Closing Scenes of Babylon’s History — Celebration of the Conquest of Judea — The Sacred Vessels Desecrated — God. Clarke from this Prophecy in 1825 — The Sick Man of the East — The Eastern Question; What is It.
INTRODUCTION
Instead of choosing, like too many kings of later times, means for the gratification of low and base desires, he chose young men who should be
He appointed them daily provision of his own meat and wine. Instead of the coarse fare which some would have thought good enough for captives,
And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who had appointed your meat and your drink; for why
They addressed themselves to the king in Syriac, a dialect of the Chaldean language which was used by the educated and cultured classes. The severity of his sentence was probably attributable more to the customs of those times than to any malignity on the part of the king.
It was providential that the dream of the king should leave such a powerful impression upon his mind as to raise him to the greatest height of
Then Daniel answered with counsel and wisdom to Arioch the captain of the king’s guard, which was gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon. He answered and said to Arioch the king’s captain, Why is the decree so hasty from the king.
It was remarkable that Daniel and his companions, so lately pronounced by the king ten times better than all his magicians and astrologers, should
Then Daniel went in, and desired of the king that he would give him time, and that he would show the king the interpretation. It was providential that the dream of the king should leave such apowerful impression upon his mind as to raise him to the greatest height of.
It appears that the first intimation Daniel had of the matter was the presence of the executioners, come for his arrest. His own life being thus at
Just as the dream was held from the king, so he was unaccountably held from appealing to Daniel for a solution of the mystery. It appears that the first intimation Daniel had of the matter was thepresence of the executioners, come for his arrest.
I thank thee, and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who hast given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me
But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. And he it is, says Daniel, who maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.
But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall
He resolved to make the channel of the river his own highway into the stronghold of his enemy. The pride of the Babylonians being particularly provoked by this act, in the fifth year of Darius Hystaspes, B.C.
We might as well confine the Babylonian empire to the single reign of Nebuchadnezzar, or that of Persia to the reign of Cyrus, as to confine the
It is the more to be regretted, therefore, that these powers are devoted to the propagation of error, and to misleading the anxious inquirer who wishes to know his whereabouts on the great highway of time. We might as well confine the Babylonian empire to the single reign ofNebuchadnezzar, or that of Persia to the reign of Cyrus, as to confine the.
Alexander’s successors did not constitute another kingdom, but a
Cowles, D.D., may perhaps best be taken as a representative exposition on this side of the question. The Persian was not the same as the Babylonian, nor the Grecian the same as either of the two that preceded it.
The grand fallacy which underlies this whole system of misinterpretation, is the too commonly taught theory that the kingdom of God was set up at
Yet what is the smiting of the image made to mean by the theory under notice. The image of chapter 2 is exactly parallel with the vision of the fourbeasts of chapter 7.
The image of chapter 2 is exactly parallel with the vision of the four beasts of chapter 7. The fourth beast of chapter 7 represents the same as
From this digression we return to the inquiry, Do the toes represent the ten divisions of the Roman empire. No historians of whom we are aware, place the beginning of this work of the dismemberment of the Roman empire earlier than.
The two legs of iron symbolize Rome, not merely during its closing years, but from the very beginning of its existence as a nation; and if these
The connection between these and some of the modern nations of Europe, is still traceable in the names, as England, Burgundy, Lombardy, France, etc. The fallacy, however, which forms the basis of this objection, is the view that the two legs of the image do signify the separation of the Roman empire into its eastern and western divisions.
No such division into two great parts is denoted by the other symbols under which Rome is represented in the book of Daniel; namely, the great
Each of the four monarchies had its own particular territory, which was the kingdom proper, and where we are to look for the chief events in its
With the book of history open before you, I ask you, Is not this an exact representation of the remnants. They shall not cleave one to another.’ The nature of the substances forbids them to do so in the one case; the word of prophecy in the other.
Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without.”
Yet with all these facts before them, asserting the irresistible power of God’s providence through the overturnings and changes of centuries, the efforts of warriors, and the diplomacy and intrigues of courts and kings, some modern expositors have manifested such a marvelous. 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 forever.
Shortly after this language was penned, Napoleon III, this “destined monarch of the world”! was dethroned, and died in ignominious retirement,
The kings, or kingdoms, in the days of which the God of heaven is to set up his kingdom, are evidently those kingdoms which arose out of the Roman empire. The occasional petty revolts of distant provinces, suppressed as with the power, and almost with the speed, of a thunderbolt, did not constitute a division of the kingdom.
This fifth kingdom, then, could not have been set up at Christ’s first advent, because it is not to exist contemporaneously with earthly
This one consideration is sufficient to disprove forever the view that the kingdom of God, which constitutes the fifth kingdom of this series as brought to view in Daniel 2, was set up at the commencement of the Christian era. The image was, at the time of the crucifixion, only developed to the thighs, so to speak; and if the kingdom of God was there set up, if there the stone smote the image, it smote it upon the thighs, not upon the feet, where the prophecy places the smiting.
Again, the kingdom of God is placed before the church as a matter of hope. The Lord did not teach his disciples a prayer which in two or three
The fourth kingdom is first destroyed, the fragments are removed, the territory is cleared, and then the fifth is established as a succeeding kingdom in the order of time. The margin reads, “Which was not in hand.” This shows that the smiting is not done by an agent acting for another, not by the church, for instance, in the hands of Christ; but it is a work which the Lord does by his own divine power, without any human agency.
We have plain Scripture declarations to establish the following propositions
At his request they were placed over the affairs of Babylon, while Daniel himself sat in the gate of the king. There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon,.
And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to cast them into
Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach,. Thus were the visions of mine head in my bed: I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great.
The means by which God did this. What could strike with fear the heart of such a monarch as Nebuchadnezzar? He had been a warrior from his
A still greater humiliation than that narrated in the second chapter was brought upon the magicians. There, they boasted that if they only had the
The remarkable illustration of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. This is symbolized by a tree in the midst of the earth
The mercy that God mingles with his judgments. When order was given that this tree should be cut down, it was commanded that the stump of the
Hence Daniel takes occasion to give the king counsel in view of the threatened judgment. At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon.
And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they
The Medes and the Persians were cruel and rapacious, robbers and spoilers of the people. This beast, of course, corresponds to the fourth division of the great image — the legs of iron.
The fourth terrible beast continues without change of character, and the little horn continues to utter its blasphemies, and hold its millions of
Admonitions, at first simply fraternal, soon became absolute commands in the mouth of the pontiff. And shall wear out the saints of the Most High.” Has the papacy done this.
And shall “think to change times and laws.” What laws and whose? Not the laws of other earthly governments; for it was nothing marvelous or
And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people. And the prophet immediately adds: “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole.
Who was Antiochus? From the time that Seleucus made himself king over the Syrian portion of Alexander’s empire, thus constituting the Syrian
And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them. Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of this sanctuary was cast down.
If it were proper to apply the little horn to any one of these twenty-six Syrian kings, it should certainly be applied to the most powerful and
Hence he could not be at the same time a separate and independent power, or another and remarkable horn, as the little horn was. If it were proper to apply the little horn to any one of these twenty-sixSyrian kings, it should certainly be applied to the most powerful and.
Antiochus the Great, the father of Epiphanes, being terribly defeated in a war with the Romans, was enabled to procure peace only by the payment
The little horn waxed exceeding great; but this Antiochus did not wax exceeding great; on the contrary, he did not enlarge his dominion, except
We answer, Romanists take that view to avoid the application of the prophecy to themselves; and many Protestants follow them, in order to oppose the doctrine that the second advent of Christ is now at hand. It has been an easy matter to show that the little horn does not denote Antiochus.
The field of vision here is substantially the same as that covered by Nebuchadnezzar’s image of chapter 2, and Daniel’s vision of chapter 7
The field of vision here is substantially the same as that covered byNebuchadnezzar’s image of chapter 2, and Daniel’s vision of chapter 7.
The little horn waxed great toward the south. This was true of Rome
The little horn waxed great toward the east. This also was true of Rome
The little horn waxed great toward the pleasant land. So did Rome
By the little horn the daily sacrifice was taken away. This little horn must be understood to symbolize Rome in its entire history including its two
And while the descriptions given in the word of God of the character of this. Hence although three earthly governments are introduced in the prophecy as oppressors of the church, they are here ranged under two heads; “the daily” and the. transgression of desolation.”.
Is the earth the sanctuary? The word sanctuary occurs in the Old and New Testaments one hundred and forty-four times, and from the
All that can be said of the earth, therefore, is, that when renewed, it will be the place where the sanctuary of God will be located. It can present not a shadow of a claim to being the sanctuary at the present time, or the sanctuary of the prophecy.
Is the land of Canaan the sanctuary? So far as we may be governed by the definition of the word, it can present no better claim than the earth to
And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established forever.” This clearly shows the connection which existed between Judah and the sanctuary. There now remains but this oneclaim to be examined; namely, that the sanctuary mentioned in the text is.
Is the temple in heaven the sanctuary? There now remains but this one claim to be examined; namely, that the sanctuary mentioned in the text is
One year’s round of service in the earthly sanctuary represented the entire work of the sanctuary above. In the type, the cleansing of the sanctuary was the brief closing work of the year’s service.
He received letters to the governors beyond the river to help him on his way to Judea, and an order to the keeper of the king’s forest for timber for beams, etc. The occasion of Nehemiah’s petition to the king for permission to go upto Jerusalem was the report which certain ones, returning, had brought.
If any should contend that Nehemiah’s commission must be a decree, because the object of his request was that he might build the city, it is
There was nothing granted to Nehemiah which was not embraced in the decree to Ezra; while the latter had all the forms and conditions of a
It is evident from the prayer of Ezra, as recorded in chapter 9:9 of his book, that he considered himself fully empowered to proceed with the
Reckoning from the commission to Nehemiah, B.C.444, the dates throughout are entirely disarranged; for from that point the troublesome
There is no number in the Bible whose genuineness is better ascertained than that of the 2300 days. To the careful attention of every student of prophecy we commend the subject of the sanctuary.
I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks
And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel; 5. The king still refuses to yield to the influence of the angel; three weeks expire, and lo.
