I now turn to the critic’s second argument, which is based on the language of the Book of Daniel. The presence of the Book of Daniel in the Jewish Canon is a fact more weighty than all the criticisms of the critics.
INTRODUCTORY
It is not in our time only that the end of the world has been predicted. The phenomenon is not a natural one, resulting from the study of the evidences; it is supernatural altogether.
DANIEL AND HIS TIMES
This was “King Jehoiachin’s captivity,” according to the era of the prophet Ezekiel, who was himself among the captives. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon.
THE KING’S DREAM AND THE PROPHET’S VISIONS
The date of the earlier vision was about the time of Jehoiakim’s revolt, when their. 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.”.
THE VISION OF THE RIVER OF ULAI
One point of contrast with the prophecy of the fourth Gentile kingdom demands a very emphatic notice. The more explicit revelation of the ninth chapter, measures out the years before the first advent of Messiah.
THE ANGEL’S MESSAGE
The opening verses speak of that strange edict by which Cyrus authorized the building of the temple. Indeed the date of that decree. affords conclusive proof that it was not the beginning of the seventy weeks.
THE PROPHETIC YEAR
Is it possible then to ascertain the character of the years of this lesser era. Solomon’s temple, to the year before the foundation of the second temple was laid, was a period of 490 years of 360 days.fh8.
THE MYSTIC ERA OF THE WEEKS
But Judah proved impenitent and obdurate, and the promised blessings were once again postponed till the close of this strange era of the Gentile dispensation. It appears from the passages already quoted, that the predicted tribulation is to last three and a half years, and to date from the violation of the treaty in the middle of the seventieth week.
MESSIAH THE PRINCE”
4.fj2 The list of the governors of Syria, therefore, fails us, and for the same interval P. But whatever doubt there may be as to the birth-date of the Son of God, it is due to no omission in the sacred page if equal doubt be felt as to the epoch of His ministry on earth. Luke and the date of the nativity (as fixed by the evangelist himself, under Cyrenius, in the autumn of B.C.
And thus, passing out of the region of argument and controversy, we reach at last a well- ascertained date of vital importance in this inquiry. The ostensible date of the 1st Nisan, therefore, according to the phases, was the 31st March.
THE PASCHAL SUPPER
Not so was it with the holy offerings of the feast day, which they must needs eat before the hour at which their uncleanness would have ceased.fk8. John expressly state that it was “the preparation of the Passover,” and must not this necessarily mean the fourteenth of Nisan. But besides, it was specially distinguished as the day on which the firstfruits of the harvest were offered in the temple;.
The law enjoined that the sheaf of the firstfruits should be waved before the Lord “on the morrow after the (paschal) Sabbath,” (<032310>Leviticus and from that day the seven weeks were reckoned which ended with the feast of Pentecost. But as the book of Deuteronomy expressly ordains that the weeks should be counted from the first day of the harvest,.
FULFILLMENT OF THE PROPHECY
Out of deference to these writers, and also in the hope of removing prejudices which are fatal to the right understanding of the subject, these difficulties have here been discussed. These seventy weeks represent seventy times seven prophetic years of 360 days, to be reckoned from the issuing of an edict for the rebuilding of the city — “the street and rampart,” of Jerusalem. And accuracy as absolute as the nature of the case permits is no more than men are here entitled to demand.
The date of the nativity could not possibly have been the termination of the period, for then the sixty-nine weeks must have ended thirty-three years before Messiah’s death. No student of the Gospel narrative can fail to see that the Lord’s last visit to Jerusalem was not only in fact, but in the purpose of it, the crisis of His ministry, the goal towards which it had been directed.
PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION
As already noticed, the Church of Rome displays the chief moral lineaments of the Man of Sin. It is not whether great crises in the history of Christendom, such as the fall of Paganism, the rise of the Papacy and of the Moslem power, and the. Protestant reformation of the sixteenth century, be within the, scope of the visions of St.
Far more unwarrantable still is the assertion of finality, so confidently made, of the prophecies relating to the apostasy. They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver;” “And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.”.
FULLNESS OF THE GENTILES
But, it may with reason be demanded, does not this imply merely that Israel shall be brought within the blessings of the Gospel, not that the Jews shall be blessed on a principle which is entirely inconsistent with the Gospel. Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.” (<451508>Romans 15:8, 9). Everything that God has promised is within the range of the believer’s hope;fn5 but this is its near horizon.
The truth of the second advent belongs to prophecy, and the statements of Scripture respecting it are marked by precisely the same characteristics as marked the Old Testament prophecies of Messiah.fn6. An intelligent apprehension of the truth respecting it is essential to the right understanding of unfulfilled prophecy.
SECOND SERMON ON THE MOUNT
The entire passage is obviously prophetic, and its fulfillment clearly pertains to the time of the end. It is so much the object of the sacred historians to describe these that little else is recorded. But of the interval of 400 years between the promise and the completion no account is given.”fo11.
The seventy years from Messiah’s birth to the dispersion of the nation were fruitful in miracle and prophetic fulfillment. The decline of the Moslem power is one of the most patent of public facts;.
THE PATMOS VISIONS
The seven Churches; the transitional period following the close of the Christian dispensation.” fp7
The seven seals; the period during which all that prophecy has foretold shall precede the kingdom will be fulfilled
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.”. The great tribulation” of Scripture, the awful persecution of the last days, which shall continue three and a half years. The great and terrible day of the Lord,” the period of the seventh seal, beginning with a revelation of Christ to His people in Jerusalem,.
But a careful examination of the statements of Scripture will lead to some modification of this view. His wars and conquests are predicted,fp10 and the twelfth chapter opens with the mention of the predicted time of trouble, “the great tribulation” of Matthew and Revelation.
THE COMING PRINCE
And these results will reward the student of the Apocalyptic visions of Daniel and St. One point in the angel’s description of the Beast in relation to the harlot claims special notice. Demons are frequently mentioned in the narrative of the Gospels, and they have also a place in the doctrine of the Epistles.
Four years later he had founded an Empire and given a new direction to the history of the world. The day of vengeance of our God,” “the great and the terrible day of the Lord,” — such are the names divinely given to describe that time of unexampled horror.
CHRONOLOGICAL TREATISE AND TABLES
The years of the different eras are only in part concurrent. For example the first year of the desolations dates from the tenth day of
589, and the tenth year of the captivity begins even later, while the ninth year of Zedekiah and seventeenth of Nebuchadnezzar dates from the 1St Nisan (15th March) B.C. If these points be kept in view the chronology of the table will be found to harmonize every chronological statement relating to the period embraced in it, contained in the Books of Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
CERTAIN LEADING DATES IN HISTORY, SACRED AND PROFANE fr21
THE JEWISH MONTHS
MISCELLANEOUS: WHO AND WHEN
Pusey here remarks,fs3 “The accession of Artaxerxes after the seven months of the assassin Artabanus would fall in the middle of 464. 18, then forty-six years would bring us exactly to A.D.29 — the first Passover of the Lord’s ministry. Elliott’s book to find that the words are nothing more than a prediction of the downfall of paganism in the fourth century.
As the Harlot comes to her doom by the agency of the Beast, it is. This is a typical instance of the looseness of the historical school in dealing with Scripture.
A RETROSPECT AND A REPLY
Even the Apostle of the Gentiles, in the whole course of his ministry, brought the Gospel first to the Jews. It is only the superficial reader of the passage, I reply, who can use it thus. Guinness asserts that the apocalyptic visions have been fulfilled in the events of the Christian era.
I hold him to that issue, and I test it by a reference to the vision of the sixth chapter. My statement was: “The division of the Roman earth into ten kingdoms has never yet taken place.
FOOTNOTES
The First Book of Maccabees is a history of the highest repute, and the accuracy of it is universally acknowledged. Having regard to the testimony of the Annalistic tablet, that question may be looked upon as settled. My belief in the Divine character of the Book of Daniel will, I trust, appear plainly in these pages.
These writers further urge that the description of the third kingdom resembles Rome rather than Greece. Treatise Rosh Hashanah of the Mishna deals with the mode in which, in the days of the “second temple,” the feast of the new moon was regulated.
