FROM the twenty-first verse we have had the account of the king of the north, known in profane history as Antiochus Epiphanes. The Spirit of God has entered into much fuller detail in speaking of his history, because his conduct, specially at the close, in meddling with the Jews, and their city, and their sanctuary, furnished the occasion for a type of the last king of the north, who will be found following in his predecessors' wake, save that his guilt will be incomparably graver in the sight of God—so flagrant, indeed, that His judgment can tarry no longer. This accounts for a circumstance that has often perplexed the students of Daniel's prophecy. We read of an abomination of desolation in the predicted account of Antiochus; (11: 31); and it has been commonly supposed that our Lord refers to this in Matt. 24:1515When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) (Matthew 24:15). Those who looked for the future fulfillment of this abomination have sought to reconcile it with the facts, by the assumption that the Spirit of God must have branched out into the future personage that Antiochus represented. But in my judgment there is no need for anything so unnatural. Antiochus Epiphanes was only a type, and verse 31 does not go beyond his history, save as a foreshadowing.
In other words, to the end of verse 31 all is strictly historical—typical, of course, of the future, but nothing more. And therefore the answer to the difficulty that some find in our Lord's quoting, as they suppose Dan. 11:3131And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. (Daniel 11:31), is really as plain as possible. He does not quote this verse. The passage he refers to is in chap. 12. In chap. 12:11, you will find an expression similar to this. “And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.” There we have a defined date, which connects this last setting up of the desolating abomination with the deliverance our Lord predicts in Matt. 24., and Jacob's most fiery trial is that which just precedes his deliverance. Now there are more reasons than one for believing this passage in Dan. 12. to be what our Lord cites. Some of them depend upon considerations more fit for the study than for public ministry. But the sum of the matter is, that the expressions the Holy Ghost employs in chap. 11:31, and in chap. 12: 11, differ. In chap. 11: 31, it means the abomination of him that desolates, or of the desolater. Whereas, in chap. 12: 11 The true meaning is that which is given in our Lord's words—not the abomination of him that maketh desolate, but “the abomination of desolation;” which is, I suppose, what is meant in the English version by the words, “that maketh desolate.” Thus the two phrases are distinct. Although there is a resemblance between them, there is also a difference; and that difference is enough to show that our Lord spoke not of the abomination set up by Antiochus, but of that mentioned in chap. 12. Consequently, there is, in fact, no difficulty to be removed; because the desolation spoken of in chap. 11. is past—the desolation (chap. 12.) that our Lord draws attention to is future. That this is so will appear from other considerations also. Thus, in the verses that follow, we have a state of things distinct from what will be in the future tribulation of Israel. “Such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries; but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.” Now we find from the Revelation, and other parts of Scripture that speak about the future of Israel, that the godly remnant could hardly be said to do exploits. They will suffer; but I do not think that deeds of power thus characterize the blessed ones who are to pass through the dreadful crisis of the future. In the days of Antiochus, it was not so much suffering, but “being strong, and doing exploits” —exactly what was true of the Maccabees and others, who undoubtedly were not so much a baud of martyrs as a set of men who roused the spirit of Israel, and resisted the cruel and profane scourge of that day. Again, we read, “And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days.” There is a long period, observe, of sorrow and trouble, that follows the outburst of courage and prowess against the desolater, and this is still continued in further verses. “Now, when they shall fall, they shalt be holpen with a little help; but many shall cleave to them with flatteries. And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end; because it is yet for a time appointed” —clearly showing that this is before the time of the end. The Spirit of God is here referring to what has already taken place. And then we have a picture of terrible desolation that goes on, as it is said, “to the time of the end.” I infer, then, that the Spirit of God singles out the desolation that then befell the people of Israel, and the defiling of the sanctuary under Antiochus or his generals. This brought vividly out the circumstances of the last days; but along with them certain other circumstances were added, that ought not to be expected in those days. In other words, we arrive at what may be called the long and dreary blank that severs the past history of Israel, and the struggles in their land against neighboring aggressors, from the great crisis of the last days. This is where the true break occurs. Certain disasters were to go on “to the time of the end; because it is yet for a time appointed.” There is no place in the chapter where the interruption of the history: so well fits in as after verse 35.
But now, in verse 36, at once we have a person abruptly introduced into the scene. We are not told who he was, or where he came from; but the character that is given of him, the scene that he occupies, the history that the Spirit of God enters into in connection with him, all declare too plainly that it is the terrible king who will set himself up in the land of Israel in personal antagonism to the Messiah of Israel, the Lord Jesus. He it was of whom our Lord spoke when he said that if they refused Him who had come in His Father's name, they would receive another coming in his own name, Nor is this the only passage of Scripture, where this same false Christ, or rather Antichrist (for there is a difference between the terms), is described as “the king.” Not only have we different references to him under other epithets, but in the first great and comprehensive prophecy of Scripture, Isaiah, we have him introduced in an equally abrupt manner. In Isa. 30 we have an enemy of Israel, called the Assyrian. Doubtless, looking at past history, Sennacherib was their great head in that day. But he only furnished the opportunity to the Spirit of God to bring out the future and final adversary of Israel. His fall is here brought before us. “For through the voice of the Lord, shall the Assyrian be beaten down who smote with a rod. And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which the Lord shall lay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps, and in battles of shaking will He fight with it.” After the end of that victory there will be exceeding joy for Israel; instead of the train of sorrow which most victories bring, there follows unfeigned gladness before the Lord. “It shall be with tabrets and harps.” For the enemy there will be proportionate misery. Sometimes still more awful and unending than temporal destruction falls upon the proud foe. “For Tophet is ordained of old, yea, for the king it is prepared: He hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.” In our version there is a singular obscurity, remarked by another, in this verse. At first sight it might appear that the Assyrian and “the king” were the same person. The true rendering is “For the king also it is prepared” —that is, Tophet is prepared for the Assyrian, but besides, for THE KING also. Just as in our passage in Daniel, we have the Assyrian or king of the north on the one hand, and “the king” on the other. The same frightful end awaits them both. But I only refer to this now for the purpose of showing that the expression “the king” is not unprecedented in Scripture, and that it applies to a notorious person that the Jews were taught in prophecy to expect. God, in judicial retribution for their rejection of the true Christ, would give them up to receive the Antichrist. This is “the king.” He would arrogate to himself the royal rights of the true king, the Anointed of God. Tophet was prepared for the king of the north, and also for “the king.”
But this is not all. In Isa. 57 we have him introduced with similar abruptness. In chap. 55. are shown the moral qualities that God will produce in His people. In chapter 57. He shows us the fearfully iniquitous state then also found in Israel. And in that day God will no longer endure anything but reality. Forms of piety, covering uncleanness and ungodliness, will have passed away. There “the king” is suddenly introduced to us (v. 9). “Thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thy messengers far off, and didst debase thyself even unto hell.” To have to do with him was to debase oneself unto hell. No wonder that for “the king also” Tophet was prepared. This shows that before the mind of Israel from the first there was one that the Spirit of God led them to expect to reign over the land in the last days, who is Called “the king.”
This at once furnishes a most important clue to Dan. 11. We are come to the time of the end. The bank is closed—the long dark night of Israel's dispersion is well-nigh over. The Jews are in the land. In what condition? Are they under Christ? Alas I there is another and a terrible scene that must first be enacted there. “The king” that we have read of is there, and the course he pursues is just what we might expect from the landmarks of the Holy Ghost. “The king shall do according to his will.” Ah! are any of us sufficiently aware what a fearful thing it is to be the doers of our own will? Here is the end of it. It was the first great characteristic of sin from the beginning. It is what Adam did, and the fall of the world was the immediate result. Here is one who at that day may seem to be the loftiest and most influential of Adam's sons. But he does according to his will.” And nothing worse. Are we to read such a history as this without moral profit to our own souls? To forget what an evil thing it is ever to be the doers of our own will? Let none suppose that, because they may be in a position to rule, they are therefore outside the danger. Alas! it is not so—no one thing so unfits a person for righteous rule as the inability to obey. It is good first to know what it is to be subject. Oh! may it strike deep into all our hearts, that “the king,” the Antichrist, is first stamped as one doing his own will. May it test us how far we are seeking ours! How far, under any circumstances, we are doing or allowing anything, that we could not wish every soul in this world to see—perhaps even those that are nearest to us. Alas! one knows the difficulty and danger in these things from one's own heart, from experience and observation. Yet there is no one thing more contrary to that Christ that we have learned. We are sanctified “unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” It is not only to the blessing, the sprinkling of the blood—but to the obedience of Jesus Christ—to the same spirit and principle of obedience; for that is the meaning of the expression. We are not like the Jews who were put under the law, and whose obedience had this character—bound to do such and such things under penalty of death. We are already alive unto God, conscious of the blessedness in which we stand, and awakened to see the beauty of the will of God, for His will it is which has saved and sanctified us. This is our calling, and our practical work here below. Christians have no other business, properly speaking, than to do the will of another. We have to do God's will according to the character of the obedience of Christ—as sons delighting in the will of our Father. It does not matter what we may have to do. It may be one's natural daily occupation. But do not make two individuals of yourselves—with one principle in your business or family, and another for the church and worship of God. Never allow such a thought. We have Christ for everything and every day. Christ is not a blessing for us merely when we meet together or are called to die: but if we have Christ, we have Him forever, and from the first moment we are emancipated from doing our own will. That we learn is death; but it is gone now in Christ's death. We are delivered, for we are alive in Him risen. But what are we delivered for? To do the will of God. We are sanctified unto the obedience of Jesus Christ.
As for “the king,” you have in him the awful principle of sin that has always been at work, but which here exceeds all bounds. The moment has come when God will remove the providential checks which up to that time, He will have put upon men, when Satan will be allowed to bring about all his plans; and that, too, in the very land whereon the eyes of God rest continually.
“The king shall do according to his own will; and he shall exalt himself and magnify himself” —not only above every man, but “above every god.” And it is not only that he takes his place above these so-called gods, but “he shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods.” And, strange to say, (if one did not know the perfect wisdom of God, and could not wait for His counsels to be matured,) in spite of his fearful profanity, “he shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.” There at once is a word that gives us the key to the passage. For some have found immense difficulties in this portion of the word of God. Many have transported into this verse the Pope of Rome, others Mahomet or Bonaparte. But here we find that this king is to prosper till the indignation be accomplished. What, or about whom? Has God indignation against His Church? Never. This is the time of the perfect patience of God—not of His indignation. With whom, then, is it connected? The word of God is perfectly plain. It is when dealing with Israel that God speaks of indignation I have already shown that fully from Isa. 5; 10; 14, and other passages, as it is entirely confirmed by the whole nature of the revelation here. For we read of one that would be the king of Israel—not in Constantinople or Rome, but in Palestine. And the time is a future outburst of indignation against Israel in the promised land. He (the false king) shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished. Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women. The expression, “the desire of women,” clearly, to my mind, refers to Christ—the one to whom all Jews were looking forward, and whose birth must have been above all things desired by Jewish women. It is plain from the connection that such is the true meaning. For it occurs between “the God of his fathers” (Jehovah) and any god.” Nothing is less likely than, if it had merely referred to natural relationships, that it would have been thus placed. It was, probably, from the wish to apply this to the pope that such an interpretation has found currency. But let us only understand that the prophecy concerns Israel and their land, and all is plain. “He shall not regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women.” Christ is distinguished from the God of his fathers, perhaps, because the Son was to become incarnate. But Christ is regarded no more than the God of his fathers—an expression, by the way, which implies that he himself is a Jew. It is “the God of his fathers.” “For he shall magnify himself above all. But in his estate shall he honor the God of forces.” It is not that he goes forward as Antiochus did, trying to force Jupiter Olympius upon the Jews; but he adopts a new superstition. This also disproves the reference to Antiochus, who was a Gentile. Here it is a Jew, who will take the place of the Christ, and who, of course, regards neither the true Christ nor Jehovah.
It is a self-exalting personage who opposes the true God, i.e., who equally sets aside the superstitions of men and the faith of God's people. Self-exaltation is his marked feature.
But that is not all. The antichrist will be infidel, but not merely infidel. He will have rejected the God of Israel, and the Messiah. Nor will he honor any of the gods of the Gentiles. But even this man, although he sets himself up as the true God upon the earth, will, for all that, have some one to whom he bows and causes others to bow along with himself. The human heart, even in antichrist, cannot do without an object of Idolatry. So, in ver. 38, there is this apparent inconsistency that comes out in the antichrist. “But in his estate shall he honor the God of forces.” He makes a god, as well as setting himself up to be God. “A god whom his fathers knew not shall he honor with gold and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.” It is entirely an invention of his own. More than that. He will divide the land among his adherents. “He shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.” There we have God's account of this king that will be found in Palestine in the last days. And it is plain that this last verse is a most conclusive proof that he is in Palestine reigning, It is “the land.” The Spirit of God never so speaks of any other country. It was that land which was nearest to God—a sort of center for all others.
Here we have a change in the history. “And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him.” This confirms what was said before—that “the king” is found “at the time of the end.” Then “shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen, and with many ships.” The Spirit of God had long before spoken about the kings of the north and of the south. It was important to show that at the time of the end these powers will have successors, who will make their push at “the king” in the holy land. “The king of the south” —that is, Egypt—and “the king of the north” —that is, the holder of the present Syrian possessions of the Sultan. These two persons shall make a movement against “the king.” Not that they have a common policy: on the contrary, they seem bitter enemies one of another. But “the king” so exalts himself, arrogating to himself such pretensions in the holy land, that God permits the final catastrophe to arrive. The king of the south comes first, and then the king of the north, who appears to be the great military and naval leader of the east in those days. “The king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.” “shall enter also into the glorious land.” This can be no other land than that of Israel. The king is there. The northern king is a totally different person, an antagonist of “the king,” as well as the king of the south. The Spirit of God having introduced “the king,”
without telling us whence he came, now drops that personage without telling us what became of him. His frightful destiny shown us fully in other scriptures. But it was important to introduce him as an episode in chap. 11., for the purpose of showing the last great conflict between the kings of the north and of the south. Accordingly he drops “the king,” and the rest of the chapter is occupied with the king of the north. He not only enters the glorious land, but he goes on with conquests elsewhere. “Many countries shall be overthrown, but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon.” We find from Isa. 11 That this is a very notable fact. These borderers lived on the outskirts of the holy land. God so orders that if they escape the king of the north, they are to be ravaged by the triumphant Israelites. God will not permit that the early and bitter enemies of Israel should meet with their righteous retribution from the hands of any but the people whom they had so sought to oppose and injure. Accordingly, it would appear from Isaiah, that, a very little after, the Israelites execute God's judgment on them.
“He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries; and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.” From this we learn that the king of the north is not acting as a colleague with the king of the south. He proceeds down to the south, where, it would appear, (ver. 43,) there will be a great development of material prosperity, whether from the resources of the land itself, or more probably from its becoming the great emporium of western and eastern commerce in that part of the world. “But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him.” It is when he is down in the south, beyond Palestine, that he hears these rumors of perplexity in the north and east. He had come himself from the north, and was the conqueror over the east also; and now he has tidings from these quarters that agitate him. He hastens back from the land of Egypt and reaches Palestine. “And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palaces between the seas (that is between the Mediterranean and the Dead seas) in the glorious holy mountain: yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him.” This is the doom of the once victorious king of the north not of “the king” who was introduced by the way to show us the occasion of the final struggle between the north and south.
I would now desire to inquire whether there be not other scriptures of interest to connect with what we have just been looking at. In the close of Zechariah, we shall find information of great interest. Just a word or two first on the end of chap. 11. The Spirit of God there says, “Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock.” This I conceive is clearly the Antichrist— “the king.” For, looking at verse 16, we learn that this idol shepherd is in the land. “Lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit them that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that which is broken, nor feed that that standeth still; but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.” This utter selfishness, and self-exaltation, and spoiling the flock, instead of feeding it and carrying the lambs in his bosom, is in frightful contrast with Christ, the Good Shepherd. Then the false shepherd, Antichrist, is to be raised up in the land of Israel, and there he does not spare the flock of God. In chap. 12. we have another power. It is said, in verse 2, “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” There are nations gathering against Jerusalem. Just as in Dan. 11., the king of the north comes down and the king of the south. Nations assemble against Jerusalem while this idol shepherd is there. Jerusalem and the Jews are the object of attack. “And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people; all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” Victory seems to incline to the assailants of Israel. But none can then harden themselves against them and prosper, because the Lord will have identified Himself with them in that day. “In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness; and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah;” and then we have the way in which the Lord will defend His people in that day. But what will make it still plainer is that which we read in chap. 14:2, “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.” Here we have additional disclosures that you would not have gathered from chap. 12. Thus we learn that “the city shall be taken and half of the city shall go forth into captivity;” evidently distinguishing this future siege from the past. When the Chaldeans took the city, they carried all away captive. When the Romans took it, all they spared were made prisoners of. Were we have another siege, in which half will be taken and the other half not. And if anything can more clearly mark off the future from the past, it is that the nations, having taken half of the city, will not pursue their victory further. Why? “Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle. And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east.” Who can pretend that that has ever been accomplished? Who can say that the Lord has thus come and stood upon the Mount of Olives? How can you reconcile the past with such a statement as this? The Lord has never been on Jerusalem's soil as a conqueror since that day. Was it thus when Titus besieged it? Do you try to explain it away as merely a providential deliverance? But, I ask, were they delivered then? They were taken captive. Jerusalem to this day remains trodden down to the Gentiles, and must, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. But the passage indicates the times of the Gentiles closing in; the end of Gentile oppression. When this day is verified, and the Lord goes forth to fight against those nations, His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives. And as a mark that this is not to be allegorized, we find that the Spirit adds that the Mount of Olives is to split in twain—an outward physical proof that the Lord God has planted His feet there. “The Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley: and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” “Ye shall flee to the valley of the mountain,” —that is, it will form a valley between the two— “for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal.... and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.” Now, then, there we find a most clear proof that there is a future siege of Jerusalem, and that this siege will be characterized by two attacks. The first attack will be successful against Israel; half the city will be taken, and all the miseries of a frightful siege will follow, as far as half the city is concerned; but the other half is reserved for the Lord, who will bring the third part through the fire. He will put Himself at their head, and crush all the nations of the earth that come together against Jerusalem. Thus the second attack will be to the ruin of those that make it. If we connect this with Daniel, how plain is the additional light that we get! The king of the north first comes down when the king of the south is pushing at “the king” in the holy land. There is a simultaneous assault made upon Israel, to destroy the people in the land, who, alas! deserve it. But in the midst of evil there will be a godly seed. God will employ these assailants to do the work of the executioner. The wicked will be taken away, and when God has purged those that are there, there will come another scene. The king of the north having been successful in his first attack, pursues his way towards Egypt, against the king of the south. He comes there, but tidings from the north and east trouble him.
Meanwhile, we may ask, what is become of “the king?” Has he been destroyed in the collision between the kings of the north and of the south, that had taken place in the land? No. What then is become of him How does he fall? By the brightness of the appearing of the Lord from heaven. He is reserved for the hand of God himself. He will be cast alive into a Lake of fire burning with brimstone. “For the king also it is prepared.” Thus we have the Old Testament and the New giving us one concurrent testimony. It will be by no ordinary doom of ruined man that he will perish. It is God departing from all His ordinary ways of dealing with the wicked. Men have been from time to time taken up in the grace of God from this world without passing through death; and there are men for whom it is destined of God to be sent down alive into hell—the terrible contrast of those who are alive when Christ comes, waiting to be taken up to heaven. It will be so with that wicked one, the idol shepherd—the king—and not with him only. The king of the north is a bolder enemy still. “The king” has set himself up in the land, corrupting and apostatizing the people of Israel. He has met with his doom. If only the slightest word of the judgment that had been executed in that land were to reach the king of the north, we can understand how he would be troubled. Whether that is the cause of his hasty return against Israel., or because the ten tribes were in movement, I do not pretend to say. We are not told. But he comes up to the holy land again; and this time, it is to fall under the immediate hand of God—not with the sword of a mighty man, nor with the sword of a mean man. No man, but God, will execute the vengeance upon him. Here we find the reason why there were two attacks. He has gone down, after his first assault on Jerusalem into the south and has pursued certain conquests there. Excited by the tidings referred to, he hastens to return, hoping now to have it all his own way. “Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle.”
But I must also ask you to look, before closing, at one or two other passages. Take Isa. 28 and 29., where you will find abundant confirmation of all that I have touched upon in this closing scene. In Isa. 28. you will observe that there are two great powers of evil connected with the land of that day—one “the king,” who is in relation with the people, and in the land; the other the king of the north, who comes down as an antagonistic power. We shall find both these in this chapter. First, Ephraim is mentioned, and the Lord pronounces woe upon “the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower Behold the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which, as a tempest of hail, and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.” There, I apprehend, you have the Assyrian threatened, as this dreadful storm from the north, that would break forth upon Ephraim. If we look at the middle of the chapter, we shall find another thing. We have seen what was the condition of Ephraim, who dwelt in the outskirts of the country. But what was the destiny of Jerusalem, the capital “Because ye have said, (ver. 15,) We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.” There we have evidently what is connected with “the king” who will be in Jerusalem, and who will form a compact with “the beast,” the great imperial power of that day, to whom Satan will have given his throne. There is harmony between what we have in Isaiah and in Revelation and in Daniel. “We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us.” Mark that. The over flowing scourge is the king of the north, the outside power that is coming down upon them. They of Jerusalem have made a covenant with death and with hell, that is, with instruments of Satan in that day: and they hope by this means to escape the king of the north. I have already shown that the beast, the great power of the west, will be in connection with the “king” at Jerusalem—that the western parts will be the great seat of the beast—that he will command all Europe, that properly belonged to the Roman Empire. When that empire is re-organized, he will be the great instrument of using its strength. “The king” will have made a covenant with him; or, as it is said in chap. ix., he, that is, the Roman prince, will make a covenant with the mass of the Jews. At the close, both are found in Jerusalem, fighting against the Lord and His saints coming from heaven. They will find their supposed strength in this covenant, but it will not stand. The overflowing scourge (the Assyrian) sweeps on, and half the city of Jerusalem is taken. How marvelously does Scripture hang together! Then (Isa. 28:1616Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. (Isaiah 28:16)) comes in the reference to the Lord's laying a foundation-stone in Zion, which is evidently a word for the faithful remnant of that day, however true for us who believe now.
Isa. 24 is the last portion to which I wish to refer. There we have the closing desolation of the city. “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt. . . Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow; and it shall be unto me as Ariel. And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.” That is the siege spoken of in Zechariah. “And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground,” &c. That is their condition when they are desolated. But mark, in verse 5: Moreover the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust..... Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquake And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night-vision.” The Lord has gone forth and fought with those nations as He fought in the day of battle. I have brought sufficient evidence from various parts of the word of God, which entirely falls in with, and throws light upon, the very interesting portion of Daniel now before us. All concur in showing most clearly that there is a terrible future for apostate Israel and their western associates; and no less terrible for their confederate eastern adversaries. The covenant with hell will not stand. When the great powers of the world will have, apparently, swept all before them, and have gathered for the last great struggle before Jerusalem, God will take that opportunity for dealing with them after His long term of patience. It will be the closing scene. They will think that universal monarchy is to be in their hands; but it will be God's day for summoning them to judgment. Here I speak of a judgment of nations and of kings—not of the dead before the great white throne.
God is about to deal with the earth—with men in the midst of all their plans. The regeneration of the world will be the great day when the Lord, having weeded out of Israel the transgressors, and used “the king” himself, and the judgment that fell upon him, to separate the true ones of Judah from the wicked, will cause the hour to chime when the account must be settled with the nations. This appears to me to be the simple, straight-forward statement of the truth of God that we have here. We are not to suppose it is merely a question of one great power only. There will be different principles at work. And it is an awful thing to think that these lands where we enjoy such privileges are to be then overspread with the deepest darkness. The covenant with death and with hell will be because of an alliance made with the highly civilized western world. What a humbling thing for the pride of man! Civilization in a day that is past did not keep the mightiest minds from degrading idolatry and filthiness. Alas! we shall have a still worse scene at the close. Christendom will end in restored idolatry, in novel false gods,—in man himself worshipped as God. Such I believe, is the predicted future of this age. But one can keep the heart the same from being entangled with all that leads to it—Christ Himself. May we be occupied with Him; not building upon men's foundations, not hoping their hope, not trusting to progress, or even to religion, so called. If Christ is my object in everything, there is safety there, and nowhere else.