Daniel 8:26

And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.

The vision of the evening and the morning is true. It concerns the kingdoms and powers shown in Daniel 8. Its little horn is Rome, not Antiochus Epiphanes, with the specifications of the prophecy matching the historical facts of Rome.

The command to shut up the vision because it shall be for many days means its fulfillment lay far in the future. It was to remain closed for a while, closed and sealed even to the time of the end in the closing period of this world's history. What was then distant is now coming to pass, for the events foretold in Daniel's visions are coming to pass in the last days.

Gabriel gave only a partial interpretation, leaving unresolved the period of twenty-three hundred days or years that must elapse before the cleansing of God's sanctuary. The missing time detail is supplied in Daniel 9, where seventy weeks are cut off from the twenty-three hundred days. The reckoning of the prophetic periods of Daniel 8 and 9 begins in 457 B.C.

Daniel could not understand how the long period related to the seventy years of captivity foretold through Jeremiah, the desolation of Jerusalem, and the return from captivity. He mistakenly thought the twenty-three hundred days ended with the seventy years of captivity. Hearing that the vision shall be for many days filled him with perplexity and astonishment, so that he fainted and was sick certain days and none understood it.

The vision belongs to the revelations of the mysteries of ages to come given in Daniel chapters seven to twelve, which Daniel himself did not fully understand. He was given the blessed assurance that he would rest and then stand in his lot and place at the end of the days. What Daniel saw would come is being opened through present judgments, as the judgments witnessed in San Francisco serve as a warning to Oakland, opening to its people what was to come.

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