Dan. 2: 7
THEN followed the second empire of the Medes and Persians, the captors of Babylon, set out by the image's breast and arms of silver, and by the bear that raised itself on one side: a kingdom of larger extent, but inferior in vigor and splendor, which lasted some 200 years before it fell before Alexander the Great, the founder of “another third kingdom of brass, which should bear rule over all the earth.” Who could have conceived of an empire so much wider than its predecessors, from the vain and contentious Greeks, led by the despised race of Macedonia, and their boy king? Up to that time what did they present but a cluster of jealous, factious states, if one except Sparta, struggling for leadership, whatever their skill in arts or letters? The attacks of Darius and Xerxes at length united them for a while in patriotism with a humanly brilliant result. Only God could have led the king to dream, and the prophet to interpret, the Greek or Macedonian kingdom. Yet there is the living picture, the details of which cover the beginning of chap. 8.
There is more particularity as we descend the stream of time; so false is the maxim of the rationalists who leave out God, or count Him such a one as themselves. How plainly does He put contempt on their assumption that a prophet anticipated no more than the imminent future! They are given as God pleased, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The first or Babylonian no doubt was there before men; but which of the rest could have been foreseen even plausibly by a single soul on earth? Least of all would Nebuchadnezzar have conceived changes so beyond calculation.
We have seen the extreme improbability of a world-wide empire from Greece or its rude neighbor Macedon. What is the fact as to the Rome of Nebuchadnezzar's day? The philosophers count its annals as for the most part uncertain if not fabulous. Yet we need not doubt the city was then ruled by such petty kings as Italian towns could boast of old, kinglings indeed. Long before, we see a sort of analogy in the numerous kings whom the sons of Israel smote under Joshua (chap. 12.), more than thirty. The kings were succeeded by consuls; dictators too ruled occasionally; decemvirs; and consular tribunes; till the chaotic condition morally and politically gave opportunity for an emperor, though still employing republican forms. Rome yet for hundreds of years had been engaged in constant struggling with its rival neighbors. Sabines, Volscians, Veientes, and the like. Finally they had their city taken and burnt by the Gauls; they further had to fight for their very existence with another competitor. And what think you, was the power that rose up to dispute in a life and death conflict with Rome? It was Carthage, an active mercantile city, exceedingly ambitious and aspiring, planted and colonized by the accursed race of Canaan.
From early days God had pronounced against that son of guilty Ham, who had indeed many sons; so that we may admire the mercy that all were not involved in similar ruin. It was righteous that God should mark His displeasure. Is there not a moral necessity to deal with men guilty of signal wickedness? Even an infidel husband would not condone his wife's dishonor, or his son's stealing the family's money. If God must not punish iniquity, to let man off, what is it but desiring God to be less holy and righteous than the most worthless of mankind? If justice is not only free but bound to render according to the due desert of human deeds, is God alone to be debarred from that prerogative'? In the three Carthaginian or (as they are called) Punic wars, the two cities fought for supremacy, and so for life. Rome fought in Sicily, in Spain, and at length, after desperate defeats on her own soil, in Africa. In the last of the three Rome's stern determination was to destroy Carthage. The senate felt that thence emanated an enemy that would entirely frustrate all their hope of progress and conquest; and so the cry that Carthage must be blotted out arose accordingly. These wars stretched from long before Christ; but they were still longer from the time of Daniel who died an aged man more than five centuries before our Lord's birth. Yet even then all that so deeply concerned the last of the empires was made known and written down by God's inspiration. Here we have, from two separate aspects, a complete sketch-map of the world-powers that were to govern from first to last until the Lord appears in power and glory. Even so it is given clearly in the brief space of a few paragraphs.
Does any one object that there are few particulars? If time permitted and such were my present object, it would be easy to prove that they are many more than hasty men imagine. And it is observable that, just when we are brought down to the fourth empire, then these details are supplied in most abundance. What a rebuke to rationalism! And why was it so? Because the Roman was the empire in which Christ was to be born and be cut off; as that empire is to rise up again by Satan's power when He will shine forth in judgment from heaven. The Roman empire was to be expressly different from all its predecessors. The Babylonian lost its imperial power; so did the Medo-Persian; as well as the Macedonian or Grecian, never to rise again. Yet they were all to exist, and so they do still; but their dominion was to be taken away, as it is laid down in Dan 7: 12. There was to be no revival of their imperial character, though a prolonging in life was given them, when their dominion was lost. Rome and Rome alone is the empire which must rise again, as we learn in Rev. 13 and more awfully than of old, quite falling in with what Daniel predicts of its end in chaps. 2. and 7.
A great many Protestants think all this refers to the papacy. But the Pope essentially differs from a Roman emperor. The Popes have played a shameless imposture in Rome under the abased name of the Lord. Babylon is much more like their evil in pride and corruption and persecution than a Roman emperor. It was the Roman power that was responsible for the crucifixion of Christ under the apostasy of the Jew long before the first budding of the papacy. Pontius Pilate who condemned the Lord was the local expression of Rome in Judea. God as well as man always holds the governing power to be responsible for its public, deliberate, unrepudiated acts; as we see sometimes in international affairs. In the face of his conscience, of his conviction of Jewish unrighteousness, and of solemn warning, the governor condemned the Just; the Roman empire far from repudiating it accumulated its acts of enmity. This is the power whose head was wounded to death but healed to universal astonishment on earth; and it emerges not only from the sea but from the abyss, the historical fact being given of the little horn in Dan. 7 as the character is in Rev. 13; 17 It “was, is not, and shall be present.”
Nothing so wonderful in all past history as that which is predicted in the Book of Revelation, as for instance this three-fold condition and its moral source at the end, as well as God's judgment of it: “the beast... was, and is not (which we can now say still applies), and shall come forth out of the bottomless pit” (as Christ Who died and rose will be present from heaven). The first points to a condition of past existence, then to its non-existence (we know it was destroyed by the Goths and other wild races, chiefly the Teutonic tribes of that day), and lastly to its future re-existence. The moment of its revival surely hastens. Already a great step is taken toward the re-appearance of that empire. Italy has become a kingdom; and not only so but a great power is Italy now considered. I cannot doubt that it is destined to become still greater before the sure execution of God's judgment on the peculiar iniquity of the empire. Scripture cannot be broken; and we find that which has been said fully proved in Daniel and the Apocalypse. The outline was manifested clearly enough in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and yet more in the vision of Daniel. Then above all in the Revelation our attention is drawn to a principle of the greatest moment. Most is said throughout on the fourth or Roman empire. Thereon the Spirit of God dwells most, because of its collision with the Lord Jesus. That would have seemed most difficult, humanly speaking: to deal most fully with the most distant is not the manner of man, who would have naturally said as much as possible about Babylon; then, if at all, more hazily about Persia, and not a word could have been said of the two western empires.
Again, how could man prognosticate that only four world-powers were to rise? There was ample ambition of founding more. Even in the middle ages Charlemagne tried to set up such an empire and failed, with the strongest desire to succeed. Then a military genius arose in this century no less ambitious, and never scrupling at violence or corruption to effectuate his schemes; Napoleon Bonaparte essayed it. He sought, if ever man did, a universal empire, but notwithstanding all means, skill, and opportunity, he broke down utterly in the attempt. God employed great Britain to smash all Napoleon's hopes. Nelson with his fleet completely crushed his navy, and on the field of Waterloo Napoleon saw his star set forever. There was to be no new world-power, though all know of course there are those who style themselves emperors in a quite subordinate sense.
(To be continued D.V.).