Thoughts on the Book of Daniel.
By Uriah Smith
Verse 35. 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. Though restrained, the spirit of persecution was not destroyed. It broke out wherever there was opportunity. Especially was this the case in England. The religious state of that kingdom was fluctuating, it being sometimes under Protestant, and sometimes under papal jurisdiction, according to the religion of the ruling house. The bloody queen Mary was a mortal enemy to the Protestant cause, and multitudes fell victims to her relentless persecutions. And this condition of affairs was to last more or less to the time of the end. The natural conclusion would be that when the time of the end should come, this power which the church of Rome had possessed to punish heretics, which had been the cause of so much persecution, and which had for a time been restrained, would now be taken entirely away; and the conclusion would be equally evident that this taking away of the papal supremacy would mark the commencement of the period here called the time of the end. If this application is correct, the time of the end commenced in 1798; for there, as already noticed, the papacy was overthrown by the French, and has never since been able to wield the power it before possessed. Verse 36. And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that is determined shall be done. The king here introduced cannot denote the same power which was last noticed, namely, the papal power; for the specifications will not hold good, if applied to that power. Take a declaration in the next verse: "Nor regard any god." This has never been true of the papacy. God and Christ, though often placed in a false position, have never been set aside and rejected from that system of religion. The only difficulty in applying it to a new power lies in the definite article "the"; for, it is urged, the expression "the king" would identify this as the one last spoken of. If it could be properly translated a king, there would be no difficulty; and it is said that some of the best Biblical critics give this rendering, Mede, Wintle, Boothroyd, and others, translating the passage, "A certain king shall do according to his will," thus clearly introducing a new power upon the stage of action. Three particulars must be shown in the power which fulfills this prophecy: 1. It must assume the character here delineated near the commencement of the time of the end, to which we were brought down in the preceding verse. 2. It must be a willful power. 3. It must be an atheistical power. Or perhaps the two latter might be united by saying that its willfulness would be manifested in the direction of atheism. A revolution exactly answering to this description did take place in France at the time indicated in the prophecy. The historian thus describes this great religious change:— "It was not enough, they said, for a regenerate nation to have dethroned earthly kings, unless she stretched out the arm of defiance toward those powers which superstition had represented as reigning over boundless space."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. i, p. 172. "The constitutional bishop of Paris was brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and scandalous farce ever enacted in the face of a national representation. . . . . He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the convention that the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage of Liberty, Equality, Virtue and Morality. He then laid on the table his Episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the president of the convention. . . . . The symbols of this degradation were followed by the renunciation of several apostate priests. . . . . The world for the first time, heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of Deity."—Ibid., Vol. i, p. 173. A late writer in Blackwood's Magazine says:— "France is the only nation in the world concerning which the authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers, plenty of infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world's history as the single State which, by the decree of their legislative assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which the entire population of the capital, and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement." But there are other more striking specifications still fulfilled in this power. Verse 37. Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall magnify himself above all. The word for woman and wife are in the original the same; and Bishop Newton observes that this passage would be more properly rendered "the desire of wives." This would seem to indicate that this government, at the same time it declared that God did not exist, would trample under foot the law that God had given to regulate the marriage institution. And we find that the historian has, unconsciously perhaps, and if so, all the more significantly, coupled together the atheism and licentiousness of this government in the same order in which they are presented in the prophecy. He says:— "Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of marriage—the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society—to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in, and cast loose at pleasure when their taste was changed, or their appetite gratified. If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional cohabitation or licensed concubinage. Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as the sacrament of adultery. These anti-religious and anti-social regulations did not answer the purpose of the frantic and inconsiderate zealots, by whom they had been urged forward."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. i, p. 173. "Nor regard any god." In addition to the testimony already presented, to show the utter atheism of the nation at this time, the following fearful language of madness and presumption is to be recorded:— "The fear of God is so far from being the beginning of wisdom, that it is the beginning of folly. Modesty is only an invention of refined voluptuousness. The supreme King, the God of the Jews and the Christians, is but a phantom. Jesus Christ is an imposter." "In August 26, 1792, an open profession of atheism was made by the National Convention; and corresponding societies and atheistical clubs were everywhere fearlessly held in the French nation. Massacres and the reign of terror became the most horrid."—Smith's Key to Revelation, p. 323. "Herbert, Chaumette, and their associates, appeared at the bar and declared that God did not exist."—Alison, Vol. i, p. 150. At this juncture, all religious worship was prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and desecrated. The churches were closed. The bells were broken and cast into cannon. The Bible was publicly burned. The sacramental vessels were paraded through the streets on an ass, in token of contempt. The Sabbath was abolished, and death was declared, in conspicuous letters posted over their burial places, to be an eternal sleep. But the crowning blasphemy, if these orgies of hell admit of degrees, remained to be performed by the comedian Monvel; who as a priest of Illuminism said:— "God, if you exist, avenge your injured name. I bid you defiance! You remain silent, You dare not launch your thunders! Who, after this, will believe in your existence? The whole ecclesiastical establishment was destroyed."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. i, p. 173. Behold what man is when left to himself, and what infidelity is when the restraints of law are thrown off, and it has the power in its own hands! Can it be doubted that these scenes are what the omniscient eye foresaw and noted on the sacred page when it pointed out a kingdom to arise which should exalt itself above every god and disregard them all?