The book of yours which I have by me is, “Lectures on the Book of Daniel,” second edition.
Q. 1. I cannot reconcile some passages in it with Scripture. On page 103 I read “‘The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings.' There, beyond question, we have the empire of Babylon” and on page 33, “Babylon was first made an empire of in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, who here includes, as it were, those that were to follow.” Surely the description in Dan. 7:2, 32Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. 3And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. (Daniel 7:2‑3), “......behold the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from the other” in no way applies to Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne of Babylon. Was not his father Nabopolassar king of Babylon in before him?
Q. 2. In pages 106 and 107 Alexander's (the Grecian) kingdom is represented (you say) in the vision by the “Leopard which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also Four heads.” You add “There you have not so much what was found in Alexander himself, but rather in his successors.” Why do you say so? The scriptures must be correct. The leopard appeared with four heads, not with one which was replaced by four, like Alexander's one kingdom which was divided into four! The interpretation of this vision in Dan. 7:1717These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. (Daniel 7:17) ("These great beasts which are four, are four kings which shall arise out of the earth”) was given within some three years of the fall of the Babylonian empire. And yet you say, “‘The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings.' There beyond question we have the empire of Babylon” (page 103). The interpretation given to Daniel says “shall arise,” while the Babylonian empire began (page 33) in Nebuchadnezzar some (?) sixty-six years before. J. S. C.
A. 1. The book of Daniel is itself the nearest and weightiest help to explain the difficulties of its several parts. Thus chaps. 2 and 7 reflect light one on another. There is a manifest unity in the colossal image seen in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which has its answer in “the four great beasts.” that “came up from the sea” in Daniel's vision during the first year of Belshazzar's reign. In the visions all were thus seen at once, though in historical fact they were to succeed each other; as the rest of the chapter would plainly enough indicate. It was not a question of what Babylon had been, or of Nebuchadnezzar's succeeding Nabopolassar, but of God's gift of world-empire to these four successive powers. They begin with Nebuchadnezzar, and are terminated by the judgment to be executed on the final form of the fourth or Roman empire by the Stone cut without hands, i.e. God's kingdom wielded by the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven. Nabopolassar was doubtless king of Babylon; but in no way head of the image or imperial system which commenced with his son Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God gave this place expressly. He, not his father, could say though arrogantly, “Is not this great Babylon that I have built?” as he built enormously besides. His foreign conquests were great, yet less momentous than his energetic home policy. But his overthrow of the Jewish kingdom in its last stronghold was the turning point, and in him the Gentile imperial system began. Dan. 2:37, 3837Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. 38And 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. (Daniel 2:37‑38) affords light clear enough for beginning with Nebuchadnezzar and excluding his father or any other before him; as no reasonable mind doubts the parallelism of the two chapters. Compare Jer. 27, Ezek. 12, 17.
A. 2. Here the comparison of Dan. 8:21, 22 simply and fully solves the difficulty as to Dan. 7:66After 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. (Daniel 7:6). So one must say because scripture so explains. The later vision of Dan. 8 bears on important details of the second and third powers, laying aside all reference to the first and fourth in Dan. vii. “It is written again” is of the greatest moment when “It is written” is misapplied. Scripture is everywhere consistent as well as surely correct. The fourth beast appears with ten horns; yet we know from other scriptures that these mean ten kings at the very close of the last empire, in no way that they were so found when that empire first began. The same remark applies to the four heads of the leopard or Macedonian empire. Each vision gives characteristic differences without in the least implying that they all appeared from the start. Other or subsequent statements correct such an inference as unfounded and contrary to fact.
So, “shall arise” in Dan. 7:17 must in fairness be taken as a whole, connecting the three powers to come with the Babylonian though already in being and tottering to its fall. To construe the words with such rigid technicality as to exclude the Babylonish empire from answering to the lion with eagle's wings is, not a difficulty for my exposition, but really a setting of Dan. 7 in opposition to Dan. 2 and a groundless upturning of the plain fact. From a full consideration of these scriptures I hold that truth calls one to interpret the “four kings” which “shall arise” as comprising the beginning to the end of these earthly bestial systems, but not so as to exclude the first beast from Nebuchadnezzar's day; for this would set scripture against scripture and thus disproves itself as erroneous. “These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.” One cannot fairly use this to deny retrospect, but must include Babylon from Nebuchadnezzar. For the object is to give the imperial system relative unity; whilst “the first” and “another,"! &c. in ver. 4-7, gave also succession adequately, as indeed had been done yet more plainly in Dan. 2. Verses 11, 12 contrast a prolonging of the three previous beasts after the loss of dominion; whereas the fourth is utterly destroyed when it ceases to be an imperial power at the close. Scripture therefore sustains the statements questioned, without meddling with the ordinary version of the passages; it shows that the difficulty lies rather in divorcing one text from another, instead of receiving all. Scripture cannot be broken. The prophetic manner also must be borne in mind. A priori expectations of what or how God should reveal are sure to be disappointed. Our blessing is to own His wisdom and goodness in what He gives or withholds. The Holy Spirit, as He wrote all in view of Christ's glory, so works in giving us to expound aright just so far as we have His glory in view, the true safeguard of explaining aright.
Even the incredulous Gibbon in his Letter to Bp. Hurd (Hurd's Works, V. pp. 365, 6) says, “The four empires are clearly delineated, the expedition of Xerxes into Greece, the rapid conquest of Persia by Alexander, his untimely death without posterity, the division of his vast monarchy into four kingdoms, one of which is mentioned by name, their various wars and intermarriages, the persecution of Antiochus, the profanation of the temple, and the invincible arms of the Romans are described with as much perspicuity in the prophecies of Daniel, as in the histories of Justin and Diodorus. From such a perfect resemblance the artful infidel would infer that both were alike composed after the event.” He argued that the author of the Book of Daniel was too well informed of the revolutions of the Persian and Macedonian empires, supposed to have happened long after his death; and that he was too ignorant of the transactions in his own times: in a word, that he was too exact for a prophet, and too fabulous for a contemporary historian.
It is enough to reply that the book is no less distinct in ch. 9 about Christ's death and the destruction of Jerusalem; and that the alleged contemporaneous history is declared to be at “the time of the end” when Israel are to be delivered, and therefore, as future, necessarily unfulfilled prophecy. Hence, to say “fabulous” is not only premature but ignorant, as it will be surely proved to be the baseless skepticism of Gibbon, in the wake of Porphyry. But even they took no exception to the Four Empires as laid down in Dan. 2,7, and saw no such force in Dan. 7:2-3, 62Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. 3And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. (Daniel 7:2‑3)
6After 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. (Daniel 7:6), or 17, as to enfeeble that interpretation. Now there was no empire of Rome till long after the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, where it pleases unbelief to imagine the writing of the book of Daniel. Yet the book not only speaks of a fourth or Roman empire, but dwells with peculiar fullness on its last phase, not yet accomplished, when its blasphemy is to draw down the holy vengeance of the Son of man. Then will follow, not the white throne judgment when the wicked dead shall arise from their graves for judgment, but the kingdom which He shall previously exercise over all peoples, nations, and languages. This therefore clearly presupposes the earth, when it shall be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. Indeed even before that kingdom the latter part of Dan. 11 shows us “the time of the end,” in which Antiochus Epiphanes has no place whatever. But three kings figure: “the king” (Ver. 36-40) in the land, who will be so distinct froth the then “king of the north” and the “king of the south,” that they will both attack him at the same time. Ver. 41-45 are occupied exclusively with “the king of the north” in that future day, who becomes an especial object of divine wrath, as “the king,” we know from elsewhere, will have been before him. Thus minutely writes the prophet on the solemn crisis at “the end of the age,” which future, detail is clearly after the gap where Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees are done with.