Remarks on the Prophetic Visions
in the Book of Daniel
By
S. P. TREGELLES, L.L.D.
Seventh Edition, 1965
When ye therefore
shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand
in the holy place, whoso readeth, let him understand.
-------
PREFACE
TO THE
FOURTH EDITION
The Remarks on the Prophecies in Daniel, contained
in the following pages, originally appeared in separate portions, at different
times, from 1845 to 1847. They were then
printed and published just as I had time to prepare them from the notes with
which was furnished, which had been carefully and efficiently taken whilst I went
through these portions of prophecy orally with some Christian friends. My work of preparation, from the notes which
were put into my hands for the purpose, was
carried on while I had but little access to books of reference, and thus I
could give my “Remarks” no such complete
revision as I could have wished.
When the last of the separate parts appeared, the
whole was published in one volume, which has twice been reprinted, just as it
was, to meet an existing demand, without however any revision on my part, or I
believe any intentional alteration.
These three impressions having been out of print for
some time, I was requested to publish a new edition, but I was unwilling that
the book should be again printed without giving to the whole that careful and
thorough revision which ought to be bestowed on everything relating to those
truths which God has taught in His word.
I have, therefore, examined every part with Scripture; and although the
alterations in the statements of the “Remarks” are but few, yet here and there
various additions have been made, such as appeared to me to be either needful
or desirable. It has thus been during
more than two years under my hand, at times, for the purpose of this revision.
To the original “Remarks”,
as first published, I have now added so much as almost to make this to be a new book. It contains all that was published before,
but with more than an equal quantity in addition of what is new.
The principal material enlargements have been in the “Note on
the Year-day System” (which has now extended to a whole chapter,
in order to consider the subject fully), the “Note on
the Interpretation of Daniel 11 by past History”, and the “Note on Prophetic Interpretation in Connection with Popery
and the Corruption of Christianity.” In this last-mentioned Note I have now
endeavoured fully to show how the word of God meets Romish and non-evangelical
error, and that the simple application of Scripture, as literally understood,
does not in any sense palliate Popery, whether regarded in its doctrines or its
practices.
It is not, I believe, needful to specify the minor
enlargements and alterations throughout the “Remarks”,
they have been introduced without making any change in the general principles
as to the explanation of Daniel, or in their application to particular details.
The “Note on the Roman
Empire and its Divisions” is entirely an addition.
In “Concluding Remarks”
I have stated some particulars relative to the origin of the following pages,
and also spoken of some of the dangers against which students of prophecy do
well to be on their guard.
The “Map of the Ancient
Persian and Roman Empires”, and the “Explanatory
Notice”, are also amongst the additions now made.
The reader will perceive that my “Remarks” are so connected with the portions of
Scripture to which they relate, that, for them to be rightly followed, the
Bible should be kept open for continual reference.
I believe that these “Remarks”
have already been found of use to some, in their endeavours to know what is
taught us in the word of God. That they
may continue to be blessed to this end is my earnest desire and prayer. Whatever leads us simply to the Scripture,
which is the testimony of the Holy Ghost concerning Jesus Christ our Lord, in
His sufferings and in His glory, may be known by our souls as replete with
establishment in the apprehension of His truth and grace.
If readers, who pass by all Prefaces, find
themselves on good terms with the books they read, authors perhaps have no
right to complain; but as with our friends, so with our books; might not many
mistakes be avoided, and after-explanations be rendered needless, if we took
care not to overlook the conventional ceremony of an introduction?
- S. P.
T. Plymouth, August 15, 1852.
* *
* * *
* *
In issuing a fresh reprint of this volume no
alteration has been made beyond mere verbal corrections and occasionally the
addition of a brief note or of a few words; an Alphabetical Index has also been
added. I have not judged it best to make
allusions to works on the subject which have appeared since 1852: I have not,
however, neglected them; though in no case have I seen it needful to change the
views previously expressed; indeed, on many points they have been materially
confirmed. I had two reasons for not
discussing the opinions expressed in more recent works; the one is that such
discussions would so add to the bulk of the volume as to change its character,
which unless it were needful I did not wish: the other is that it would have
been too great a demand on my time and attention, seeing that it is not right
for me to do anything which would materially interfere with that work in which
I have specially to seek to serve the Church of Christ; I mean the Greek Testament
on Ancient Authorities, for which I have collated every accessible ancient
Greek document, and of which the four Gospels were some time ago completed,
before I was compelled by seriously impaired health to lay aside my work for a
time.
It is not for those who value the word of God to
shut their eyes to the condition of things in the professing Church. On the one side we find the sacrifice of
Christ owned as a fact, but its application to us is made to depend on
ecclesiastical ordinances and not on the operation of the Holy Ghost in leading
the soul of the sinner to the blood of the Cross: on the other hand there are
those who would own Christ (and in word perhaps the Holy Ghost) as acting on
the soul, and thus they speak of our deliverance by a Redemption in power by a
living Saviour, while redemption by price paid, a perfect propitiation wrought
out once and for ever by the death of Christ, is utterly ignored and even
denied. Thus on either side the truth of
God is rejected; but what rejection equals that in which the Cross of Christ is
not allowed its true place? that in which “sacrifice”,
“shedding of blood for the remission of sin”,
etc., are words only (if owned at all), and not substantive realities?
It has been a portent amongst us that those in
office and profession holding the place of Christian teachers have even set
themselves to argue against the very books of Holy Scripture which they were
bound to maintain, and which are commended to us with all the authority of the
incarnate Son of God.* Such attacks had been but little expected,
except from those not professing to be under the banner of the Lord Jesus.
[*
Under the guise of courtesy we often now find a willingness to concede to
opposers almost every vital point: so that professed defenders of the authority of Holy Scripture themselves give up,
and commend others for giving up the absolutely decisive teaching of the Lord
Jesus Christ and of the Holy Ghost, through the Apostles, as to questions of
simple fact. Thus one who has professed
to vindicate the Pentateuch as to its historic character has been commended in
that he “very wisely declines to avail himself of the
testimony of the New Testament in his attempt to prove the historic character
or Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. The
use that has been made in this controversy of the supposed testimony of Jesus
Christ is for the purposes of general criticism wholly irrelevant. It involves certain theological hypotheses
which would be rejected by very many who are unquestionably orthodox, and to a
reverent piety it is every way offensive. Nothing can be more impolitic (to put
the matter on the very lowest ground) than to make the Divine wisdom of our
Lord responsible for those canons of criticism and literary opinions which are
notoriously uncertain, fluctuating, and progressive”, etc. If professed defenders can thus write, what line of demarcation remains between
truth and error? If our Lord’s own
statements are but a “supposed testimony”, on
what can we rely? We have not to make
our Lord’s Divine wisdom responsible for any uncertain, fluctuating, and
progressive canons of criticism, but we have to subject our notions on such
subjects to His divine teaching. If we
are not to believe Him when He said “Moses wrote of me”,
if we may doubt His wisdom and truth in saying this, then (and not till then)
we may be Christians of “reverent piety”,
though rejecting alike the writings of Moses and the words of Jesus. It is not surprising that those who set aside
the reality of our Lord’s work of propitiatory sacrifice should contemn first
the law in which sacrifice is so taught, and then our Lord Himself as an
authoritative teacher.]
Also, in that which professes to be the true
spiritual part of Christ’s Church, what laxity do we find! All that I said in the conclusion of this
volume as to Definite Confessions of faith has a tenfold force now. New things seem so opposed by some who make
pretensions to the holding of Evangelical truth as the doctrine of Scripture
(so firmly held by the Reformers) of our acceptance in the imputed
righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
They admit anything rather than that He so kept the Law for us that His
living obedience is put down to the account of every sinner who is cleansed in
His blood. This is one way in which
Christ’s real substitution is set aside: He obeyed for us meritoriously
in His life, even as He suffered penally for us in His death. But the reality of His incarnation (as set
forth in all the old and orthodox confessions) is opposed by those who either
deny the true sacrifice of the cross or who contradict the true doctrine of
imputation. The Lord in His life obeyed
the Law, and it is in vain to contemn such living obedience by asking if it was
“mere law fulfilling”: for if Jesus did ever
and in all things obey the Law, loving the Lord His God with all His heart and
with all His mind and soul, and strength, then was His whole life a righteous
law-fulfilling, beyond which He could not go: and by God’s grace, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one
that believeth”. But in fact
those who suggest such doubts seem not to know what is meant by the holiness of
God, the law of God, the one obedience by which many shall be constituted
righteous; and they only confuse the unwary by some new and false notions on
the whole subject of substitution and sacrifice as a sweet savour before God.
But the denial of a doctrine of God does not make it the less true and
precious, or its maintenance of the less importance.
- S. P. T. Plymouth, July 9, 1863.
* *
* * *
* *
PEFACE
TO THE SEVENTH EDITION
First published in 1852. The last hundred years have seen six editions
of this invaluable book, revised and amplified by the author. The sixth edition has been in demand since
his death and through two World Wars has informed and instructed Christians in
the sure word of prophecy. Mr G. H. Lang in his various books
recommended it highly; and C. H.
Spurgeon in his ‘Commenting and Commentaries’ said
of the book ‘Tregelles is deservedly regarded as a
great authority upon prophetical subjects’. The S.G.A.T.
Council recommends it today. The last,
long chapter on a ‘Defence of the authenticity of the Book of
Daniel’ has been omitted, not because of any disagreement but
for economic reasons and because no prophetic student today has any doubts
about the subject in view of our Lord’s endorsement. An appendix has been added
on the life and works of Dr. Tregelles.
* *
* *
* * *
NOTE
DESCRIPTIVE OF THE
MAPS OF THE
ANCIENT EMPIRES OF PROPHECY
These maps have been introduced as showing the
extent of the territory to which the prophecies of Daniel refer: these ancient
empires are exhibited on the same scale.
So that they may at once be easily compared.
The limits of the Babylonian monarchy, under
Nebuchadnezzar, cannot be defined with certainty; besides the territory which
he actually held, there was also,
in all probability, a large extent of country under his sway and influence,
although actually governed by subordinate sovereigns. The territory of the Medo-Persian kings is
accurately known. It must however be
borne in mind that the Persian empire comprised large districts of mountain and
desert, and that the provinces, separated by such regions, often owned a very
partial allegiance to a monarch ruling in
Susa or Ecbatana. There were also
districts which, though lying within the Persian monarchy, were governed by vassal kings.
For many years before the reign of the last Darius
the Perersian empire was materially weakened; whole provinces cast off their
allegiance, and if reduced at all, it was to a very doubtful submission. Thus the conquests of Alexander gave him not
only a more extensive territory than that of the Persian kings, but also a
sovereignty more truly under his sway. The four kingdoms which were formed out
of Alexander’s empire are defined, page 79.
Of these, that of Seleucus was by far the largest, but much of its
extent was not retained by his successors; the eastern provinces became
independent, and in other parts, such as
The
These maps were supplied by Bishop D.A. Thompson, as used in his booklet “TheVisions & Prophecies of Daniel
Illustrated.”
-------
THE FOUR EMPIRES OF DANIEL
(Chapters 2, 7, & 8.
At one time
-------
INTRODUCTION [Pages 1-5]
THE BUDDING OF THE FIG-TREE
“Now learn a parable of the fig-tree: When his branch is yet
tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye,
when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors”
(Matt. 24: 32, 33).
In this instruction of our Lord to His disciples He shows them
the manner in which their expectation was to be directed to coming events. He had told them of the condition of things,
in connection with
Centuries have passed since the discourse on the
It may be said, What use can it have
been to the Church to have had to wait for so many years? What profit is there to us in being directed
to that which for eighteen hundred years has not taken place? If Christ has commanded it, that is enough -
He will always vouchsafe blessing to those who are doers of His will - but
further, here is profit which a spiritual mind can apprehend; for if this word
had been heeded by saints, it would have kept them from many of those
associations and objects which are contrary to the leadings of the Spirit: for
thus they would have had before their minds the character and close of this
dispensation, and the place of Christ’s faithful servants in the midst of the
nations, holding the gospel of the kingdom as a witness, but seeing the world’s
corruption as a thing which flows on unchanged in its nature (while souls are
gathered one by one out of it), even up to the coming of the Lord Himself. Had this exhortation been rightly heeded, the
hope of the coming of Christ would not have passed away from the minds of
saints, so as to be looked at as a thing which, at all events, is not a
practical doctrine.
Suppose I were cast upon some uninhabited isle, in a clime in
which I could not (from my ignorance of its situation) count the seasons by
months; and if the object of my hopes was the summer, and I found a fig-tree,
and knew that its budding forth would intimate the approach of that
season. I should watch the tree; I
should often examine whether it was beginning to bud forth. I might look week after week and see nothing;
I might think I saw some indications of sprouting, and
then find it all come to nothing, but still I should watch on. Now, if I also
knew that a ship came to the island at a particular time in the summer, this would
be a point of hope to me, for it would hold out the prospect of deliverance;
and this would make me doubly diligent in watching and waiting for the
budding. Hope would connect itself with
those things which indicate its accomplishment.
And these things occupying my mind, I should be preserved from the
thought of regarding the solitary isle as my abode. I might find long patience to be needful, but
at length the buds would come forth; and then, according to the indication of
the season, the wished-for vessel.
Thus is it with regard to the Church. God has given us a point of hope, and He has
also instructed us with regard to indications of its accomplishment: the point
of hope is that to which the soul tends, while the detail of intervening
circumstances affords the needed instruction, from which is learned the
practical walk of those who possess such a hope. If held in the Spirit, these things cannot
take away from the power of the hope - they were revealed for the directly
contrary purpose: the early Church knew them, and found them to have a
practical and separating power; and in the body of detail with which the
epistles (especially the later ones) are furnished, the dark statements of
coming evil are given in order that the evil may be avoided, and the bright
hope of the glory of the day of Christ might shine through it all and in
contrast to it all. Had not the Church
been so taught, the taunt, “Where is the promise of His
coming?” might indeed be felt as troubling the soul; but when we know
that we have been warned of deeper darkness before the morning, we may indeed
feel that the more conscious we are of deepening gloom, the more rejoicingly may we look onward to the dawn.
Nothing gives us any indication of the immediate introduction
of the latter day, except this to which Christ directs us; we may see many
things to make us expect that the fig-tree would soon bud, but when we see the
buds (and not till then) can we speak with certainty as to what is forthwith to
come to pass. We might see attempts of
the nations to set the Jews in the Holy Land - this ought to make us look
carefully to Jerusalem; God might hinder those efforts, or He might allow the
fearful closing scenes of this dispensation to issue out of them, as at length
He will do.
The importance of the detail of prophecy is very great to the believer: it
certainly is a sad thing to see this extensive portion of God’s truth
overlooked and neglected. It is by the
detail of prophecy that we learn how to walk in the midst of present things
according to God; it is thus we learn His judgment about them, and what their
issue will be. Many Christians directed
their minds much to this a few years ago; but it cannot, I believe, be denied
that this portion of revealed truth has more recently been neglected and
overlooked. Those who have done this
have surely omitted to see how important its present bearing is on the
conscience and conduct: what other portion of revelation shows so clearly the
separateness from all that is opposed to the Lord, to which believers are
called?
There is such a thing as having held truths and then let them
slip; this shows a want of Christian watchfulness. There is such a thing as
having set truths before others, and when the time of their application arrives,
failing in using them ourselves. Most
spiritual minds feel conscious of the power of Satan being great at this time
and his workings peculiarly dangerous; but if I see from the word of God that
these things are to be, I shall be one of those who know these things
beforehand, and this knowledge is to be used as my safeguard, that I be not
carried away with the error of the wicked.
The voyager who knows from his charts those parts of his course in which
danger most exists should be found the most prepared to act in the emergency;
it will not take him by surprise.
But it may be said that if results are rightly known nothing
more is needed; but surely then we should be using our own thoughts as to all
the things connected with those results.
The mere knowledge of a coming deluge would never have led to the
construction and arrangement of the ark.
The knowledge of a result may lead to presumption of the most fearful
kind. The whole testimony of the word is
our safeguard.
The following Remarks on the Prophetic Visions in the Book of
Daniel are intended especially to direct the mind towards some of the important
portions of the detail of prophecy with which the Scripture furnishes us. Should they be found helpful to Christians
who desire to learn from the prophetic word and to know for themselves what
that word teaches, their object will be fully attained. To this end may the Lord vouchsafe His
blessing!
* *
* * *
* *
THE IMAGE (DANIEL 2) [Pages 6-23]
The book of Daniel is that part of Scripture which especially
treats of the power of the world during the time of its committal into the
hands of the Gentiles, whilst the ancient people of God, the children of
Israel, are under chastisement on account of their sin.
The first chapter opens with the statement that
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem, that he besieged
the city, that “the Lord gave Jehoiakim,
king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God,
which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the
house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure-house of his god”. This may, I believe, be regarded as such an
introduction to the book as shall guide our thoughts as to its subject; the
nation of Israel had departed from God, and He now delivers Judah, that portion
of them with whom He had dealt in the most protracted long-suffering, into the
hands of Gentiles, to whom He now commits power over His chosen city,
Jerusalem. The distinctive object in the
book of Daniel is to reveal, at the very period at which this committal has
been made, what would be the course, character, and consummation of the power
so bestowed.
We may divide this book into two portions - that part which is
written in the Chaldee language, and that which is written in Hebrew. While we see that the book has one general
scope - namely, Jerusalem given by God for a time into the power of the
Gentiles who bear rule - we may regard this in two ways; we may either look at
Gentile power in the outline of its history, or we may look at those things
relating to this power in their local connection with Jerusalem. Now, the course, character, and crises of
Gentile power are taken up in this book in the Chaldee language, while those
things which are limited in their application to the Jews and
There are very few portions of the
Scripture which are written in Chaldee; there are some parts of Ezra (chap. 5: 8 to 6: 19,
and 7: 12-27) so written, which bring before
us the children of Israel as being under the power of the Gentiles; there are
some parts of this book; and there one verse in Jeremiah
(10: 11) which contains a message sent to
the Gentiles. This verse occurs just as
the gods of the nations had been mentioned in contrast with the living God.
It is important that we should so bear
in mind the inspiration of Scripture as to recognise that nothing respecting it
can be looked on as accidental; there must be every circumstance a reason as to
whatever God has written, and however He has written it, whether we possess
sufficient spiritual intelligence or not to apprehend it. Now, in such a case as the present we may be
sure that God has not made this difference of language without a very definite
object. The Chaldee portion of Daniel
commences at the fourth verse of the second chapter, and continues to the end
of the seventh chapter: all the rest of the book is written in Hebrew. In the Chaldee portion we see power in the
hands of the Gentile presented before us to its character, course, and
consummation; and in the portion of the book we see the same power localised in
connection with the Jews and
We are often instructed in Scripture by having the same set of
facts presented before us in different aspects: each aspect may show but a few
features of difference, but still enough will be found to evince that the
variety is not without its value. As an
illustration of this we may take the parables of our Lord, in the thirteenth
chapter of St Matthew. He teaches there
on one general subject, the effects which would result from the introduction of
the gospel amongst men: He illustrates the results, both of good and of evil
(from the counter working of Satan), until the day when the tares shall be
separated from among the wheat - when the fishes, good and bad, shall receive
their respective allotments. Instead of
one narrative, or one continuous parable, He uses many, and thus we receive
instruction in its individuality as to its several parts, and also in its
completeness as to the whole instruction given.
This mode of Scripture teaching, by the presentation of many pictures
of the same truths, in order that their bearings and connections may be clearly
and rightly apprehended, is especially found in the book of Daniel; in the
first chapter of which we see Judah, because of sin, delivered into the hands
of their enemies and carried into exile to Babylon.
Thus it is that the prophet is placed in the land of
strangers: Daniel had not personally committed the sins which led to the
captivity, but as part of the Israelitish nation it
was his to share their lot. He and his
companions are brought into a place of particular connection with the king’s
court, and this was an occasion of proving if their hearts were faithful to God
or not. Daniel refused the appointed
portion of the king’s meat, of which he, as an Israelite, could not partake
without defilement, and thus in the midst of
In the second chapter we read of the vision shown by God to
the king of
In the vision of this chapter the moral character and acting
of this power towards God are not stated (except indeed as one who knew the
mind of God might gather it from the crisis), but for this we must look for
further light in the subsequent visions of the book.
Here all is presented as set before the king according to his
ability of apprehension, the external and visible things being shown as man
might regard them. The vision of
Nebuchadnezzar was of a great image with the head of gold, the breast and arms
of silver, the belly and thighs of brass, and the legs of iron; in the
interpretation all these several parts are taken up, and the symbolic meaning
of each is stated. The four metals of
which the image consisted represented four kingdoms which should successively
bear rule in the earth.
To understand
the Scriptures aright we have no occasion to go beyond the limit of the
Scriptures themselves. The same passage of revealed truth which tells us of the
authority of holy Scripture tells us also of its sufficiency: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
all good works” (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17). Thus nothing can be needed by the man of God, in order that he
should be “thoroughly furnished”, beyond the
inspired writings contained in the Bible.
We have then no necessity to go out of the Scripture itself in order to
gain information as to those things of which we read in Scripture; we may find
many things which are interesting as bearing upon Scripture, but still whatever
God looks on as needful for the establishment of the souls of His people, and
for their spiritual intelligence in His truth, is to be found within the limits
of His Scripture. History is not
revelation; and we are nowhere commanded to search history to learn the truths
found in God’s word; although it may be owned most freely that God’s word sheds
a light upon the things which man has written as history, and that many lessons
may be learned from seeing how different are the thoughts of God and of man
about the same events.
We have no occasion whatever to go beyond the limits of
Scripture to learn what the four kingdoms are which are thus mentioned in
Daniel.
First. It was said expressly to
Nebuchadnezzar that the head of gold symbolised his kingdom (ver. 37, 38): “Thou, 0 king,
art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power,
and strength, and glory: and wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts
of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and
hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou
art this head of gold.” These
last words fix the first kingdom incontestably to be that of
Now, as to the terms in which the extent of Nebuchadnezzar’s
power is stated, of course we are not to
understand that he actually held and exercised this rule over every part of the
inhabited earth, but rather that, so far as God was concerned, all was given
into his hand, so that he was not limited as to the power which he might obtain
in whatever direction he might turn himself as conqueror; the only earthly
bound to his empire was his own ambition.
This is just what we find also in Jer. 67: 5, 6:
“Thus saith the Lord of hosts. ... I have made
the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power
and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom
it seemed meet unto me. And now have I
given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of
[* The extent of Nebuchadnezzar’s
dominion was, however, very great, far greater than many have supposed. In the
course of his conquests he must have become the wielder of most of the powers
of the earth, as it then was. We know
something of the greatness which
Second. He was told, “after thee shall
rise another kingdom inferior to thee”.
To find out what kingdom was intended we have only to inquire what
kingdom succeeded to that of Babylon; in 2 Chron. 36: 20 we read of Nebuchadnezzar, “them that had escaped from the sword, carried he away to
Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the
kingdom of Persia”. And indeed in
this book of Daniel itself we find a plain intimation of what the second
kingdom should be which should succeed that of Babylon; in chap. 5: 28 it is said, “Peres;
thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” Although these were two nations, yet the
Medo-Persian kingdom is regarded as being one, as we also find in chap. 8: 20.
Third. In the vision the king had seen “his belly and his thighs of brass” (verse 32), and this is defined in the
interpretation to be “another third kingdom of brass,
which shall bear rule over all the earth”. In chap. 8
we learn (verse 21) what this kingdom was,
to which dominion was given after that of the Medes and Persians – “the rough goat is the king of Grecia”; this symbolic
goat had been previously spoken of as destroying the ram, which was used in
that vision as the symbol of the Medo-Persian kingdom. The commencement of chap.
11. tells us the same thing.
Fourth.
In the vision
the image had been seen with “his legs of iron”
(verse 33); in the interpretation we read, “the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron
breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, and as iron that breaketh all
these, shall it break in pieces and bruise” (verse
40). We shall not find the name of this fourth kingdom in the Old
Testament, although we see here, and in other places, its character and
description. But we learn from the New
Testament what this kingdom is; for we there find another bearing rule over the
earth after that of
Thus we may see that it is wholly needless to go to any other
source than that of the Revelation of God in order to discover what these four successive
kingdoms are - the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian, Roman.
It must be obvious to the Christian student of Scripture how
much more satisfactory it is thus to learn the details of facts from the word
of God than from the records of history; the
latter may be true, but the former commands our faith, and leaves us with a
confidence of certainty which we never can have with regard to facts derived
from other sources. It would have
been indeed strange if it had been necessary for us to draw from the doubtful
statements of profane historians in order to understand prophecy; and we must
also remember how many would find it impossible to do this.
The metals which symbolise these kingdoms become less and less
pure. A certain process of deterioration
appears to be marked out as to power, while passing from one kingdom to
another.*
[* It may be worthy of observation
that the metals in the image lessen in their specific gravity as they go
downwards; iron is not so heavy as brass, and thus the weight is so arranged as
to exhibit the reverse of stability, even before we reach the mixture of clay
and iron.]
When Nebuchadnezzar received the committal from God it was
simply power from Himself, not derived from man, not dependent on the will of
others, but put by God into his hand and exercised in responsibility to Him
alone, as the only ruler of princes.
Nebuchadnezzar might rightly bear, as far as man was concerned, the name
of autocrat: his will was law. Now, we
can see in part from Scripture how power deteriorated in its character in the
other kingdoms. The
In
the continual hindrances thrown in the way of the Jews after their return from
Babylon, when they attempted to carry out the edicts of the Persian kings in
their favour, we see manifest proof how the governors, and others in authority
under the Persian kings, could oppose the execution of the pleasure of the
sovereign.
We do not read much in Scripture as to
the Grecian power, and therefore details as to the manner of the deterioration are not to be pressed; only
the fact of such deterioration of
power being intimated should be noticed.
In one respect the Scripture appears
to indicate the mode of this deterioration, when it tells us of the divisions
of the third kingdom, so that it continued in a fragmentary and not a united
form.
The fourth kingdom is said to be “as
strong as iron”. As a metal this
is in many respects inferior to brass, although possessed of much more strength
for certain purposes, and capable of far more extensive application. Strength
and force are spoken of, but still apparently deterioration.
It may also be noticed that the deterioration of the fourth
kingdom is especially shown in its last state.
Each of the four kingdoms appears as succeeding that which had
gone before, not as annihilating it, but as incorporating it with itself - each
making, as it were, the dominion of the metal which had gone before a part of
itself, just so do we read in chap. 5: 28 of
the manner in which the kingdom of the Medes and Persians succeeded to that of
Babylon: “Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes
and Persians”; the kingdom not being, as it were, destroyed, but
transferred - that is, the cities and nations were to continue in existence,
while the glory which had belonged to them passed into the hand of other
powers.
[* The senate often made a show of
appointing the emperor, but their decree was, in general, simply a needful
compliance on their part. So, too, in the case of Vespasian, although the
people of Rome professed to bestow on him the imperial power (as recorded in
the still existing bronze tablets), yet, in fact, they had no real power, for
Vespasian already had the military rule in his own hands.]
The committal of power in all the fullness spoken of in verses 37, 38 appears to belong to Nebuchadnezzar
personally, or at all events to have been confined to the
In verse 40 we have rather
the character of the Roman power than its territorial extent; this latter
subject does not appear to belong to the scope of the present vision, which we
have to regard especially as speaking of these kingdoms in their succession
from
The “potter’s clay” (verse 41) means, I believe, simply “earthenware” - that which is hard but yet brittle;
softness does not seem to be at all the thing pointed out. Now, an image which stood partly upon feet of
earthenware would be very stable so long as there was nothing but direct
pressure brought to bear upon these feet, while a blow falling upon them would
break them to pieces, and that only the more thoroughly from the fact of iron
being intermixed with the earthenware; this I believe to be the thought here
presented to us.
We see from verse 42 that
the part of the feet thus formed of iron and clay intermixed was the toes; and
the interpretation which is given is, “the kingdom shall
be partly strong and partly broken” (or, rather, “brittle”). In verse 43 the explanation is continued, “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men”;
thus there will be power (in its deteriorated form, iron) mixed up with that
which is wholly of man, and which, when put to the proof, is found to be only
weakness itself.
Thus we see this fourth empire especially brought before us at
a time when in a divided condition, and when thus debased. The number of the toes of the feet appears to
imply a tenfold division: this may be taken as a hint given to us here,
although the more specific statement of the fact is not told us till farther on
in this book. This kingdom is then divided into parts, which we shall see from
other portions of the Scripture (especially chap. 7)
to be exactly ten. Power in the hands of
the people is seen, having no internal stability, although something is still
left of the strength of the iron.
Verse 44. Here we see that when
the image is fully developed, even to the toes of the feet, then destruction
falls on it. In the vision it had been
stated (verse 35) that all the materials of
the image became, when smitten, “like the chaff of the
summer threshing-floors, and the wind carried them away, that no place was found
for them”. This expression may
give us some intimation of the moral character of these kingdoms before God,
such as we do not find anywhere else in the chapter; just as we read in the
first Psalm, “The ungodly ... are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.”
The expression in verse 44,
“in the days of these kings”, is worthy of attention, for it brings before
our minds more than had been expressly stated, either in the vision or in the
interpretation; namely, that the kingdom which had last borne rule has been
divided, and that the toes of the feet do actually symbolise such divided
parts. “These
kings” cannot mean the four successional monarchies, because in that
case the plural number could not be used seeing that they do not co-exist as
the holders of power. The fourth kingdom
is divided into parts (which other Scriptures show to be exactly ten), and “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a
kingdom which shall never be destroyed”.
This kingdom is in its character utterly unlike the four which
had preceded it; it has nothing springing from Babylonian headship, which may
be transferred, and become deteriorated in the hands of men, but it stands in
direct contrast to all that has been.
It is important to observe very distinctly what is the crisis
of the image: “a stone was cut out without hands, which
smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to
pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold,
broken to pieces together, and
became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them
away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the mage became a great mountain, and filled the
whole earth” (ver. 34, 35).
Now, what does the stone so falling upon the feet of the image
symbolise? It has been sometimes thought
that it alludes to grace, or to the spread of the gospel; but surely if the
very words of the Scripture be followed, we shall see that destroying judgment on Gentile power is here spoken of, and not any gradual diffusion of the knowledge
of grace. The image is standing on
its feet, part of iron and part of earthenware; the stone then falls from above
upon these feet, and the whole image is destroyed as it were with one crash.
Now, our Lord speaks of
Himself as the “stone”, and makes reference, or direct citation
of, several passages in the Old Testament in which he had been so
designated. Thus in Matt. 21 He says, “Did ye
never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same
is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes? ... And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but
on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder” (ver. 42, 44).
Our Lord here cites from Psalm 118,
and alludes to the mention made in Isaiah 8
to the stone on which Israel has stumbled and been broken; and he likewise
clearly refers to the destroying judgment which takes place when the stone, now
exalted at the head of the corner, falls thus upon the fabric of Gentile power
– “it will grind him to powder”.
“The stone” must be taken as a definite appellation of
our Lord. We see this from Psalm 118: 22, Isaiah
8: 14 and 28: 16, Acts 4: 11, and 1 Peter
2: 4, 6, in all of which Christ is spoken of under this name. Now, this
cannot refer to Him as born into the world, because the fourth kingdom was not
then in its divided condition - no toes were then in existence. This falling on the feet of the image could
not, therefore, have anything to do with our Lord when He was upon earth. Equally impossible is it for this to
symbolise the spread of the gospel; for,
so far from Christians being put in the place of destroying those that bear
earthly rule, they are taught submission to the powers that be as ordained
of God, and their place is to suffer, if needs be, but not to rebel.
Thus,
it is clear that the Lord Jesus is here referred to as coming again - in the day when He shall take to Himself
his great power and shall reign - when He shall be revealed “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God,
and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1: 8).
It might occur as a difficulty that the Roman empire does not
exist as one united body; and hence it might be thought that the stone falling
on the image must have been some past event: but observe, the
[* Not only did the monarchies of Western Europe spring up, as
each holding a portion of Roman sovereignty, but also in their continued
administration this fact has been habitually recognised. Each has regarded as holding a portion of Roman imperium. See Note on the
Now, we may regard “the stone”
in three different ways, for we find it in Scripture so spoken of, in
connection with
I have already spoken of the relation of this stone to Gentile
power, but I would remark further, that the utter distinctness of this power
from that which stands in grace is most vividly presented to us in the crisis
of this power. The Church is built upon
the stone; the image is destroyed by the stone falling upon it. We ought carefully to note the distinctions
which God makes in His word, and no line of demarcation which He has laid down
is more plain than that which exists between the world and its power on the one
hand and the Church on the other. How
wondrously does it show the power of Satan in confusing the mind as to things
that differ, that it should have been
supposed to be possible for the
Church rightly to rest upon the power of this world upon that which the Lord
Jesus is going thus to judge!
Let the saints rightly value their place as identified with
Christ, as resting upon Him, and
then they will see aright how to act as to any connection with the world and
its power. A saint who identified himself with the image would be, as it were, so
far seeking to put himself in the place of that which will receive destroying
judgement. It is quite true that God
will keep from final condemnation every soul that He has quickened by the
Spirit to believe in Christ; but it would evince a hardihood of mind which
seems scarcely compatible with grace for any one deliberately to say, “God will keep me, and so I may put myself in the place where
judgment will fall.” It is for us
to have nothing to do with that upon which the judgment of God will fall, but to realise our union with Him who will
execute the judgment, and in whose coming kingdom his people will share.
The second chapter of Daniel may be looked on as the alphabet
of the prophetic statements contained in the book; and it is well for the mind
to be grounded in the truths contained in this portion of the book, before
other parts of it are searched into. We
have here the four successive empires, the last of these in a divided and
deteriorated condition and then, in contrast to the whole that had preceded, a
kingdom, which shall last for ever, set up by the God of heaven - the coming of
the Lord Jesus in destroying judgment being the turning point which changes the
whole scene; all that had failed in the hand of man then passing away, and that
which is kept in the Lord’s own hand being then introduced.
If we refer to the 8th
Psalm, we shall see the extent of Christ’s dominion spoken of in terms
very similar to those which in this chapter had been used to describe the power
committed to Nebuchadnezzar: we thus see how the power of the earth, entrusted
to him, and which failed in his hand, is taken up by Christ, as One who really
is able to hold and to exercise aright this dominion in all its wide extent.
* *
* * *
* *
THE GREAT TREE (DANIEL 4) [Pages 24-29]
The Vision in this chapter does not particularly connect itself
with the object proposed in these “Remarks”, which was to speak of those
portions of Daniel which are still, in a great measure, future; it is, however,
one of much interest, for here we find, in the past accomplishment of a vision,
an earnest of the exact and precise fulfilment which all these visions must
necessarily receive.
The form of this chapter is remarkable;
it is a decree proceeding from Nebuchadnezzar himself, after those things had
passed over him which God foretold to him in vision; when he was forced to
confess “the signs and wonders that the high God hath
wrought towards me. How great are his
signs! and how mighty are his wonders! his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and his dominion is from generation to generation” (ver. 2, 3). Thus did the king, at length, acknowledge the
hand and power of God. After the vision
in the second chapter had been declared to him by Daniel, he looked to the
prophet as though he were the source of the communication of
divine truth to him: “then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell
upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an
oblation and sweet odours unto him” (2: 46);
he then acknowledged God as the revealer of secrets, although it is evident
that his heart was in no way humbled before Him.
And thus, in the next chapter, so far from honouring the
living and true God, the king set up his golden image in the plain of Dura,
commanding that all should worship the idol; as if he, who was himself the
receiver of power from God, could himself possess authority to decree anything
as to who should or should
not be the object of religious worship.
The miraculous deliverance of those who refused to obey the king’s
command to commit idolatry leads to an acknowledgment, on his part, of the God
whose power had thus shown itself; so that he made an edict that no one should
speak against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, on pain of death.
But still his heart was lifted up in pride; he continued to trust
in his own power; and this fourth chapter is his own remarkable declaration how God had dealt with him to humble his
haughty spirit.
After acknowledging the power of God, he goes on to say, “I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing
in my palace; I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed
and the visions of my head troubled me.”
He then describes (ver. 6, 9) how he sought in vain, from the wise men
of
Having thus narrated the dream, the king sought the
interpretation from the prophet. Daniel
shows us that the communication of truth from God, or a place of special
service to Him, does not at all interfere with the full action of right human
feelings. He saw that the vision
foretold a solemn chastisement from God which should fall upon Nebuchadnezzar,
and therefore he felt deeply his own position as being thus the communicator of
evil tidings. “Then
Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonied one
hour, and his thoughts troubled him. The
king spake and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream, or the interpretation
thereof, trouble thee. Belteshazzar answered and said, My lord, the dream be to
them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies.” He then, after describing the tree in all its
greatness, adds: “It is thou, 0 king, that art grown
and become strong: for thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and
thy dominion to the end of the earth.” He then applies the Judgment on
the tree to the king: “They shall drive thee from men,
and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make
thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and
seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the Most High ruleth in
the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” But still the king was told that his kingdom
should be sure unto him, after he knew that the heavens do rule. Daniel’s feeling towards the king did not
allow him to rest with merely delivering the prophecy of chastening; he exhorts
the king as having a true and earnest desire for his welfare: “Wherefore, 0 king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee,
and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy
to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.”
A year passed on: the king’s heart was not humbled; he still
looked on his power and might as his own, and did not confess that rule and
authority are from above, and not from beneath.
He was walking in the palace of the
[* It was reserved to our day to bring
out to light an abiding record of the extent of the works of Nebuchadnezzar:
the inscription in the arrow-headed character, found on the bricks in every part of the plain of Babylon, is “Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar”. Turned to so many new uses, they still
speak of the establisher of
The appointed seven years were at length accomplished in the
king’s humiliation, and then (he says), “At the end of the days I
Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned
unto me; and I blessed the most High; and I praised and honoured him that
liveth for ever”, etc. (ver. 34). And
then, according to the word of the Lord by Daniel, his kingdom was restored to
him, and “excellent majesty was added to him.” He whose earthly power had been so great had
now learned to “praise, and extol, and honour the King
of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride, he is able to
abase”.
This is an instructive lesson of the exactitude with which prophecy
is accomplished: it may teach us how we
should expect the fulfilment of what is yet future. These things took place under the head of the
first of the four great monarchies, and thus they might have been regarded as a
warning to those possessed of the power of the earth, that they might learn who
gives them their power, and who it is that ruleth among the children of men.
How little this was heeded is shown us in the next chapter,
where Belshazzar, unmindful of what he had known (chap. 5: 22) of the actings of
God, went on in a course of un-humbled blasphemy. The neglected warning made the condemnation
all the greater. The
Thus has God, from the beginning, shown us what the result is
of power in the hands of the Gentile monarchs: the Giver of authority has been
continually forgotten; it has been regarded as something not received, or else
it has been attributed to wrong sources.
In the sixth chapter of Daniel we find one remarkable
exemplification of what man may do when possessed of authority: Darius was led
by the craft of the presidents and princes to decree that no petition should be
asked for thirty days of any God or man save of himself only. He seems to have thus unwittingly put himself
in the place of God, and thus became an aider of the evil design formed against
Daniel - a design which, by the miraculous interposition of God, issued in the
destruction of those that formed it.
All the results set before us in this book show that power will never be held as from God, and
for God, until Christ takes it into his own hand. God dealt with the first head of Gentile
power for the instruction of those who should come after (“to the intent that the living may know that the Most High
ruleth in the kingdom of men”); but the result has only been farther and
yet farther estrangement from God, until this shall be fully exhibited in the
last head of Gentile power.
*
* * *
* * *
THE FOUR BEASTS (DANIEL 7) [Pages
30-50]
This chapter contains a prophetic vision, and its interpretation
given to the prophet, in which the objects are presented not merely according
to their external aspect (as had been the case in the second chapter, in the
vision seen by the king), but according to the mind of God concerning them.
In this vision we not only have again four successive kingdoms
upon earth, and an everlasting kingdom set up by God on the destruction of the
last of these, but we find also distinct details as to moral features, as
regards God and those who belong to Him.
This vision was seen in the first year of King Belshazzar,
when the power of
In speaking of the origin of these four kingdoms we read (verse 2.) of “the great
sea” as the scene from which the four symbolic beasts arise; this is
not, I believe, an expression which we should overlook, for the “great sea” is always used in every other passage of Scripture
in which the phrase occurs as meaning distinctively the Mediterranean Sea. This, I believe, presents that sea before us
as the centre territorially of the scene of this vision.
Four beasts arise out of this sea (verse
3), and these are (verse 17)
interpreted to be “four kings which shall arise out of the earth”. From the words of verse
23, “The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom
upon earth”, it is clear that the words “king”
and “kingdom” are used, in passages of this
kind, almost in an interchangeable sense - a kingdom is sometimes looked at as
headed up in its sovereign, whose name is used; at other times the name of the
kingdom is used in speaking of the power, designs, etc., of the sovereign. This must be borne in mind just as much in
reading prophetic narrations as in the common language of life.
We may thus, interchangeably, speak of the Babylonian,
Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, or of those of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus,
Alexander, and Augustus.
The distinct scriptural proof of what these four kingdoms thus
succeeding each other must be has been given in Remarks on the Great Image, chap. 2, pp. 12. 15: it is needless to repeat it
here; but it may not be amiss to add that the four individuals regarded by God
as the heads of these several monarchies are all of them definitely brought
before us in Scripture, either in historical account or else in distinct
prophecy as to their persons, or both.
Of the four personal heads, Alexander alone is not a subject of
Scripture history, as well as of prophecy.
Now while I believe it to be most important for us to remember
that, for the real spiritual understanding of the word of God, and for its use
as bearing on our consciences, we need no knowledge but that which the Spirit
has given us in the word, yet we may often find truths intimated in the
prophetic Scripture, which throw much light upon what we learn as facts from
other sources. This is a very different
thing from using history in a manner for which God has given us no warrant, as though
the world could be illuminated by any such doubtful, defective, and glimmering
light of man’s kindling.
Now, in looking at “the great sea”
as the territorial scene of the vision, we must also remember that the time to
which the visions in Daniel belong is that of Gentile power ruling over
Jerusalem and the Jews, and also that the powers are defined (verse 17) to be monarchies; we thus find that each
of these beasts symbolises a monarchy bordering on the Mediterranean and having
This, as it appears to me, is what we have presented before us
in the territorial allotment of the sphere of this vision.
The brief interpretation of the vision is given in verses 17, 18: “These
great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the
earth: but the saints of the most high [places] shall
take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” This gives us the general outline of the
truths here taught us - the succession of the monarchies, and a kingdom which
should arise in contrast to the earthly empires.
The first of these four kingdoms is here symbolised by a lion (verse 4) with eagles’ wings: the prophet beheld it
until the wings were plucked - until (I suppose) its ability for widespread
conquest had passed away; it was made to stand on its feet as a man, and a
man’s heart was given unto it. These words
seem to me an intimation of what had taken place with regard to Nebuchadnezzar,
who was taught by the remarkable discipline of God that the Most High ruleth in
the kingdom of men.
The second monarchy was symbolised by a bear: this beast made
for itself “one dominion” (for so I believe we
should render the expression which stands in our version “one side”). The
Medes were an ancient people, and the Persians were a comparatively
modern tribe; neither of these could be looked on as likely to overturn the
power of Babylon; but by the expression “one dominion”
there seems to be a hint of the second kingdom being a united power, so that the one dominion should
be a combination, and thus it stands in contrast to the third and fourth
monarchies which were at first united and afterwards were divided. The three ribs seen in the mouth of the bear
seem to indicate the conquests which it was devouring, according to what was
said to it, “Arise, devour much flesh.”
The four-headed winged leopard, which symbolised the third
kingdom, seems to indicate the rapidity of the conquests of that power, and the
fourfold division which was its after condition.
But it is impossible to read this vision without seeing that
the fourth kingdom is the principal topic brought before us, and that the other
three simply appear as introductory. We
see from verse 19 that this was the
impression made upon Daniel’s mind by that which was exhibited to him in
symbol. But not only was the fourth
beast the most conspicuous object, but it was while in a certain condition that
the details concerning it are given, we look in fact rather at the crisis than
the course of its history. The
description of the beast is given in verse 7:
“After this I saw in the night visions, and, behold, a
fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great
iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the
feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it”;
this is the general description, and then there is added, “and it had ten horns,” and then another horn is spoken
of as springing up amongst the former ten. Now, it is clear that it is the
actings of the beast when possessed of this horn, or rather perhaps of this
horn as concentrating the power of the beast, with which in this vision we have
to do.
In the statement which was made to
Daniel we find a very distinct explanation of these things: it was said to him
(verse 23), “The
fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse
from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and
break it in pieces: and the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that
shall arise.” Thus we see that
the horns symbolise what this kingdom would become at a particular point of
time, namely, when that empire, which was once united as a monarchy under the
power of the Caesars, should be divided into ten kingdoms. An intimation of this had been given in the
number of the toes of the image in chap. 2,
and the same thing is found both in symbol and in direct statement in the book
of Revelation (see, for instance, chap. 13: 1,
and 17: 12).
This, then, must be the state of the Roman earth at the time
when another king, whose actings are here detailed, arises in the midst of the
other kings.
This king is at first symbolised by “a
little horn”: this is not his
designation when acting in blasphemy and persecution, for then the symbolic
horn had become very great, “his look was more stout
than his fellows”; but at first he rises like “a
little horn” in the midst of the other
horns, and then so increases in power as far to surpass them all.
The rise of this last horn was thus shown in the symbol: “I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them
another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up
by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a
mouth speaking great things” (verse 8). This
is explained, in verse 24, to be another
king rising after the first ten, “and he shall be
diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings”: and then his
persecution and blasphemy are mentioned.
As spoken of at first, we meet with nothing but his blasphemy
against God, and then (verse 11) judgment
from God falling upon the beast because of this blasphemy; but when Daniel is
making inquiry as to what all this might mean, some further particulars are
brought before us: “I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;
until the Ancient of Days came [as had been shown in the previous
vision, ver. 9], and judgment was
given to the saints of the most high [places]; and
the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom” (verses 21, 22).
This is explained (verse 25), “And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the
most high [places], and think to change times
and laws: and they shall be given into his hand, until a time and times and the
dividing of time.”
Thus, we see this king using his power in a twofold form of
opposition to God - in open and direct blasphemy against Him, and in the persecution of his saints. We also find that this opposition continues
to the end of his reign, and that this is consummated by the direct judgment of
God.
While the scene presented on earth is the beast energised by
this last horn, wearing out the saints and blaspheming the name of God, we have
also the veil so withdrawn as to unfold to us what at the same time takes place
in heaven. In verses
9 and 10 we have this displayed to
us; a court of judicature is set in heaven, where God judges, and, in
consequence of His judgment, the sentence which is pronounced above, unseen by
any eye save that of faith, is executed upon the earth. “I beheld till the
thrones were cast down [or rather were set], and
the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of
his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his
wheels as burning fire; ... the judgment was set, and the books were opened”; and
then the effect on earth of the judgment in heaven is thus spoken of. “I beheld then
because a cloud received him out of their sight”: to instance one of
these places:- when our Lord stood before the high priest, He said, “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26: 64).
Now, in the expression “sitting on the right
hand of power” He clearly referred to Psalm
110: 1 (see also Psalm 80: 17), but in speaking of the clouds of heaven
He as manifestly alluded to this place in Daniel: the one passage of the Old
Testament brings before us the place into which He, who has thus been rejected
by men, is received by God; the other brings before us the glory which shall be
manifested in His coming and taking the rule into His own hands.
But there is this difference between the mention made of “the clouds of heaven” in Daniel from that in the New
Testament, that here we have not the coming forth of Christ spoken of, but that
which immediately precedes it; I say advisedly immediately precedes, because He sits at the right hand of
Jehovah until His enemies are
made His footstool, and when God has accomplished that, then this kingdom is
given in actual investiture to the Son, and He comes forth to crush His so
prepared footstool beneath his feet.
But though this scene, in which the clouds of heaven are
mentioned, is not identical with the actual coming forth of Christ, yet even this passage might
be taken as intimating the very close connection between the two things - for the court of judicature set in heaven
is, so to speak, the intermediate point between His seat in glory, where He now
is, and the manifestation of His person, when “every
eye shall see him”; He has with Him the same adjuncts that He will have
when He returns to this earth.
We have then as the parties before us in the crisis of this
chapter‑
Upon earth: 1. The last horn of the fourth beast, persecuting
the saints and blaspheming God.
2. The beast itself with ten horns (three plucked up before
the last horn), so connected with the horn of blasphemy that it is involved in
the judgment on that horn and is in several important senses responsible for
its acts.
3. The saints worn out and warred against by the horn of
blasphemy.
In heaven: 1. The Ancient of Days taking the place of
judicature and condemning the fourth beast because of the words spoken by the
horn.
2. The Son of Man brought before Him with adjuncts of heavenly
glory, and receiving above a kingdom which He will exercise in government upon
earth.
If we learn simply from Scripture, I think that there can be
no question as to who or what the fourth beast symbolises - that has been
considered already - but with regard to the horn of blasphemy, it is very
important for us distinctly to see from the word of God whether this be a power
past, present, or future. One thing is
clear, that his dominion and actings in blasphemy and persecution continue up
to the coming of the Lord, because it is then the saints take the kingdom and
not before, and till they take the kingdom he wears them out.
Thus, if he be a power whose rise is
past, he must also be present, and some of his actings must be future. And, further, if his wearing out of the
saints has begun, it must also be now going on and must still continue until
the judgment of verse 10. It might also be left to the consciences of
Christians to say whether they are now at this time enduring active
persecutions of this kind, or whether
they are in most places permitted to dwell in external rest and tranquillity.
We cannot, then, possibly speak of this horn of blasphemy as
already past; just as manifest is it that his dominion is entirely future. The considerations just stated appear to
prove this point.
But, further, it is said (verse 25),
“And he shall speak great words against the most High,
and shall wear out the saints of the most High [places], and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given
into his hand, until a time and times and the dividing of time.” Here then we have a chronological statement,
to which we shall do well to take heed.
It is true that this is a period reckoned backward, and thus we can form
no calculation of our own upon it as to times or seasons, but for the purpose
for which God has revealed it, it is so stated as fully to meet the object; it
is a period which runs on to the coming of the Lord Jesus, and must be reckoned
backward from that time. This then gives
the limit of the distinct actings of this horn in blasphemy and persecution; it
commences at the beginning of the “time, times, and a
half”, and runs on to the coming of Christ without any intermission.
This period has been commonly taken (and I have no doubt
rightly so) as signifying three years and a half. Now, we know that it must
mean a period exactly defined, and not about such or such a time; for had
it been merely an indefinite statement, the mention of “half a time” would be useless.
It is impossible to be definite and indefinite at one and the same
time. The word rendered “time” is that which denotes either a stated period or
else a set feast, or else an idea blended, as it were, of the two, namely, the
interval from one of the great set feasts to its recurrence, i.e. a year; thus
then we find a time, i.e. one year; times (the smallest plural, as the
statement is definite), two years,
and half a year, i.e. three years and a half.
The word “time” is similarly
used in chap. 4, where it was foretold to
Nebuchadnezzar that he should be driven from men until “seven times” should
pass over him, i.e. seven years; also in Lev. 23,
where the feasts are mentioned, the Hebrew word which corresponds to the
Chaldee word here used (and which itself is found in chap.
12: 7) is employed in the sense of denoting a set feast, or the period
from one recurrence to another.
Thus then the period at which the especial blasphemy and
persecutions of this horn begin is three years and a half before the coming of
the Lord Jesus - a short time, during which evil will be allowed greatly to
prevail, but then in consequence of its full development the judgment of God
will come in.
This then is briefly his history as given in this vision. The Roman earth is found divided into ten
kingdoms: another king arises who destroys three of the former kings: for three
years and a half he acts in open defiance of God, and in persecution of his
saints: the whole Roman earth is so connected with his deeds as to share in the
judgment which comes from the hand of God upon him, and this occurs at the very
time when the kingdom is given into the hand of the Son of Man, and when the
saints take it with Him.
But many may object, Is not the horn here spoken of the
Papacy? Does not history warrant us in
charging these blasphemies and persecutions upon that power?
To this I reply, No appeal to history can be of any avail in
opposition to direct testimony in the word of God. Thus, unless this power be
wearing out the saints continuously up to the coming of the Lord, the chief
point in supposed resemblance is lost.
And even further, if any one chooses openly and fairly to appeal to
history, he will find discrepancies at every point - for instance, the tenfold
division of the Roman earth of which mention is here made has never yet taken
place, and therefore, of course, the horn which was to arise after the others
has not yet come into existence. It is
quite true that many have given lists of kingdoms which arose in the fifth and sixth
centuries out of the broken parts of the Roman empire, but these have all been
sought merely in the west, as though the eastern half were not to be
considered, when in fact the existence of the eastern empire was protracted for
a thousand years after that period.* And
further, whatever lists have been made out of ten kingdoms, they have all
varied widely both as to the kingdoms themselves and also as to which were the
three which the Papacy overcame. It has
also been entirely forgotten that the Papacy existed before the breaking up of even the western
empire, instead of being a horn springing up after the other ten.
[* Till May 29, 1453, when the Turks took Constantinople and
the last
But it has been said that this horn must be a power existing
through a long period of time, and not a single king; because it is alleged
that in prophetic language a day is used as a symbol of a year, and therefore a
year as that of three hundred and sixty days (twelve months of thirty days
each), and thus the whole time of the persecution of this horn is twelve
hundred and sixty years. This question
is one into which, in its full statement, I cannot enter in this place, but the
reader will find it examined elsewhere more fully.* I will only here remark,
that if this canon of interpretation were sound the period of Nebuchadnezzar’s
madness (“seven times”) would be still
continuing; and not only should we be left in utter uncertainty in every
prophecy in which time was mentioned, but in some we should even find
inextricable incongruities and contradictions. What, for instance, could we
make of the three days during which our Lord was to lie in the grave? But the comparison of the “seven times” which should pass over Nebuchadnezzar is
sufficient in this place: the dominion of this horn is half of that time, both
are prophetic statements, and thus the allegation is utterly groundless, that
we have here a period predicted or 1,260 years.
The accomplished prediction of chap. 4
is authority
to us for understanding the expressions of chap. 7. Let us take it simply as being what it states
- three years and a half, a short period, immediately followed by the coming of
the Lord Himself.
[* See Note on the Year-day System, after Remarks on The Seventy
Heptads (Daniel 9).]
The same considerations which show the non-applicability of
this horn to the Papacy will equally evince that it cannot be any other power
whatever which has as yet come into existence; we have yet to see the tenfold
division of the Roman earth before it can arise.
If we look on corrupted Christianity as the worst form of
evil, we should fail greatly in estimating aright those things of which the
Spirit teaches us in the word. Corrupt
Christianity - the introduction of other things as the ground of peace with God
besides faith in the one sacrifice of Christ once offered, the admixture of
idolatry with the worship of God, even as the mixed multitude did in the cities
of Samaria (2 Kings 17) - these are indeed
abominations; but our eyes are directed to see “greater
abominations than these”. The
consequence of the non-reception of the truth will be the solemn act of God in
sending upon men “strong delusion”, so that they
will receive, own, and honour, in the place of God, that person “whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power,
and signs, and lying wonders”.
God will act in this manner to prepare the foes of Christ to be crushed
by His feet (see Psalm 92: 7). Corrupt Christianity may obscure every
fundamental truth of God’s revelation, but it would cease to be Christianity at
all (whether in substance, form, or name) if the God whom we own should be
denied and counselledly rejected, both in heart and also in word - and yet this
will be done. He will “deny the Father and the Son”.
Let then our thoughts of the evil of corrupt Christianity be
what they may, let us form a just estimate of its awfulness from its contrast
to that which God reveals as His truth - here is something which goes beyond it: it is true that it issues out of
it, but still it is not to be measured by its precursors. If then we apply these solemn truths to
things past or present, we lose the true purpose for which God has revealed
them, and blunt (so to speak) the edge of His truth.
There is one point in the vision and interpretation which must
not be overlooked: in the vision (ver. 13, 14) the Son of Man takes the kingdom; in the
interpretation (verse 18) it is said, “the saints of the
most high [places] take the kingdom”. How simply does the light of New Testament
truth explain to us that which at first sight might seem a contrast instead of
a connection! This is one of the
passages of the Old Testament Scripture which may be taken as an intimation of
that union which was afterwards to be declared as existing between Christ and
His people - the union which was brought out in His death and
resurrection. That which had been said
of Him in the vision is said of them in the interpretation.
In verse 27 it is said that
the kingdom, etc., “under the whole
heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the most
high [places]”. This appears to
me to be a different statement, informing us that a certain kingdom, not
co-extensive with that of the Son of Man, will be given to a certain
nation. Who then can this nation be?
Now, it is clear from many Scriptures that
In Rom. 9: 24 we read
concerning the saints of God, “us whom he hath called, not
of the Jews only, but also of
the Gentiles”. In Rom. 11: 24 we read of “their
own olive tree” (
In Isaiah 8. A Christ speaks of His brethren – God’s
children given into His hand to be redeemed – “Behold,
I and the children whom the Lord hath given me, are for signs and wonders in
Thus, then, may we understand how in this chapter of Daniel we
find the expression “people of the saints of the most
high [places]” - that nation to which the saints stand in some peculiar
relation, although they themselves may, for the most part, be of other origin,
according to the flesh. But it may be
thought that Daniel could have no apprehension of saints who were not Jews; let
this be granted, but what then? The
meaning of the statements in God’s revelation must not be limited by the
thoughts of those to whom they were addressed; for if we were to interpret
Scripture in this manner, we should be continually bounding the truth of God by
the finite apprehension of man. The oneness of the body, jointness of the inheritance of those who are made
partakers of grace, whether Jews or Gentiles, was a truth which God
purposed in after times to reveal; but while this is fully admitted, we
must avoid the dangerous error of excluding from Old Testament statements those
whom we learn from the New Testament to have been included in the mind of God
in the promised blessings. If we had to
look at any of those things according to Daniel’s apprehension of them, what,
we might ask, could he have .mown of the Son of Man taking the kingdom in the
vision, the saints taking it in the interpretation? What could he have thought of their being
designated “saints of the most high [places]”? -
a name which so clearly refers to the position above, which belongs to those
who have a portion in Christ. Christ was
not yet risen and ascended, and therefore the saints (see Eph. 1.) were
not risen and ascended in Him, and yet the Holy Ghost could beforehand make
use of such terms as these.
The chapter concludes by telling us, “As
for me, Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in
me: but I kept the matter in my heart.”
This seems to intimate that the mind of the prophet was as yet enabled
but little to apprehend intelligently the things which he saw and heard. Their significance therefore must most
assuredly not be limited by the thoughts which occupied Daniel’s mind.
We have then “the people of the saints
of the most high [places]” as one of the parties to partake in the
blessing to which this chapter leads us on.
I believe that it was intended that our minds should rest very
particularly upon the brief interpretation given in ver. 17, 18.
There we have in contrast “four kings
which shall arise out of the earth” on the one hand, and “the saints of the most high [places]” who “shall take the kingdom”, etc., on the other. The issue of earthly power is told us here:
to what does it all lead? - to greater and greater opposition to God, so that
the last state of the fourth beast (the period when earthly power has had before
it the light of Christ’s gospel, and has rejected it) is found to be of the
most malignant character of evil against God and His saints; but all this ends
in “the burning flame”!
On the other hand, we have saints whose portion is found to be
one of deepest suffering during this very period, and God allows them to
suffer; but they belong to the most high places, not to the earth from which
the four beasts have arisen, and the end
of the whole matter to them is, reigning with Christ - with Him whose precious
blood is their title to glory, for whom they have been allowed to testify in
suffering, and by whose continuous grace they have been sustained.
This chapter of Daniel teaches us some of the characteristics
of our own dispensation -
Now, is it possible to be identified with the actings of this
fourth beast and yet to be one of these saints?
The question might seem needless, but, practically, men have said that
the two things are compatible and consistent.
Again, is it possible that it could be according to the
pleasure of God that those who now bear earthly rule should also take the
superintendence of His Church? In other
words, can authority in the Church rightly spring from the fourth beast - the
throne of the Caesars? If this can be
so, then let the wolves be the shepherds, instead of their being the
adversaries into whose midst the sheep are sent forth. Also, let us remember that the horn of
persecution and blasphemy will be the last holder of the power of the fourth
beast: can he be the sources of power in the Church? and if not, can his
predecessors? Could Tiberius or Nero be
this? The present state of the fourth
beast lies between these two points.
How rarely do men make such confusion as this in natural things
- then, should real Christians make them in the things of God? In matters of civil government is our place
to
obey the powers that be, to own them as set of God, but never to forget
the Supreme Lordship of Christ over us: and for the right discerning of these
things it is our place to take heed to the word, doctrinal, preceptive,
and prophetic, knowing that it is thus the Spirit of God instructs us.
As believing in Christ we ought to esteem it a high and
wondrous blessing that we are not only cleansed in His precious blood, and made
heirs of glory with Him, but that we are instructed now as to things around
us and before us, that we may judge of them according to His mind.
May we be taught, as one part of our Christian walk and
discipleship, to understand how opposite is earthly authority in its course and
issue to all that to which we are called; and, especially, to see the Church so
contrasted with the power of the world that the one cannot possibly be the
source of office or authority in the other!
We see grievous confusion around us: the word of God teaches
us that it will increase - how blessed and cheering it is to our souls to look
on the coming of Christ as beyond it all, our point of hope and joyful
expectation! What though the wearing out
of the saints will intervene? - it is only until the judgment of the Ancient of
Days, when the Son of Man takes the kingdom, and we take it with Him. “Sorrow may endure
for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
* *
* * *
* *
NOTE ON THE ROMAN EMPIRE
AND ITS DIVISIONS [Pages
51-74]
Of the four monarchies, symbolised by metals in the image and
by beasts in the vision of Daniel 7, that
which is chiefly of interest to us is the fourth; for under it, during its changes
and processes of division, do we now live.
I shall therefore state the extent, etc., of that empire when it stood
in its entirety, and then show (what to some minds is difficult to be
understood) that this empire is that which still bears sway, though in a
divided condition.
Let it be observed that I do not say that it is of absolute
necessity, for our spiritual apprehension of the vision, that we should know
the detail of geographical and historical facts; but surely we are, if we
possess the opportunity, to compare such facts with Scripture, and thus use
Scripture as giving us right thoughts as to the facts. If God gives us a prophecy in Scripture
concerning Egypt or Tyre, we are of course to use those powers of observation
with which He has furnished us so as to know what and where Egypt and Tyre are;
how much more, then, must this be the case as to territories and nations with
which we are ourselves concerned?
The power of Rome was of very gradual rise; the city, which at
the first bore the name of seven-hilled, not from its being built on seven different hills, but only from seven ascents or
points of hill on which it stood,* expanded as to its own circumference, and as
to its dominion, until it became the metropolis and mistress of the civilised
earth - until her sway extended throughout the East and the West alike.
[* The seven hills which originally
gave the well-known designation to
The internal changes of the Roman commonwealth had been
equally great: the stern republic of patricians, who, on the one hand, had
expelled their kings and, on the other, had pressed down the plebeians, had
been gradually compelled to admit all its citizens into almost every office of
honour, trust, and power. The early
course of Roman government, after the expulsion of the Tarquins,
was in many respects like that which the state of
From this latter condition of the republic arose that imperial
rule which was prefigured by the fourth beast seen in Daniel’s vision.
At the time of this prophecy the power of
The battle of Actium (September 2,
31 B.C.) decided two at once; it placed the sovereign authority of the Roman
earth in the hands of Octavius, and it destroyed the
power of the Egyptian kingdom. The two
events occurred by a kind of necessary connection: Rome received the obelisks
of Egypt to adorn the shores of the Tiber, and, acknowledging the imperial
power in the hands of Octavius, bestowed on him the
dignified designation of Augustus.*
[* The following extract from Spalding’s
“The title by which Augustus pretended to the sovereignty was that of a free
election by the people, renewed from time to time. All names, forms, and ceremonies, which the
free constitution held illegal, were carefully shunned; and all that the spirit
of liberty had honoured were protected aria brought paradingly
forward. But the republicanism was a
wretched mask through which every man of information saw distinctly, though
none was strong enough to tear off the disguise. From the very commencement of the first reign
all the powers, both of the senate, the popular conventions, and the
magistracies, were virtually and effectually secured to the emperor. The new prince united by degrees in his own
person all the ancient offices of state; or, at least, though he allowed the
appointment of colleagues, he entrusted to them no share of the real
administration. He founded, on his
assumption of the tribuneship, a claim of personal
inviolability, and his title of Imperator, which we translate Emperor, a
prerogative of absolute military command, not only beyond the city, which was
the republican rule, but also within it - an extension of powers which directly
contradicted the old constitution. His generalship of the armies, indeed, aided
by the official weakness and personal subserviency of the senate, constituted
the true ground on which his monarchy rested. But, in appearance, he was only the first of
senators; the august forms of the assembly were treated with profound respect;
and the sovereign sheltered his ordinances under its name.”
Such was the nature of Roman monarchy: it comprehended the
absolute military Imperium beyond the city; to
this it added a similar Imperium, not so confined,
decreed by the senate; and, as a third element, it comprehended the Tribunitian power derived from the people - the
long-cherished prerogative which the plebeians had earned for themselves on the
day of their secession to the Mons Sacer.
Julius Caesar had endeavoured, like Sulla, to rule as
perpetual dictator, a name of ancient historic importance in
At the commencement of the rule of the fourth monarchy it
possessed in Europe, Italy, Gaul, the Spanish peninsula, Greece, Macedon,
Thrace, and Illyricum, so that its boundary was
pretty nearly the line of the rivers Rhine and Danube; in Africa it possessed
the northern coasts and Egypt; and in Asia, Syria, and Asia Minor, the
Euphrates being about the limit.
Such, then, was the original empire of the fourth beast. Under the successors of Augustus other
conquests were made. Britain, which had
been invaded by Julius Caesar, and which for many subsequent years maintained
only a commercial connection with Rome, was made a part of the empire, so far
at least as the line of forts carried from the Clyde to the Forth.* In Germany the Roman boundary was carried by
a defined rampart from the Rhine near Bingen, along
the Taunus mountains, then in a direction mostly
south-east until it reached the Danube at the most northern point of that
river. The Emperor Trajan
added the
[* Roman Britain - The first invasion of this island by Rome was
conducted by Julius Caesar, who, on the 26th of August, 55 B.C., in
the consul-ship of Pompey and Crassus, planted the
standard of the eagle on our shores. But Caesar founded no permanent dominion
in
Amongst the more important events during the Roman occupation
of Britain were the deaths of Septimius Severus, at York, in 211, and of Constantius
Chlorus, in 306, at the same city; this caused his
son Constantine to assume the imperial purple, which led to the cessation of
all persecutions of Christians. The
extent of the Roman dominion in Britain varied at different times: the rampart
of Hadrian (the Picts’ wall, as it is often called)
crossed the island from Carlisle to Newcastle; but the vallum
of Antoninus included a greater extent of country,
running as it did from the Forth to the Clyde; while even farther north there
were Roman towns.]
Besides the conquests of Trajan,
which were at once resigned,
Before the formal division of the imperial power there had
frequently been a partition of the sovereign authority of
Under Constantine there was again an united empire, but this
monarch, by founding the city which still bears his name on the side of the
ancient Byzantium, gave a principle of permanence to the territorial division,
for he thus established what has been from that time and onward the metropolis
of the eastern empire.
After the death of the last surviving son of
In this division it was intended that the West should be the more
important empire. However, in 395, when
the East was appropriated to Arcadius, the eldest son
of Theodosius the Great, and the West to Honorius,
his younger brother, the boundary was so changed as to unite the greater part
of what is now European Turkey to the East.
The boundary left the shores of the Adriatic, between
In the year 425, when Theodosius II took Valentinian
III as his associate in the empire, he united a still further portion of
territory to the East; the West (of which the seat of government was now
Ravenna) no longer retained the provinces east of Venetia and Rhaetia. The
boundary was thus formed by the Julian Alps, then by a line drawn to the river
Inn just where its course turns to the north (at the point where it now flows
from the Austrian into the Bavarian territory), and then by the course of the
Inn to the Danube.
This was the definite line of demarcation by which the Roman
earth was fully divided into East and West; the separation was occasioned by
internal as well as external causes.
Within, the empire had consisted of elements utterly distinct, mentally
and morally; it needed a strong hand to cause such contrary materials to
coalesce; and when the Parthian power on the east and
the vast immigration of tribes from the north pressed on the Roman territory, a
separation of administration was almost the necessary result: thus the
long-admitted principle of association in the empire now assumed the form of
distinct and separate government.*
[* The Roman hold on
The western empire soon became a prey to the northern
invaders, so that in 475 the succession ceased in the person of Romulus Augustulus: not so, however, at Constantinople, where, with
varied circumstances and a circumscribed territory, the imperial dignity
continued, until it expired with the last Constantine, when (in 1453) the
eastern metropolis passed into the hands of Mahometan
invaders.
This, then, is the empire whose whole extent is marked out in
prophecy as that which shall be divided into ten kingdoms, just as the
dominion of Alexander was separated into four.
It may be questioned whether, with regard to this division,
the empire must be looked at as it existed under Augustus, or in its widest
extent, or according to its limits when the complete division took place of
East and West. The first of these limits
is not, I believe, the true one (reasons for this opinion will appear
presently), and as to the second, it may be doubted whether territories which
Rome voluntarily resigned could be regarded as integral parts of the empire;
hence it seems to me that we should include Southern Britain, and take on the
Continent the line of the Danube and Rhine in a general sense.*
[* The Emperor Caracalla (whose
reign began in 211) extended the privilege of Roman citizenship to all persons
born within the empire who were not slaves.
This was done for the purpose of raising an increased property-tax; it
had, however, a very important effect in giving a certain unity to the races
within the empire.]
In this territory, according to the terms of Daniel’s
prophecy, written before
We have, in accordance with Scripture, to look at all the
present period as one in which changes and divisions take place within the
Roman earth, prior to that tenfold development into kingdoms which shall
precede the rise of the terrible but transient horn of blasphemy.
Does this seem difficult to any mind? If so, let it be considered that in the
vision of Daniel 7 the fourth beast is
regarded as reigning until the Son of Man takes the
kingdom and His saints take it with him.
If this has not taken place as yet, then the fourth beast still bears
rule, however changed may be the form of his power.
The example of the third beast may illustrate this: the united
empire of Alexander began to dissolve at his death; but still as long as any of
its great divided parts remained as sovereignties (whatever changes they had
undergone) any person would have been living under the third beast. This would have been true before the battle
of Ipsus (301 B.C.) effected the fourfold division;
it would have been equally true when that great division had in many respects
changed, and until the fourth beast had by the conquest of Egypt superseded the
last of the four Grecian sovereignties.
In one respect the third and fourth beasts stand in definite
contrast: the fourfold division of Alexander’s empire took place without any
great interval of years after his death; and then other changes ensued: the
territory of the fourth beast, whether intermediate divisions had taken place
or not, was to be found separated into ten kingdoms just before its utter destruction by the Lord Himself. Thus, unless we can say that Christ has taken
His kingdom and destroyed the divided sovereignties of
How fully the Roman character has been impressed
on the sovereignties formed within its territory is shown by the circumstances
of their rise. They were in general
founded by some king or chief of an invading tribe, who succeeded in planting
his people within the imperial territory; over his own followers he possessed a
defined military authority. To the Roman
provincials it was a very indifferent matter who their sovereign might
be: they were heavily taxed and dispirited, so that to the greater part of them
it seemed preferable to be ruled by a military conqueror who from Jocal connection might be interested in improving their
condition, than by an emperor who secluded himself in the luxury of Ravenna, or
one who, reigning on the shore of the Bosphorus,
cared only for the eastern provinces.
The provincials, too, had seen examples enough of barbarian rule during
the days of the united empire not to object to any sovereign because of his
birth or nation. Thus they acknowledged
their new rulers as holders of Roman imperium, and regarded them as possessed of that
absolute power which the Roman emperors had claimed and exercised.
The new rulers willingly accepted the acknowledgment of the
provincials, and thus, without exchanging their kingly titles for the imperial name, they governed as holding an associated
authority within the empire. The twofold
power which they thus possessed, that over their original followers and that
over the provincials, led to the development of new forms of government
containing opposing principles. The
followers of the invading chiefs owed them but a kind of limited allegiance,
they possessed privileges which were as indefeasible as was the power of the
sovereign; the new subjects, on the contrary, knew of no relations between the
governed and those governing, other than had been recognised by Roman
rule.* The municipalities, indeed, had possessed
certain privileges, and when permanent conquest and not mere devastation was
the object of the invaders, they found it to be for their own interest to
preserve such bodies. It was by means of
the municipalities, with their local organisation, that much of what had been
Roman floated above the wreck of ages down to our days.**
[* Thus it has been said that the Franks occupied the soil of
Gaul for three centuries, without any amalgamation having taken place between
the new dominant body and the old Roman provincials; the terms might seem to be
borrowed from what Daniel 2 says of the iron
and clay.
From the relation in which the
followers of the invading leaders stood to them sprang much of the notion of
modern European nobility. The almost independent ground which this class could assume,
seven centuries ago, shows what a limited allegiance chiefs even
then rendered to their
sovereigns. Thus the original form of
the homage of the Aragoriese nobles to the sovereign
ran thus: “We who are as good as you, and together are
more than you, will be faithful to you as our king and lord, if you govern us
well and truly, IF NOT, NOT.” The privilege of remaining covered
in the presence of the sovereign is all that the Spanish nobles now retain of these high-sounding
claims. So long as the ancient office of
hereditary Lord High Steward of
** In
this country,
The twofold relations of the new sovereigns seem to have
occasioned what we should now call constitutional governments, in which,
however, almost all that controlled the king was to be found amongst his
original followers. From the greater
submission of the provincials, the kings had an interest in bestowing on them
such privileges as might check (what might be termed) the military nobility.
In some cases the kings, whose power had arisen within the
Roman earth, sought and obtained imperial recognition from
[* Sir Francis Palgrave in his Anglo-Saxon
Commonwealth has done much to
show the relation in which sovereignty within the Roman empire, and in
particular in Britain, was connected with imperial recognition and association.
The rise of Saxon rule, however, was marked by some
peculiarities. At the departure of the
Romans, three races occupied the country: First, the non-Romanised Britons, whose
abode was principally to the west of the
After the withdrawal of the Romans, sovereignty became
independent amongst the non-Romanised Britons; while the Roman population
sought weakly and vainly to maintain their authority in the island. The dominion of the Saxons arose, not by
breaking down Roman authority, but by occupying the ground which
Although from the year 476 there ceased to be an emperor
reigning in the West, the authority of the imperial name was not finally
extinct in its original centre of dominion.
Odoacer, the king of the Heruli
(a tribe issuing from the shores of the Baltic), who in 476 had deposed Romulus
Augustulus, was invested, at the request of the Roman
senate, with the title of Patrician by Zeno, the eastern emperor, and under
this designation he exercised sovereign power.
Theodoric, the king of the Ostrogoths,
by whom Odoacer was displaced and slain (in 493), had
been educated at Constantinople, and it was as a province of the empire, and
under the (disregarded) condition of tribute, that he received the grant of
Seventy years had not passed from that date when Charlemagne,
the monarch of the Franks and the German tribes, was (in the year 800) solemnly
crowned emperor, at
In his family the imperial title continued with diminished
lustre; at Coblentz, in the church of St. Castor, his
descendants agreed to divide his territories; and after various vicissitudes,
the title of Roman Emperor, together with the supremacy over Italy (real at that time), was appropriated in the
person of Otho, 962, to an elective German
monarch. But though his rule was principally beyond the Alps, yet for ages it was
considered that the imperial title was not rightly his until he had been
crowned in
The latest traces of the power of the eastern emperors in the
West are to be found in the Italian islands and the
Thus it was by gradual steps that changes took place in the
Roman earth; and thus plain is it that the sovereignties of South-western
This sometimes led to formal transactions resembling the
ancient assumption of an associate in the empire. Thus, in November 1337 the
Emperor Lewis, the Bavarian, met Edward III of England at Coblentz
and there at the church at St. Castor, where the empire had been divided five
hundred years before, he constituted him Imperial Vicar of all territories and
peoples on the left bank of the Rhine, with authority to coin money in those
districts - an authority on which he acted at Antwerp. This imperial title was distinctly declared
in an Act of Parliament in the time of his grandson Henry IV, and it explains
part of the ceremonial observed in the threefold coronation of Queen Elizabeth,
first as Queen of England, second, Queen of Ireland, third, “Sovereign Lady and Empress of all Nations and Countries from
the Islands Orcades to the Mountains Pyrenees”.
Thus, though the Ottoman arms destroyed the imperial name and
power in the East in the fifteenth century, its different western branches have
continued, whether as bearing imperial or royal names. It was common to consider
[* This was done partly through the strange transaction
between Andreas PaIaeologus and Charles VIII in 1494;
the latter, in 1495, when in session of Naples, formally received and bore the
title of Emperor; he seems to have
considered himself as then holding part of the Eastern Empire.]
It may be questioned whether the tenfold division of the Roman
earth must be precisely in accordance with its geographical boundaries: but at
all events it seems clear that the seat of all the kingdoms must be within the Roman bounds as well as the main body of the territory:
further than this it may not be safe to venture an opinion. The Romans conquered far beyond the limits which they
retained: the Eyder, between Holstein and Schleswig, appears to have been the line to which they
penetrated in that direction: they also occupied military positions beyond the
boundaries of the empire, just as Napoleon held Magdeburg and other places
which were no part of his territory.
Thus there may be districts beyond the Roman earth which will be
connected with parts of the ten kingdoms.
It is “out of” the fourth kingdom that
ten others arise, whatever exterior territory any of them may possess or
conquer.
From the
vision of Daniel 2, and that of chap. 7, we may see that the ten kingdoms do not
arise until a certain process of deterioration (the mixture of clay with iron)
is complete; and that these kingdoms, when all developed, have not any
protracted course before them. Just as
the sovereignty, out of which they sprung, was
secular, so of course are they also
secular. Whatever have been the changes
in the Roman earth, as yet we have not seen the definite tenfold division;
indeed, had we seen it we could have expected nothing other than the appearance
of the last horn and the judgment of the Son of Man at his coming.
To suppose this last horn to be the Papacy would interfere
with almost every point that the visions in Daniel teach us; it would involve
us in the supposition that before the rise of the Papacy the imperial power had
passed away, and that its territory was in the hands of ten definite
kings. If so, those kingdoms must
continue as such (unless the three which fall before the last horn be
excepted) until the coming of Christ: whereas we know how change after change
has passed upon
The tenfold division of the Roman empire (even if we had a
right to exclude the eastern half) could never be definitely pointed out,
whether in the early centuries or since.
The lists differ exceedingly, and very frequently countries wholly
disconnected with the Roman empire are introduced simply because in later days
they have been upholders of the Popedom.* But even if the lists of kings could be made
out, and if the commencement
of the divisions of the empire were the proper time, and not a little before
the second advent of Christ, it would still remain to be shown how the Popedom
then rose after the ten kings, and how it destroyed three of the former kings,
and what
three.
[* The following note, from [the late] Mr. Conder’s
Literary
History of the New Testament (P.
576), shows what ideas have been
advanced as the division of the Roman empire into ten kingdoms:
“At the epoch of A.D. 532, which is fixed upon by Mr. Elliott,
there existed on the platform of the western Roman empire the following ten
kingdoms: the Anglo-Saxons, the Franks, the Allman
Franks, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Suevi, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths,
the Bavarians, and the Lombards. Notwithstanding many
intervening revolutions and changes in
I do not discuss the points stated as historical facts (such
as whether there was one united Anglo-Saxon kingdom in
532); the kingdoms being sought in
the West alone is sufficient to show the fallacy
of the scheme which ignores the eastern empire; the date, too, is not a
fortunate one, as it is just before the eastern emperors again extended their
influence over the West. But what
relation has the extract from Gibbon to the matter in hand? If we are to seek for ten kingdoms in the
Roman empire, to the
Some place the rise of the Papacy, as the little horn, in the
reign of Justinian, in the middle of the sixth century; at that very time,
however, the Popedom, both in temporal and spiritual
things, was ruled over by Justinian: Vigilius, the
weak and vacillating Roman bishop, who, according to circumstances, adopted or
renounced the monophysite heresy, possessed no
temporal authority; and in doctrinal points he bound himself by oath to the
emperor. As if to reverse the relations
in which things afterwards stood, the emperor declared the pope, when
un-submissive, to be excluded from the fellowship of the Church.
Others regarded the Papacy as thus arising when Boniface III
was addressed by the Emperor Phocas in 606 as “Universal Bishop”.*
That the secular authority of Rome, then, belonged to the emperor we
have proof existing in the Roman Forum itself, where, in our days, excavations
around “the nameless column with the buried base”
have caused the base to be no longer buried, and the column to be no longer
nameless, since the inscription on the pedestal shows that it was erected to
the honour of this very Phocas by his Italian
representative. How completely the popes
were subjects, at a later period, is shown in the
case of Pope Martin I, who, for his firm opposition to the monothelite
heresy, was seized at
[* The title of “Universal Bishop” had been used for some time
in the East as a complimentary title: it was not intended to signify that the
person to whom it was applied excluded the jurisdiction of other bishops, nor
yet was it so understood as if it could belong to one only. In
More has been made out of the title of “Universal Bishop” than it really involves. Boniface III accepted a title which the
cooler judgment of his predecessor, Gregory I, had rejected. The title gave no added jurisdiction, spiritual or temporal.]
It is to the age of Pepin and his
son Charlemagne that we must descend before we find the popes as holders of
temporal sovereignty. This, however,
they held as feudatories of the western emperors, so that Leo III was required
by Charlemagne to vindicate himself from treasonable charges.
In later days popes did indeed claim a power of conferring
sovereignty, as though all the kingdoms of the earth were theirs, but this was
not through the territorial dominion which they held, but as a supposed
attribute of their spiritual jurisdiction.
As yet they claimed no part of the dominion of the Caesars, for even in
the districts of
[* How gradually the popes acquired
independent temporal sovereignty is shown by their transactions with the
emperors.
“Since the revival of the Roman
Empire under Otho the Great (962), the emperors had
regularly placed in
“At home the pontiffs were weak,
often despised, and sometimes expelled; but abroad their name grew and
flourished. ... The minority of
Frederick II enabled the resolute Innocent III (1198-1216), a middle-aged Roman
noble, to fortify the temporal sovereignty of the holy see
over a large district of Central Italy.
He revived, and, partly by force, partly by the submission of the
principal towns, was able to bring into effect that famous
donation by which, in the times of Hildebrand and his successor, the Countess Matilda
of
The entire independence of the Papal states was secured in 1278: during the secession to Avignon (1305-77), however, and the subsequent schism of
the West (1378-1417), the power of the popes over them was weakened and in part
destroyed, so that it was not till after the French occupation of in 1494,
under Charles VIII, that the Papal territorial rule was consolidated. From that time it received various additions
till the year 1644. In modern days the
whole of the Papal dominions have been swept away from their priestly
sovereigns, and all (with the exception of
But the actuality of a secular kingdom did not increase the
Papal influence in temporal things.
Boniface VIII sought in vain
to bestow kingdoms and to resume them, as Innocent III had done a century
before. From that time, in
temporalities, the popes became petty Italian sovereigns, while in spiritual
things their authority was equally recognised as before. Such were the steps by which the popes gained
secular sovereignty: for which secular sovereignty alone we are now concerned:
it was that, and that alone, which had belonged to the Caesars, and the divided
parts of their dominion could not be something differing entirely in kind from
the dominion itself.
Thus there is really no point of time at which we could apply
the vision of Daniel 7 to the Papacy. We must look at the Roman power still
continuing in its divided parts, and expect that its ultimate condition will be
a tenfold division into kingdoms in which strength and weakness will be
combined, when - three years and a half before the second advent of Christ - a
power of blasphemy and persecution will arise who will overthrow three of the
former kings.
The spread and use of the Roman law illustrates the
continuance of the Roman power.
Throughout the Roman earth, Roman law became the basis of all
jurisprudence, and though modified by custom or direct enactment, it still
furnishes a body of principles of wide and various application. The Corpus Juris Civilis itself supplies evidence of the continuance of
Roman power and institutions, for there we find enactments of the Henrys and Frederics of the house of Hohenstaufen,
as co-ordinate with those of Severus,
[* The Pisan Codex is said to have
been brought thither from Amalfi: after the
subjection of
In connection with Roman law it may be observed that
(Luther gave an
enumeration of ten kingdoms which did not exclude the East: but then he
supposed the power which destroyed three of them be not Papal but Mahometan. “The Anti-Christian power spoken of in Dan. 11: 39, etc., was
the Pope; that of Dan. 7: 8, etc., the Turk. The
Ten horns of the last or Roman kingdom were
What does this long statement of facts teach? Does it supply us with new light as to the
bearing of Daniel’s prophecies, different from what we should have learned from
the Scripture itself?
To the Scripture we may adhere simply: facts, or supposed
facts, can never alter the force of what the Spirit of God has caused to be
written. This statement of facts is
intended (and I trust it may serve) to show that objections to the simple reception of Scripture
teaching, when based on facts in their supposed bearing, are manifested
to be groundless, so soon as the facts themselves are correctly presented. History thus possesses a negative value, and
enables us to cast aside difficulties with which some would obscure the force
of God’s word.
* *
* * *
* *
THE RAM AND HE GOAT (DANIEL 8) [Pages 75-91]
The prophetic scene becomes narrowed before us in
this chapter; one definite portion of future history is here anticipatively
written for us by God. The same is the
way which God has taken in teaching us those things which were profitable for
us to know, as to the past. If we look
at the history of man as given in Genesis, we have at first, after the flood,
the general statement in outline of all nations in their ancestry and first
formation, and then afterwards a narrower scene is brought before us - one
family from which springs one nation and with this we principally have to do in
the remainder of the Old Testament. Just
so in the prophetic visions of Daniel; we have Gentile power in its committal,
course, and crisis, also in its wideness of extent, its moral relations to God,
and its actings with regard to those who belong to God; and besides an account
of who it is that succeeds to the dominion which has been forfeited by the last
of the Gentile powers: and then comes the narrower scene, in which we see these
things set before us in their connection with that same one nation which had
been so early taken up in history.
With this chapter the Hebrew portion of the book
recommences and this continues to be the language of all the remainder, the
whole of these visions relating distinctly to the Jews and
This vision was seen in the third year of king
Belshazzar, the last king of the first monarchy, just when the Medo-Persian
kingdom had so risen into power as to be ready to subvert the Babylonian.
The place where the prophet sees the
vision is at one of the capitals of the Medo-Persian kingdom, “Shushan, in the
The vision is given us from verses
3 to 14, the interpretation from verses 19 to 26. Daniel first sees “a
ram which had two* horns, and the two horns were
high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last”. The ram is then described as to the exercise
of its power, etc.: “I saw the ram pushing eastward,
and northward, and southward, so that no beasts might stand before him, neither
was there any that could deliver out of his hand, but he did according to his
will, and became great.”
[* The word “two”
in our modern English Bibles is in italics, as though it were supplied in
translation. This, however, is one of
the needless changes introduced by Dr. Blayncy in 1769. “Two horns” is
the rendering of the Hebrew dual, as our translators well
knew. In verse
7 the numeral is expressed.]
The interpretation of this, as given in verse 20, is
– “The ram which thou sawest having two horns, are the
kings of Media and
The next object in the
vision is thus stated: “As I was considering, behold,
an he goat came from the west, on the face of the whole earth, and touched not
the ground; and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.” The
following verses, 6, 7, describe the manner
in which the prophet saw the ram destroyed by the he goat. The interpretation
of the goat and its great horn is given in verse 21:
“The rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great
horn that is between his eyes is the first king.”
We have thus a point of connection
between this vision and those of the second and seventh chapters; we first of
all have the power which was about to succeed to that of Babylon brought before
us in a defined form; the “reign of the kingdom of
Persia” (2 Chron. 36: 20) is that
which we have seen as springing into power, that is the breast and arms of
silver of chapter 2, or the second beast
like to a bear of chapter 7. The power of this second monarchy, detailed
just prior to its taking its place of supremacy, and its overthrow by that of
Grecia, next come before us, and then the rest of the vision has some relation
to a form of things which results from the divided power of the third monarchy.
Is the general subject of
the remainder of this vision past or future?
If past, our only concern with it would be to learn those lessons which
the Spirit of God may have seen fit to record therein, but if future, it
assumes, of course, a yet deeper interest, for in that case it would be one of
those portions of revealed truth in which our God vouchsafes to call us to
fellowship of mind and thoughts with Himself, opening to us those things which
will come to pass in the development of His holy counsels.
Some may say, If the vision
belongs (as seems clearly to be the case) to the third monarchy, and if that
monarchy was superseded (as we know was the fact) long ages ago by the Roman,
then, of course, this vision is a thing entirely accomplished and exhausted, as
much so as the vision of the third chapter, which related personally to
Nebuchadnezzar.
Now, in reply to the
question as to the past or future aspect of this vision, we must mark as
carefully the period on to which it reaches as we do that at which it
commences. In the beginning of the
explanation given by Gabriel to the prophet he says (verse
17), “At the time of the end shall be the vision,”
and again (verse 19), “Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end
of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall be.” This is certainly an intimation that the
distinguishing features of the vision belong to the time when God’s indignation
against Daniel’s people shall reach its completion, when all the circumstances
of their rejection and chastisement shall arrive at their end. We know from many scriptures (such as Jer. 30: 7) that the time which immediately
precedes Israel’s forgiveness and deliverance will be that of their extremest
trouble and suffering: in other words, it will be thus in “the last end of the indignation”.
Thus we have a point to
which the vision reaches, as well as
a starting point, and we have therefore to see what portions belong
respectively to the past and to the future.
After the rise of the empire
of Alexander and his personal rule have been spoken of in the vision (verses 5-8), we find, “The
great horn was broken: and for it came up four notable ones toward the four
winds of heaven.”
In the interpretation this
is stated (verse 22), “Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four
kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.” This we know to be a past thing, not merely
historically, but as a simple matter of revelation; for these things were to
spring out of the breaking off of the first king. This fourfold division had been intimated in chap. 7 by the four heads of the third beast, and
it is also mentioned in chap 11.
We know simply as a matter
of historical fact that after the death of Alexander his dominions were
parcelled out amongst his generals, and that after a few years (subsequently to
the battle of Ipsus, 301 B.C.) four kingdoms were formed.
Ptolemy possessed
Cassander, Macedon and
Seleucus all the rest.*
[* Some of the districts included in
the fourfold division became
subordinate states. The
These historical facts
enable us to give names, etc., to the four kingdoms here mentioned, and this is
a convenience; but it cannot be too fully borne in mind that for the real understanding and use of
the truths revealed in Scripture history possesses no authority whatever; the
Scripture itself supplies us with all that is needful.
The vision, after speaking
of the formation of the four horns, proceeds thus: “And
out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceedingly great
toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.” This is stated thus in the interpretation: “And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the
transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and
understanding dark sentences, shall stand up”, etc. The history of this horn or king is then
given, and it reaches to the end of the vision; everything concerning this
person and his actings must therefore belong to the period called “the last end of the indignation”.
The point then at which the vision divides itself
between that which is past to us and that which is future is at the statement
of the fourfold division of the kingdom of the he goat (verses 8 and 22); all that follows, “the
latter time of their kingdom,” and the springing up of the persecuting
power, must be future.
The dealings of God in the latter day with the Jews
and
To this period, then, the issue of this vision
belongs: a king rises from one of the four parts of that dominion which once
was in the power of Alexander; his power extends in various directions, amongst
others “towards the pleasant land”; this, of
course, means the land of
What the condition of the Jews may be at this time,
how divided into classes as regards their recognised standing before God, etc.,
we can learn from other scriptures; but however these things will be, one thing
is clear, that this horn is present in persecuting power at the last end of the
indignation.
Another of his prominent characteristics is
blasphemy: “He shall stand up against the Prince of
princes” (verse 25). “He magnified himself
even to the Prince of the Host” (verse 11),
so that he is found not merely as the opposer of God’s ancient people, but also
of the Lord Himself.
It is scarcely possible for us to have examined this
chapter thus far without being struck with many points of resemblance between
this horn and that which has been spoken of in he seventh
chapter: that in the seventh chapter continues to act till Christ takes
the kingdom, the one before us acts up to “the last end
of the indignation.” These two
periods are synchronous, for the deliverance of
Further, the four divided kingdoms which formed
themselves out of the empire of Alexander were one by one incorporated with the
The moral features which are alike in the two have
been already noticed. But it may be
added that both the one and the other coincide remarkably in this respect with
a king metioned in the eleventh chapter of
this book: the origin of this king is altogether similar to the horn of chapter 8, that is, from one of the four parts of
Alexander’s empire.
Compare the following passages:
Chap. 7: 25. “He
shall speak great words
Chap. 11: 36. “He shall speak marvellous
against the most High.” things against the
God of gods.”
7: 25. He
shall “think to change
11: 37. “Neither shall he regard
times and laws”.
the
God of his father”, etc.
7: 21, 22. “The same horn
prevailed until the time 11: 36. “He shall prosper till the indignation
came that the saints
possessed the kingdom.” be accomplished.”
8: 9. He
waxed great “towards
11: 41. “He shall enter also into
the pleasant land”.
the
glorious land.”
8: 17. “At the time of the end
11: 40. “And at the time
of the indignation.”
of the end”, etc.
8: 19. “In the last end of the
11: 36. “He shall prosper till the
indignation.”
indignation be accomplished.”
The conclusion from all this appears to be
inevitable, that the horn of chapter 7 and that of chapter
8 are one and the same person. If
this be not the case, we have at the same time, within the same territorial
limits and similarly described, two kings, alike in blasphemy and persecution,
alike in claiming divine honours, alike in their almost unhindered course of
evil. The non-identity of the two would
involve difficulties of the greatest magnitude - so great that the supposition
may be regarded as a moral impossibility.
I believe that those who have considered that they are not one and the
same have supposed that they were not marked as belonging to the same period:
this, however, is utterly contradicted by the express statement of “the last end of the indignation” in this chapter, and
by events which are detailed as following immediately on the destruction of the
king in chapter 11.
But it has been sometimes asked (rather, I believe,
in the way of difficulty than of objection), How can these powers be identical,
for that in chapter 7 springs out of one of
the ten parts of the Roman earth, that before us from one of the four parts of
the third empire? The answer to this is
simple and, I believe, satisfactory: In chap. 7
we see that the whole of the Roman earth is to be divided into ten kingdoms,
these ten being found in its whole extent, the East as well as the West. The four parts of Alexander’s empire formed a
considerable portion of the eastern half of the Roman territory, and as we see
here these four existent as kingdoms at the time of the end, it only follows
that four kingdoms out of the ten will be identical with the parts into which the
third empire was long ago divided. A
horn springs out of one of these parts: it may be described in a general
manner, as in chapter 7, as rising from one
of the ten kingdoms, or else in a much more definite way, as in this chapter,
in which we see even what part or direction of the Roman earth will give him
his origin.
There appears to be a peculiar fitness in the way in
which these things are presented in this chapter: the Medo-Persian power is
first seen, and then the ground is cleared (so to speak) by the Grecian he
goat; then that distributive form of the countries bordering upon the Holy
Land, which came into existence after the death of Alexander, is
mentioned. “The
pleasant land” being the central object, there was no occasion for going
beyond the countries with which that was locally connected; for here we have
no statement about wideness of extent of dominion; it does not come at all into
consideration; but it is the power as exercised in one place and over one
people. The consideration that this is
in the Hebrew portion of the book, and that chapter
7 is in the Chaldee, tends to make the whole matter simple.
No one need find any
difficulty in the idea of his being spoken of as springing from one of the ten
parts of the
Roman earth, and here from one of the parts of
Alexander’s empire: every one would see how Simeon (for instance) might be
described as one the twelve sons of Jacob, or as one of the six sons of Leah;
the latter designation would be the more definite, but the sons of Leah would be
all comprehended under the more general expression “sons
of Jacob”.
We may now consider particular statements which this
chapter presents, both in the vision and the interpretation. In verse 23
the description of the condition of the kingdoms when this power arises is
worthy of particular attention: “in the latter time of
their kingdom when the transgressors are come to the full”: these are solemn words - the line of
demarcation between what is long past and what is yet future is found in the
vision between verses 8 and 9, and in the interpretation between verses 22 and 23. The
fullness of transgression belongs to a yet future period. These
words do not state to what people, whether Jews or Gentiles, this description applies,
but it surely must be regarded as a solemn, general statement of the condition
of things which will immediately precede the advent of the Lord Jesus.
If we were to look backward at the history of past
ages we should see scarcely a parallel to the wickedness found among
Alexander’s successors, and this whether they were looked at in themselves, or
in their treatment of God’s people, the Jews.
But evil as these things have been, here is something yet more dreadful. God has given further light, and after this
light has been received for awhile, it has been rejected. The countries once subject to Alexander have
been used as the scene on which God has especially acted; those were the lands
in the midst of which Israel was set as a witness for God; there it was that
Christ, God’s blessed Son, in due time appeared, was rejected and suffered:
there by his command the gospel was first preached, and fruit was gathered from
among Jews and Gentiles. Indeed, the
record of the book of Acts (with the
exception of the very end) simply narrates the preaching of the gospel within
those limits.
We can compare the statements in 2 Tim. 3 and similar passages with this
expression, and thus we shall see how the fullness of transgression will come
in amongst those, wherever they may be, who have in former times heard the
gospel, but who have departed from the holy commandment delivered to them. As to
Verse 24: “His power shall be
mighty, but not by his own power.”
Light is thrown, I judge, on this statement by Rev.
13: 2: “The dragon gave him his power and his
seat, and great authority.” He acts
by the power of Satan, and all the greatness that he displays is from this
source. God at length shall send on men
who have wilfully rejected this truth, “strong delusion
that they should believe a lie”.
Satan’s energies will be freed from many of those restraints which God
now imposes; and then Gentile power will be found with this additional
characteristic in the person of this king.
Verse 10: “It waxed great,
even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars
to the ground, and stamped upon them.”
This, we must remember, was a symbolic scene in vision: “the host of heaven” and “the
stars” appear to me to be descriptive symbols of those whose portion
from God is heavenly glory. Here they
seem destroyed by the horn, but they bear a symbolic name, taken from what they
are in God’s purpose: we may compare chapter 12: 3,
“They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and
ever.” If this refers simply to
those who are Jews by nation (and this seems to be the case from the mention of
“the pleasant land” immediately before), then it
must apply to that portion of them who are not under that blindness which has “in part happened to
Israel”: it must belong to those whose calling is heavenly, as being
believers in Him who is above at God’s right hand.
Verse 11: “Yea, he magnified
himself also to the prince of the host.”
Verse 25: “He
shall also stand up against the Prince of princes.” These statements may be well compared with
what we read in Isa. 14 of the king of
Babylon and his blasphemy; he takes the place which belongs to Christ and to
Christ alone, and says in his heart, “I will ascend
into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also
upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend
above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High” (Isa. 14: 13, 14).
The things stated about the connection of this horn
with the daily sacrifice, in the eleventh and following verses, are obscure;
but there are some points on which remark may be made, rather in the way of
suggestion than in that of teaching.
From the mention of “the
daily sacrifice” and the “sanctuary” it
is plain that at part of the actings of the horn these things will be found in
existence - a portion of the Jews will have returned in unbelief to their own
land, and the worship of God will be attempted to be carried on according to
the Mosaic ritual. This horn takes away
the daily sacrifice and casts down the place of the sanctuary; this apparently
implies that he desecrates it to other purposes. From verse 12
it appears as if God gave up these things into his hand as not owning or
acknowledging the worship so rendered, “by reason of
transgression”, and then the opposition of the horn to the truth, and
its practising and prospering, are especially mentioned.
It appears that in the history of this horn there
are various points or stages of narration to be observed; the particular point
to be noticed is the difference between what precedes and what follows
the taking away of the daily sacrifice; when that is done his blasphemous
position becomes the more marked, as well as his acting in persecution.
In verses 13 and 14 we find the prophet listening to certain
inquiries: one holy one speaks and asks, “How long
shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice and the transgression of
desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?” And he said unto me [this is remarkable, the answer is made to Daniel and not the
inquirer], “Unto two thousand and three hundred days,
[evenings, mornings,] and then shall the sanctuary be
cleansed” [justified or vindicated].
This term of 2,300* recurrences of the morning and evening sacrifice
appears to me to relate to the whole period of this horn’s connection with it;
during, first of all, the time in which, as found in other Scriptures (see in “Remarks on the
Seventy Heptads, Daniel ix”), it is carried on as upheld and sanctioned
by him, and also during the “time, times and a half”
(three years and a half) in which he will directly and avowedly oppose God and
all worship rendered to Him.
[* Some writers on prophecy have, in
their explanations or interpretations of this vision, adopted the reading “two thousand and four hundred days”, and in
vindication of it they have referred to the common printed copies of the LXX
version. In this book, however, the
translation of Theodotion has been long substituted for the real LXX: and
further, although “two thousand four hundred”
is found in the common printed Greek copies, that is merely an erratum made in
printing the
The expression “transgression of desolation” is not to be passed over
without notice, for it is the first of the varied mentions made in the book of
Daniel of that “abomination of desolation” to
which our Lord refers us in Matthew 24.
In the explanation in verse 26 all the further light given to Daniel
about this latter part of the vision is a confirmation of its truth and
certainty: “and the vision of the evening and the
morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision: for it shall
be for many days”.
The conclusion of the history
of the “king of fierce countenance” is briefly this‑“he shall stand up also against the Prince of princes, but
he shall be broken without hand” (verse 25). These latter words appear to be intended to
call back our minds to the description which we had given us in chap. 2 of the destruction of the fabric of
Gentile power by a stone cut out of a mountain without hands. That stone is “the
Prince of the kings of the earth, the first born from the dead”, the
Lord of all glory; although the power of the enemy in blasphemy goes on long,
it reaches its highest point, and the personal interference of the Lord Christ
in judgment closes the scene and new things are introduced. “When the wicked
spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is
that they shall be destroyed for ever” (Ps.
92: 7).
We find then in this chapter‑
First, the rise of the
Grecian power on the ruins of the Medo-Persian.
This gives us the territorial platform of the vision.
Second, the Grecian kingdom in
a state of fourfold division.
Third, this fourfold
division existing as a thing yet future, at the time of the last end of the
indignation, and then another king rises from one of the divided parts.
Fourth, this king acts in
blasphemy against God, in persecution against His saints, in tyranny and
destructive power over
Fifth, he stands up against
the Prince of princes, and is destroyed by the direct action of God’s power.
We must not leave unnoticed
the effect which this vision had upon the mind of the prophet: “And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterwards I
rose up, and did the king’s business; and I was astonished at the vision, but
none understood it.”
The vision appeared as one
which held forth a sad prospect for Daniel’s people: here were these sorrows to
be endured in future ages. It is true
that, inferentially, a point of bright hope might be discovered, for these
things belonged to “the last end of the indignation”.
Beyond, then, all that other prophets had spoken of, blessing and grace
must lie in a bright perspective. But
Daniel was confounded at the intervening sorrows; his soul had not been as yet
sustained (as we know that it afterwards was) to look through and beyond the
sorrow and thus to see the exceeding brightness of the the distant glories.
The place in which we are
set is indeed one of many privileges: God looks on His whole redeemed people as
one body, “the heir”. While in a state of nonage, i.e. before
Christ came, the Spirit was not given as He now is, as the Spirit of sonship,
and as the leader of God’s children into the apprehension of all the truth
which is revealed to us in the word. It
is our place to enter into God’s revealed counsels and to see that He is making
everything tend onward to the glory of Christ: every portion of truth will have
unction for our souls, if we can see it as connected with Him.
In a vision like the present
it is true that we have mostly a narrative of evil; but it is our place to see
it where it is set in God’s counsels. We
have not to faint or be astonished like Daniel, but to have our souls so filled
with the knowledge of Christ, and what God’s purposes of grace are, as to know assuredly
that every intervening hindrance will only tend to its more full and glorious
display. Opposition to Christ, and the
working of Satan, will reach to a head, and then the Lord, taking the power
into His own hand, will be manifested as the King of Israel, as well as being
our Head; then will the indignation be accomplished, and the remnant of Jacob
will return to “the mighty God”, and Jerusalem,
the holy city of the great King, will indeed be made “a
praise in the earth”.*
[* I may refer the reader who wishes
for further examination into Scripture testimonies concerning the person
denoted by the horn in this chapter to a tract of mine entitled The Man of Sin, and also to Prospects of the Ten Kingdoms of the Roman
Empire, by B. W. Newton, and to Aids to Prophetic Inquiry, by B. W. Newton (Sovereign Grace Advent
Testimony).]
*
* * *
* * *
THE SEVENTY HEPTADS (DANIEL
9) [Pages 92-126]
The soul of a saint always
finds establishment when it can truly repose upon the revealed will of God, when,
amid the conflict of human thoughts and human actions, it can be brought simply
to “God and the word of his grace”. Those who are not so reposing may only look
at the storm, but those who, like Paul in the tossed vessel, have had the word
of God brought home to their ear can take courage themselves and rely upon the
promise of safety even for the guidance of others.
This gives prophecy a
peculiar value to the soul of the instructed Christian - he thus is warned of
the coming events; but though he sees them he is not cast down, for he knows
the issue beforehand. Our present
calling is to walk in the midst of human things in the full practical
recognition of the glories which have been made known to us as belonging to us
in Christ our head, above at God’s right hand.
Prophecy has been bestowed on us in order that we may know how, in the
midst of confusion and the varied forms of Satan’s working, we may stand and
act as those who belong to Christ. We
know as a simple fact how the Church has greatly overlooked this important
portion of God’s revealed truth. We know
also how the enemy has sought to cast a kind of discredit upon every effort
which is made either for any to understand and use prophecy themselves, or to
give instruction to others therein. But
this, instead of leading us to overlook this precious deposit of God’s truth,
ought to make us the more earnest in not neglecting that which is so important.
If discredit be cast upon
such investigation it ought to cause us to look the more to the God of all
grace, that He may vouchsafe to us the teaching of His Spirit that so we may
use it aright.
In considering the ninth chapter of Daniel we see at once the value
which previous prophecy possessed in his soul.
He had been favoured with many direct communications from God, but here
we find him using the prophecy which had been given through Jeremiah as the
ground of his confession and prayer. “In the first year of Darius, I Daniel understood by books the
number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet,
that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of
[* “Thus saith
the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished at
It is interesting to see how
Daniel connected hope resting upon promise with prophecy: the hope was that the
captives should return from
And so, surely, the Spirit always teaches: we may either
follow our speculations about the things which God has revealed, or else have
our ears open to hear all His instruction: the latter is our only safeguard
against speculation. Happy is that believer who holds what God
has revealed, in dependence upon His grace, and the power of His Spirit,
to enable him to use it aright.
But the mind of Daniel did not merely lay hold of
the fact of the restoration of his people; this was, indeed, an object of hope,
but he saw God, and the working of God in the matter: he saw God as the one who
had laid on them this punishment of captivity, as the one who had promised to
bring them back, and as the one who had a mind concerning the whole.
And very solemn were the thoughts of the prophet
when his heart was thus brought before God: he saw the faithfulness of God in
those things which told of judgment, for here was the proof - that they were in
Babylon; and thus he was led to what God had said about restoration from
captivity in the very places which in the Law of Moses denounced that
punishment, Lev. 26: 40, etc.: “If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their
trespass which they have trespassed against me, and that also they have walked
contrary unto me; and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have
brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts
be humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity: then will I
remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my
covenant with Abraharn will I remember; and I will remember the land.”
So too in Deut. 30 repentance is
spoken of as that which God calls for as the prerequisite to His bringing back
His people to their land. These promises
of course belong, in their full application, to the future and final
deliverance and restoration of Israel; but we find the principle of them taken
up and used by Daniel. With regard to the return after the seventy years, God
had distinctly said that the fulfilment of His absolute promise should be
preceded by prayer: “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye
shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. ... And I will
be found of you, saith the Lord; and I will turn away your captivity”,
etc. (Jer. 29: 12-14). God had promised to end the Babylonish
captivity in seventy years; God had also said that repentance and the
confession of their sin, and the sin of their fathers, were prerequisites. Daniel, instead of seeing these things in opposition
to each other, looked at the seeming condition, not as taking away from the
certainty of the promise, but rather as stating what God Himself would work and
provide. He relies upon the promise of
God, and doing this he takes himself the place of confession and humiliation;
he makes confession of the sin of all Israel, their fathers, their kings, and
all; he consents to the righteous judgment of God in all that He had wrought,
and thus, as it were, on behalf of all Israel “accepts
the punishment of their iniquity”.
He pleads with God to work on behalf of his people, and his land, and
Jerusalem the holy city, for His own name’s sake that he would now show his
faithfulness at the close of the seventy years, in ending the captivity: “0 Lord, hear; 0
Lord, forgive; 0 Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, 0 my God;
for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.”
Full of blessed instruction as all the former
portion of this chapter is, I am only now regarding it as introductory to the
response on God’s part to the prayer of the prophet. In verses 20, 21,
we find that the angel Gabriel was forthwith sent forth to the prophet – “0 Daniel, I am now come to give thee skill and understanding”
(verse 22).
We find at the end of chapter 8 that
the vision had not been understood; but now the teaching from God assumes a
different form. God gives the
instruction by direct statement, and not by symbol which required
interpretation. It is also well to observe
that the symbolic visions in this book and their interpretations do not run
exactly parallel to each other; each presents certain features which are
omitted in the other, and each helps to give definiteness and consistency to
the truth taught.
Verse 23: “At the beginning of thy supplication the
commandment came forth; and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly
beloved”: the margin has here “a man of desires”, whence some have questioned whether it
refers to the desire on Daniel’s part to know the things, or to the desires
being on God’s part towards him: it is clear from the form of the word that the
latter is correct. “Therefore understand the matter and consider the vision.”
The following verses of the chapter contain the
prophetic part of the vision: much is comprised in them, but the things spoken
of are stated so concisely that they require very particular attention.
Daniel had made inquiry about seventy years of the
captivity in Babylon; the answer speaks also of seventy periods, which in our
English translation are called “weeks”; the
word, however, does not necessarily mean seven days, but a period of seven
parts: of course it is much more often used in speaking of a week than of
anything else, because nothing is so often mentioned as a week which is
similarly divided. The Hebrews, however,
used a septenary scale as to time, just as habitually as we should reckon by
tens; the sabbatical years, the jubilees, all tended to give this thought a
permanent place in their minds. The
denomination here is to be taken from the subject of Daniel’s prayer; he prayed
about years, he is answered about periods of seven years, i.e. the recurrence
of sabbatical years.
His prayer had related to the deliverance of Israel
from their then captivity, the reply goes much farther: for it sets out, not
from the release of the people, but from the edict to restore and to build
Jerusalem, and it reaches through events of varied kinds, until the absolute
and established blessing on the ground of righteousness and forgiveness is
brought in.
I will now give the verses
from the 24th to the end,
departing in some places from our English translation, together with remarks
interspersed; and the whole prophecy may be considered in detail. I retain the word “week”
for convenience sake, and not as implying seven days to be the import of the
Hebrew word.*
[* See the Note on the “Year-day
System”, below.]
Verse 24: “Seventy weeks have
been determined (more strictly, ‘divided’)
upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the
transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for
iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal vision and
prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies.” (This expression is used in
no other place as signifying a person, nor ought it, I believe, to be so taken
here.)
Verse 25: “Know then and
understand, from the issuing of the decree to restore and to build
Verse 26: “And after the
threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and there shall be nothing
for Him; and the city and the sanctuary shall the people destroy of a prince
who shall come; and his end shall be in the overflowing; and until the end
(there is) war (even) that
which is determined for desolations.”
Verse 27: “And he (the
prince who shall come) shall confirm a covenant with
the many (or with the multitude) for one week;
and at half the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease; and upon
the wing (or pinnacle) of abominations
(shall be) that which causeth desolation, even until
the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the causer of
desolation.”
Here, then, we have the objects of hope placed
first, just as we find in the Psalms and so many other portions of prophetic
Scripture: the soul is first set in the place of strength by the apprehension
of the blessings which are to be brought about; and then the intermediate
trials become subjects of prophetic instruction.
In verse 24 the
expression “are determined” is more strictly “are divided”; this may relate to the seventy weeks
being a period of time divided out, as it were, from the whole course of ages,
for God to deal in a particular manner with the Jews and Jerusalem; or it may
refer to the period being itself divided into parts, as we see in the verses
which follow.
Daniel in his prayer, in addressing God, had
constantly spoken of Israel as “thy people”, “thy holy city”, etc.; but the angel Gabriel in the
reply takes them up simply as Daniel’s people – “thy
people, thy holy city”, etc - as though God would intimate that until
the everlasting righteousness should be brought in, He could not in the full sense
own them as His.
The various things spoken of “to finish the
transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and
to bring in everlasting righteousness”, are all, I believe, future. I do not regard any of them as referring
strictly to the work of Christ upon the cross (although we, as believers in
Him, know that many of these things have a blessed application to us), but it
rather appears to me that they all belong to the time of Israel’s blessing,
when the preciousness of the blood of Christ shall be applied to those “who
are spared of them”: when “thou shalt call me my
Father; and shalt not turn away from me” (Jer.
3: 19).
I believe that “to seal
vision and prophet” means this - to give the seal of confirmation to the
vision by the issue of events as predicted; and in the same manner to confirm
the prophet by the fulfilment of those things which God has spoken through him.
The expression “to anoint
the most holy” (or rather “holy of holies”)
has often been taken, as I am well aware, as referring to our blessed Lord;
this I believe to be an erroneous application of the words: the expression does
not in a single case in any other passage apply to any person, but always to
the most holy place of the tabernacle or temple, or else to things such as
sacrifices which were “most holy”. Here I believe that it simply refers to the
most holy place, the sanctuary of God, which in the days of
These, then, are the objects of hope-circumstances
which will be brought to pass when the seventy weeks have run to their
termination. The point from which they
commence is next stated: “from the issuing of the
decree to restore and to build
[*
On The 20th of Artaxerxes. - Some have found a
difficulty in making out the chronology of the seventy weeks, because they have
thought that the time from the 20th of Artaxerxes to the crucifixion
of our Lord would not fully accord with that marked out in the prophecy. If it had been so, it need have surprised no
one; whatever be the result of chronological calculations, the word of God is
the same; we know that it is certain, and everything else must bend to it.
But
here I believe the difficulty to be wholly imaginary. It is true that we may find some from the
date pointed in the margin of our Bibles; but the history of this date, as it
there stands, is rather curious.
Archbishop Ussher drew up a scheme of Chronology which is commonly
followed, rather from convenience than from its absolute correctness being
supposed. About a hundred and fifty
years ago Bishop Lloyd undertook to affix Archbishop Ussher’s dates to our
English Bibles; but, in this instance, he made a
considerable alteration and substituted another date of his own, so as to adapt
the reign of Artaxerses to his own theory.
The
date which stands in our Bibles for the 20th of Artaxerxes is 446
B.C. - this makes the commencement of his reign 465 B.C.; but the authority of
the best and most nearly contemporary historian will put the matter in a very
different light. Thucydides mentions
that the accession of Artaxerxes had taken place before the flight of
Themistocles; this authorises us to adopt Ussher’s date and to place the
commencement of the reign 473 or 474 B.C.
This would give the date of 454 or 455 B.C. If we add to this the date of the crucifixion
it will just give us the exact period of the sixty-nine weeks. In doing this we must remember that the birth
of our Lord was about four years before the common era, so that the
thirty-third year of His life, when He is supposed to have suffered, would
correspond with the year twenty-nine of our reckoning. I believe this to have
been the true date; first because of the day of the week on which the passover
commenced in that year; and also, because of the consuls of that year (the two
Gemini) having been mentioned by several writers as those of the year when our
Lord was put to death.
This
remark does not affect the instruction given us by God in this chapter; it is a
point which I only notice for the removal of difficulties.
It
is great pity that Archbishop Ussher’s date should in this particular have been
misrepresented: it was a point to which he had paid particular attention. About the year 1613 he lectured on the
subject at
Ussher
in thus laying down this date had no motive for bringing the space of 485 years
from the 2oth of Artaxerxes to A.D. 29; for his division of the seventy Heptads
differs from mine, and he did not regard A.D. 29 as the date of the crucifixion
of our Lord.]
The twentieth of Artaxerxes gives us a starting
point from which the reckoning of the seventy weeks begins; we have next to pay
attention to the manner in which this period is divided into distinct
parts. Two portions of the time are
first spoken of – “From the issuing of the decree to
restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks,
and threescore and two weeks”: i.e. two periods, the one forty-nine
years, the other four hundred and thirty-four years; the whole period of the
four hundred and ninety years being included, except seven years.
There is next added, “the
street shall be built again, and the scarped rampart, even in pressure of times”;
then follows, “and after the threescore and two weeks”,
etc. Hence it is clear that the whole
period from the decree to Messiah the Prince is four hundred and eighty-three
years, and that forty-nine of these years are appropriated to something
peculiar; the only thing so mentioned has been the building of the street,
rampart, etc. - these things are, I judge, to be allotted to the first division
of the time, namely, forty-nine years.
Some have thought that this same interpretation was
supported by the expression “in pressure of times”,
which they would render “in the shorter space of time”
- a rendering wholly destitute of ground, only supported indeed by its supposed
fitness in this place. I quite agree
with the explanation which allots the first forty-nine years to these events,
but I could not support it by any such supposed rendering.
But it may be asked, What is the evidence that
forty-nine years were spent in the restoration of the city? I answer, I believe it to have been so,
simply on the authority of this passage; no other portion of Scripture says
anything about the length of time, and here forty-nine years are mentioned, and
also the restoration of the city is so placed in juxtaposition that they appear
clearly to belong together.
Verse 26: “And after the
threescore and two weeks, shall Messiah be cut off”; this period is
marked by the definite article as identical with the threescore and two weeks
of the preceding verse. The four hundred
and eighty-three years from the issuing of the decree run on “to Messiah the Prince”; it becomes then important to
inquire to what part of our Lord’s earthly path the reference is made. He was “born King of
the Jews”, but this appears to be something more than the mere title:
now, the only time in which we find the Lord Jesus taking this title in the
presence of Jerusalem was six days before He suffered, when He came thither on
the ass’s colt; He was then presented as King, and six days afterwards was put
to death as the King of the Jews. I
should regard the limit “unto Messiah the Prince” as reaching on to His having been thus presented to
I should not thus consider the expression “After the threescore and two weeks” as implying an interval;
but rather as being just the same as “at the end of the
sixty-two weeks”, “when they are accomplished”.
The words which stand in our English version, “but not for Himself”, have often been taken as if they
spoke of the vicarious character of our Saviour’s suffering; this would however
be, I believe, placing a most true and important doctrine upon an insufficient
basis. I believe that the words simply
imply, “and there shall be nothing for Him” - He
will be rejected, and His earthly kingdom will be a thing on which He will not
then enter.
The series of years has run on unhinderedly from the
issuing of the edict to the cutting off of Messiah; but at this part of the
vision there are various events spoken of before the one remaining week comes
into notice at all. “And the city and the sanctuary shall the people destroy of a
prince who shall come.” This
refers, I have no doubt, to the destruction of
“And his end shall be in the
overflowing”: I suppose that this speaks of the end of the prince who
shall come; in the expression “the overflowing”
allusion seems to be made to some known event in prophecy; I suppose that it is
the same overflowing as that which is alluded to in Isa.
10: 22 and 28: 18. This would identify the time of this prince
with the crisis of
The interval up to “the end”
is only characterised by war and desolations; just so our Lord teaches us in Matt. 24, “Nation shall
rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The expression “that
which is determined” appears to be taken up from Isa. 10: 23.
The vision gives us no intimation about the times of
events which belong to the interval - we only find at the cutting off of
Messiah, one seven years is unaccomplished; this “reserved
week”, as some have aptly called it, belongs to the time of the prince
who shall come.
Verse 27: “And he (the
prince who shall come) shall confirm a covenant with
the many for one week.” In “Remarks on Chapter 8” I sought to show that the horn
spoken of in the two chapters is identical, and here he again appears to come before
us; in fact, the allusion seems to be made to known circumstances about
him. He makes a covenant with the
multitude; that of course means the multitude of Daniel’s people, they are
leagued with him and he with them. This
takes place three years and a half before he causes sacrifice and oblation to
cease, hence it is clear that they go on as under his patronage for some
time. This will, I believe, throw some
light upon the two thousand three hundred days mentioned in chapter 8: 14.
We find him here making a covenant for one seven years, then breaking it
at the end of three years and a half; and the removal of sacrifice, etc, is so
spoken of as to connect it with the breaking of the covenant. This tends, I think, to show that one thing
done in pursuance of this covenant had been the establishment of the temple
worship. The period of two thousand
three hundred days is a few months short of the whole term of the seven years,
enough being not included, it may be, to be allotted for those preparations which
will be needful for the worship to be set up; then follows the time during
which it is carried on under his auspices, and then follow three years and a
half of distinct persecuting and blasphemous power.
The character of this period of three years and a
half is to be specially gathered from chapter 7,
in which mention is made of “a time, times, and a half”,
and also from the forty and two months, 1,260 days, etc., which are spoken of
in the book of Revelation.
The identity of the time, times, and a half, of chapter 7, with the last half week of this
chapter, might almost be taken for granted; the proof, however, is simple: the
horn in chapter 7 acts in blasphemy and
persecution until the Lord Jesus and His people take the kingdom; the three
years and a half run on to that point; here in this chapter the whole period of
seventy weeks issues in the absolute and established blessing of Israel,
Daniel’s people - the week of this covenant is the last portion of the seventy
weeks, and the half week after the sacrifice is taken away is the latter
portion of that week. Thus the period in
chapter 7 and the concluding period before
us run on to the same point, they are also equal in duration; hence they begin
at the same time and are altogether identical.
If we would form a just estimate of the events of the last half week we
must gather it from chapter 7.: here we have
the same power in its local connection with
The seventy weeks when distributed into portions
will then stand thus:
1. From the edict to the
building of the wall, etc. 49 years
2. From the building to Messiah the Prince, and his cutting off 434
[Then an interval of unmarked length.]
3. The period of the
covenant of “the prince that shall come” 7
One of the blessings spoken of in verse 24 had been “to
finish the transgression”; this may be suitably compared with the
expression in chapter 8, “when the transgressors are come to the full”.
“And upon the wing of
abominations [shall be] that which causeth
desolation.” The phraseology of this passage is rather obscure, but I
believe that this is the meaning of the words.
“The transgression of desolation” had
been mentioned in the previous vision.
This appears to be a reference to what had been there said - there is further elucidation to be obtained
from what we find in the subsequent vision - but all these passages have a
solemn interest and importance for us, when we remember what our Saviour said
in Matt. 24, “When
ye see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in
the Holy place; whoso readeth, let him understand” then do so and so.
“The Holy place” is
that in which this abomination will be set; this of course means the
These things - the cessation of sacrifice, and that
which causeth desolation standing on the pinnacle - continue, “even until the consummation and that determined shall be
poured upon the causer of desolation”.
The expression “the consummation and that
determined” is quoted from Isa. 10: 22, 23. This connection is one of great interest; for
on the one hand the return of the remnant of Jacob to the mighty God is spoken
of, and on the other, faith is encouraged not to be afraid of the terrible
power of Asshur.
In rendering the concluding word by “the causer of desolation” I believe that I follow the
true sense of the original. I am quite
aware that the verb, the participle of which is here employed, is used
sometimes in a neuter, and at other times in an active, sense; sometimes
implying that which is made desolate, at others that which occasions the
desolation. I believe that the former of
these is the more common, but the latter is proved, I think, to be its sense in
this connection, by chapter 12: 2, where it
is clear that the abomination that maketh desolate is spoken of, and not anything which has been made desolate.
It is indeed remarkable to see how Daniel was
confided with the counsels of God in these things; the response to his prayer
gave him instruction as to far deeper truths.
He only thought of
the past iniquity of his people, God thought of a deeper iniquity when they
will receive one who comes in His own name, after Messiah has been rejected;
when He makes a covenant with them, and it issues in awful idolatry. Grace and faithfulness would have been
displayed in bringing the people back from Babylon, but how much more would God
manifest these things when they stand in contrast to the ripened iniquity of
man as found in Jerusalem! It was
Daniel’s place to look at all these things and to learn God in them, to see Him
as above the whole, and to apprehend something of what the full manifestation
of this grace will be, and what the blessings in store for Jerusalem and for
Israel are, when the seventy weeks have run their course. This might in some measure enable Daniel to
enter into God’s mind; and we must remember that Gabriel was expressly sent to
give him skill and understanding.
These seventy weeks appear to me to relate to the
period of God’s defined dealings with the city of
But other parts of Daniel throw abundant light upon
the matter; the horn of chapter 7 wears out the saints of the most high places,
until the coming of the Son of Man and the taking of the kingdom; in fact, the time of their being persecuted is the
same three years and a half as the last portion of time before us here.
But the whole question is rendered perfectly simple
by such statements of the New Testament as “Let both
grow together until the harvest” (Matt. 13:
30). Thus there will be both
tares and wheat upon this earth till then; true
believers in Christ, and others who put on the semblance or profession, until
the end of the age.
Also, “blindness in part
hath happened unto
I do not go into more elaborate evidence as to this
point: I merely suggest a few simple facts.
I only add that our Lord, in His use of the prophecy of Daniel and His
whole teaching in Matt. 24, assumes that
some of His beloved Church will continue to be cared for as His sheep upon
earth, until He comes in manifested glory, until He destroys “that wicked”
with the breath of his mouth.
Some may think these observations on this point to be
mere digression - I think so myself, and I only add them because of statements
having been not only connected with the ninth of Daniel, but even based upon
it, statements which have no relation whatever to the contents of the chapter.
It is remarkable to observe the difference between
the manner in which God reveals truth, and that in which man would seek to gain
knowledge. Those things which God
reveals are not only profitable themselves, but the manner also in which they
are presented is for profit. This we
shall do well to bear in mind in reading God’s word: it is easy for us to get
out minds informed about truth and to hold it apart from God; but what we have
to seek is that our hearts and consciences may be so exercised by all we read
of God’s revealed counsels that we may have deeper apprehensions of grace and
learn more of the glories of Jesus our Lord.
* *
* * *
* *
NOTE ON THE
“YEAR-DAY SYSTEM”
Many have adopted a principle of interpretation with
regard to designations of time, when they are found in prophecy, to which they
have given the name of “the year-day system”. This principle is that in such prophetic
designations of time the literal meaning must not be held, but that in all
expressions of periods of time in future events a day stands as the
representative of a year, and all other spaces of time in similar proportion.
There are not a few who hold this as an opinion so
established in their minds that they regard it as an undoubted truth, without knowing
definitely on what grounds it was adopted; they speak of a prophetic day or a prophetic year as if it were an axiom that these
expressions denote the one a literal year, and the other a term of three
hundred and sixty literal years.
On this principle they would interpret the
designations of time in the book of Daniel and in the Revelation; they thus
speak of the I,260 years and the 2,300 years. Of course, if we find distinct Scripture
warrant for this assumed canon we must bow to it, and interpret
accordingly. But if this canon is
supposed to be a deduction from Scripture, let us examine whether the inference
be legitimate, and let the reception or the rejection depend on the grounds of
proof.
It is not, I believe, stated by any that this canon
is a subject of direct teaching in Scripture, at least none of the points
advanced seem to be relied on as showing this; some of the maintainers of the
system expressly repudiate such a thought, for instance Mr. Conder says:
“The application of the
year-day principle to the prophecy would, a priori, have been incapable of proof, and might seem scarcely compatible
with probability” (Literary
History of the New Testament, P. 585). And
to this he subjoins the following note:
“It is admitted that, for
the first four centuries, the days mentioned in the prophecies of Daniel and in
the Apocalypse were interpreted literally by the Fathers of the Church; but
from the fifth to the twelfth century, a mystical meaning came to be attached
to the period of 1,260 days, though
not the true one. At the close of the
fourteenth century, Walter Brute first suggested the year-day interpretation, which was fully
espoused by the Magdeburg Centuriators, and applied to the Papacy (Elliott,
vol. ii, pp. 965‑972). That the true solution of the enigma should
not have occurred to the earlier writers, is not surprising. It was not intended, and was scarcely
possible, that it should be shown, a priori, that such was the principle of interpretation. As Mr. Elliott remarks, while the period was
yet distant, a moral purpose was answered by a temporary veil of mystery being
thrown over the prophetic period; for the Church was not to know the times and
seasons, that she might be kept from the earliest age in the attitude of watchful
expectation. It was accordingly, not
till the time drew near, that the solution of the chronological enigma began to
be perceived. Nor does it form any
objection to its truth, that the a priori evidence scarcely amounts
to a probability, when the a posteriori demonstration is all but irresistible. It seems to be the divine intention that the
discovery of the prophetic mystery should wait upon the facts, not anticipate
them.” Some, who have received
the year-day principle without inquiry, will be surprised at these admissions
of the weakness of the a priori evidence by which it is upheld; others may think that too much is
surrendered. At all events, however, it
must be owned that this canon of interpretation is not known as an intuitive
truth; the early Church knew no such axiom; and therefore I hold that it should
be shown to be either laid down in Scripture or else that it should be proved
thereby, before any one can
be expected to receive it, and before it is applied to the interpretation of prophetic
statements.
In the quotation just given
I do not suppose that anything irreverent was intended in saying that “a moral purpose was answered by a temporary veil of mystery being thrown
over the prophetic period”; but surely such ideas and expressions should
be avoided. It is by truth that God teaches His people, and thus
we can never attribute to Him the accomplishment of a moral purpose by that
which would be a virtual deception. He
may produce a moral effect by leaving us uninformed as to many things; but this
is wholly different from such an effect being wrought by positively false
conclusions and opinions occupying the mind.
Where Scripture is silent, we know nothing as to God’s truth, and this
silence may accomplish a moral purpose; but where the Scripture speaks to us,
how can it be according to God’s mind and appointment that a moral purpose
should be answered by our thoroughly misunderstanding it, by its being for ages
a delusive light? Scripture may mislead
the rejecters
of truth, but God can never have designed that it should direct His people
wrongly: had He done this, He would have made the reverse of truth profitable
to their souls. If it is right that we
should now understand the
designations of time in prophecy, it was equally right from the earliest period
of the gathering of the Church. Unless
the Scripture taught, as a fact, that God had drawn such a veil, I would not
believe it; and if I thus learned that a veil existed, I would not believe that
it had been withdrawn, unless I had distinct proof to that effect. To do otherwise would be to assume the
existence of some other depository of God’s truth beside the treasury of holy
Scripture. Observe, I do not say that
Scripture truth on various points may not have been misunderstood, and that for
long ages; this is wholly different from maintaining that God laid over
His Scripture, from the
first, a veil of mystery. Our hearts are
dull of apprehension, so that they constantly need the teaching of the Spirit
of God; the Scripture itself is the recorded testimony of that same Spirit.
God has taught us in His word what is our object of
hope; He also teaches us the intermediate scenes as to some of their more
important features. A right apprehension of any of the details set
before us can never deaden in our minds the moral “attitude
of watchful expectation”. Nay, it
is only so far as we are truthfully instructed that we can watch and expect aright.
What, then, are the Scripture proofs which are
advanced in favour of the year-day system?
It is true that some expositors show that this
principle is needful in their explanations of the prophecies themselves; this really is only a petitio
principii: a certain exposition
cannot stand, unless this canon is assumed, therefore (it is concluded) the canon must be true. The right mode of treating the question would
be this: if a certain exposition stands or falls together with a canon of
interpretation on which it is based, then
the exposition in question must be held or not according as that canon is
proved or supported by God’s word. I
am quite aware that dogmatic arguments are sometimes employed: such a doctrinal
system depends on such a mode of interpretation, therefore that mode of
interpretation must be maintained; and then when a great deal has been said on
the doctrinal
importance of the points involved, it seems to some minds as if strong
a posteriori
grounds, at least, had been assigned for the mode of interpretation. This, however, is not a legitimate mode of
drawing deductions from Scripture. We can never judge of the truth of any part of Revelation by our
notions of its importance.
If, then, the prophecies containing designations of
time do not state anything on the face of them which supports such a mode of interpretation,
we must look elsewhere for the a priori grounds of this opinion; I have then to consider certain passages
which are commonly referred to in support of this hypothesis.
1. Numbers 14: 34:
“After the number of the days in which ye searched the
land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even
forty years.”
This passage speaks of a denounced fact, but in it
there is nothing that implies a principle of interpretation. The spies had searched the land of promise
forty days, and God sentences the murmuring and rebellious Israelites
to wander in the wilderness the same number of years. In the prophetic part of the verse years
are literal years and not the symbol of anything else. Apply the year-day system to this passage, and
then “forty years” will expand into a vast
period of fourteen thousand four hundred years. All that can be deduced from this passage, as to
the connection of the terms “day” and “year”, is that as the search of the land had occupied
forty literal days, so the wandering in the wilderness should continue for
forty literal years. Literal years answer
to literal days.
2. Ezekiel 4: 4-6:
“Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity
of the house of
Now this is not a symbolic prophecy at all, but simply a symbolic action, which was commanded by God; and unless
there had been the express statement we never could have known that what
Ezekiel did, for so many days, really represented the actions of the same
number of years. It is true that this is
an instance in which a day symbolically represents a year, but the way in which this is
done is wholly different from any such ground being taken as though in
prophetic language the one were used for the other.
If in this passage day meant year,
or if it were to be interpreted by year, what should we find? - that
Ezekiel was commanded to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety years,
and on his right side forty
years.
3. Another passage which has been used as a basis
for this system is the latter part of the ninth of Daniel; some, however, of
the strenuous advocates of the year-day principle fairly own that it has no
bearing upon the question. Its supposed
connection arises from the word rendered “week”,
having been taken as though it must be simply in its literal meaning seven days. This
might be called wholly a question of lexicography; the word itself is strictly something
divided into or consisting of
seven
parts - a heptad, a hebdomad. It bears the same grammatical relation to
the numeral seven as one of the
Hebrew words used for ten does to the other of similar meaning. Gesenius simply defines its meaning to be “a septenary number”, he then speaks of its use as
applied sometimes to days, sometimes to years; the word itself, however,
defines nothing as to the denomination to which it belongs, whether the one or
the other. In Ezek.
45: 21 it is used almost entirely like a numeral, standing with a
feminine plural termination in connection with a masculine noun … (according to the peculiar usage of
numerals in Hebrew and the cognate languages); and this passage is important as
showing its use. It is not to be denied
nor yet to be wondered at that it should be more often used of week than anything else, for this obvious
reason, that of all things admitting a septenary division there is nothing so
often spoken of as a week. In this
sense, however, it more commonly takes the feminine plural termination.
In the present passage it takes its denomination
from years, which had been previously mentioned in Daniel’s prayer. Daniel had been praying to God, and making
confession on behalf of his people, because he saw that the seventy years,
which had been denounced as the term of the captivity of
[*
In this case, the addition of the [Hebrew] word … days, is important, as it shows that
the term might else be understood
differently: it is therefore a natural addition, especially as it comes just after the prophecy of the
seventy heptads years.]
I am well aware that strong assertions have been
made to this effect: that if we follow the conventional reading (i.e. with
points) it is simply “seventy weeks” (i.e. of
seven days), but that if we reject the points, it must mean “seventy seventies”; this statement is very incorrect.
I do read with the points, but the argument
does not rest upon them. I do not admit
that periods of seven days are necessarily indicated by the word itself. But if we paid no attention to the points, we
are not left to any such meaningless rendering as “seventy
seventies”; the fact must have been overlooked that in verse 27, where the word occurs in the singular,
it is twice written full (i.e. with the letter Vav inserted), and this, without any
points to help us, decides the matter.
In translating we may use the word “week” not at all as conceding the point of the meaning
of the Hebrew word, but simply for convenience’ sake, and as requiring less
explanation and circumlocution than any other in common use. I believe that I need say no more to prove
that this ninth of Daniel in no way upholds the year-day scheme.
4. Luke 13: 31, 37:
“The same day there came certain of the Pharisees,
saying unto him, Get thee out and depart hence, for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that
fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the
third day I shall be perfected.”
In transcribing this passage, I feel such
astonishment at its ever having been used as the basis of an argument on the subject
that I think that some readers may be incredulous as to the fact; I must inform
such, that the passage was used a century and a half ago by Fleming (whose speculations as to the weakening of the Papacy were deemed by many, in
1848, so wonderfully convincing),
and recently by Mr. Birks. But what
use can
they make of the passage? Mr. Birks says
that the incident occurred several weeks before our Lord’s sufferings. He therefore interprets it thus, “our Lord’s ministry commencing with a passover, closed at
the passover, after an exact interval of three years. The words of this passage would therefore
exactly describe the continuance of that ministry: the three days importing the
three years.” On this I remark, first, that if our Lord’s ministry
did continue exactly three years, it is what no one has distinctly proved, and
if true, it is not what is commonly held;* and, secondly, that if in this instance our Lord
meant years by days, there
must at this very time have been at least two years (“to-morrow and the third day”) of
His ministry yet to come. Most readers
will, I should think, consider that the three days here are as literal as the
three days during which our Lord lay in the grave, and that the term “third day” is here as simply third day as in the passage which speaks of the
marriage at Cana in Galilee. I am not
now concerned to expound the passage in Luke, but it seems to me to relate to
our Lord’s arrival at
[*
Three years and six months is the term ordinarily assigned to our Lord’s
ministry, while others would limit it to a year and a few months, and others
(such as Dr. Chr. Benson) think that the Gospels supply evidence that it
continued for about two years and a half. In the face of this uncertainty of opinion I was
surprised to see the direct asertion that it lasted exactly three years. I do not remember any writer who had held
this. I do not think that it could be
proved from Scripture that it began at the passover; at least it had commenced
before the passover in John 2, and is the
first spoken of in connection with our Lord’s ministry.]
5. Mr. Elliott has recently brought forward Heb. 7: 27 as another passage to support the year-day system: “Who needed not daily as those high-priests, to offer up
sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s”. Mr. Elliott supposes (following Macknight)
that the high-priest offered sacrifice but once in a year and therefore daily must mean yearly. On
this mistake (for a simple mistake it is) the
supposed argument drawn from this passage entirely rests. On this point I need only refer to Mr. Newton’s
Aids to Prophetic Inquiry (First
Series, 2nd ed.), pp. 176, 177.
In all these passages the days when mentioned are
simply days and the years
simply years: there is not a
single phrase in which it is said that the word days must mean years, except the very places the meaning of which is
the point under discussion. One
supposition cannot be brought forward as proof of another.
A distinction has indeed been drawn between symbolic
and literal prophecies: it is said that in the
former we are not to understand days literally, but as the symbols of something else. If this distinction be good, no literal prophecies ought to be brought forward
amongst the supposed proofs: the sentence of forty years of wandering was a
literal, not a symbolic, denunciation; Ezekiel, indeed, lay on his side
symbolically; but there was no prophecy in the case at all. The use which has been made of this
distinction has been to seek thus to avoid the force of literal periods of time
mentioned in prophecy which have been literally fulfilled.
And now, to consider the principal statements of
time to which this supposed canon is applied:they are -
1. The time, times, and a
half, Dan. 7: 25 and 12: 7.
2. The two thousand three
hundred days, Dan. 8: 14.
3. The twelve hundred and
ninety days, Dan. 12: 11.
4. The thirteen hundted and
five and thirty days, Dan. 12: 12.
5. The five months, Rev. 9: 5, 10.
6. The hour, and day, and
month, and year, Rev. 9: 15.
7. The three days and a
half, Rev. 11: 9, 11.
The first of these periods is mentioned
in the same manner in the book of Revelation 12: 14;
in that book we also find a similar period spoken of as forty and two months, 11: 2, 13: 5; and twelve hundred and sixty days, 11: 3, 12: 6. In neither of the passages in Daniel does this
designation of time occur in the midst of a symbolic prophecy at all; for in chapter 7 the period is spoken of in the plain
literal interpretation of the symbolic horn, which is said to mean a literal
king, who shall subdue three literal kings (not described as horns in this part
of the chapter), into whose hand the saints shall be given for a time, times,
and half a time - three years and a half. If we make these words symbolic,
may we not arbitrarily explain away any other expression of Scripture? In chapter 12
there is no symbol at all; the communicator of truth to Daniel “held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and
sware by Him that liveth for ever, that it shall be for a time, times, and a
half”. It seems to me as if the
solemnity of this oath, “by Him that liveth for ever”,
would exclude the thought of mere metaphor and symbol: at least I know of no
words in Scripture on which emphatic exactitude is more impressed.
But when we turn to the book of Revelation and see
how variously this period is expressed, 1,260 days, forty and two months, a
time times and half, it seems as if care had been taken to prevent all
possibility of misconception; whether occurring in symbolic description or in
literal explanation, the same isochronous expressions are repeated.* As to “time, times, and a half”, we have the period stated in three languages, Chaldee, Hebrew, and
Greek.
[*
I may mention that when first my attention was directed to the prophetic parts
of Scripture it was by this threefold mode of speaking of the same term in the
book of Revelation that I was led to inquire into the grounds of the year-day
theory - a thing of which everyone who knows anything about Scripture has heard
traditionally, whether interested in prophecy or not. As a Hebraist I was already aware that the
passage in Daniel 9 had no bearing in favour
of the theory; and the varied mode of statement in the Revelation showed me
that unless it possessed distinct proof it was not to be received.
The
maintainers of the year-day theory accuse those who reject it with repeating
the same arguments over and over again: perhaps they do this, but what of that?
If we seek truth, not originality, we shall often act thus. How can we set forth
the foundation doctrines of Christianity - the redemption of Christ, and the
testimony borne by the Holy Ghost to the efficacy of His blood for the salvation
of every believing sinner - without repeating what has been spoken reiteratedly
from the Day of Pentecost and onward? And
do not the upholders of this theory repeat the same arguments? Although I care but little whether I say the
same things as others have said before me (so long as the things are true), I
may inform the reader that my views on the year-day system were published
in 1836; so that at least I did not copy from subsequent writers. Let, however, truth be maintained, as set forth in Scripture, irrespective of such
points as who those may be who
have previously held the same.]
The second passage (Dan. 8: 14) is
literally “unto two thousand three hundred evenings
mornings”, referring to the offering of the daily sacrifice each morning
and evening. This also occurs in an
explanation, so that the symbolic theory (even if it had any true foundation,
instead of being, as it is, a gratuitous assumption) would avail nothing. The expression seems such as intentionally to
exclude all thought of other than real days.
The third and fourth passages (in Dan. 12) have nothing whatever to connect them
with symbols, or with anything other than literal statement. In fact there is nothing to bring these under
the year-day theory, except it be an assumed interpretation.
The fifth of the passages has nothing whatever in it
to call for this theory as needful. There is nothing to hint any meaning except
five literal months.
The sixth passage has been supposed by some to intimate
a very precisely defined period of three hundred and ninety-one years, fifteen
days. This would require proof. I cannot see that it speaks of a period of
time at all; the passage only says that the four angels were loosed that “had been prepared for the hour, and day, and month, and year”
- a solemn designation (as it seems to me) of the point of time spoken of; just so our Lord says, “of that day and hour knoweth no man”.
The seventh passage, “three
days and a half”, Rev. 11, has
nothing in it to require any other than the literal interpretation. Some advocates of the year-day system have
been fond of laying stress on this passage, because, they say, that it was
early perceived by the Church that the period meant three.years and a day. Had
this been the fact it would have proved nothing to any who does not feel
bound to follow a supposed consensus patrum in the understanding of Scripture. The fact has, however, been over-stated.
Prosper, in the fifth century, says that
the three days and a half of the slain witnesses answer to the three years and a half of
antichrist. Others repeated the
expression a little more strongly; but such passing remarks do not invalidate
the correctness of the statement of Mr. Conder that “at
the close of the fourteenth century” “the
year-day interpretation” was “first suggested”.*
[*
As far as I know, the first who spoke of a period of twelve hundred and sixty years was the celebrated Abbot Joachim of
But still, even if we have no exact proof
of the theory, may we not apply it to the interpretation of Scripture? Is every
word in the Bible to be taken literally?
There is nothing relative to Scripture which can be
pressed as a matter of teaching, unless it can be proved from Scripture, or
from the force of the words, or from the facts of the case: and thus no one can
be condemned for rejecting a theory not so proved. No doubt that in the Bible, as well as in
other books, figurative terms and expressions are used. Thus, when our Lord called Herod “a fox” He used a figure which none could mistake; when
He said “Destroy this temple” he used a figure
of deep meaning, which was misunderstood. But where there is no figure at all, we have
no authority to go out of our way to invent one; especially when it is both
inapt and inapplicable. This mode of
procedure will never aid us in understanding Scripture, for thus we should only
be bending it to our own minds, instead of taking the place of learners and
inquiring, What has the Spirit of God written for our instruction?
Thus the meaning of the words day and year may be considered a simple matter of lexicographical
investigation, just as is the import of the word rendered week in Dan. 9; and then the
responsibility of proving that they may signify something else rests upon those
who so understand them. But with regard
to Scripture
terms, we need not always treat them as mere matters of lexicography,
and in the case before us we possess ample and absolute evidence against that theory, the supposed proofs of
which have been discussed.
1. In Dan. 4: 16, 23,
and 32, king Nebuchadnezzar was told that he
should be driven from men, etc., “till seven
times should pass over him”.
This on the year-day theory would be a
period of two thousand five hundred and twenty years - longer than from
the time of Nebuchadnezzar to the present day. And the term “seven
times” occurs both in the symbolic part of the chapter and in the
literal, so that the force of words cannot be avoided by any such distinction. Nebuchadnezzar, however, says (verse 28). “All this came
upon the king Nebuchidnezzar.”
The prophecy related to literal years,
and in literal years was it accomplished. If then, in chapter
4, seven times are seven actual years, of course the period in chapter 7 is half that number. Thus king Nebuchadnezzar is an unexceptional
witness that prophetic Scripture does not admit the year-day theory.
2. The next witness is Daniel the prophet himself. In chapter 9: 2
he tells us that he understood by books the prophecy of Jeremiah that the Lord
would accomplish seventy years in the
desolations of
3. The prediction of our Lord as to his own resurrection
on the third day is also of importance. It is useless to evade the application of this
and similar passages by saying that they do not occur in symbolic prophecies;
the answer is simply, “Neither do some of the passages
to which you apply the year-day theory; they, too, are in simple statements.”
Thus, if, in the case of our Lord’s
burial, the third day meant day and not year, then we may plainly
see that the canon which assigns the meaning of year to the word day, when it
is used in prophecy, utterly fails in its application.
Instances might be multiplied - such for example as
the four hundred years in Genesis 15
foretold to Abraham as the limit of the bondage of his descendants in Egypt - but
it is needless to accumulate proofs when the point is established, according to
the Scripture rule, at the mouth of two or three witnesses.
This, then, is a case in which the Scripture has
spoken; we are not, therefore, at liberty to form any conclusions of our own
(as if it had been silent) whether day might not mean or symbolise year; we
are bound in subjection to the word of God to say that it does not and cannot
so mean, and that thus every interpretation which depends on that theory is necessarily
incorrect.
If we were to admit a non-scriptural canon of
interpretation we should do much injury to truth, and we should adopt that to which
we could not authoritatively direct the attention of any one; but the injury to
truth is far greater when we admit a canon which is positively anti-scriptural
- in the former case we should be adding to the word of God, but in the latter
we should be even contradicting it.
It is by truth that God works on the hearts of His people; to this we must
then adhere, however it may run counter to conventional ideas. The prophecies of Scripture can never be used
for their legitimate purposes if they are explained by the aid of a primary
canon, which is in itself not only unsupported by Scripture but is actually in
contradiction to it.
*
* * *
* * *
THE PROPHECY CONCERNING THE JEWS
IN THE LATTER DAYS (DANIEL 10, 11, 12.) [Pages 127-163]
To be continued (D.V) …