p. 146 | THE BIBLICAL INSTITUTE

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 10, 1877

THE BIBLICAL INSTITUTE

HELD IN OAKLAND, CAL., APRIL 1–17, 1877.

Last week we gave a brief synopsis of the first two lessons of the course given at this Institute, covering the prophecies of Dan. 2 and 7. This week we give the questions proposed by the class on those two chapters, and the answers, substantially, that were presented to the same.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON LESSONS I. AND II.

1. Dan. 2. It has been stated by some speakers that the reason the Lord chose gold, silver, brass, and iron to represent the four kingdoms in the great image, was because those kingdoms would represent themselves by these metals. Is there any historical proof of this assertion?

Ans. An iron crown was used in the later years of Rome as their symbol of power; and this iron crown appeared as a historical object down to within a few hundred years of the present time. But we know of nothing to sustain the statement in reference to the other kingdoms. That some regard was had to the relative strength of the kingdoms, in the metals by which they were represented, is evident from the language of the prophecy itself: “And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron.” Verse 40. But inasmuch as the image closes with a mixture of miry clay; the idea of degeneracy from beginning to end, from gold to mud, is still more strongly presented.

2. Dan. 2:45. What is the mountain out of which the stone was cut that smote the image on its feet?

Ans. The great mountain of grace, that system of favor to men which led God and his Son to devise the way of salvation, and which led Christ to enter upon the work of redemption which will result in his finally having a kingdom filling the whole earth, after all the evil kingdoms of this world like the shattered fragments of broken potters’ vessels shall have been cleared away.

3. Dan. 7:8. Of what are the eyes and mouth symbolical?

Ans. This little horn being a symbol of the papacy, the eyes in the horn would appropriately indicate the far-seeing policy, shrewdness and cunning of that power. In some of the great papal processions in Rome, there is borne before the pope a banner or shield covered on both sides with eyes, to denote that that church is all eyes, everywhere present, watching the actions of all men. Well was it said of that horn that it had eyes like the eyes of man. The mouth would indicate clearly the other great feature of this church, its utterance of presumptuous words, and assumption of blasphemous titles.

4. Dan. 7:13. What is meant by the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, when he comes to the Ancient of Days?

Ans. This scene certainly does not take place on this earth, or within the region of our atmosphere. The Ancient of Days is not here. The Son of man goes before him to receive a kingdom, which he does not receive before his work as priest is ended; hence it does not refer to his ascension at the time of his first advent; for then he went to his Father to act as priest before him. But he receives his kingdom before he returns. Luke 19:12. Hence this scene transpires in Heaven. The clouds therefore are not the clouds of our atmosphere which may be referred to in expressions respecting his return to this earth. We know of no clouds in Heaven but the clouds of angels that ever surround their Lord; and we think these are the ones intended here.

5. Dan. 7:23. What marked the establishment of Rome as a universal empire?

Ans. Rome reached the height of its greatness under Octavian, known as Augustus Cæsar. The date from which it may most probably be considered a universal empire, was the time when it had made itself master of all the divisions of the preceding or goat kingdom. And when it made Egypt a province, it had then absorbed into itself all the kingdom of Alexander. This was B. C. 30. But it was introduced into prophecy earlier than this, that is, when the league was made between it and the Jews in B. C. 161. After that the prophet saw it extending itself toward the east, the south, and the pleasant land. This was fulfilled when it made Syria and Palestine Roman provinces in B. C. 63, and Egypt, as already stated, B. C. 30.

6. Dan. 7:25. Is the word “times” in this verse in the Greek or Hebrew of such form as to denote just two times; that is, is it in the dual number, so that the expression might be read, “a time, two times, and half a time, making three times and a half?” Ans. No argument, we think, can be drawn from the dual number on this verse. The Hebrew does not make that distinction in numbers, and in the Greek the form is frequently identical with the regular plural. But the expression is none the less definite; for no number being expressed, the law of language would require us to understand the least number that could be expressed by the plural, which is two. As many as two it must be, or it could not be put in the plural; but to say that it is more than two, would be pure assumption for there is nothing to indicate it. And this conclusion is made certain by comparing this language with other prophecies in reference to the same period of time, in which it is called 42 months and 1260 days. Rev. 12:6, 14; 13:5. This would be a time (1 year 360 days) two times (or years 720 days) and half a time (180 days) making in all 1260 days.

7. Dan. 7:25. Some claim that the 1260 years of papal supremacy began somewhere in the 8th century when Pepin ascended the throne. How can this be answered?

Ans. The point marked in the prophecy as the beginning of papal supremacy is not when the pope became a temporal prince, but when he had power to persecute the church of God. This was not by virtue of any grant from Pepin, nor from Phocas, but from Justinian. Croly, on the Apocalypse, says that the highest authorities among the civilians and annalists of Rome spurn the idea that Phocas was the founder of the supremacy of Rome; they ascend to Justinian as the only legitimate source. Baronius, the great Catholic historian, formally gives the whole detail of Justinian’s grants of supremacy to the pope. Gavazzi, Lectures, p. 66, says: “The celebrated letter of Justinian to the pope in the year 533, not only recognizing all previous privileges, but enlarging them, and entitling the pope and his church to many immunities and rights, afterward gave origin to the pretensions displayed in the canon law.” See also De Commin, vol. 1, p. 114. This decree made in 533 was not carried into effect till 538, and we must date the period from the time when the saints’ times and laws were actually given into his hands. It was this spiritual control, not temporal, that is marked by the prophecy.

8. Dan. 7:25. If the Bible year is only 360 days, how were the seasons regulated, as there are in reality in every year 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 49 seconds?

Ans. The regular year of the Jews was 12 months of 30 days each, which would give just 360 days for the year. But this falling so much short of a real year, the seasons would have been entirely thrown out of place in a short time, unless some method had been adopted to remedy the difficulty. The simple method adopted by the Jews was this: Every third year an extra month was intercalated. Their 12th month was called Adar, and this extra month was called ve-Adar, or the second Adar, and was made of sufficient length just to make up the time they had lost, and bring the year up with the sun again. But this third year, lengthened out indefinitely by this thirteenth month, was exceptional. The regular year was 360 days in length; and hence in the reckoning of all prophetic periods the year of 360 days must be taken. But the years which they symbolize are of course the actual years, 365¼ days in length.

9. What judgment is spoken of in Dan. 7:26?

Ans. Political judgment on the papacy at the end of its specified period of 1260 years. National calamity and overthrow are sometimes spoken of in the Scriptures as judgments. In Acts 7:7, Stephen speaks of the overthrow of the Egyptians at the exode as follows: “And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God; and after that shall they come forth and serve me in this place.” It could therefore be properly said that the (threatened) judgment upon the Egyptian nation sat at that time. So the period of papal supremacy was limited to 1260 years, and at the end of that time judgment was rendered and his dominion taken away. That this judgment refers exclusively to the papacy is evident from the remainder of the verse. It was at the time when his dominion was taken away which we know was in 1798; and a consuming process was to follow, which has since been fulfilled till now the last vestige of his temporal power is gone, and the end must be near. This judgment is not the same as that of verses 9 and 10, which has been explained in remarks on the sanctuary, nor the same as that of verse 22, which seems to refer to the time when the saints will have their part to act in apportioning judgments upon the wicked, 1 Cor. 6:2, which will be during their reign of a thousand years with Christ. Rev. 20:4.

10. At what date was Rome divided into its eastern and western divisions?

Ans. As the prophecy takes no note of this division it is a point of no importance so far as concerns an interpretation of the prophecy. It is however a matter of historical interest as one of the steps which prepared the way for the overthrow of the Western Empire. Swinton’s Outlines of the World’s History, p. 193, speaks on this point as follows:— “Constantine made a change which had a great effect upon the later history of the Roman world. He removed the capital of the empire to the old Greek city of Byzantium, on the Bosphorus, which he greatly enlarged and called New Rome, but which has been better known ever since as Constantinople (Greek polis, a city—the city of Constantine). Even before this, Rome had, as we have seen, ceased to be the usual dwelling-place of the emperors, who commonly lived at Milan, Nicomedia (Bithynia), and elsewhere; but the transfer of the capital to a Greek city is a proof of how completely the Empire had come to overshadow Rome and Italy. Theodosius was the last emperor who reigned over the whole Roman Empire. On his death in A. D. 395, the vast dominion was divided between his two sons.—Honorius ruling in the West, and Arcadius in the East. From that date the history of Rome divides itself into two distinct histories, that of the Western or Latin Empire, and that of the Eastern, Greek or Byzantine Empire.”

LESSON THREE.

THE VISION OF DANIEL CHAPTER VIII.

The symbols of this chapter are mostly explained in the chapter itself. The ram with two horns, the higher of which came up last, represented the kings, or the kingdom, of Media and Persia, the two horns symbolizing the two elements in the nation, the Medes and Persians. The Persian came up last and attained the controlling influence. Hostilities first broke out between the Babylonians and the Medes, whereupon Cyaxares, king of the Medes, summoned to his aid his nephew Cyrus, the son of his sister who had been married to Cambyses the king of Persia. Cyrus, responding with an army of 30,000 Persians, was at once placed by Cyaxares in command of the joint forces of the Medes and Persians. On the taking of Babylon, B. C. 538, Cyaxares (who is called Darius in Dan. 5:31), as civil ruler, took the throne. On his death, two years later, B. C. 536, he made Cyrus his successor, and the same year, Cambyses, the father of Cyrus dying, Cyrus was brought also to the Persian throne. The two were then united in one; and thus was founded the Medo-Persian Empire, the ruling house being in the Persian line. This power pushed its conquests especially in the directions named, northward, westward and southward, till in the days of Ahasuerus, Esther 1:1, it reigned over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, from India to Ethiopia.

The rough goat is explained to be the king of Grecia. Verse 21. The great horn between his eyes was the first king. Id. This shows that the word king as first used has the sense of kingdom; as it would be absurd to speak of the first king of a king. This first king was Alexander the Great, who having defeated the last Persian king, Darius Codomannus, at the battle of Arbela, Oct. 1, B. C. 331, found himself master of the world. This horn was broken and four came up in its place, denoting the four parts into which his empire would be divided. Eight years after the battle of Arbela, Alexander gave himself up to beastly drunkenness to that degree that he died Nov. 12, B. C. 323, aged only 33. Prideaux gives a just estimate of the man, when he calls him “the great cut-throat of the age in which he lived.” In the name of Aridæus, then called Philip, bastard brother of Alexander’s and also an idiot, and by Alexander’s two infant sons, Alexander Ægus and Hercules, all being under the guardianship of Perdiccas, the unity of the empire was for a time maintained. But it did not take long to put these all out of the way, and within fifteen years after Alexander’s death the kingdom was divided into four parts, between his four leading generals: Cassander had Macedon and Greece; Lysimachus had Thrace and those parts of Asia that lay upon the Hellespont and Bosphorus; Ptolemy had Egypt, Libya, Arabia, Palestine and Cœle-Syria, and Seleucus had Syria and all the East. These kingdoms are called, in brief, Macedonia, Thrace, Syria and Egypt. They date from about B. C. 308.

The little horn denotes a succeeding kingdom to arise in the latter part of the reign of the four horns, a kingdom of fierce countenance, strange language, a wonderful destroyer, to stand up against the Prince of princes, and at last to be broken without hand. This horn was not Antiochus Epiphanes as claimed by some, for he was not “exceeding great” in comparison with Medo-Persia and Grecia that went before. He did not increase his dominions, was not another horn, but only one (the 8th in order) of the 26 kings that constituted the Syrian horn of the goat. He did not stand up against the Prince of princes (Christ), but died 164 years before our Lord was born.

This horn must symbolize Rome, as in the parallel visions of Dan. 2 and 7. Rome came out of

one of the horns of the goat, as it conquered Macedonia B. C. 168, and in 161 became connected with the people of God by its league with the Jews; 1 Mac. 8; Josephus’ Antiq., b. xii., c. x., sec. 6; Prideaux, Vol. ii., p. 166; thus becoming a subject of prophecy, and appearing to the prophet to come out of the Macedonian horn. It extended its conquests toward the east, south, and pleasant land (Palestine), making provinces of the following countries: Syria, B. C. 65; Palestine, B. C. 63; Egypt, B. C. 30. It stood up against the Prince of princes, nailing Christ to the cross. By Rome the daily was taken away and the transgression of desolation set up; that is, there was a change in the religion of the empire, Paganism (the daily desolation) was taken away, and the papacy (the transgression of desolation, or the abomination that maketh desolate) was set up. Dan. 12:11. An host was given him: the hordes of barbarians that overran the empire, but were converted to the papal faith.

This horn of Daniel 8 must not be confounded with the little horn on the fourth beast of Dan. 7. That symbolized the papacy exclusively. This embraces Rome through its whole career both pagan and papal. In other words, this horn of Dan. 8, is the same as the great and terrible beast of Dan. 7, in both its phases.

In verse 14 is introduced the period of 2300 days, the sanctuary and its cleansing. All the vision was sufficiently explained to the prophet with the exception of the time. But Daniel says, verse 27, “I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it.” Although Gabriel had been commanded to make him understand it, Daniel fainted before an explanation of the time was reached, and the angel was obliged to postpone further instruction.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON LESSON III.

1. Dan. 8:13. What is to be understood by the phrase, “How long the vision?”

Ans. We think it has reference to the time embraced in the vision. How long a period is covered by the vision during which the sanctuary and the host shall be trodden under foot? The answer, Unto two thousand three hundred days, does not point out definitely the close of the time, but only brings to view the last event which will close up the matter so far as the sanctuary and the host are concerned, bringing eternal deliverance to the people of God. These days therefore must cover most of the time of the vision, embracing the duration of the great kingdoms noticed in the prophecy. To call the days literal, not quite six years and a half, would be simply ridiculous. They must be prophetic days, signifying so many years.

2. Dan. 8:17. “At the time of the end shall be the vision.” End of what?

Ans. We think the expression “the time of the end” here means the same as when found in other passages; namely, a period of time commencing in 1798, and extending to the end, in which the main prophetic periods should terminate, and those events and movements transpire which were to warn the world and prepare a people for the end. Then “shall be the vision;” that is, be opened, begin to be understood. It was closed up and sealed to that time. Then it would be unsealed. Since that time the great light has arisen on prophetic subjects which has shown the end to be near, and given rise to the extensive Advent movement of the present generation.

3. Dan. 8:19: “Behold I will make thee to know what shall be in the last end of the indignation.” What is meant by the last end of his indignation?

Ans. The manner of expression here used shows that the indignation covers a period of time. We think that it is the indignation which God permits to come upon his people from opposing powers, the same as mentioned in verse 13, How long shall be the vision . . . to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? In Eze. 21:27, God speaks concerning the throne of Israel, when subjected to the King of Babylon, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more till he come whose right it is, and I will give it him.” Three overturns from Babylon awaited it, that is, to Persia, to Grecia and to Rome. Then it should be no more; national existence ceased, but the spiritual Israel have lived among the nations, but still in subjection to earthly powers. And so it will be till He come whose right it is, Christ, who shall take the throne of his Father David, and rule over his people forever. Again, it was said to Daniel (12:7), “When he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people” (that is, shall have finished the scattering of their power, or their oppression among the nations) “all these things shall be fulfilled.” This all shows that God’s people were to be overturned, scattered, and subject to indignation, till the times, or rule, of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. And in the verse under notice, the Lord says to Daniel, I will make thee to know what shall be in the last end of this time of indignation. Then he goes on to predict the final downfall of earthly kingdoms, and lastly points Daniel forward to the cleansing of the sanctuary, which puts away the sins of God’s people, and is the first step toward their deliverance, which will be the full end of the indignation, followed by their glorification and eternal inheritance.

4. What followed the league formed between the Jews and the Romans in B. C. 161?

Ans. The cruel oppression of the Syrians roused such a spirit of resistance among the Jews that under the leadership of the Maccabees, aided by the friendship of the Romans, they achieved their complete liberation from Syrian tyranny. Smith’s History of the World, Vol. 3, p. 170, speaks of “the long list of nations in Europe and Asia, to which the Roman Senate sent letters requiring them to protect the Jews residing among them.” Thus matters continued till internal dissensions invited the Romans to interfere in a manner more positive than by the existing league of amity and friendship. In the days of Pompey there were two aspirants for the office of high-priest, the high-priest holding also the position of prince or ruler of the people. Powerful factions followed their respective leaders, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus; and to put an end to the strife, appeal was made to Pompey who was then in the East settling the affairs of Syria, to decide the question. Aristobulus, perceiving that Pompey would give the decision in favor of Hyrcanus, retired to Jerusalem and made immediate preparation to defend his claims by force of arms. This brought Pompey with all his army against the city. Aristobulus finally relenting came out to surrender to him the keys of the city; but his party by a sudden outburst of fanaticism refused him entrance. The party of Hyrcanus threw open the gates. The others retreated to the temple and its fortified precincts where they were besieged by Pompey. After three months the place was taken and the defenders massacred, the blood of the priests themselves being mingled with that of the sacrifices they were offering at the altar. Aristobulus graced the triumph of Pompey at Rome. Hyrcanus was restored to the priesthood, but stripped of the royal title. Judea became a Roman province, till the dismemberment of the Roman Empire.