p. 662 | The Sabbath-School by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 5, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 42.

The Sabbath-School.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

LESSON FOR THE PACIFIC COAST—NOV. 28.

The Little Horn of Daniel 7.

BEFORE making any comments on the "little horn" of Daniel 7, we wish to complete the notes on the "little horn" of Daniel 8, which was the subject of last week’s lesson. By reference to the notes of last week, it will be seen that we proved conclusively that the "little horn" of Daniel 8 represents the Roman Empire. This proof cannot here be repeated, but one or two additional proofs will be given. It will be remembered that the third kingdom—Grecia—represented by the goat with the notable horn, was divided into four parts after the death of Alexander, the four divisions being represented by the four horns which "came up" after the great horn was broken. The prophet then introduces the fourth kingdom—Rome—as follows:—

"And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land." Dan. 8: 9. This seems to some to be an objection to calling this little horn Rome; for how, they ask, could Rome be said to come forth from one of the divisions of the Grecian Empire? In point of fact, this is no objection at all; but on careful consideration it is just what we might expect; for if Grecia was a universal empire, which is affirmed by both sacred and profane history, then any power which should rise up against it, must naturally come forth from some part of it. That Alexander’s dominion was universal, extending even to Rome, is attested by the following statements:

"The Lucanians and Bruttians [inhabitants of Italy] are especially mentioned as having sent embassies to Alexander at Babylon." "The Tyrrhenians also," said Aristobulus and Ptolemaeus, "sent an embassy to the king to congratulate him upon his conquests." "There is every reason to believe that among the Tyrrhenian ambassadors mentioned by Alexander’s historians, there were included ambassadors from Rome. . . . History may allow us to think that Alexander and a Roman ambassador did meet at Babylon; that the greatest man of the ancient world saw and spoke with a citizen of that great nation which was destined to succeed him in his appointed work, and to found a wider and still more enduring empire." —Arnold’s History of Rome, chap. 30, par. 1 and 2.

BUT there is still more direct evidence to show the propriety of speaking of Rome as coming out of one of the divisions of the Grecian Empire. We quote and abridge from Prideaux, who relates the history in a very entertaining manner. First, however, we will state that the four divisions represented by the four horns, were Macedon, Thrace, Syria, and Egypt. In the year 168 B. C., Antiochus Epiphanes, then king of the Syrian division, determined to make himself master of Egypt, which was then governed by his nephew and niece, who were very young, and incapable of successful resistance. Says Prideaux:—

"This he most certainly would have accomplished, but that he met a Roman embassy in his way, which put a stop to his further progress, and totally dashed all the designs which he had been so long carrying on for the making of himself master of that country."—Connexion, Vol. 2, Book 3, "An. 168, Ptol. Philometer 13."

THE embassy was one which the Roman Senate had sent in response to the urgent request of the young Egyptian monarch for assistance against Antiochus. The reader will not fail to note that only three ambassadors, and not an army, were sent by the Romans to command Antiochus to desist from his intended war upon Egypt. These ambassadors met Antiochus when he was only four miles from Alexandria, on his way to besiege that city. The chief ambassador was Popillius, with whom Antiochus had been intimate while he was in Rome as a hostage. On seeing Popillius, Antiochus reached forth his hand to embrace him as an old friend. "But Popillius, refusing the compliment, told him that the public interest of his country must take the place of private friendship; that he must first know whether he were a friend or an enemy to the Roman State, before he could own him as a friend to himself; and then delivered into his hands the tables in which were written the decree of the Senate, which they came to communicate to him, and required him to read it and forthwith give him his answer thereto. Antiochus, having read the decree, told Popillius he would consult with his friends about it, and speedily give him the answer they should advise; but Popillius, insisting on an immediate answer, forthwith drew a circle round him [Antiochus] in the sand, with the staff which he had in his hand, and required him to give his answer before he stirred out of that circle; at which strange and peremptory way of proceeding, Antiochus, being startled, after a little hesitation, yielded to it, and told the ambassador that he would obey the command of the Senate; whereupon Popillius, accepting his embraces, acted thenceforth according to his former friendship with him."

BUT the point of all this is found in the next two sentences of Prideaux. Says he: "That which made him [i. e., Popillius] so bold as to act with him after this peremptory manner, and the other so tame as to yield thus patiently to it, was the news which they had a little before received of the great victory of the Romans, which they had gotten over Perseus, king of Macedonia. For Paulus Æmilius, having now vanquished that king, and thereby added Macedonia to the Roman Empire, the name of the Romans after this carried that weight with it as carried a terror in all the neighboring nations; so that none of them after this cared to dispute their commands, but were glad on any terms to maintain peace, and cultivate a friendship with them."

NOW SINCE it was the conquest of Macedon that gave Rome its prestige among the nations, and made it virtually a universal empire, having the power to dictate to other kingdoms, and to stop their projects by a single word, it is evidently very proper to speak of it as "coming out" of one of the horns of the goat, viz., the Macedonian horn. The historian, in describing the rise of the Roman Empire, could not well employ a more fitting expression than that used by the prophet, 370 years before the occurrence. The quotation given above shows the immense superiority of the Romans over Antiochus Epiphanes, and thus of itself effectually demolishes the theory held by some that that pusillanimous king was the "exceeding great" power represented by the little horn.

NOW WE must turn our attention to the present lesson, "The Little Horn of Daniel 7." The student must be careful not to confound this little horn with that of Daniel 8. The little horn of Daniel 8 represents the Roman Empire as a whole; the little horn of Daniel 7 represents the Roman Empire only under one phase, the whole empire being represented by the fourth beast, of which the little horn was only a part. We quote the description of the beast and the little horn, as given by the prophet.

"AFTER this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it; and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots; and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things." Dan. 7: 7, 8.

WHEN Daniel was troubled over the explanation of this vision, an angel gave him the interpretation, and in beginning said: "These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever." Dan. 7: 17, 18. So the beasts represented the four universal kingdoms that cover the history of the world till the coming of the Lord. These four kingdoms have already been named, and therefore we well know that the fourth beast represents the Roman Empire. See the further description in Dan. 7: 23.

BUT Daniel was not completely satisfied with the first answer given by the angel. From his connection with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream he must have known the main features of these four kingdoms; but there were some particulars upon which he desired more light. "Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast [answered in verse 23], . . . and of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows." Dan. 7: 19, 20. The answer to this request was given as follows:—

"Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, . . . and the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise; and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings." Dan. 7: 23, 24. The fourth beast was the fourth kingdom—Rome—and the ten horns, it is plainly stated, "are ten kings that shall arise," that is, ten parts into which the Roman Empire should be divided. This division is mentioned in Dan. 2: 41. It was effected by the incursions of the barbarous tribes which dismembered the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, so graphically described by Gibbon. The division was complete, and the undivided empire of Western Rome had ceased to exist, before the close of the fifth century A. C.

AFTER the division of Rome into ten parts, another power was to arise, diverse from the others, and having the characteristics mentioned in Dan. 7: 8, 20, 21, 25. These characteristics are met in the papacy, and in no other power. It uprooted three powers to make room for itself, and as if to identify the papacy as the power here referred to, the pope’s tiara is a triple crown; such a crown is worn by no other ruler.

"AND he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws." Dan. 7: 25. If we find that these three specifications apply to the papacy, then it will be useless to look further for an application for the little horn. We can give to each specification only a very brief notice.

1. "HE shall speak great words against the Most High." It is a notorious fact that the pope is styled the "Vicar of the Son of God," indicating that he fills the office of Christ, Paul, speaking of the papacy, which he calls the "man of sin" (2 Thess. 2: 3, 4), says that he "exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped." This is parallel to Dan. 7: 25. It is fulfilled in the pope’s claim to have power to grant indulgences, a thing which God himself has never promised to do. Further, it is fulfilled in the papal dogma of infallibility. This dogma was ratified by the Council of 1870, and the following is a portion of the decree:—

"And since by the divine right of apostolic primacy the Roman pontiff is placed over the universal church, we further teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all causes the decision of which belongs to the church, recourse may be had to his tribunal, and that none may re-open the judgment of the apostolic see, than whose authority there is no greater, nor can any lawfully review its judgment."—The Vatican Decrees, by Dr. Philip Schaff. Although this dogma was ratified in 1870, it has been held for centuries, as is shown by the following monstrous assertion in one of the Roman decretals:—

"If the pope should become neglectful of his own salvation, and of that of other men, and so lost to all good that he draw down with himself innumerable people by heaps into hell, and plunge them with himself into eternal damnation, yet no mortal man may presume to reprehend him, forasmuch as he is judge of all, and to be judged of no one."—Quoted by Wylie, History of Protestantism, Book 4, chap. 10.

2. "AND shall wear out the saints of the Most High." When we come to this particular, the evidence is overwhelming. Both time and language would fail to do justice to the matter. Prominent among papal atrocities is the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. On the 24th of August, 1572, was begun in Paris one of the most horrible cold-blooded massacres that history records,—that of the Huguenots. The king himself, Charles IX., took part in it, shooting down many of those who were attempting to escape the fury of his soldiers. The number slain throughout France on this occasion is placed by the best authorities at 70,000. To show Rome’s connection with the massacre, we quote:—

"At Rome, when the news arrived, the joy was boundless. The messenger who carried the dispatch was rewarded like one who brings tidings of some great victory, and the triumph that followed was such as old Pagan Rome might have been proud to celebrate. . . . Through the streets of the Eternal City swept, in the full blaze of pontifical pomp, Gregory and his attendant train of cardinals, bishops, and monks, to the church of St. Mark, there to offer up prayers and thanksgivings to the God of Heaven for this great blessing to the See of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. . . . On the following day the pontiff went in procession to the church of Minerva, where, after mass, a jubilee was published to all Christendom, ‘that they might thank God for the slaughter of the enemies of the church lately executed in France.’”—History of Protestantism, Book 17, chap. 16, par. 15.

BUT the saints were to be worn out. This implies more than outright slaughter. We quote one paragraph from the account of the imprisonment of the Waldenses, when, at the command of Louis XIV., who was the obedient servant of the pope, they had been driven from their valleys:—

"We know not if ever before an entire nation were in prison at once. Yet now it was so. All of the Waldensian race that remained from the sword of the executioners were immured in the dungeons of Piedmont. . . . And how were they treated in prison? As the African slave was treated on the middle passage. They had a sufficiency of neither food nor clothing. The bread dealt out to them was fetid. They had putrid water to drink. They were exposed to the sun by day, and to the cold at night. They were compelled to sleep on the bare pavement, or on straw so full of vermin that the stone floor was preferable. Disease broke out in these horrible abodes, and the mortality was fearful. ‘When they entered these dungeons,’ says Henri Arnaud, ‘they counted 14,000 healthy mountaineers, but when, at the intercession of the Swiss deputies, their prisons were opened, 3,000 skeletons only crawled out.’”—Hist. Protestantism, Book 16, chap. 13, par. 18.

IN the above instance, we see how an entire nation was literally worn out, yet we have scarcely more than hinted at the atrocities visited upon the innocent Waldenses. In the following brief extract from the account of the martyrdom of Cranmer, we see a sample of how Rome proceeded to "wear out" individuals:—

"The fire was lighted, and then withdrawn, and lighted again, so as to consume him piecemeal. His scorched and half-burned body was raised on the pikes of the halberdiers, and tossed from one to the other to all the extent his chain would allow; the martyr, says the martyrologist, ‘lifting up such hands as he had, and his finger ends flaming with fire, cried unto the people in these words, “None but Christ, none but Christ,” and so being let down again from their halberds, fell into the fire, and gave up his life.’”—Wylie, Book 23, chap. 10.

CERTAINLY more is not needed to identify papal Rome as the little horn that was to "wear out the saints of the Most High." Rome has more than met the demands of the prophecy. And the one who reads the history from which these extracts are taken, must of necessity exclaim: Surely the Roman Catholic power is the woman whom the seer of Patmos saw "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." Rev. 17: 6. Happy would it be for the saints of God if they could be assured that she is sated with blood. But such assurance cannot be given; for says the prophet, "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." Dan. 7: 21, 22. E. J. W.