Of
these kingdoms the two
selected by the angel for special prophecy were chosen because
PTOLEMITES
AND SELEUCIDS
(1)
Ptolemy I. Soter,
B.C. 323-285;
(2)
Ptolemy II.
Philadelphus, B.C. 285-247; Antiochus II. Theos, B.C. 261-246 – 11:
6.
(3)
Ptolemy III.
Euergetes, B.C. 247-221; Selecus II. Kallinikos, B.C. 246-226 – 11: 7-9.
(4)
Ptolemy IV.
Philopator, B.C. 221-205; Seleucus III.
Keraunos, B.C. 226-222 – 11:
10-12.
(5)
Ptolemy V. Epiphanes,
B.C. 205-181; Antiochus III.,
the Great, B.C. 222-187 – 11:
13-19.
(6)
Seleucus IV., B.
C.187-175 – 11: 20.
(7)
Ptolemy VI.
Philometor, B.C. 181-146; Antiochus IV. Epiphanes, B.C. 175-164 – 11: 21-35.
That
is, six Ptolemies and six Seleucids prior
to Antiochus Epiphanes; twelve in all, or thirteen in all, the reign of
THE
INTERVALS.
Remarkable
are the Intervals or
Gaps in this
prophecy of the future from 3rd. Cyrus to 11th.
Antiochus
Epiphanes, 534-175 = 359 years. The
angel closes the events he foretells as stepping-stones to the crisis. Prophetic history is one
thing, ordinary
secular history another. No
uninspired writer would write history as here forecast.
(1) An interval of 146 years lies
between verses 2
and 3, from 5th.
Xerxes 480 to Alexander 334, including
eight Persian kings. (2)
Another of
21 years, between the clauses in verse
4,
from Alexander’s death to the partition of his empire, 323-302. (3) Another of 30 years,
between 5 and 6,
covering the omitted reign of
The
warfare wages from Ptolemy I, and
II.
Verses 11: 5-9,
B.C. 306-247, a period of 59 years, from
III.
Verses 11:
10-20, B.C. 227-175, a period of 52 years.
(1) Overleaping 20 years, 247-227, down
to the “sons” of
Seleucus II., viz.:
Seleucus III., 227, and Antiochus III. the Great, 224, the angel
foretells the
invasion of
(3)
After an imposing military demonstration
there should be a second alliance between Syria and Egypt, a scheme
again for
the union of the two kingdoms, based on what Eastern monarchs would
call
“equitable negotiations” (not “upright ones”), all the
more so since Egypt should be in her conqueror’s power; the scheme
this,
viz.: the marriage of Cleopatra, the daughter of Antiochus, to Ptolemy
V., in
order to betray Egypt into her father’s hands, a scheme foiled by her
wifely fidelity to her husband; Cleopatra in ruin, the “equitable
negotiations!” 11: 17,
B.C. 195. (4)
Finally, Antiochus should undertake
an expedition against the coast islands of Asia Minor, B.C. 190, but
suffer a
fair and honourable let lasting defeat by Scipio Asiaticus at the
battle of
Magnesia, losing also his fleet at Ephesus, and thus, punished for his
insults,
be driven in retreat toward his own stronghold, compelled to surrender
all his
European possessions, his eastern ones also west of the Taurus, forced
out of
Europe by the Romans, loaded with indemnity, killed while plundering
the temple
of Jupiter at Elymais, and so disappearing forever from human history. 11: 18, 19,
B.C. 187. His
successor –
Seleucus IV., a “Revenue Raiser” causing Helioderus to go through
Palestine, and attempting to plunder the temple, - should enjoy a brief
reign,
and suffer by poison at Heliodorus’ hands a death as ignominous as that
of his predecessor, 11: 20,
B. C. 175. Thus, in
his own way, in 11: 5-20,
the angel foretold the founding of the
Syrian kingdom, 11: 5;
unveiled two
diplomatic scenes, one in the palace at Antioch, 11:
6, the other in the palace at Alexandria, 11:
17, one invasion of Syria, 11: 7-9,
two invasions of Egypt and the conquest of Palestine by the King of the
North, 11: 10-12, 13-16. Also his last campaign and
ignominous
end, 11: 18, 19,
with that of his successor,
11: 20 – the
whole intended to lead up
to the advent of the “Madman,”
or
Greek Antichrist, viz.:
ANTIOCHUS
IV.,
EPIPHANES.
IV. Verses 11: 21-35, B.C.
175-164. Of this
wild beast in human form the
angel fortels that a “Vile”
or
“Contemptible Person”
should, in the
place of (“the state of”)
Seleucus
IV. stand up in his pride, a younger son of Antiochus the Great, born
B.C. 221,
dying B.C. 164, the “Little Horn”
in
8: 9, 20 years
a hostage at Rome, and
without title to the throne, and should, at the age of 58 years, effect
a
successful coup d’ etrat,
usurping by craft the Syrian crown, 11:
21,
B.C. 175; that, under him, the same playing fast and loose with truth
and
treaties, which distinguished his house, and now prevails in modern
times,
should continue, the same diplomacy in foreign affairs, the utter
absence of
good faith and presence of dissimulation, the pretence of peace while
preparing
war, the promise of reforms for Israel while effecting none, the
practice of
menace, intrigue, and force, to secure dynastic interests, a policy in
which
financial and political would be the first and justice, truth, humanity
and
righteousness, the last considerations – that, true to the traditions
of
his house, he would establish his kingdom (1) by leaguing with apostate
Jews,
Palestine now in his possession, breaking a pre-existing covenant to
give the
Holy Land to Egypt’s queen as her dowry, and in which Ptolemy
Philometor
was “prince of the covenant,”
11: 22,
repelling by superior force “the
arms of a flood;” Ptolemy’s invasion
of Syria to enforce a treaty right, and entering into a new treaty;
and, that
“after the league made with him,”
he, Antiochus, would “work
deceitfully,”
11: 23; (2) by
taking advantage of the wars
in Mecedonia, Greece and Southern Europe, he would endeavour to conquer
Egypt,
uniting both kingdoms on one, then Macedonia, Thrace, Greece and Asia
Minor, so
forming one mighty empire out of all, controlling the Mediterranean and
acquiring supremacy over the three continents.
The angel predicts that his
CANPAIGNS
AGAINST
Would
be three, and in the following order,
viz.:
(1)
The First Campaign
would be a crafty
entrance into Egypt with a small force, “in
time
of security,” marching along the rich provinces of Lower
Egypt
– the Nile Valley – coming up as far as Memphis, simulating friendship
yet plundering the country, and, in order to become “strong” with the Egyptians,
distributing wealth
and spoil to the people, contrary to the custom of his house, and
plotting
against the fortresses, 11:
23, 24, B.C.
173.
(2)
The Second Campaign
would be in force,
courageously, defeating the great army of Ptolemy betrayed by his own
courtiers
into the hands of Antiochus; that, then, forming a new treaty, one king
in the
power of the other, “both these
kings’
hearts would be to do mischief.”
Both
“speaking lies at one table.”
Yet
unsuccessfully, because God had set a time-limit to their intrigues. The angel here draws a
picture of modern
diplomacy also, true to the life.
He paints Gentile politics and power in living costume,
the code and
cunning of the great Colossus, the inner life of the Beasts, 11: 25-27, B.C. 170.
(3)
The Third Campaign
should be in force
again, but disastrous to Antiochus, since Popilius Loenas and the Roman
fleet
from the naval stations at Cypris and Crete – “the ships from Kittim” –
would compel him
to vacate
Still
more, the angel predicts that his
CAMPAIGNS
AGAINST
Would
be two, and in the following order, viz.:
(1)
The First Campaign
would be upon his
return northward from the Second Expedition against
(2)
The Second Campaign
would be upon his
expulsion from Egypt by the Roman fleet under Popilius, 11: 30, when,
humiliated, and raging like a madman, he would
return northward, with indignation against the “Holy
Covenant,” and, in league with the apostates, devote
20,000 more
to massacre, pollute the bulwarked sanctuary of God, abolish the Daily
Sacrifice, set up “the
Abomination causing
desolation” – a pagan altar on the altar of Jehovah –
violating mothers and daughters and hanging infants, increasing by
corruption
the number of apostates and giving orders to his generals if failing to
Hellenize the Holy People, then to “root
out the
whole race of the Jews” and “make
Jerusalem a common burying-ground,” 11:
31, 32. All
which he would
“do” or attrempt to
“do,” B.C. 168-165;
I
Macc. 1: 29-64; 3: 32-37.
The climax of horror was reached 15th.
and 25th.
December, B.C. 168. The
vision of
it is given in chapter 8:
9-14, 23-25.
But,
though ground between contending empires,
God would not forsake His people.
His covenant stands fast.
Evermore there shall be “a
remnant
according to the election of grace,” a company of
overcoming
souls, faithful to death, ordained to wear a crown brighter than David
wore and
jewelled with gems more lustrous than the stones on Aaron’s breast. If Antiochus can “do,”
God’s people shall “do.” The angel fortells
THE
MACCABEAN
TRIBULATION
He
depicts the unsurpassed courage of a holy Mattathias
and his five sons, among
whom Judas Maccabaeus, the
“Hammer” of God – a Charles Martel before his time –
and all his Asmonean heroes should stand forth strong in the strength
of God,
resisting the commandments of the Greek Antichrist – God’s own,
who, through faith should “obtain
a good report,”
when persecution would be the greatest, the tyrants rage the hottest. “The
people who know their God shall be strong and do!” 11: 32.
Soul-thrilling is the record of their
deeds, in I Macc. 2: 1-70. He predicts that the holy
Teachers, the
“Maskilim,” or men of
understanding, should instruct the people to stand for the truth, God,
and the
religion of their fathers in the midst of captivity and martyrdom by
flame and
sword, spoiled of all things, their only raiment sheepskins and
goatskins,
their home the battle-field, their shelter the dens and caves of the
earth;
that a little band of pious souls, the faithful “Chasidim,”
would rally to their help, when all seemed lost;
that a crowd of cowards, deserters in time of danger, hypocrites and
flatterers
in time of victory, would cleave the them; that among the slain would
be some
of the brave hero-leaders who would win the martyr’s crown; that
God’s design was to “try, purify
and make
white” His loved ones, show to the world the
indestructibility of
grace, the power of faith and patience of hope, and that neither
tribulation
nor distress, not persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword, could
separate them from His love; and, finally, that though severe, the
tribulation
would be short, even “for an
appointed time”
– the 1150 days mentioned in 8:
14. So
does the angel unveil the “Warfare
Great” at the close of Old Testament
times. That the
illustrious heroes
of the Maccabaean age were sustained by
the Hope of the Resurrection, which their
holy prophets, from Moses
to Daniel, had set before them – yea, from Abraham’s day –
their history most touchingly attests.
Thrilling, beyond description is the story of the
martyrdom of the
Maccabaean mother and her seven sons – a story without a parallel for
pathos and effect upon the heart, save in the case of Him who was the
Author
and Finisher of their faith. The
“Seven,” tortured and slaughtered, one by one, before the eyes of
her who bore them and nursed them in their infancy, died with her under
God’s covenant of everlasting life, their noble mother cheering and
sustaining them amid their agonies, then crowning the aceldama with her
own
triumphant death. With
what
calmness, holy resolution and courage of faith, they met their fate! “Thou, O persecutor,
takest us out
of this present life, but the King of the Ages will raise us up to life
everlasting” – an allusion to Dan.
12:
1. “These
bodies, this
corruptible, we lay down for the sake of His laws, hoping to receive
them
again.” This they
knew, that
“God will restore to His saints their bodies when He shall raise to
life
the dead men of this nation, even the slain of His people” – an
allusion to Isa. 26: 19. Sublime in moral heroism
are the words
of the seventh son, the other six already weltering in their blood:
“And
thou, O godless wretch, of all men most abominable, be not lifted up. Our brethren, having noe
suffered a
short pain, have died under the covenant of everlasting life, but thou
shalt
receive, through the judgment of God, the just punishment of thy
presumption.” Already
the
fourth son had as calmly and solemnly spoken, “It is good being put to
death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised again, but, for
thee,
there shall be no resurrection unto eternal life” – an allusion to Isa. 26: 14.
Then, lastly, the immortal mother who, in the ecstasy of
immolation
poured forth the full tide of her un-bosomed love and faith, and,
slaughtered,
fell on sleep to wake with her sons in the resurrection of the just. “Blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord,” Rev.
14: 13; 2 Macc. 7: 1-12; 5 Macc. 1: 13.
Thus
did the Old Testament saints look to the second coming of Christ with
the
intensity of faith and ardour of expectation, that puts to shame the
attitude
of the Christian church to-day, with reference to that sublime and
glorious
event.
The
holy Apostle Paul has embalmed the memory of
these martyrs of the Law, and extolled their exploits with the unction
of his
inspiration. His
heart heaves and
his pen burns as he presents them to us for our imitation, crowned by
the
example of the blessed Jesus.
“They waxed valiant in fight and turned to flight the
armies of
the aliens,” as did Judas Maccabaeus, scattering at one time 9,000 of
the
foe with only 1,500 men, at another 110,000 with only 8,000, the
battle-cry on
their lips, “God our Help!”
“Victory from Jehovah!” “The
Kingdom
Forever!” – proof
that the modern
maxim, “God is on the side of the strongest battalions” is a
lie! “Out of weakness they were made strong.” “They were
tortured, not accepting deliverance (as was the fact with
the mother and
her seven sons) that they might obtain a better
resurrection!”
“Others
had trial of cruel mockings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonments.. They were stoned, they
were sawn
asunder, they were slain with the sword.
They wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being
destitute,
afflicted, tormented, of
whom the world was not worthy!
They wandered in deserts and in
mountains, and in dens and in caves of the earth!
And all these” – the
Old Testament heroes of the faith – “having
obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise
(of life
everlasting, never to die), God
having provided some
better thing for us (even Christ at both His comings) that they, without us, should not be
made perfect”
Heb. 11: 34-40.
These
glorious martyrs of the Law at the close
of the 3rd. prophetic empire – twice
immortalized in the
Scriptures – the prophet Daniel teaches us are the fore-runners of
martyrs yet to be, at the close of the 4th.
empire, under the last
Antichrist, Dan. 7: 25; 9:
27; 12: 1, 7. The
apostle Paul set them before the New
Testament saints as examples to inspire their courage and lead to
imitation of
their fortitude – “a cloud of
witnesses,”
then beholding and now beholding our warfare and our race. He adds to them “Jesus,” the Christian
proto-martyr, the Author
and Finisher of the “faith”
by which
those heroes obtained a good report.
By
such examples and the love of Christ, that
“cloud” has been
expanded to
20,000,000 martyrs more in New Testament times, the latest the brave
Armenians
who were “slain with the sword”
rather than abjure their faith and accept the creed of Islam. The holy John assures us
that the early
Christian martyrs, also, were the forerunners of martyrs yet to be in
the Time
of the End, who will cheerfully drink – as did they – the Cup the
Saviour drank, and be baptised with the baptism He was baptised with. And foremost shall be
their glory, as
foremost was their suffering. In
that galaxy of saints shine a Stephen, Peter, Paul and James; a
Polycarp,
Ignatius, Irenaeus and Justin; a Wickliffe, Huss and Jerome of Prague;
a
Wishart and Hamilton; a Rogers, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and holy
Bradford;
with millions more, the victims of Antiochus, of Nero, of Torquemada,
the Duke
of Alva, Claverhouse and “Abdul the Dammed” – a happy
fellowship, whose effulgence in the resurrection shall correspond to
the
sufferings by which they tested their loyalty and love.
To comfort such, in view of the
tribulation to come upon them, every apocalypse in both Testaments was
given,
without exception. To
be among that
blessed company, Paul desired that literally he might “be made conformed to the death of
Christ, if by any means he
might attain to the
resurrection out from among the dead”
Phil. 3: 10, 11,
and nobly won his
desire. 2
Tim. 4: 6. Of
such, with
special emphasis – sharers with the Maccabaean heroes – the Holy
Spirit has said “the world was
not worthy”
– peerless souls whom God himself has “counted
worthy of the Kingdom of God,” Heb.
11: 38; 2 Thess. 1: 5; while the “timid
and unbelieving,” who “love
their
lives” and seek to “save”
them, shall “lose”
them and have
their portion among “them that
are without,”
Rev. 21: 8; 22: 11.
-------
“I
saw, far down
the coming time,
The
fiery chastisement
of crime,
With
noise of mingling
hosts, and jar
Of
failing towers and
shouts of war;
I
saw the nations rise
and fall
Like
fire-gleams on the
whitened wall;
I
saw them draw the
stormy hem
Of
battle’round
Who
trembled at my
warning word?
Who
owned the prophet of
the Lord?
O
prophet of the beating
heart,
For
God’s great
purpose set apart,
Before
whose
far-descending eyes
The
future as the
present lies,
Beyond
a narrow-minded
age
Stretches
thy
prophet’s heritage;
Through
heaven’s
dim spaces, angel-trod,
Through
arches
‘round the throne of God!
Thy
audience, worlds!
– all time to be
The
witness of the Truth
in thee!”
-
-------
CHAPTER
9
(Daniel, Chapters 10-11
continued, - Chapter
11: 36-45: The Transition-Section; Various views; True
View of the Type
and Antitype; Place of the Great Interval between the Ends of the Third
and
Forth Empires; Photograph of the Antichrist; The Antichrist’s Last
Campaign,
and World’s Last Battle; “Time
of the End;”
The Three Greater Power in the Field; Occupation of Egypt; Invasion of
Palestine; The Great Tribulation; Michael standing over the Jews;
Angelic War
in Heaven; Universal war on Earth; Joel’s Picture of the Scene;
Zechariah’s; Isaiah’s; John’s; The Blood Bath; The
Preparation of the Nations for the Struggle; The Military Budgets of
Rushia,
Germany, Austria, France, Italy; The Causes; The “Ever-recurring
Law;” The Eastern Question, and its Solution.)
DANIEL,
CHAPTERS 10-12. – TSABA GADOL.
WARFARE GREAT.
TYPE
AND
ANTITYPE. EASTERN
QUESTION.
The
previous article dealt with the
angel’s words, concerning the “Warfare
Great,” as far as to the Maccabean period, viz., to 11: 35.
The present deals with the remainder of 11
in connection with 12. The first thing here is
THE
TRANSITION SECTION
V. Verses 11: 36-39. The death of Epiphanes is
not recited at
the close of 11: 30-35,
B. C. 164, as it was
given already in 8: 25,
in the words “he shall be broken
without hand.” The
silence is doubtless due to the fact
that type and antitype are blended in “the
King,”
11: 36,
continuing together through the
section, until the one is displaced by the other at 11:
40. The
exit of “the King,”
the Antichrist, is expressed in the
words “he shall come to his end
and none shall
help him,” 11:
45. “His end”
here, is “his end”
in 9: 26,
i.e., the end of the “prince
that shall come.”
The
vital question that decides the division of
the chapter from 11: 21,
onward to the end,
is how much refers to Antiochus, and how much to the Antichrist? We encounter it at verses 21, 36, and 40.
It is (1) whether from 21
to the end of the chapter, all relates to
Antiochus; or (2) all to the last Antichrist; or (3) all to both; or
(4) whether
21-35 relates
to Antiochus alone, and 36-45
to the Antichrist alone.
These views exhaust the history of the
interpretation. The
first was held
by Porphyry in ancient times, - and is held by the higher critics. The second was held by
Jerome and some
of the church fathers, the Interval between Seleucus IV., 11: 20, and
the
Antichrist being placed between 20
and 21.
The third view was next held by Jerome also, Theodoret and
others two
senses, the literal and typical allowed in order to include both
Epiphanes and
the Antichrist. Only
in this sense
was it that Jerome asked “Suppose these things are said od
Antiochus, what harm comes to our religion?”
The fourth view, viz., partly to
Epiphanes, 21-35,
and partly to the
Antichrist, 36-45,
was that of the learned
Jews of Jerome’s time, and which he himself was inclined to adopt. The fifth, viz., only 40-45 relates to the
Antichrist, arose after the
rise of Mohammed in the line of his successors, as the Antichrist, on
the
year-day theory.
As
to the first view – all to Antiochus
– it is excluded by the fact that nothing in the career of Antiochus
corresponds to this campaign of 40-45;
that
Porphyry’s assertion to the contrary is void of all support; that the
fancy that the three campaigns of Antiochus against Egypt, and the two
against
Palestine, in 23-35,
are here
“recapitulated” is absurd, as Jerome himself discovered, since
never at any time did Antiochus march through Palestine, as “the King” here does 11:
41, to invade Egypt, but only entered Palestine on his “return” from Egypt to
Antioch, 11: 28, 30,
- besides never having “the
Libians and Ethipians at his steps.”
As to the second view – all to the Antichrist – it is
excluded by this, that the “Vile
Person,”
11: 21, is the
immediate successor of
Seleucus IV. in 11: 20
B.C. 175., i.e..,
stands up “in his estate,”
therefore
cannot be the last Antichrist at the close of Gentile times. There is no interval,
therefore, between
20 and 21.
As to the third view – all to both
– it is excluded by this, that the features peculiar to the Antichrist,
and not found in Antiochus (and such are admitted, especially his
self-exaltation “above every god,”)
cannot be common to Both. As
to the
fourth view, viz., partly to Antiochus, 21-35,
and partly to the Antichrist, 39-45,
it is
certain (1) that the term “the
King”
is here first used absolutely, apart from the qualifying adjunct, “of the North,” and is
connected immediately with
a description of absolute atheism in its extremest form, which was not
true of
Antiochus; (2) that, in verse
40, the
pronoun “him” in
the clause “push at him,”
– and “him” in the
clause “come against him,”
– and “he” in the
clause, “he shall enter,”
all refer to “the King”
in 36,
the antitype of Antiochus, as do all the pronouns “He,” “His,”
“Him,” in all the
verses
following. Keil,
holding the common
view, has endeavoured to dispute the above, but unsuccessfully against
Kliefoth, who with others has victoriously defended it; (3) that the “warfare Great” ends only
with the final
deliverance of the Jews from the grasp of “the
King” in 36,
and with the
resurrection of the holy dead, 12:
1, at the
coming of the Son of Man, and the King’s destruction, 7: 13; (4) that “the
Time of the End” 11:
40, is
identical with “at that time”
in 12: 1, and
therefore, “the King”
in 36,
is the “Him,” “He,” “His”
in 40-45, who
is destroyed at the second
coming of Christ. A
greater than
Antiochus is here! The
identity of
this blaspheming atheist with the last Antichrist is established by
Paul, in 2 Thess. 2: 1-12,
and by John, Rev. 13: 5-7,
incontrovertibly. Therefore
did Hyppolytus, the ablest and
first real exegete of the early church,
say: “Here is the Antichrist in 11:
36, 37.” So did the Jews believe,
and Jerome say of them, “The Jews
maintain that the things here spoken relate to the Antichrist,” adding
further, “Our writers hold that the things here predicted relate to the
Antichrist.” As to
the fifth
view that only 40-45
refers to the
Antichrist, it is excluded by the above considerations, while yet it
remains
true that 40-45
refers solely
to him and not to
Antiochus.
The
only question, therefore, is this, viz., if 36-39 is the
transition-section, including a
double personality, type and antitype in one description, where is the
Interval
between these two persons, i.e., between Antiochus and the Antichrist. Is it between 35
and 36, or 39
and 40?
The answer made by the most patient specialists, and
supported by the
strongest arguments from men of opposite schools is for example that
“the
section, 11: 40-45,
cannot be explained of
Antiochus, in any way, and the Interval must lie
between verse 39
and 40.” (Dornstetter.)
“The transition is at verse
36, and the interval lies between 39 and 40.”
(Tiefenthal.)
Even Cornill, like Kuenen, Hitzig,
Bevan, Behrmann, confess that the section cannot be referred to
anything known
in the history of Antiochus.
“I hold such an explanation to be impossible. It is excluded by the
structure of the
whole chapter which gives a clear chronological succession of campaigns
and
events from Cyrus to Antiochus. A
leap backwards
at 11: 40, in
order to make a resume,
is unknown to prophecy and inconceivable at its culminating point. The words ‘And in the time of the End’
denote progress in events, not
regress in discourse, and are decisive against it.” (Cornill.)
Nor, again, can 40-45 be a fourth
campaign of Antiochus, since the tyrant was expelled from Egypt, by
Roman
force, B.C. 168, and “ever after, Egypt was under Roman protection”
(Welzhofer), until it was “deeded
as a farm, by will, to the Roman people and in vain was sought to be
revived to
Cleopayra by Caesar and Antony,” (Mariette). Moreover, the battle of
Pydna, B.C. 168,
shattered forever the Syrian power.
What then? Shall
we say, as
a last resort that 40-45
is the dream of a
Maccabean writer, not yet informed of the death of Antiochus, and
forecasting
an imaginary future for him? Porphyry spurned that idea, “Such
exposition is the last resort of rationalistic criticism.” (Wolf).
“The probability of a resume
is an improbability, the dream of a possible fourth campaign is the
dream of an
impossibility, and the resort of an imagination of a Maccagean Jew is
only what
we might expect from a criticism which itself is a dream” (Herzfeld).
It remains, therefore,
that 40-45
is a true prediction, and that the interval between Antiochus and the
Antichrist, lies between verses
39 and 40.
That interval stretches from B.C 164 to A.D. 1898 [2,011],
and is 2061
years [+113], or
237 years greater than the interval in 9:
26,
between A.D. 70 and 1898; an interval of 1,827 years.
At 9: 40,
we take farewell to Antiochus forever, and are transported into the “Time of the End” of our
present age. Here,
we rest with confidence, as to the
interpretation. Jerome’s words are conclusive of
the mature judgment of the early church.
“Our writers hold that the things here predicted relate to
the
Antichrist.” Fraidi’s words are conclusive as
to the judgment of the Middle Age, “The judgment of antiquity was that
of
the centuries following.” Dusterwald’s words are conclusive
as to modern times, “All, save the rationalists, hold that verses 40-45
pertain to the Antichrist.”
As to the contents of the section before us, we come, now,
to the
PHOTOGRAPH
OF THE
ANTICHRIST
It
surpasses that of Antichus in 8,
bad as that is, and transcends all historical
accounts of the Syrian tyrant. The
angel paints in bold relief the three predominating characteristics of “the King.”
(1) His atheistic self-deifying egotism and blaspheming
mouth. Epiphanes,
indeed, stood up against the
“Prince of princes,”
Israel’s
Jehovah, and opposed him, 8:
25, but it is
not said that he exalted himself “above
every god,”
or blasphemed the “God of gods,”
and
refused to “regard any god,”
as is
said of “the King,”
in 11: 36, 37.
Here is an atheism so absolute as to smite every Pantheon
in antiquity,
every ethnic god, as well as Jehovah.
Epiphanes, however, was not “Atheos” in an ethnic
sense. “Theos”
belonged as
a title to his line, as “Divus”
did to Caesars. He
worshipped Olympian Zeus, set up his
statue in
ANTICHRIST’S
LAST
CAMPAIGN.
VI Verses 11: 40-45. It is only in his military
character the
Antichrist is here presented, and it is only a section of the
world-wide
“Warefare Great”
that is here given;
that which pertains to the final struggle of the Jews for the
re-possession of
their land, and their final deliverance from Gentile power. The time is called the “Time of the End.”
In
whatever sense the words “at
that time” in 12:
1, are taken, - a sense determined by the events described
in 1-3, in the
same sense the “Time of the End”
in 11:
40-45 must be taken, because the “Time of
the End” here, is “that
time”
there. The two are
chronologically
one, and the events of 11:
40-45
contemporate with those in 12:
1-3, the
Deliverance of Israel and the resurrection from the dead directly
connected
with the destruction of “the King,”
11: 45.
No interval exists between 11: 45,
and 12: 1. The “Time
of the End” here, is not the “Time
of the End” in 11:
35, and 8: 25,
viz., that of the third empire, the Greek,
but is clearly that of the fourth in its ten kingdomed state, the Roman. Nor is the expression “the Time of the End” the
same as the “End of Time.” It does not denote the end
of history,
nor of the planet, nor of nations, but the end of our present age, the
70th
week itself in 9: 27,
the last half of which
is seen in 7: 25,
and 12: 7.
It is the time when the Antichrist will make a “covenant,” or “treaty,”
with the Jews, granting them a modus
vivendi, in their own land,
with civil rights, and permission to revive their ancient worship, then
suddenly soon after because of some important event in their history
which
threatens his own empire, perhaps their effort to gain their
independence, or
the conversion of the remnant, violate his “covenant,”
11: 27, and “on
wing of abomination,” because their bitterest enemy,
seeking their
extirpation. By
such means he
accelerates his own destruction.
Coincident with his last campaign in the first campaign of
“Gog and Magog,”
led by the “Prince of Rosh,
Meshech, and Tubal,” and
connected with the defeat of both Gog and the Antichrist, and with the
restoration of
The
“Time of the
End” is of the intensest interest, as it brings to the end
of the
“Warfare Great,”
with the momentous
events that follow. The
angel
predicts that, of all the “Powers”
then in the field, three
shall be prominent, (1) the “King
of the South” who is not Ptolemy
Philometor, but the power holding Egypt, the horizon of the South in
the last
days extending to the Nile-sources, as in Isa. 18,
and Zephaniah 3;
(2) the “King of the North,”
who is not Antiochus Epiphanes,
but the power ruling the North, the horizon extending beyond the
Caucasus, as
in Ezek. 38;
the East reaching beyond the
Euphrates, as in Revelation
16, the West
beyond the Mediterranean, again in Ezek.
38;
(3) “The king” of 11: 36, the antitype of
Antiochus, viz., the
Antichrist; that in “The time of
the End,”
the power ruling the South, shall “push”
at “the King” of 11: 36, that is, cross
swords with him, (compare 8:
4, 6), and open the great campaign; that the
power ruling the North, - mighty, abundant in horses, wheeled armament,
and
ships, a great naval and military power, strong in cavalry, - shall
come
cycloning “against him,”
the same
“King” of 11:
36; that, notwithstanding these demonstrations, “the King” will mobilize his
forces “enter into the countries”
round about, “overthrow”
(see 11:
12); in short, that entering Palestine from the north, his
line of march
will be southward through Palestine, subjecting the insurrectionary
Jews, many
here as elsewhere being “overthrown”;
that, nevertheless, the transjordanic regions occupied by Israel when
they
first entered the Holy Land, viz., Edom, Moah, and the chief city of
Ammon,
“shall be delivered out of his hands,”
– lands called by Isaiah “the
shoulders
(i.e., mountains) of the
Philistines,” occupied
in this crisis by returning Israel, (compare Isa.
11: 11-16); - that, notwithstanding this, “the King” shall enter
Egypt, and the tribes of North and
South Africa shall flock to his standard, and “Egypt
shall not be able to deliver itself,” and that the
treasures of
Egypt shall be at the King’s command.
This, the first result to the power
holding
Still
further, the angel predicts that, “at that time,”
a spectacle unparalleled
in magnificence, and followed by events incomparable in importance for
the
kingdom of God, shall take place; that the “Warfare
Great” shall extend itself to the unseen world; that “Michael the great prince that standeth
for the children of
thy people” (Daniel’s people, the Jews), shall “stand over” them, and there
shall be “War in Heaven,”
Rev.
12: 7, a battle of battles in aerial regions between the
powers of light
and darkness, a conflict of principalities and powers leagued for
Israel’s destruction, with angelic hosts leagued for Israel’s
defence; an onset by “Michael
and his angels,”
against the “Dragon and his
angels,”
a warfare against “the hosts of
the high ones on
high,” as well as against “the
kings
of the earth on the earth,” Isa. 24:
21; heaven, earth, sea, dry land, all nations, shaken; -
commotion
above, commotion below, commotion everywhere, and specially in
Palestine. Everywhere,
we learn that
Michael’s standing “over”
the
children of
As
to the fulfilment of the vision, enough has
been said already, to show its impossibility in the time of Antiochus. Up to 1898, [now
2011] – all the
prophecies of Daniel save
the remainder of the interval from 1898 to the 70 th. week, and the 70
th. week
itself, have met their literal accomplishment in the exactest and
minutest
manner. This alone,
awaits the
future. That it was
not fulfilled
in the age of
That
this last crisis is impending, is
undeniable. The
whole world is
preparing for the last act in the tragedy of the “Warfare Great.”
Christendom is already one vast militarl camp and naval
depot. The son of
Pethuel is again on his
watchtower, blowing the trumpet in
THE
LORD
“Proclaim ye this
among the nations. Prepare
war. Wake up the
mighty men. Let all
the men of war draw near. Let
them come up. Haste
ye, and come, all ye nations round
about and assemble yourselver together.”
This the summons.
THE
PROPHET.
“Thither cause thy
mighty ones to come down, O Lord!”
This the prayer.
THE
LORD.
“Let the nations
bestir themselves, and come up to the
THE
LORD TO HIS HOSTS.
“Put ye in the
sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
Come; tread ye; for the wine-press is full, the vats
overflow, for their
wickedness is great.”
This the order.
THE
PROPHET A SPECTATOR.
“Multitudes!
Multitudes! In the
Such
the solemn scene, where the Antichrist is
judged and Gentile politics and power go down in blackness and blood. The same scene is given in
Isaiah 59: 19-21,
and 66:
5-16; in Dan.
7: 9-14; in Zeph.
3: 8-20; in Zech.
12: 2-14; 13: 1; in 14:
1-11. It
is given in
Matt. 25: 31-46. It
is the
scene of the sickle-judgment, and the winepress with “Blood up to the horses’ bridles”
in Rev. 14: 12-20,
and of “Heaven Opened”
for the Antichrist’s
destruction, in Rev. 19:
11-21. It
follows the Armageddon rendezvous in Rev.
16: 12-16, and is the end of the “Warfare Great” when the Son
of Man comes to
“take away the Sultanate”
of the
Horn, and “consume and destroy
it to the end.” Dan. 7: 26. All the prophets, Christ
and His
apostles, have looked to this “End”
of our age.
And
the nations are “preparing.”
History is the afterclap of which prophecy is the
fore-stroke; the echo of
which prophecy is the voice. The
growth of modern armies and the man-killing power of their weapons, the
destructive enginery of modern warfare by land and sea, during the last
twenty
five years is appalling. The augmented war-material and armies swollen
beyond
all precedent, in times of peace, are the omen of disaster to the world. They are the presage of
the judgment day
on all nations, no arbitration can arbitrate away.
The guilt of Christendom must meet its
punishment. The
condemnation of the
“Christian Nations” is their military strength. … The causes
of this vast “military Christendom of the Nineteenth Centuary” are
familiar to all; the advance of science in destructive agencies, mutual
distrust of the nations, their rivalries and jealousies, treachery and
breach
of treaties, balance of power, the peace of Europe, enormous increase
of
wealth, expansion of commerce, the fact that resistless power knows no
moral
law, the ambition of Europe to divide the non-Christian nations,
partition Asia
and Africa, and control the mines and markets of the world, lust for
supremacy,
want of righteousness, the discontent of the masses, the increase of
unbelief
and crime, and the corruption of Gentile politics and power. Add to those the
apprehension of a
collision between the East and West, and the coming struggle with
Islam,
Judiasm, and each other. The
prelude to that will be the apparent harmony of the “Powers” of the world for a
period of time, - the
“silence for the space of half
an hour, in heaven,”
the “four angels holding back
the winds,”
the solemn hush when the air is breathless and leaves are motionless;
then the
thunder-burst of Judgment! At
such
a time,
Prepare
war! Come up to the
It
is not for nothing that the histories of the
“Seven Great Monarchies” and the hundred histories of the
“People Israel,” and of the “Religion of Israel,” and
the “Explorations in Palestine,” have been written in these last
days, and the scholarship of modern times been called to exert itself
in Old
Testament studies as never before.
The “Future” has become the theme of existing interest. What means the unexampled
interest,
to-day, in the “Maps and Survey of Palestine,” in such books as
“The Recovery of Jerusalem,” the “History of
Jerusalem,” “
It
is with some providential intent the labours
of a Curtius and Grote, a Stanley and Rawlinson, a Mueller and
Weltzhofer, a
Meyer and Brandis, have drawn attention to the “laws of historical
development,” and shown how the destiny of the Jews affects the destiny
of all nations, and that “in the near future, the world may expect to
see
the operation of the law, more powerfully than ever.”
The “Powers” will not be
allowed of God to continue their concert of crime perpetually, for
their own
benefit, and the hindrance of the
-------
“Then shall be great tribulation, such as
was not since the
beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And, except those days
should be
shortened, no flesh should be saved; but, for the elect’s sake, those
days shall be shortened.”
Matt.
24:
21, 22.
“Then shall the righteous shine forth as
the sun in the
kingdom of their Father; who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
Matt.
13:
43.
“Beloved, think it not strange concerning
the fiery trial that
is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as
ye are
partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, ye
may
be glad with exceeding joy.”
1 Pet. 4: 12,
13; 1: 7.
“When the Lord shall build up
“Appear to your joy.” Isa. 66: 5.
“THY WORD IS TRUTH,” John
17: 17.
CHAPTER
10.
(Daniel, Chapter 12, -
Conclusion of the Prophecy; Definition of
the Time; Intervention of Michael; The Great Tribulation; The
Deliverance of
the Jews; The Resurrection of the Holy Dead; Splendour of the Risen
Saints;
Life Everlasting; Completion and Authentication of Daniel’s Book; Study
of the Book in the “Time of the
End”;
The Epilogue; The Higher Criticism; Perplexity of Daniel; Its Solution;
First
Dismissal of the Prophet from the Scene; Extension of the “Time of the End;” The 1290
and 1335 Days; The
Blessed Time; Second Dismissal of the Prophet; The Promise of the
Prophet’s Resurrection; Christ, Glory, the Kingdom, the End – Our
Hope.)
DANIEL,
CHAPTERS 10-12. –
END OF THE
WARFARE GREAT. THE
GREAT
TRIBULATION.
RESURRECTION. DELIVERANCE.
The
chapter falls into three divisions: (1) the
Conclusion of the prophecy, 12:
1-3; (2) The
Completion of the Book of Daniel, 12:
4; (3)
the Epilogue or closing Vision, 12:
5-13.
(1)
The Conclusion of the Prophecy, 12:
1-3.
These verses disclose in what way the constancy and faith
of God’s
people will be tried in the final crisis, by what means the Lord will
separate
converted Israel from their apostate brethren, Isa.
66: 5, and how he will break in pieces the oppressor and
redeem from
deceit and violence the souls of the poor and needy, Psa.
72: 4, 13, 14. The
fate of
(1)
The Definition of the “Time”
of the events. It
is “at
that time,” 11:
40, when the
Antichrist camps on Mount Moriah, 11:
45,
hence neither in the times of Antuiochus, nor of Titus, since it is
immediately
followed by the “Great
Tribulation”
that next precedes the Coming of Christ.
Dan. 7: 13, 25;
12: 1-3, 7; Matt. 24: 15-29;
2 Thess. 1: 6, 7; 2: 1-12; Rev. 13: 5; 19: 11-21; 20: 1-6. It will be “such a time as never was”
prior to A.D. 33, when
our Lord made this statement, therefore not in the times of Antiochus; “No, nor ever shall be”
prior to the days
immediately before His Second Coming, therefore not in the times of
Titus. The
character of the time is faithfully
delineated by our Lord as corresponding to Antedilvian and Sodomite
times. “As it was
in the days of Noah,” and of “Lot,” Luke 17: 26-37. The Gospel [of
the Kingdom] will
have gone, as a testimony, to
all nations, and Christendom, the field full of Tares and Wheat, will
be
burdened with “scandals”
to be
“taken out” by the
sickle of
judgment. Matt.
13: 41. Modern
Culture and
Civilization will have done their best and worst, and amid
antichristianity,
lawlessness, church-defection, and a world in war,
(2)
The intervention of Michael in behalf of
But
if the conflict is aerial, it is also
terrestrial, and chiefly in the Holy Land, where “the nations are gathered against
(3)
The Great Tribulation. “There
shall be a time of Trouble such as never was since there was a nation,
even to
that same time,” 12:
1. Of
this, much has already been
said. It is that
period of
affliction described so graphically and so frequently in both
Testaments, by
Moses, Deut. 32: 39-43;
by Balaam, Num. 24: 23, 24;
by Isaiah,
26: 8-21; 59: 16-21; 66: 5-16;
by Jeremiah,
30: 7; by Ezekiel,
38: 1-23; 39: 1-29;
by Joel, 3: 9-16;
by Zephaniah, 3:
8; by Zechariah,
12: 1-14; 13: 1; 14: 1-5;
by our Lord, Matt. 24: 15,
28; by Paul, 2
Thess. 1: 6, 7; and by John, Rev.
3: 10; 7: 14; 11: 7; 12: 12; 13: 1-18, covering the second
half of the
Apocalypse from chapter 12
to 20.
Here is found the formal condemnation of all the modern
optimistic
schemes, social theories, and wide-spread false teaching, that looks
for the
reform of the whole world and conversion of the nations before the
Second
Coming of Christ. If
we ask the
Prophets, Christ and His Apostles, what they expected in the Future,
after the
Gospel seed had been scattered all over the earth, their reply will be
found to
be one and harmonious. By
the side
of the Wheat, Satan’s seed, the Tares, will occupy the field of the
world
“together” till the
Lord comes. During
the Times of the Gentiles Israel
will remain in unbelief. Along
with
the progress of Christianity, externally waxing to a power in the
world, and
allying itself with governments and states, shall go prosperity,
internal
corruption and decay, a deepening departure from the faith, as the last
times
draw near – antichristianity at last ascendant, the world controlling
the
Church, false teaching, false Messiahs, false culture and civilization,
crime
universal, the faithful a “little
flock”
to whom it is “the Father’s good
pleasure
to give the kingdom.”
The great apostasy in Christendom shall culminate in the
Antichrist, and
bring the crisis of the “Warfare
Great,”
viz., the “Great Tribulation,”
the
world still “lying in the Wicked
One.” They
looked for all this, and for the
return of the Jews to their own land, their conversion in the midst of
the
crisis, and the Second Coming of Christ to put an end to the whole
disorder and
bring His Kingdom of righteousness and truth to victory. No other future than this
is found in
the Sacred Scriptures, save the Millennial Age and the final New Heaven
and
Earth, both which follow the Advent of the Son of Man in clouds. The triumph of the Kingdom
comes only to
those who, faithful to Christ, pass through this Tribulation, and,
sealed by
His Spirit, are “overcomers”
who
have “gotten the victory over
the Beast and His
Image, his Mark, and the Number of his Name,” even as
before in
earley times, Rev. 15: 2;
20: 4. The
unwritten in the Book of Life
“worship the Beast”
and perish in
his punishment. Rev. 13: 8.
The conversion and reform of the
whole world before the Second Advent is a human fiction, contradicted
by both
Testaments.
In
Daniel’s Book the Tribulation, though universal,
is confined to the Jews and the Holy Land, the election out of
(4)
The Deliverance. “Thy
people shall be delivered,” 12: 1,
i.e., at the close of the Great Tribulation, 12: 7;
7: 25-27; 9: 27. Here
is
proof conclusive that the final gathering of living Israel, and the
resurrection of Israel’s holy dead, are contemporaneous events at the
close of the Great Tribulation, Dan.
12: 1-3,
and that “our gathering together
unto Christ”
is at the same time-point as Israel’s Deliverance, viz., at the close
of
the 70th. week.
2 Thess. 2: 1-3. This promise of the
Deliverance of the
“Remnant” is
ancient as Moses and
runs through both Testaments. Not
exempted from trial, or even martyrdom, yet the “Remnant”
shall not be destroyed. Sealed
of
God, kept safe from the power of temptation, delivered out of all their
troubles, as were their fathers before them, they shall be overcomers
through
the blood of the Lamb. “Alas, for the day is great, so great
that none is like it; it
is the time of Jacob’s trouble but he shall be saved out of it.” Jer. 30: 7. Accounted worthy to escape
the
licentiousness, drunkenness, surfeiting, cares of this life and snares
of the
antichristian time, and the judgments to fall on the ungodly, they
shall stand,
a faultless company, with their Redeemer, on the earthly “
[*
Remarkable is the space given to
The
deliverance will be miraculous, (1) by the
personal appearing of the Son of Man, first of all in the clouds of
heaven Dan. 7: 13;
(2) in the next place, “His feet
shall stand on the Mount of Olives,”
and a way of escape for the Jews be provided by earthquake shocks,
sundering
the mountain, Zech. 14: 10; (3) by the tripartition of
the city
previously, its fall of “one
tenth”
of it, and the engulfment of “7000
men of name,”
the supporters of the Antichrist; Rev.
2: 13;
(4) by the destruction of the Antichrist and his hosts “outside the city,” Rev.
14: 20; Dan. 9: 27; 7: 26; 12: 7; 2 Thess. 2: 8; Rev. 19: 11;
(5) and,
as stated, by the coming of the Lord to “Zion,”
the last military station where the Antichrist encamped, Dan. 11: 45.
It will be an elect deliverance even of “as
many as are written in the book,” Dan.
12: 1; “the holy,
every one written among
the living in Jerusalem,” Isa.
4: 3;
the surviving: “We who are alive
and remain unto
the coming of the Lord,” even as in the case of Gentile
believers,
who have just been caught away, 1
Thess. 4: 17. It
will be a spiritual deliverance of
(5)
The Resurrection of the Holy Dead.
Not only shall living
The
idea, therefore, of a Secret Parousia for
the resurrection of the holy dead, prior to the appearing of the Son of
Man in
the clouds of heaven at the close of the tribulation, is contrary to
the Word
of God. To this
time-point of the
revelation of Christ in His glory, to raise the dead, deliver
(6)
The Splendour of the Risen Saints.
“They that
be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that
have
turned the many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever,”
12: 3.
The angel employes two words nowhere else found in the Old
Testament,
(1) Hayi Olam, life everlasting,
i.e.:
to die no more, and (2) Hizhir,
shall
shine, from Zohar, splendour. This last one is
beautifylly rendered by
the German word Himmelglanz, the
gleam of Heaven. Moses
describes
the firmament as a “sapphire
pavement”
beneath the feet of the God of Israel, “the
body
of heaven in its clearness;” Exodus
34: 10, and Elihu compares it to a “molten
mirror.” Shining with undimmed resplendency. Job 37: 18. Ezekiel describes it as “an appearance of brightness as the look
of the brightness of
burnished gold,” Ezek.
8: 2. To
the golden sheen the angel adds the
incandescent glory of the “stars,”
literally of the “glitterers.” Our Lord and Paul allude
to these
expressions in their brilliant language when speaking of the
resurrection and
its different degrees of glory, Matt.
13: 43; 1
Cor. 15: 41. An
instance of
the reality, we have in the Transfiguration of the Lord in the “holy mount,” when “His face did shine as the Sun, and His
raiment was white as the light.”
Matt 17: 21, “white
as snow and glistering,” Mark
9: 3;
Luke 9: 30. What
the angel
teaches is that the wise shall shine like the crystal sheen of the
sunlit
firmament, and the converters of the many to righteousness shall glow
with the
glitter of the stars in a cloudless canopy.
Still more, their effulgence shall be
eternal – a glory un-obscured forever, 12:
3. This
their Zohar.
Degrees of glory
there will be, even as the three in Orion’s belt excel in magnitude and
glory the lesser stars of the constellation.
The transfiguration of the living will
equal that of the dead. The
Lord
extends the splendour of all the “righteous.” Matt. 13: 40. Allusion is here doubtless
to the
Maccabean teachers of the law, in 11:
33-35,
but the prophecy includes the whole sacramental host of God’s elect,
who
share the glory ready to be revealed.
All who are instrumental in the salvation of the many will
be clothed
with surpassing brightness.
Eminent, the martyrs of Jesus will shine, saints who have
not deemed as
dear to them their lives, for Jesus’ sake.
Rev. 20: 4;
14: 13; 2 Thess. 1: 5; Heb. 11: 35-39; Rev. 12: 11; 2 Tim. 4: 6-8. Such the “out-resurrection.” Phil. 3: 11. If a splendour so great
and enduring,
for the body alone – even to be glorified like Christ, whose brightness
Paul tells us eclipsed the noon-day sun – is the reward of a
Tribulation
so brief, then indeed the sorest afflictions are but as the puncture of
a pin,
and the longest but as a moment – not worthy to be compared with the
“far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory.” Rom. 8: 18. Earth never wore a diadem
so royal as
that composed of risen saints. The
eloquence of all the antiquity, or modern times, has furnished no
description
equal to this conclusion of the prophecy; a scene so imposing, majestic
and
impressive; so sanctifying and sublime; so solemn and subduing! We have seen the rainbow
braided on the
brow of the dying storm, but here a glory-crown of saints, the jewelled
diadem
of God, is placed upon the head of the dark Tribulation itself – a
vision
that can never vanish from the soul of the believer.
How quick the transit from the cross to
the crown, from shame to honour, from suffering to glory! The end of the “Warfare Great” is the
outburst of an
illumination which celebrates a victory for the
II.
The Completion of Daniel’s Book. The
great prophecy of Daniel is now
ended. The whole
future has been
disclosed to the Second Coming of Christ, and now the angel issues his
order to
the prophet. “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words
and seal the Book, even
to the time of the end.” 12:
4,
i.e., (1) to the end of the third empire, and (2) to the end of the
fourth. By the “words” is meant the words
of the last revelation
just given, viz., chapters
10: 11, 12: 1-3. By
the “book,”
the whole Book of Daniel, from first to last.
By “shut
up the words” is meant, bind them with the rest of the
parchments,
as part of the Book. By
“seal the book” is
meant, attach to the roll the
official seals of its authentication, and deposit the same in the
archives of
the Jewish nation, as part of Holy Scripture.
Preserve it for the warning and comfort
of God’s people. This
does
not mean that its contents shall remain inaccessible to the High Priest
or to
teachers of the people. The
order
relates alone to the preservation of the original text.
It was the custom of the prophets,
before binding the separate parchments, to transcribe copies for the
public
use, from which still others were transcribed by official hands, under
penalties for error. Thus
the Book
of Daniel descended to the Jews, in a standard text, with which all
copies
could be compared as the near “time
of the end”
approached. The
order of the angel
implies no less than this, that Daniel was the author of the whole
book, most
of which was written during the exile and its finisher in post-exile
times,
during the Persian reign.
III.
The Prediction of the Study of the Book in
the “Time of the End.” “Many
shall run to and fro, and the knowledge shall be increased.” Dan. 12: 4. This explains the reason
of the
order. A long
period will intervene
between now and then, and only then will the contents of the book be
completely
understood, therefore “seal the
book,”
that a sure and standard text may be preserved.
Proof conclusive, again, that the book
was written long before the Maccabean times.
That it existed then and was studied
with unabated interest, is established by the indisputable testimonies. That it is studied to-day,
yet more than
ever, is a sign of the nearing “time
of the end.” By
the words “run to and fro”
is meant, not “modern
locomotion,” nor “missionary enterprise,” nor “rushing
here and there,” but the diligent perusal of the book with intensity
and
earnestness, by the method of turning forward and backward its pages,
comparing
prophecy with prophecy, in order to understand its contents. The angel means that, as
the “time of the end”
approaches, whether the near or
far horizon, “multitudes”
will
devote themselves to a study of the book, and come to the “inner
perception” (the knowledge) of its meaning.
Light will burst forth as
IV.
The Epilogue or Closing Vision. 12: 5-13. With the termination of
the order, what
we have is
(1)
The sudden change of the scene; and not
without some deep significance. The
linen-clothed-man reappears, hovering over the Hiddekel to which the
name of
the Nile – “Yeor”
– is given, as if to remind
(2)
The dialogue between the linen-clothed man
and one of the “two”
– a
conversation introduced for Daniel’s benefit.
One of the “two”
asks the linen-clothed man “How
long shall it be to the end of these wonders?”
12: 6, i.e.,
how long from the invasion of
Palestine by the Antichrist, 11:
40, to the
Resurrection, the Deliverance, and the Kingdom of Glory? The two-fold answer is (1)
that “a time, two times, and
half a time,” 1260 days,
shall be the length of the time, and (2) that the end will be
signalized by the
fact that whatever “power”
the Jews
may have in the last days, it shall be broken, the Jews helpless in the
hands
of the Antichrist, with whom they make alliance.
Anti-semitism will wax to triumph among
the “powers,” in
spite of the
counter movement to rehabilitate the Jewish state.
Deut. 32:
16-24; Dan. 12: 7. Both
hands uplifted to heaven, the Linen-clothed Man awears in the presence
of the
“Other Two,” and “by Him that liveth forever,”
that not one
syllable of the prophecy shall fail, but that all shall be accomplished. The last Invasion of the
Holy Land shall
take place, the Great Tribulation shall come, the Jews shall be driven
to the
wall, Michael shall stand up, the holy dead shall be raised, Israel be
delivered, and the Antichrist destroyed.
By the
life of God, these things shall be so! This is tremendous
adjuration. See Deut.
32: 40-43; Rev. 10: 5-7.
It was
not without intense significance the angel had said in 8:
26, that “the
vision is truth;”
in 10: 1, that
“the word is truth;”
in 10:
21, that Daniel’s book is a “Scripture
of truth;” and declares in 11: 2,
“I will show thee the truth.” And not without the same
deep
significance does he further admonish the prophet, yea, command him, to
“close the words,”
and “seal the book,”
11:
4, and declares them “closed
and sealed to
the time of the end,” 12:
9. Yea,
more, he crowns the whole with an
oath, “by the living God,”
–
both hands held up – that “all
these things
shall be accomplished,” i.e., that none of them is fiction! In the name of all that is
sacred and
solemn, why does the angel thus repeat himself, exhausting all
sanctions,
angelic, human and divine? If
the
writer of the book is not a pious impostor, the whole book is true as
God is
true, and not a Maccabean novel, as our modern Higher Critics would
have
it. No other book
in all the Bible,
save John’s apocalypse, has such a weight of attestation, Rev. 22: 18, 19. The “Vision”
is “Truth,” the “Revelation,” the “Writing”
of it, the very “words,”
the “book” itself,
- all is “Truth,”
God-sent, angel-given, Spirit-breathed,
everlasting “Truth,”
closed, sealed,
authenticated, and attested by angels, sworn to by the Lord himself,
and
transmitted to our times to be studied with the intensest interest. Had criticism any
conscience of fear of
God before its eyes, it would quail in the presence of such
transcendant
confirmation. God
the Almighty,
thundering from heaven, could give no stronger demonstration of its
verity. It has the
sanction of
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, angels, prophets, Christ and His apostles,
to its
Chiliastic doctrine, and is established by no less than 2,500 years of
human
history.
(3)
The Perplexity of the Prophet. “I heard,
but I understood not. Then
said I,
O my Lord and what shall the Afterness
of these things be?”
12: 8. What was it he did not
understand? Expressly,
he declares, he “understands the
vision,” 10: 1. What perplexed
him was the definition of the time, given by the Linen-Clothed Man in 12: 7.
His soul had been riveted upon the Maccabean persecution, 11: 30-35; the tyrant’s
character, 11: 26-39,
and the invasion of the
(4)
First Dismissal of the Prophet. “Go thy
way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed to the time of the end,”
12: 9.
Tenderly the angel declines to protract the Revelation. He recurs to the thought
in 12: 4,
expanding it. “Many
shall be purified, and made white, and tried, but the Wicked shall do
wickedly. And none
of the Wicked
shall understand, but the Wise shall understand,” 12: 10.
Two classes of persons there shall be in the time of the
end, the
“Wicked” and the “Wise.”
The world will not all be converted to Christ. Moreover the Wicked, in
spite of the Day
of the Lord, will continue to practice wickedness.
The tribulation that refines the saints
will only incrustate the ungodly.
The fire that purifies the gold will only harden the clay. For that reason the Wicked
will neither
study nor understand the Book of Daniel, but the Wise will do both. Clear to their “inner perception” will be
the necessity of the
tribulation to sift God’s saints from the world-loving and unbelieving
professors of religion, and to test their fidelity.
(5)
The Extension of the Time. “And from
the time that the daily
sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination that maketh
desolate be set up, there shall be 1290 days. Blessed is he that waiteth
and cometh to
the 1335 days,” 12:
11, 12. This
much the angel concedes to
Daniel’s further curiosity.
The italuicised words here, and in the section above, are
found also in 8: 12, 13,
and 11: 31,
35, where the vision treats of Antiochus.
From this fact certain interpreters,
both evangelical and rationalistic, conclude that the whole section in 12: 8-13, refers to the
times of that tyrant. Undoubtedly,
there is an allusion
here to time past, since the angel has already carried the prophet, in 12: 7, into the remote
future. But a
prediction of the future in terms
of retrospective allusion to a prophecy, which itself is typical of the
far
future, in no way loses its own futurity.
The common use of the same terms to express different
stages in the
development of both prophecy and history, is frequent as it is
necessary. It
springs from the organic and typical
relations of prophecy and history alike.
One epoch becomes the mirror of another.
Gabriel’s
answer, in 12: 9-13,
to Daniel’s question in 12:
8, is a word explaining something of the
“afterness” of the
1260 days. Moreover,
the angel has already told
Daniel, in 9: 27,
that “a prince to come,”
at the seventieth week, would
come “on wing of abomination,”
after
allowing to the Jews, by treaty, the practice of their “daily sacrifice,” and would
break their covenant
in the middle of the week. The
deeds of Antiochus would be repeated, substantially, yet in variant
form. “An abomination” – not the
abomination –
would be set up, perhaps the image of the Antichrist himself, Rev. 13: 14.
The “time of the end”
would
be extended first to thirty, then to forty five days more beyond the
1260. Then the “Blessed”
time would come. That
no “blessed” time,
such as here predicted for
Israel, followed the “cleansing
of the temple,”
either 1290 or 1335 days after the act of Judas Maccabaeus, is evident
from the
Maccabean history. The
citadel
remained in the hands of the foe.
Two whole years of foreign armies, 100,000 strong,
assaulted
Ever
more increasingly, the ablest interpreters
regard the thirty days, following the 1260, as the period of
How
“blessed”
the time will be, and “blessed”
the
man who lives or wakes to see it, when the Lord will “appear in His glory and build up Zion,”
“gathering the outcasts, healing
the broken in heart, and
binding their wounds,” only a pen dipped in prophetic fire
can
describe. The angel
pronounces a
benediction and beatitude on the heirs of the kingdom, whom he calls “waiters” for it. And myriads such there are
to-day,
notwithstanding “blindness in
part has happened
unto
(6)
Second Dismissal of the Prophet. “Go thou
thy way til the end shall be, for thou shalt rest.” 12: 13.
The lingering prophet, loth to leave is
again admonished to retire. It
is
hard to part. But “Go thou!”
The Glorious One who hovered over the Hiddekel has gone! The “two
others” are gone! The
vision fades. “Go thou thy way,” the way
of the righteous. “Go till
the end shall be” – the end of life, with all its cares
– “for thou shalt rest”
– a holy repose, entering into peace, thy body in its bed, thy spirit
– “walking in uprightness before
God.” Isa. 57: 2. Rest till the end of
Israel’s
weary way. Finish
the Book. Discharge
what remains of the duties of
life. Dismiss all
anxious
thoughts. Messiah
will come, and
though rejected, will come again and be accepted.
(7)
The promise of the Prophet’s
Resurrection. “Thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end
of the days,”
12: 13.
The transition from a reclining posture to one of
standing, implies a
resurrection. By
the term “lot” is
meant the portion of the righteous.
The allusion here is to the
redistribution of the
-------
“The
Age of Gold, which a blind tradition
has placed in the past, lies before us.
But first a
- Carlyle.
CHAPTER
11
(Summation,
Objections,
Conclusion; General Teaching of Daniel’s Book; The Passing away of all
Kingdoms and Empires; Resume of the Main Features of Daniel’s Book; The
Design of the Judgment of the Nations;
God’s Name Sanctified, His Will done on Earth as in
Heaven; Connection
between Eschatology and the Messiah-doctrine; Objections to Daniel’s
Doctrine; Reply: The Sequence of the Kingdom in Victory upon the Second
Advent;
Curosities of Opposite View; Character of the Millennial Kingdom; Reign
of the
Saints on the Earth; Jerusalem the Centre of the New Age; Christ
present in His
Glory; The Kingdom of “the
Thousand Years:”
The Vastness of the Idea of the Kingdom; False that the Kingdom of
Christ is
not here now; False that it comes to victory before He comes; Science
demands a
Millennial Age; Use andAbuse of Prophecy; Chiliasm indestructible;
Testimony of
the Writer; Parting with the Prophet.)
SUMMATION. OBJECTIONS. CONCLUSION.
What
the book of Daniel teaches is that, because
of Israel’s apostasy, the Jewish state was overthrown and the
sovereignty
of the Hebrew people, whose great ancestor became “heir of the world through the
righteousness of faith,”
was passed by God’s decree to the four empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia,
Graeco-Macedonia and Rome, and to the several kingdoms into which the
third and
fourth of these should be divided; and signally so to the “Little Horn” out of the
third, a type of the
“Little Horn” of
the fourth, yet to
appear. Thenceforward,
during these
“Times of the Gentiles,”
the Jews
should ever remain under the Gentile yoke, scattered among all nations,
expatriated from her home, without an organized nationality, and only
saved
from their subjection at the second coming of Christ, upon their
repentance and
faith, and after sore tribulation.
Then, and only then, their lost sovereignty should revert,
their kingdom
be restored in glory greater than that of Solomon, and made the local
and
sustaining centre of the kingdom of Christ on victory “Underneath all heavens.” Thus, the ancient people
of God,
converted to a “holy people”
in the
highest spiritual sense, should be re-established in their old
historical
relations to the nations of the earth, and be as life from the dead to
the
world.
Many
are the important lessons here taught;
among them (1) the indestructibility of the Jewish race, as a separate
unamalgamated people, a “generation
that shall
not pass away;” (2) the destructibility and transient
character of
all the empires and kingdoms of the world; (3) that during the Times,
with all
the kingdoms of Europe, Asia and Africa, foredoomed like the rest to
retire
from the scene that the kingdom of Christ may enter victoriously with
Israel’s kingdom as the centre of the new age of the Gentiles the
triumph
of the kingdom of God in righteousness and peace, underneath all
heavens, is
not to be expected; (4) that the restoration of the Jews and the
re-establishment of the Jewish state are as little to be expected,
until the
Jewish people have been turned to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and
resumed
the central doctrines of their ancient creed, as taught in the
prophets, and
professed by the first disciples in the holy city; (5) that the
time-point, or
epoch, of the final Jewish elevation is the time-point of the final
destruction
of all Gentile power, viz., the second coming of Christ.
One
by one the prophet sees the ancient empires
pass away, beginning with the empire of
The
prophet beholds the conflict ever permanent
until it culminates on the closing scenes of the “Warfare Great.”
He takes account of the kingdoms of this world
masquerading in the
costume of a nominal Christianity.
He sees no hope of the world’s deliverance from its evils,
under
such condition, during the “Times
of the Gentiles.” He
has anticipated the fact that when
Christianity should enter history and come to be the religion of
princes and
the state, in place of Paganism and the old idolatry, it would be
embraced,
politically, by the Fourth Empire, and the Powers, only to be made
subservient
to their temporal interests. He
foresaw that it would become a military Christianity, a force employed
by
rulers and legislators, as a means of subjugating nations to their
sway, and
that, under the pretense of giving the Religion of Christ and a better
civilization to the world, it would veil the rapacity and lust of
mominally
Christian Powers, seeking temporal dominion over the property and lives
of men
less powerful than themselves, and so “Christianize” the
nations. History
has verified his
foresight, and at no time more openly than now, in the standing armies,
and the
fleets, of the Christian world. The
“Horns” fight each
other. That
militarism will prevail till Christ
comes is the teaching of the prophet.
The
“’Tis
but
the same rehersal of the Past, -
First
Freedom, and then
Glory; when that fails,
Wealth,
Vice,
Corruption, Barbarism at last,
And
history hath but one
page.”
The
old empires have perished
from the earth, and over their dull, dark sepulchres, “Dead
for want of Righteousness,” is read
through the fog that
dampens the grave of their glory.
Their monuments wake only the reflection that
“Hardly
the place
of their antiquity,
Or
note of those great
monarchies we find,
Save
in the dust, a
verbal memory,
An
empty name is left
behind.”
So
shall it be with the modern empires and
kingdoms. “Passing away,” are the
words the winds moan over
their dying greatness. Thoughtful
men – and of schools the most opposite – a Brandis, Hegel,
Rawlinson, Macauley, von Mueller, - a Goldwin Smith and Sybel, - how
many more,
have recognized the law. They
vindicate the prophet’s view.
One kingdom alone is everlasting.
As
to the nature
of the communication made to
Daniel, it was a divine message, mediated by an angel, as was the later
case
with John, who, however, includes the “Church”
in his apocalypse. As
to the form,
it is an apocalypse, or “secret
revealed,”
Dan. 2: 18, 19,
an open unveiling of the
future, by means of plastic images or symbols presented to the eye,
with their
divine interpretation to the ear; a ceries of realities to be fulfilled
in
history, in order and succession.
As to its contents,
they are
It
has been already noted, and must be borne in
mind, that the Vision of Judgment, in Dan.
7,
is not that of all mankind, quick and dead, i.e., not the Last
Judgment, but
the Messianic Judgment of the living nations, connected with
It
is through judgment this great consummation
is achieved. It
comes with the
solution of the world’s greatest problem – that concerning the
political condition of the ancient people of God.
Like all other prophets, Daniel, under
the imagery of the 10 Horns, foretells the final conflict through which
He
is a poor scholar in the study of the
Scriptures who has failed to see the deep inner connection between
eschatology
and the Messiah-doctrine, in both Testaments.
A disembodied state [of
the spirit] in
heaven is not the end of the ways of God.
The whole earth shall be filled with His glory. Through successive stadia
His kingdom
comes, with mighty changes among the nations, till the last catastrophe
is
reached. Men cannot
arbitrate the
“Day of the Lord”
out of the Book of
God. We can no more
dissociate eschatology
from the Messiah-doctrine, than we can dissociate Messiah from the
kingdom. His work
was not all
completed at His first coming.
Prophecy provides the ground-lines of the whole movement
in connection
with a calculus of time that passes from the Old Testament into the New. If it is true that, in
science,
indestructibility of matter, persistence of force, and continuity of
motion,
are essential axioms of development, and that the last impetus is from
the
heterogeneous back to the homogeneous, from diversity to unity,
conflict to
rest, through age-long transformations, these are no less true of
history and
the kingdom of God. Long
before
science announced these, God’s Word revealed them, and built up
prophecy
upon them. Heb.
11: 3. Acts 17:
26-28. It
is to the crisis of the second advent
the prophet looks when the world will change front and a new age heave
into
history. The
kingdom is
indestructible, the force is persistent, the motion is continuous. The result of the crisis
will be the
union of Jew and Gentile in the one
If
therefore, we ask ourselves what the prophet
Daniel has done, the answer is easy.
He has unveiled the plan of God, foretold the course of
empire, and
“Objections”
abundant there are from
every side to Daniel’s doctrine, which is that of all the prophets, of
Christ and His apostles, as to every other doctrine of the Word of God,
-
“objections” as numerous as they are worthless.
It belongs to the truth of God that it
always gives occasion for “objections,” and is never
“received” until the heart is subdued to regognize its authority
above the prejudices and the vain interpretations of men. The “difficulty” is not in
the head, but in the heart, and its normal disposition toward the truth
it
dislikes. “Unto the upright there ariseth light in
darkness.” The
chief “objection” is to
the “Truth” itself,
and here to the
truth of the pre-millennial advent of Christ – the “Chiliasm”
of Daniel’s book, as also of John’s Apocalypse – blind to the
fact that it is the “Chiliasm” of the whole Bible.
To discuss the objections would be to
write a large volume. It
is not
necessary. Truth
once established
by the word of God, objections are nothing, - least of all the
common-place
that the pre-millennial doctrine “disparages the means of grace, the
mission of the church, and the work of the Holy Spirit.’” – an objection which amounts to
this, that the Word of God
disparages itself! That
the cecond
coming of Christ precedes
the vivtory of His kingdom “underneath
all heavens” is as certain as that
the sunrise precedes the day, or that the first advent precedes the
setting up
of the kingdom on its spiritual side in conflict.
The sequence
of the kingdom on the
advent to set it up in conflict is undeniable.
The sequence of the kingdom on the
advent to set it up in victory “underneath
all
heavens” is not less evident.
And as that kingdom in victory is the millennial kingdom, the
second advent is premillennial. The
kingdom in victory follows that advent as inevitably as the fall of the
colossus follows the Stone’s impact on its toes, and as the destruction
of the Antichrist follows the second coming of the Son of Man. Nothing is more clear. What obscurity of vision
not to see that
none of the “objections”
made
against the nature of
the advent, the kingdom, or the thousand years, touch
the question of the sequence
of these upon the fact of the advent!
Let the kingdom be what it may, its
sequence remains undisturbed. Nor
is any truth more clear than this, viz., that no advent of Christ could
be
aught else than pre-millennial.
“He is before all
things.” For
he who hold that the “thousand
years” have already been, are now, or
yet will be before the second coming of Christ, must hold that the
first advent
is pre-millennial. And
he who holds
that the book of Daniel is truth must hold that the kingdom “underneath all heavens”
follows the second
advent, and the thousand years are closed by the last judgment and
final New
Heaven and Earth. Did
forty advents
and ages exist antecedent to “the
thousand years,”
whose starting point is fixed by all the prophets, Christ, and His
apostles, at
the close of the last great tribulation and
Let
it be remembered, then, that the kingdom is
an outward “realm”
and “royalty,” as
well as an inward rule of grace in
the heart, and that in it are found “the
kings of
the earth,” and “all
nations,”
reconstructed under the sceptre of Christ “the
only Potentate,” “King
of kings and
Lord of lords.” The
proud titles of the ancient monarchs, blazing on the monuments that
tell their
pride, He takes to Himself, and places their diasems upon His head. The advent of Christ does
not mean
denationalization. The
restoration
of
From
all that has been said, it is manifest that
the Millennial Age does not lie in the “Times
of
the Gentiles,” therefore not in the Church-period at any
time. That period
is described by
our Lord, twice, in the clearest manner, (1) in His Olivet discourse, Matt. 24: 4-29; (2) in
His seven words to the
seven churches of Asia Minor, Rev.
2: 1-29; 3: 1-22;
in both cases a period wholly different from the period of the kingdom
in
victory, Rev. 11: 15; 16:
2-4; 20: 1-6. If
John has used the phrase, “the
thousand years,” it was simply, as Professor
Ewald well says,
“because it was a technical expression for the glowing period described
by the prophets, a name already well-established, steadfast, and a
matter of
well-grounded expectation.”
So, Professor Doner
adds,
with truth, “Undoubtedly, the thing common to both the Jewish and the Christian
apocalypses
is the period of the 1,000 years, commencing with the second
advent.” We need
not dwell on
this. What we need
to guard against
is the great error that, because the “Church”
is not the “kingdom”
in victory,
therefore, the kingdom as foretold by the prophets, is not here now, in
any
sense, but only comes at the second coming of Christ.
On the contrary, the Messianic kingdom
was set-up, on its spiritual side, at the first advent, in conflict,
and we are
“translated into it,”
by renewal
from the Holy Spirit and our faith in Christ.
It came in the person of Christ, in His
blessed Gospel, in the power of the Spirit and in the preaching of the
Apostles. It is the
sum of all
spiritual good, all grace here, with the promise of all glory hereafter. To
seek it, is our first necessity. To
enter it is our salvation.
It
is pardon of sin, peace with God, and life-eternal.
And yet the conception of the kingdom,
in the teaching of Christ, is so great and manifold, that it cannot be
defined
but only described. No
logical
definition is adequate. The
predicate is too immense. The
kingdom is “like” a
hundred
different things. It
has many
phases, forms, and spheres. It
is
inner and spiritual; outer and material; moral and political. It is individual and
national. It is
earthly and heavenly. It
is temporal and eternal. It
is mixed and separate. It
is past, present, and to come. Circumstantially
it is many. Essentially
it is one. It is
the administration of the rule of
God in Christ over heaven, earth, and hell.
Its realization, here, is the doing of
the will of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Incomplete now, it is destined to
perfection hereafter. “The 1,000 years” are but
its future evolution,
mediated by the second coming of Christ.
Its conflict now is the postulate of its triumph then. To ablate this “blessed hope” is to call
the church to battle
for the world’s salvation without the certainty of victory. It is to make Paul’s
argument in
his letter to the Romans, chapters
9-11; and
his exclamation, “O the depths!”
the
outgush of a deluded mind, and the “Hallelujahs”
in John’s apocalypse, the wild ejaculations of an excited dreamer.
The
light of science should have taught us
better. The orderly
succession of
the ages and sequences of dispensations, in the grand march to ultimate
perfection, is a law as absolute as in the cosmos and the kingdoms of
nature
and of history. Evolution
indeed,
yet not without divine intervention.
Acts 17: 26-28. The procession of the rude
beginnings of
inorganic being to the elementary forms of organized existence, thence
more
complex in vast unfoldings and transformations, mediated by
catastrophe, and
the introduction of new forces, is not more true in geology, astronomy,
and
biology, than in revelation, prophecy, and history.
The same law operates in all, that of
“development,” – a word that involves three distinct ideas
(1) “tollere,” to take
away, or abolish, (2) “preservare,”
to preserve, (3) “elevare,”
to elevate or raise to a higher plane, a higher life, and so bring to
perfection. A score
of instances
present themselves as illustrations of this law, - the growth of a
child, the
growth of a plant, the growth of a civil constitution, the growth of a
doctrine, the growth of a nation to its maturity and highest bloom. What is changing and
ephemeral in form,
passes away, while what is substantial, essential and enduring, moves
onward
and upward, through sunshine and storm, ever in conflict, ever opposed,
yet
finally victorious, “So is the
Therefore,
at the close of a long life devoted
to the study of God’s Word, and having prayed that He, who alone can
open
the eyes of the blind, would vouchsafe that mercy to me, as He did to
Bartimaeus, and the two wanderers to Emmaus, do I desire to leave on
record my
unalterable conviction of the truth of the pre-millennial doctrine, a
doctrine
no other than this, that the second coming of Christ precedes the
millennial
kingdom “underneath all heavens,”
– a doctrine for which the prophet Daniel stood at the Babylonian and
Persian courts, winning glory to God, and honour for himself and his
friends. It is not
that a
man’s convictions are either the measure or the test of “Truth,” or his emotions a
proof that his creed
is right. The Holy
Spirit often
dwells in sanctifying power where He does not dwell as an illiminating
power in
the deep things of God, and time embalms the errors it does not
destroy, and
creeds are propagated from father to son.
But it is that the long, prayerful, and independent study
of the truth,
- with a sincere desire to know it, - and a heart honest enough to
receive it,
- does bring with it a self-evidencing and self-interpreting light, by
which
the truth is sealed to the conscience in the sight of God, with a
certitude
transcending all conjectures, and superior to all the changes to human
feeling,
- an “assurance of understanding” in the mystery of God. It is that the truth, like
its Author is
invincible. The
question is not
what “views” do I hold, but what “views” hold me, and
what their ground, and whence their origin?
In the words of Augustine,
“it matters not what I
say, what you say,
what he
says, but what saith the Scripture!” And as to the “meaning” of the Scripture,
which is
the Scripture, an interpretation that runs organically current, from
the
Pentateuch to the Revelation by John, and is simply a self-developing
statement
consistent and harmonious, amid a hundred variations and expansions,
each
prophet and apostle leading up to some objective point, and final focus
of the
truth, - the Master confirming all, - is absolutely infallible, and
never can
be set aside, so long as the Word of God endures.
Like the encircling concave mirrors of
Archimedes, so placed as to flash their converging lights in front of
them, so
stand the books of the Bible, - that effulgent focus, the glorious
second
coming of Christ. He who fails to see it, only fails because
his vision is perverted.
The
insight of such truth is supplied alone by the “Spirit
of Truth” who gave the sacred volume to be the light in
all our
seeing, and the comfort in all our searching.
And, to the writings of no prophet, have
the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and His apostles, borne greater witness than
to the
writings of “the prophet Daniel.” If we fail, here, it is
because we do
not use the Old Testament as they used it, cite it as they cited it, or
believe
it as they believed it.
Therefore
do I deem it loyal to the Truth to
testify that in Dan. 2: 44,
7: 27, and in Rev.
20: 1-6, lies the bottom, bedrock, basis, and
format statement of the pre-millennial doctrine, more deep, massive,
and
enduring than the granite foundations of the earth, - not
to speak of a hundred other texts.
I deem it “Truth”
to affirm that such is the organic connection of both
Testaments, and the dependence of the New upon the Old, that the
sequence of
the kingdom upon the second advent, in Dan.
7,
for the Beast’s destruction determines forever that the scene of the
cloud-seated Son of Man on Revelation
14.,
and of the Warrior on the White Horse in 19.,
are no other than the same as that of the Cloud-Comer in Dan. 7., and therefore,
the second coming of
Christ is pre-millennial. Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but this connection, dependence, sequence
and
identity, shall not pass away.
God’s throne is not more fully established. The almightiness and
everlastingness of
God’s Word are here.
Monumental brass, marble, and adamant, will wear away
corroded by the
tooth of time. The
solid masonry of
men, the rocks on which man’s mightiest architecture has reposed, will
become as the shifting sands, and his proudest structures crumble into
dust. But this “Truth” shall stand forever. Abused
like every other doctrine of the Scriptures, associated with delusions
it
abhors, error now seeking to enjoy its fellowship, and now to repel it,
wounded
in the house of its friends, rejected by those who know the least about
it,
studied relatively by the few, distorted by the many, victimized to
creeds,
councils, and special hate, it still lives and will continue to live
forever.
“Time
writes no
wrinkle on its brow.”
The
“Hope”
it wispers has been tested on the plains of Dura, in the fiery furnace
and the
lion’s den, in Maccabean caves, the apphitheatre at Rome, the dungeons
at
Patmos, the recesses of the Cottain Alps, the Americain mountains, and
wherever
the blood of the martyrs of Jesus has been shed.
Wreathed with the memories of Olivet, it
looks to Olivet in days to come.
Twice ten centuries and a half it has been the one bright
star that has
shone through the gloom of Israel’s long night of suffering and
expatriation; and now that the brows of the morning are purpling with
the
tokens of the coming day, it beats in Israel’s breast with a redoubled
pulse. The present age hates it.
The self-deluded admirers of human progress turn their
back upon
it. Sociologists
deride it.
World-reformers make light of it.
The political Zionist hisses at it.
The church treats it with indifference, and oftentimes
with
opposition. Many
good men, from
motives of policy, avoid it, unable to refut it.
It is not popular with the optimism of a
false theology and a blooming antichristianity.
But in multitudes of hearts it finds a
home, and is welcomed as nothing less than the imperishable truth of
God.
And
this I can truthfully and intelligently say,
with eyes resting on the history of the church for eighteen centuries,
giving
full credit to all that Christianity has done for the world, in the
gift of
civil and religious liberty, the abolition of the gigantic evils, the
propagation
of the blessed Gospel, in the institution of her immortal charities,
and in the
education of what
the early church
believed, and how the doctrine came to be corrupted, and by what
devices she
was persuaded to revolutionize the faith of that “cloud of witnesses” who
were the spectators of her early
warfare, and vested in the vain attempts to set aside her testimony;
and with
perfect understanding of all that creeds, councils and polemists, have
formulated, and how both ancient and modern sects have nobly but
imperfectly
expressed their judgment, and how false teachers have made use of it,
and true
teachers have been misled, and what dogmatics have objected, and what
criticism
has to offer, and, better still, what a thorough exegesis has so
triumphantly
established in the study of both Testaments; - in view of all, and of
my
account, I desire to utter this confession, that the doctrine of the
kingdom of
Christ cannot come to victory, “underneath
all
heavens,” till the Lord Himself comes, is the very “Truth” of God. That great and “Blessed Hope,” is our hope,
that “Faith” is our
faith, as it was the faith and
hope of all the prophets, of Jesus Christ, and His apostles. It is the only “Hope” of victory for the
Church,
So
we take leave, for the present, of the great
prophet of the exile, whose pages have been to us a light and a comfort
in
these our “troublous times.” And all the more, since
God Himself is
fulfilling, now, His own word beneath our very eyes, that “sure word of prophecy unto which we do
well to take heed.” Would
that our feeble effort had been
worthier of the book and its holy author!
All we can do is to close our own words, and seal our own
book, yet
saying as we drop the pen.
Blest
prophet! Second to
no seer,
Whose
eyes beheld the
coming day,
To
whom the sacred task
was given
To
paint the End, and
point the Way!
The
world’s whole
future thou hast seen,
The
march of empires,
ages down;
Their
conflict, victory and
crown.
The
wars of twice a
thousand years,
Five
hundred more, and more to come,
Earth’s
kingdoms
scattered like the chaff,
For
one alone to find
the room!
For
The
Persian, Greek, and
Roman line
To
set a throne in
Palestine.
The
Blood-stained Horns
that gore the world,
The
Teuton, Bourbon,
bold to scoff,
Islam,
Tiars, downward
hurled
Braganza,
Saxon,
Romanoff.
Secrets
of terror thou
hast told,
Of
glory, too, so
strange to tell;
Visions
beside the
rushing streams,
Time’s
footfall
measured by the hand
That
wheels the orbs in
orbits high,
The
Seasons, Ages,
Epochs, Ends,
The
calendar of
history:
Messiah,
first upon the
cross,
Then
hidden long from
mortal view;
Messiah
coming on the
clouds
To
judge the Gentile and
the Jew.
The
Risen Saints thine
eyes beheld,
The
Antichrist sent to
his doom;
Delivered
The
“Kingdom, Power and Glory”
come!
O
prophet of thy people
great!
Above
thy grave, to
Shushan lent,
Thy
“Kitab
Emeth,” “Book of Truth,”
Is
thine eternal
monument!
In
vain the critic plies
his art,
To
fiction make of
heaven-born words
Immortal
still the
“words” remain
Thine
own, the
angel’s, and the Lord’s.
Rest
undisturbed, till
yonder morn
Awakes
the “many” from the
dust;
Within
thy lot thou then
shalt stand
In
resurrection of the
just.
In
brightness, like the
golden sun,
And
glittering as the
largest star,
Splendour
shall crown
thy labour done,
Nor
age-long years its
brightness mar.
“Hayi-Olam”, streaming in from God,
“Zohar,” the gleam that fadeth
never;
Thy
portion these, with
Jesus near,
Amen! Forever and forever!
The
Hope our Hope, thy
Faith our Faith,
Thy
people on our heart
in prayer,
One
day our eyes the joy
will see,
And
then with thee the
glory share!
-------
APPENDIX
ERROR
CORRECTED.
I
think the best apology a teacher of the Truth
can make for his errors, and the only one. If he is an honest man, is
to
acknowledge the same. It
is with great
pleasure I give to the public the subjoined letter from my friend,
Prof. George
B. Merriman, formerly Professor of Mathmatics and Astronomy in the
Clifton
Springs, Feb. 3, 1898.
-------
Dear
Dr. West:-
Allow
me to call your attention to an error in
your exposition of Daniel’s prophecy, on page 86 in September number,
1897, of “Our Hope.”
You concede that the 69 weeks, or 483
years, of the prophecy are prophetic years of 360 days each, but you
have
combined them with Julian years, and, to annul the effect of this
error, have,
inadvertently, made another by subtracting 4 yrars, when you should
have added
them. I think the
following is the
explanation you intended to give.
Daniel’s
prophecy of 69
“sevens,” or 483 years, when reduced to Julian, or years of civil
reckoning, makes 476 years. This
period terminates, as you interpret the prophecy, at the birth of
Christ, B.C.
4. The time of the
year A.D. 1 is
evidently 4 years longer than 476; i.e., is 480 Julian years. The prophet, you say, took
no account of
Ezra’s “gap,” the interval between Ezra’s
chapters 6. and
7.,
or from B.C. 515 to B.C.457. This
interval, reckoned exclusively or in completed time, as was then the
custom, is
56 years. By adding
this number,
therefore, to the 480 years, we have 536 years as the entire period
from the
starting point of the 70 weeks to A.D. 1.
This puts the beginning of the 70 weeks in the very year
of the Edict of
Cyrus, B.C. 536, and shows the “perfect harmony” you seek to
establish between the Biblical and secular chronology.
Very
respectfully yours,
GEO.
R. MERRIMAN.
THE
PROPHET NUMBERS.
THE
70th
WEEK.
Daniel
9: 24-27,
is the seat and
the source
– the fons et origo – of
all the prophet numbers in both Testaments concerning the “End.”
Each week of 7 years, prophetic time.
The “One
Week,” Dan. 9:
27, is the last
of the 70 weeks, and is therefore 7 years.
Its first “Half,”
of three
and a half years (9: 27),
is unfulfilled in
Daniel, but filled in Rev.
11: 3, and called
“1,260 days.” The middle of the week,
when the “abomination”
is set up, reappears in our
Lord’s Olivet Discourse, Matt.
24: 15,
and again in Rev. 11: 7,
when the “Two Witnesses”
are slain, and is further
prominent as the time-point when Israel’s conversion is announced and
the
Dragon is dejected, Rev.
12: 10-12, and is
the beginning of the Great Tribulation, Rev. 13: 5;
Dan. 7: 25; 12: 7; Matt. 24: 15.
The second “Half,”
or three
and a half years, is expressed in various ways, yet all commensurate:
(1) As
“a time, two times
(duel number) and the dividing
of a time” (Dan.
7: 25; 12: 7; Rev. 12: 14), a “time”
being a prophetic or soli-lunar year of
360 days everywhere in Daniel’s book, as when it is said of
Nebuchadnezzar that “7 times
shall pass over him”
(4: 3), i.e.,
three and a half “times”
are a half-week, as “7 times”
are one week. (2)
As the “shortened days”
in Matt.
24: 21, 22. (3)
As the
“short time,” in Rev. 12: 12.
(4) As 42 months (Rev.
11: 2; 12: 5). As
the 1,260 days of the sheltered woman
(Rev. 12: 6),
identical with her “time, times
and a half” (Rev.
12: 14). Daniel’s weeks are weeks of years,
not of days put for years, but of years for years, in the first
instance. No
“Year-Day Principle”
finds any place in Daniel.
“Son of Man, I have
given thee each day
for a year,” was not spoken
to Daniel, but to Ezekiel.
Daniel’s “Sevens”
are groups of years, not days. The utmost caution is
needful, lest we
practice deception on ourselves when using the term “weeks.”
All the weeks are of equal size, i.e., commensurate,
although the two
“Halves” are not
identical. Otherwise,
the angel would have told the
prophet that in 69 weeks no less than 173,880 years would pass away
between the Edict of Cyrus, B.C. 536, and the Birth of Christ, and that
the 70th
week in Daniel means 2,520 years,
the half-week 1,260 years. Thus, on the Year-Day
principle, the last
half ends somewhere about 1846, or 1866, or 1896, or 1897, or 1898, the
Middle
of the Week being the Edict of Justinian, or the capture of Jerusalem
by Omar,
or the temporal donation to the Papacy, i.e., somewhere in the
neighbourhood of
A. D. 500-700. The first half of the
Antichrist’s week must therefore, have begun from 1,000 to 1, 200 years
before the Antichrist appeared, i.e., the 70th
week began more than
half a millennium prior to the Birth of Christ!
HOW
NEAR
TO THE END?
The
only reliable data we have for the
approximate determination of the question are (1) the Biblical and true
distinction between the “End of
the Age,”
and the common term “End of the
World:”
(2) The doctrine of the Seventy Weeks in Daniel, with their included
Intervals,
the last our present age; (3) The Olivet Discourse, in which this
Interval is
defined as the Roman “Times of
the Gentiles,”
and as followed by the Seventh “Week,”
at whose middle point the “abomination
of
desolation” is introduced; (4) The Thessalonian letters of
Paul,
whose eschatology rests on both Daniel and the Olivet Discourse; and
(5) the
Apocalypse by John, which again covers the same Interval, i.e., the
spread of
Daniel’s Fourth Empire, and at whose close the Seventieth Week is
introduced
the last time in Biblical prophecy.
Here we have chronological
data of definite measure, the Interval alone
being undetermined. This
chronological indeterminateness is, however, compensated for, in large
degree,
(6) by the predicted signs and events which “much
needs” precede the Advent, and by the assignment of the
Christian
Church to her place alongside of
We
stand, today, with sixty-nine of the seventy
weeks, and almost 1898 years [now
2,011 years] of
the Interval between the sixty-ninth and
seventieth week, i.e., the Interval of the Roman Times of the Gentiles,
behind
us. How long this
undetermined time
may be, how much remains of it before the revelation of the Antichrist
and the
opening of the seventieth week, none can tell.
Manifestly, we are thrown upon the Events
and Signs
foretold in prophecy, as certain to occur anterior to the Advent. Only thus can we measure
our probable
nearness to the end. By
no
astronomical calculation can we fix the time-point of this event. Every effort to do so has
been convicted
of scientific error. By
no Year-Day
theory of reckoning can it be decided, since Daniel knows of none such. The series of precurrent
events and
signs were designated of Christ to be among the objects of the Church’s
watching,
the special couriers in advance of his appearing.
That Coming He has fixed in the most
positive manner, as have the Prophets and His apostles, at the “End” of the Church’s
Missionary Age, and
given with great fidelity its unmistakable omens, “Behold, I
have told you before.”
These are political, civil, national,
international, moral, social, religious, cosmical, i.e., terrestrial
and
celestial. Some
enter singly, some
contemporaneously, some successively, all increasingly.
Some are nearer to us, i.e., remotest
from the Advent; some are further from us, i.e., nearest to the Advent;
and as
the end approaches are cumulative, more frequent, special, intense and
universal. Some are
mediate, some
are common to all ages, but all together are peculiar to the “End.”
The earlier precursors do not retire from the field, but
still
continue. The
heralds of the
“Day of the Lord”
persist and enter
into the day itself. The
last sign
is “the Sign of the Son of Man
in Heaven,”
that is, the Appearing of the Son of Man, who is Himself His own Sign,
as Bengel beautifully says, “Ipse Signum
Sui.”
Among
the Events which
protend the approaching End of the Age, are
I
Those given in the Old
Testament, viz.:-
1.
The return of the Jews to
their own land in numbers sufficient to satisfy the prophecy. Isaian 11:
11-16.
2.
The covenant between
the Antichrist and the Jewish masses, whereby they acquire a modus vevendi with the building of their
temple, and revival of their ancient worship, the Lord reproving their
unbelieving labour. Isaiah 66: 1-4; Daniel 9: 27.
3.
The conversion of the
Remnant and their persecution by their apostate brethren. Isaiah 56:
5-9.
4.
The breach of the
covenant between the Antichrist and the Jews, followed by the Great
Tribulation, Daniel 9: 27,
beginning with
the attack on certain Powers upon the Antichrist, and the Antichrist’s
invasion of
5.
The gathering of the
nations against
6.
The sanguinary action
in the valley of Jehoshaphat and
7.
The Cosmic Signs
– earthquake, the sundering of the
II.
Those given in the New
Testament. In the
Olivet Discourse
the Lord gives the Signs and Events for both the destruction of
1.
The appearing of False
Christs, coming in His name. Matthew 24: 5.
2.
Wars, civil and
international, disrupting the bonds of amity and peace among nations. 24: 6, 7
3.
Cosmic Signs –
earthquakes contemporaneous with sporadic famines and pestilence, in
different
places, 24: 7,
these the signs and events
nearest to us, as they were to the Jews before
Among
the Middle Signs:
4. As
to the External
History of the Church, a universal hatred and bloody persecution of the
saints
by the nations. The
extensions of
missions has for its pre-supposition not only the reception of the
Gospel on the
one hand, but its rejection on the other; the conflict of Christianity
with the
world-powers and the false systems of religion by which they are
supported. 24:
9.
5. As
to the Internal
History of the Church. A
Great
Apostacy from the truth by unbelieving Christians, a departure from the
true
faith and life of the Gospel [of
the kingdom], and
a practical return to a worldly and heathen
walk and conversation, by means of false
teachers themselves apostate from the truth – unbelief,
lawlessness,
pleasure, crime and declension of Christian love and vital goodness
abounding
in professing Christendom. 24: 10-12.
6.
The Progress of
Missions at the same time; a universal witness to the Gospel [of the Kingdom] among
all nations, during a condition of society such as was in the days of
Noah and
of
Among
the signs remotest
from us and nearest to the Advent are:
7.
The Antichrist, the
Abomination of Desolation spoken of by “Daniel
the prophet,” the Great Tribulation, and false alarms as
to the
coming of Christ. The
political
dechristianization of the Christian powers, their subserviency to
mammon and
Antichristianity, will have advanced with the progress of Christendom
in
wealth, and its departure from the
Gospel [of the
kingdom]
and the law of righteousness.
What exists, save “Christ’s elect,” is a moral
“carcass” fit only for the eagle’s beak.
24: 15, 21-26, 28; James 1: 5-7.
Christendom
will be as morally corrupt as it will be architecturally splendid, and,
save a
faithful few, as dead to Christ and His Spirit, as it is alive to
mammon and the
work of Satan, under the pretense of “Peace”
and “Reform.” “Money
and Peace” will be its
curse, all the time preparing for war, - Hypocrisy its policy, Unbelief
its
creed.
8.
The culmination of the
Apostacy, under the teachings of false Christs and false prophets, the
frog-croaking ministers of [Satan,] the Antichrist and the
False Prophet, deceiving the
world by means of great signs and wonders, assailing the truth and
proclaiming
“the lie” that
Christ and
Christianity are a fraud. 24: 24; Revelation 13: 5-18; 16: 14.
9.
The Conversion of the
Jews and the Gathering of the Nations against
10.
The Cosmic Signs next
to the Advent, viz., Obscuration of the Heavenly Lights, Meteoric
Showers, the
Concussion of the Heavens, Earthquakes, Distress, Perplexity, Terror
and
Apprehension, the Sea roaring. 24: 29; Luke 21: 25-26. The Son of Man Himself,
His own Sign, in
the clouds of heaven. 24: 30.
Such
are the signs and events that “must
needs come to pass” before the Second Coming
of Christ. How many
of these are in
the field now is for the judgment of enlightened men to determine. As to the Nearer Signs,
there can be no
question. As to the
Middle Signs,
the only question is how long they will continue until the latest ones
enter. That they
are present in their measure
is undeniable. That
both the signs
nearest to us and the middle signs contemporate and cumulate, in our
day,
cannot be disputed. The
conversion
of the world is nowhere a sign of the End in any book of Scripture, and
any
judgment based upon a presupposition so gratuitous is worthless. Nowhere has the Saviour
said,
“When the world is universally converted, then the End will come,”
but this, “When the Gospel
[of the kingdom (Matt. 24: 14)] has been testified to all nations, then
the
End shall come.”
Nowhere is the Divine commission to witness to the Gospel
in all lands,
instruction all nations in the truth, and so discipling them, any
pledge that
the measure of true conversions will equal the universality of the
command. It never
has done so in
any nation, city, town or village of the world, and never will in this
present
age. That vision is
reserved for
the future after the Antichrist is destroyed and Satan is bound. Only then “All nations shall come and worship
before the Lord; because His judgments
shall have been manifested,” and that is when the
Antichrist and
his kingdom are destroyed, and the Colossus of Gentile politics and
power has
become as the “chaff of the
summer
threshing-floor.” It
is after
The
idea that the Lord may come any moment, and
that, by a “special revelation to Paul in
1 Thess. 4:
14-17,” He has subverted the
whole body of Old and New Testament prophecy as to the time-point of
His
coming, its nature, and the order of events, and that “Signs”
are only for the Jews – in a word, that He might have come before
Peter had died, and Paul had borne witness at Rome, and Jerusalem had
been
destroyed, or any of the church been martyred, and that His
intercession within
the vail, the world’s evangelization, and the fullness of the Gentiles,
might
have only required “a moment,” a doctrine which
makes Him a
self-contradictory Teacher, in view of His assertion that He intended
to
“delay,” “tarry,” be gone “a
long time,” and only “after
a long time” return to reckon with His
servants – a doctrine, moreover,
which deprives the [regenerate] believer of
His place in that bright
resurrection wherein the righteous shall shine as the sun in the
kingdom of
their Father, may be allowed, here, to pass without comment.
On
the other extreme are they who remove for
into the future the hope of the believer by indulging the dream that
the
“Arbitration” of
international
disputes will introduce the universal reign of righteousness and peace
before
the Lord comes. This
judgment is
superficial. It is
the honest but
misguided view of many Christians.
It is the scheme that Mammon will approve – the
Stockholder’s and the Bondholder’s piety for the sake of
money. The schems
was tried in
ancient times.
“The
war-drum
throbs on longer, and the battle-flags are furled
In
the Parliament of
man, the federation of the world.”
Lord
Russell, Chief Justice of England, calls it
a “poetic dream” for this age, remarking that “Europe is
pretty well civilized now, but all talk of the general disarmament is
invariably received with a smile” – the smile of Christian Europe! The fact is that the
nations cannot
trust each other, and are comforted with conditions where “Prince of
honour” cannot be maintained.
Nor can the “Day of
the Lord,”
that will “burn as an oven,”
be
arbitrated away from the word and the purpose of God, with whom the
judgment of
the nations is a divine necessity.
Peace with Shame, Disgrace, Dishonour, coffers filled with
money, -
Peace with oppression and injustice, - while guilty Christendom,
unmoved,
beholds massacre and murder by the Turk and the Spaniard, year after
year, and
the United States Government, ruled by the Money-Kings, under the plea
of
“Peace,” withholds
armed
intervention in behalf of Justice, Humanity and Liberty, the blood of
600,000
starved and butchered Cuban men, women and children, crying to heaven
for
vengeance.
And
far away from the heart of the Church, as a
practical power, does the idea of the “universal conversion of the
world” remove the hope of the coming of the Lord.
Criminal Christendom, excusing its
crimes by missionary contributions, preachers and conversion of the
world
before the Lord comes, Allusion to this has been made already. A close inspection of the
facts – not to speak of the plain teaching of
Scripture – will satisfy us that this also is a “poetic
dream.” If we
consult the
most reliable statistics …the
ratio of the Christian population to the
non-Christian in heathendom is a trifle over one-fifth of 1 per cent.
after
nearly nineteen centuries. … And the ratio of Christians in heathendom to
the unconverted there is only a little over one-fifth of 1 per cent,
-
the heathen population outrunning that of the civilized nations, Islam
outrunning Christianity in many parts of Asia and Africa, new Hinduism
resisting it, all the heathen religions still in force.
If, after nearly 19 centuries, the most
advanced staged of Christian civilization can show only one-fifth of 1
per
cent, as the ratio between converted and unconverted heathendom, how
long will
it take to convert the heathen world so rapidly increasing, not to
speak of the
unconverted millions in Christendom?
How long will it take, in face of the clear statements of
the Lord that
when He comes, it will be as it was in the days of Noah and Lot, and of
Paul
that Apostasy and Anti-Christianity will prevail, and of all the
Prophets,
Christ and His Apostles, that Christendom must be judged for its crimes?
But
when we remember that evangelization and
conversion are not synonymous terms, and that of the 1,000,000,000 yet
unconverted in heathendom vast multitudes have already been
evangelized, though
still rejecting the Gospel, even as in Christian lands, and that every
day the
missionary field is expanding through the steady toil of Christian men
and
women, and that when the Gospel has witnessed to “all nations” in the “whole
creation,” then the Lord will come, and in a time of deep
apostasy
and world-wide war, the case stands very different, and the hope of the
believer brightens with every hour.
The Lord does not expect the world to be converted when He
comes. In the last
prophecy of the New
Testament, given by Himself to John, the last call of the Gospel,
symbolized by
the voice of the Zenith-Angel flying on the path of the sun, is to an
unchristian world “ripe”
for the
Judgment. Rev.
14: 6. But
He does expect
the world to be evangelized. The
commission is to “disciple all nations,” i.e., instruct them, in
the Gospel – to preach the Gospel to “the whole
creation.” The
Greek article
placed in the original text, between “whole” and “creation,”
indicates the universality of the sphere of missionary labour, the
geographical
compass of the evangelization.
It
is best not to dogmatise. The
word from the watchtower of the
prophet is, “The vision is yet
for an appointed
time, but at the end it will speak, and not lie.
Though it tarry, wait for it, because it
will surely come; it will not tarry.”
Hab. 2: 3. This attitude of patient
expectation is
of divine commandment. Amid
all
vicissitudes the one abiding comfort is this, “Jesus
Christ, the Same,
yesterday, to-day and forever.”
Heb. 13: 8. The Church’s duty is
clear: (1) To
give the Gospel, at once, to the neglected parts of heathendom; (2) to
work and
pray for Israel’s conversion; (3) to save all the souls she can and do
all the good she can; (4) to bear a fruitful witness to the [whole]
truth; (5)
to keep herself unspotted from the world; (6) to study earnestly the
signs of
the times, and (7) to wait, watch and pray, uttering back the promise
of the
Lord, “Amen! Even
so, come,
Lord Jesus!”
“Till
He come” so runs the line,
Marking
off the term of
ill;
Darkest
hours of power
malign
Never
more an hour to fill.
“Till
He come” the might of hell
Still
against the saints
shall rage,
And,
beneath the
Tempter’s spell,
Men
in strifes and sins
engage;
“Till
He come,” wrong will prevail,
And
the right be done in
vain;
Truth’s
confessions still entail
Toil,
and obloquy, and
pain;
But
Our Hope
can brook delay,
Waiting
such a
glorious day!