Continued from Chapter VI. The Daniel Programme – Part I..

The character of Daniel is lofty, beautiful, and gracious,— a model character in many respects, and one befitting a prophet of peculiar privilege. It is not deliberately sketched, but comes out incidentally; it does not obtrude itself on the attention as we read his prophecy, the book being mainly autobiographical in its form, and the prophet having no desire to make himself prominent. This style of writing, in which it is peculiarly easy to fall unconsciously into egoism, serves only to exhibit Daniel’s singular self-abnegation and noble simplicity. We learn that he was an exile, a captive, and a slave like Joseph, as is indicated by the change of his name.

This change, intended to remind the slave of his servitude, was a custom of the East and of the period, and continued even to Christian times. Chrysostom says: “The master having bought a slave, wishing to show him that he is master, changes his name.” And again, “that the imposition of names is a symbol of mastership is plain from what we too do” (St. Chrysostom, Serm. 12, Op. iii. 1). And Daniel was not only a slave, but a life-long sufferer at the hands of his captors, one of those in whom was fulfilled the prediction to Hezekiah (Isa. xxix. 7), as appears from the fact stated in chapter i. 3, This makes his noble and faithful character all the more remarkable, as his class were proverbially addicted to intrigue, assassination, and conspiracies. Gibbon dwells on their notoriously pernicious influence on courts and kings.

He was only about fourteen when he came to Babylon, as we judge from the fact that it was at that age lads were committed to royal instructors to be trained for the king’s service, on which they entered at sixteen or seventeen. The three years during which he was “taught the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans” early displayed his character, manifesting a beautiful boyish simplicity of faith, and that high-principled self-denial in trifles for conscience sake, which is the sure earnest of future greatness, and gives the best promise of a grand career. His faith grew by exercise, till it prevailed to bring down the interpretation of the king’s dream, and it lasted through life, leading the prophet in his old age to “continue in prayer,” even when the den of lions was the penalty.

Bold and uncompromising where allegiance to God was concerned, Daniel was, however, singularly respectful and deferential, sympathetic, polite, and patient. Though never dazzled or deluded by the splendours of Nebuchadnezzar’s court, he evidently both admired and respected his vast power. It had, indeed, elements of greatness as the first which changed the “robber-tyrant domination of Assyrian and Babylonian might into organized rule.”

This respect is consistently shown—in his explanation of the king’s dream of the image, and subsequently in that of the tree cut down, which predicted Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity. How reluctant is the prophet to explain this latter vision! He sat astonished for an hour, and his thoughts troubled him, not because he feared the results to himself of the unwelcome intelligence he had to deliver, but out of sincere sorrow for and sympathy with the proud monarch before him. Tenderly and respectfully he at last, when urged, reveals the counsel of God to the king, accompanying the announcement with words of gentle yet earnest exhortation, if perchance reformation of life might lead to a lengthening of tranquillity.

The same deferential, respectful tone marks his words to the weak and unjust Darius: “Before thee also, O king, have I done no hurt.” And especially it comes out in his interview with Belshazzar on the eve of the capture of Babylon, when he recalls the glory of Nebuchadnezzar as he had seen it in his own early days. “The Most High God gave thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: and for (or on account of) the majesty that He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down.” (Dan. 5:18,19)

Daniel’s career of prosperity in a strange land never weaned his affections from his fatherland, or lessened his longing for the restoration of his people and the temple at Jerusalem. Three times a day he prayed “towards Jerusalem,” as we learn incidentally in his old age. He led a life of earnest, longing prayerfulness for Jewish interests, while all those seventy years doing faithfully the king’s business. So perfect was his fidelity that his enemies could find no fault in him in his official capacity, and the length of his career makes the statement remarkable.

“The stripling of seventeen sat in the king’s gate (‘in the Porte,’ as we say, retaining the oriental term), president over all the colleges of the wise men, and of the whole province of Babylon. Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus, are the simple words; but what a volume of tried faithfulness is unrolled by them! Amid all the intrigues, indigenous, at all times, in dynasties of oriental despotism, where intrigue too rolls round so surely and so suddenly on its author’s head; amid all the envy towards a foreign captive in high office as a king’s councilor; amid all the trouble incidental to the insanity of the king, or to the murder of two of his successors,—in that whole critical period for his people Daniel continued. . .

“The force of the words is not drawn out; but, as perseverance is the one final touchstone of man, so these scattered notices combine in a grand outline of one, an alien, a captive, of that misused class who are proverbially the intriguers, favourites, pests of oriental courts, who revenge on man their ill-treatment at the hand of man; yet, himself, in uniform integrity, outliving envy, jealousy, dynasties; surviving in untarnished uncorrupting greatness the seventy years of the captivity; honoured during the forty-three years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign; doing the king’s business under the insolent and sensual boy Belshazzar; owned by the conquering Medo-Persians; the stay doubtless and human protector of his people during those long years of exile; probably commissioned to write the decree of Cyrus which gave leave for that long longed-for restoration of his people, whose re-entrance into their land, like Moses of old, he was not to share. Deeds are more eloquent than words. Such undeviating integrity, beyond the ordinary life of man, in a worshipper of the one God, in the most dissolute and degraded of the merchant-cities of old, first minister in the first of the world-monarchies,” gives him a place among the highest and holiest men the world has ever seen.(Pusey: “Lectures on Daniel the Prophet,” pp. 20, 22.)

This was the prophet to whom He who sees the end from the beginning, was pleased to reveal THE SIXTH SECTION OF THE PROGRAMME OF THE world’s history.

This section was fuller and more detailed and definite than any which had preceded it, and extending from its own date, five to six centuries before Christ, to the end of the present state of things, the resurrection of the dead and the era of blessedness. It contains, with some unfulfilled predictions, a prophecy of the outline of history for twenty-five centuries; and a comparison of its statements with the well-known course of events must either attest its supernatural inspiration, or confute it even more clearly than any of the programmes we have as yet considered.

Questions as to the date of the Book of Daniel have been raised by rationalistic critics to whom real prophecy in any sense is as incredible as real miracle. The objections raised are about as baseless as objections well could be; and the counter-theories as to the date of the prophecy are one and all incredible, some even ludicrous. The true date, as we will presently show, has been abundantly confirmed and verified both from external and internal evidence. No further proof of the authenticity of the accepted date ought to be demanded—nor can any be given, until further Babylonian exploration brings to light, as it probably will do, contemporaneous evidence of the existence and career of the prophet. But our present argument requires no consideration of this question. Because, even if we accept the latest date suggested for the publication of Daniel, it fails to abate the claim of the book to contain supernatural predictions which were published hundreds and some of them thousands of years before they were fulfilled, and remains therefore an unanswerable witness to the prescient wisdom of God, to the intense reality of His providential government of the world, and to the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures.

In treating on this subject, we must presume on an acquaintance with the Book of Daniel on the part of our readers. As a mere work of very ancient literature it is an intensely interesting one, while as an important part of the Word of God it well repays study. Its life-like sketches of the state of things in which the writer lived, and of the characters of those with whom he came in contact; its graphic accounts of the tragic and wonderful incidents of his career; its pictures of saintly devotion, heroic self-sacrifice, calm faith, holy courage, and prevailing prayer, of fidelity under most ensnaring temptation, and of patriotism that nothing could shake; above all, its glorious witness to the delivering power and grace of God, and its lessons of lofty morality, to say nothing of its wonderful anticipations of the world’s history—all conspire to make it a document of surpassing attraction, The greatest and wisest philosopher may ponder its pages, as the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton loved to do; while the simplest child finds no stories more interesting than those of the den of lions, the Hebrew children, and the handwriting on the wall; and evangelists like Moody find no theme more moving than the experiences of the holy prophet. The book is partly historic and partly prophetic, facts and foreviews being blended in about equal proportions, The second and the last six chapters of the book are mainly prophecy, the remainder history, in which however detached predictions of events which were near at hand at the time occur.

The prophecies, with the exception of the one great Messianic prediction, and the few closing ones of the book, are political in character; they relate to kings and kingdoms, victories and defeats, treaties and royal marriages, and the fortunes of different nations; and in this fact we have a fresh proof of the suitability of the instruments divinely selected for the work they are destined to do. Moses, trained in college and at court, and placed in command of armies and expeditions, familiarized subsequently with the mountains and valleys and resources of the Sinaitic peninsula, was appointed to lead the Exodus of Israel, and convey the law of God to the Jewish nation. David, the first great king of Israel, is chosen to receive revelations as to the kingdom, and as to the Messiah who should rule to the uttermost ends of the earth. And now Daniel with his noble Jewish lineage, his high and careful Gentile education and training, his familiarity with the imperial politics of Nebuchadnezzar and with the varied civilization of Chaldea,—Daniel with his statesmanlike experience of government, with his personal faith and his pure aspirations, with his strong national sympathies, yet his wide acquaintance with the world,— Daniel the royal exile, the “ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon” (Dan. ii. 48), is made the medium of revelations embracing the political outline of long centuries of Gentile history, the first and second advents of Messiah the Prince, the hope of Israel and the salvation of the world. His training and experience, his character and position, all adapted him peculiarly for his work, and to be the channel of the wonderful revelation which was committed to him.

So numerous are the predictions in this short book that it would require a volume to consider them in detail. We must take up the main outline only of its programme of the future, and that outline is so clear and so comprehensive that subsequent history must have either definitely verified or absolutely falsified it. There can in this case be no possible uncertainty or doubtfulness as to the correspondence of prophecy and fulfilment. When a long series of consecutive events, embracing the political fortunes of all the leading nations of the world for twenty-five centuries, together with the characters and epochs of the greatest heroes of history, are predicted in succession as luminously and clearly as if the prophecy were a narrative, it must be either plainly fulfilled or not so. In this sixth section of the programme there is evidence of greater strength than in any of the previous ones of Divine foreknowledge, and of the control of the course of history by Divine power.

The programme has four main divisions, the last of which is still unfulfilled:

I. The twice-repeated prediction of a succession of FOUR GREAT EMPIRES, followed by the kingdom of God.

II. The full and chronological prophecy of the FIRST ADVENT OF CHRIST, and the DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

III A long and detailed prediction of the events connected with the second and third of the four great monarchies, including especially the wars of the Ptolemies and Seleucid, the Maccabean persecutions and martyrdoms, and the career of Antiochus Epiphanes.

IV. Predictions relating to events still future—the second advent of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the restoration of Israel (Note: Future in Daniel’s time, not ours. Israel was still in captivity then but had long returned to their homeland by the time of Christ.), the cleansing of the sanctuary, and the establishment of the kingdom of the Son of man.

We shall only have time to consider the first two of these sections in detail and to glance at the third, a large portion of which is fulfilled already, though it passes towards the close into the unfulfilled.

On the first point—the four empires.—the following is the revelation which was given first in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar, and secondly in a vision to Daniel:—

“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that 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 image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”(Dan. 2:31-35)

“Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl: the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it. 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; and it had ten horns. 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.

“I beheld till the thrones 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. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. (As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.) I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” (Dan. vii. 2-14)

Both these prophecies are conveyed by means of symbols. Is their meaning doubtful, obscure, and uncertain on this account? By no means. The divinely selected symbols are divinely interpreted, and hence there is happily no room for doubt as to their precise signification, The following is Daniel’s interpretation of the king’s vision:—

“This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Thou, O 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. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And 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, And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.” (Dan. ii, 36-45)

And again the angel’s interpretation of Daniel’s own vision is as follows:—

“These great beasts, which are four, are four kings (or kingdoms), which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” (Dan. 7:17,18)

This explanation was comprehensive and clear, but went no further than the former revelation given fifty years previously to Nebuchadnezzar, though the vision had suggested much additional matter. Daniel consequently was not satisfied. He asks for fuller explanation, especially of certain features of the fourth beast.

“Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; and of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.”(Dan. 7:19-22)

The desired explanation was graciously given—given with the brevity, authority, and clearness, which always characterize angelic communications, in which every word has weighty meaning.

“Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, 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. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.

“And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” (Dan. vii. 23-27)

The Jewish captivity was the occasion on which this programme was given, and its main object was to cheer and sustain the people of God, through the ages of delay, and the frequent times of tribulation that were to intervene prior, not to the first advent, but to the Kingdom of Messiah. The two prophecies each announce a succession of four Gentile empires to fill the interval between Nebuchadnezzar’s days and that Everlasting Reign; four, and four only, and then— the Kingdom of the Son of man and of the saints. To Daniel and his fellows, and to others like him, this prediction must have brought strong consolation. Pagan wild-beast-like empires, cruel, ravening, destructive and brutal in their degradation and ignorance of God, were not however fierce and strong to last for ever. After a brief succession of four, of which one was already in existence, they were to cease and give place to the Kingdom of Messiah. The fall of Judah had not then abrogated the covenant! The dark and terrible experiences of the present were only an interlude, the sure mercies of David were not to fail, though there was room for the patience of hope. No chronology at all had been attached to the first prophecy; and though a mystical period was named in the second, it did not convey any such clear notion as to the duration of the four empires as would damp the hope that the time might be comparatively brief. In any case pagan dominion had its limits, idolatrous tyranny was not to endure for ever, the Kingdom of the Son of man and of the saints was the glad goal of human history.

On Nebuchadnezzar, too, the moral effect of the vision had a strong and wholesome bearing. It was given to him just after his great empire was established, when thoughts came into his mind upon his bed, “What should come to pass hereafter,” what should be the future of the dominion he had established, and the dynasty of which he was the head. It was a salutary lesson for a monarch so rich and mighty, for a man so proud and vainglorious, and for a worshipper so devoted to idols, to learn that he owed his dominion to “the God of heaven,” and that it was a very passing one; that he was merely the head of a great image, that other empires were destined to succeed the one he had founded, and that all such empires would be destroyed ere long by a dominion of a very different character, one which would last for ever.

On him, however, the vision seems to have produced but little effect. He was pleased to have the dream which had so impressed him, recalled and interpreted; he duly rewarded Daniel, and accorded also a place in his pantheon to Daniel’s God, to whom the prophet had carefully attributed the revelation. But that was all. It needed a more painful and personal lesson to produce in the mind of this heathen despot the profound conviction which in his old age he so heartily expressed, of the glory and absolute supremacy of the God of heaven.(Chap. iv. 34)

The two prophecies agree as to the fourfold succession; but the second adds expressly a marked and important feature which the first only intimates, i.e., that the fourth empire was to exist in two different stages, first as a single empire, and secondly as an association of ten kingdoms. The ten toes of the image had hinted this distinction, the angelic interpretation of the ten horns of the fourth beast emphasizes it, and seems to attach special importance to this stage of the history prefigured, for stress is laid on this feature. The fourth and last empire is interpreted much more fully than all the other three, and its last tenfold section is dwelt on more fully than its first.

The two predictions indicate unquestionably one and the same reality; they give one and the same simple definite outline of the future, they present an identical programme, first in bare outline and then more filled in; they agree in the assertion that the Gentile age then beginning would witness first four successive universal empires, and that then the fourth would dissolve into a commonwealth of ten separate but associated kingdoms.

The question before us is, Has this programme been fulfilled, and how? Did there actually and conspicuously occur such a succession, not of kingdoms merely, but of empires exercising by right of conquest dominion over many kingdoms— empires universal as far as the known world of their day extended—empires that brooked no rival, but lorded it over all during their span of supremacy. Can four such be indicated, as having succeeded each other from Nebuchadnezzar’s day onwards? And was the last dissolved into a ten-kingdomed commonwealth ?

It is notorious that four such universal empires did arise, and did rule the world in succession. Scripture itself names them all, as well as profane history. It speaks of four supreme ruling kingdoms, and of four only, as having existed from Daniel’s day to its own close. The first, that of Babylon; to whose king it was said, “Thou art this head of gold.” The second, as the angel Gabriel told the prophet, was, “The ram having the two horns,” “the kings of Media and Persia.” The third, symbolised by “The rough goat,” was “The king of Grecia.” And in the Gospels we meet with the fourth: “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” “If we let him alone, all men will believe on him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.”

The testimony of profane history is equally clear.

One of the most invaluable relics of antiquity which we possess is the Syntaxis or Al magest of Ptolemy, an astronomer and chronologist who lived at the time of Hadrian’s destruction of Jerusalem. This accurate writer records in his Canon (in connection with astronomic data verified by modern observations and absolutely certain) the names and dates of fifty-five successive sovereigns whose reigns extended over 907 years, from Nabonassar, the first king of Babylon (B.C. 747), to Antoninus Pius, the Emperor of Rome, in whose days Ptolemy wrote. He traces thus the succession of the greatest monarchs in the world from before Daniel’s time to his own, a period of nine centuries, and presents in one unbroken line imperial rule as it was administered by different dynasties of monarchs from various centres of government, in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This Canon of Ptolemy is an unquestioned and unquestionable authority both as to history and chronology. He was not a Jew or a Christian, and had probably no knowledge of the prophecies of Daniel. How did the world’s history for those nine centuries present itself to him? He divides it into four successive parts, and enumerates twenty BABYLONIAN kings, ten PERSIAN (terminating with Alexander the Great, eleven in all); twelve GRECIAN, and ends with twelve ROMAN emperors, thus bringing the list down to his own time, which was that of the early Roman empire. He could not, of course, go any further, or foretell the fall of the empire, and the rise of the Gothic kingdoms of the middle ages. We append his celebrated Canon, a document of supreme importance to the historian!

THE CANON OF PTOLEMY.

Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome; this was the order Ptolemy saw in looking back; this was the retrospect of the historian, and it accords absolutely with the outline seen beforehand by the prophet. Moreover, as Faber points out:—

“In each case the principle of continuous arrangement is identical. Where Ptolemy makes the Persian Cyrus the immediate successor of the Babylonic Nabonadius, or Belshazzar, without taking into account the preceding kings of Persia or of Media, there, in the image, the silver joins itself to the gold; where Ptolemy makes the Grecian Alexander the immediate successor of the Persian Darius, without taking into account the preceding kings of Macedon, there, in the image, the brass joins itself to the silver; and where Ptolemy makes the Roman Augustus the immediate successor of the Grecian Cleopatra, without taking into account the long preceding roll of the consular Fasti and the primitive Roman monarchy, there, in the image, the iron joins itself to the brass. In short, the Canon of Ptolemy may well be deemed a running comment upon the altitudinal line of the great metallic image. As the parts of the image melt into each other, forming jointly one grand succession of supreme imperial domination, so the Canon of Ptolemy exhibits what may be called a picture of unbroken imperial rule, though administered by four successive dynasties, from Nabonassar to Augustus and his successors.”

The same Divine care which raised up Herodotus and other Greek historians to carry on the records of the past, from the point to which they had been brought by the writings of the prophets—the same providence which raised up Josephus, at the termination of New Testament history, to record the destruction of Jerusalem—raised up also this Ptolemy, to show the historian’s view of the four great empires of their succession and chronology. Nor does Ptolemy stand alone in his review of history. Ancients and moderns all are agreed as to the main outline of the history of those nations of which prophecy takes cognizance; i.e., the nations which formed the environment of the people of God in the world, and have had to do with the Jews and the Christian Church. The ancient Jewish Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, written shortly before the first advent; the writings of Josephus, who was born during the lifetime of our Lord, the Commentary of Jerome, and the writings of other Fathers, of the early centuries of our era, the histories of Sulpicius—all give the same outline. In fact, ancient history is written on this principle; all the best writers divide their subject thus, and the experience of school and college teaches us the truth of Daniel’s outline. Do we not study as four separate branches the histories of Rome, of Greece, of Persia, and of Babylon? The latter is often combined with the Assyrian empire which preceded it, for until recent archaeological discovery made it comparatively plain, the successions and distinctions of the earliest monarchies of the East were obscure, and their annals were often combined under the general title of “Ancient History.” The four empires of this prophecy start with the later Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar.

Moreover, these empires, and especially the two latter, are the sources whence we derive the laws and politics and the foundation of the literature still prevailing among us, the arts of sculpture and drawing, and especially that of architecture. But little is known comparatively of the history of the other nations of antiquity, and there can be no question that these four had a special relation to the people of God and to the history of redemption. It was Babylon who led the Jews captive, Medo-Persia who restored them to their own land; Alexander who in his turn conquered Jerusalem and held Palestine, in and about which his successors the Ptolemies and the Seleucidae were always warring; it was under the empire of Rome the glorious redemption itself was accomplished, and the Christian Church founded, while Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Jewish people were finally expelled from Palestine.

So general is the concensus of opinion on this point among all who have any acquaintance with history, that it is needless to dwell on it. The succession of Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts in our own history is not more patent than that of Babylonians, Persians, Grecians, and Romans in the history of the world since the days of Daniel, including in the last, the modern nations of Latin Christendom, the tenfold commonwealth of European nations which arose out of the ruins of the old Roman empire.

For it must be borne in mind that the double prophecy not only presents these four empires as successive, but as filling the whole interval until the second advent of Christ in glory, and the establishment of the everlasting kingdom of Messiah on earth. They exclude by implication any other or different state of things. The last, or Roman rule, continues in its tenfold state to the end of the existing order; there is nothing in the image lower than the feet, and there is no “beast” subsequent to the fourth. What follows is another age altogether. It is the kingdom of the Mountain that fills the whole earth —the kingdom of the God of heaven, to which we must revert presently. Meantime, a few details as to the history which has justified and fulfilled this first leading feature of Daniel’s programme must be given, to recall the familiar facts.

The expressions used in ver. 38 about THE FIRST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE denote universality, but they must not be taken in a strict but in a popular sense, and with reference to the then known world only. As a matter of fact, Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom never extended even at all into Europe, nor into Africa beyond the bounds of Egypt; and even over the Asiatic countries he conquered, his dominion did not descend into the actual administration of government in them all—it was simply a general control, a superior power, and the exaction of tribute. As we have seen in other cases, Scripture occasionally uses unlimited terms in limited senses, and this principle must always be borne in mind in considering such statements as those in this prophecy.

The principal conquests of Nebuchadnezzar were Syria, Palestine, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, Lydia, and Egypt. His successors were none of them equal to himself in administrative ability, and the empire did not last long. It was coterminous in its duration with the Babylonish captivity, seventy years: the conquest of Babylonia and capture of Babylon by Cyrus brought it to an end in accordance with Jeremiah’s predictions.

Continued in Chapter VI. The Daniel Programme – Part III.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness