HOMILETICS
SECT. XLII.—SARACENS AND TURKS. (Chap. Daniel 11:40-45.)
Considerable obscurity connected with the present section. According to some, it is a continuation of the prophecy regarding the vile person or Antiochus Epiphanes, here still styled the King of the North. Thus viewed, the prophecy points to a last expedition against Egypt made after those previously mentioned; an expedition, however, of which history gives no intimation, but the reverse. [330] In the opinion of many evangelical expositors, the passage foretells the rise and doings of another power, of which, however, Antiochus was also a type. That power was the Mohammedan, first under the Saracens and subsequently the Turks; a power already noticed as an antitype of Antiochus, predicted as the little horn in the vision of the Ram and He-goat, chap. 8. Historically, it was that power that in the eastern portion of the empire succeeded the Roman, and became a scourge both to the Jews and to the Christian Church. In the prophecy also the section appears to connect itself with the prediction regarding the Roman empire and its representative, the Papacy. Thus viewing it, we notice—
[330] Brightman observes that this part of the prophecy cannot apply to Antiochus, as he can find no mention in any author of a third expedition by him into Egypt. He thinks that neither the authors of the books of the Maccabees nor Josephus would have been likely to omit to mention it, had there been any such; the latter, indeed, stating that nothing at all was attempted by Antiochus against that country after his expulsion by the Romans till his death in Persia. Justin relates that after the check he received from the Roman consul Popilius, he died as soon as he returned to his own kingdom. Sending Lysias, his general, into Syria, he himself went into Persia, where he died. Keil also, with V. Lengerke, Maurer, and Hitzig, considers the idea of a last expedition of Antiochus against Egypt in this passage, not only unsupported by history, but in irreconcilable contradiction to the historical facts regarding his last undertakings.
I. The time referred to. That the prophecy points to a time far beyond that of Antiochus would seem to be intimated in the words with which the section commences: “In the time of the end.” This probably the “end” already referred to as the time when the “indignation” against Israel is to be accomplished (Daniel 11:35), the latter period of the fourth and last empire, the “time, times, and half a time” of the Little Horn. It is according to the Book of Revelation the time of the three last of the seven “trumpets,” called the three woes; this power being the fifth and sixth, the former under the Saracens, and the latter the Turks, followed by the seventh, which announces the end or finishing of the mystery of God, when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, and when He takes to Himself His great power and reigns (Revelation 9:1-21; Revelation 10:7; Revelation 11:15-18). This time of the end might, as it has done, extend over centuries, being the duration of the last period of Israel’s chastisement, and at the same time the chastisement of the Christian Churches. [331]
[331] “The time of the end.” Bright-man thinks that, as the Romans did nothing in particular against the Jews after Adrian, the prophecy passes on to the time of the weakened and decayed empire, when the Saracens, under Mahomet, encountered them, as the king of the South, a.d. 630, when they took from the Romans, in about thirty years, Jerusalem, all Syria, Africa, and Asia; the king of the North being the Turks, whose tyranny especially lay against the Romans from the year a.d. 1300. So Joseph Mede, who is followed by most modern evangelical expositors, considers the “time of the end “to be the last times of the Romans, and the king of the South the Saracens under Mahomet; while the king of the North is the Turks from Scythia in the far north, another Antichristian power who should attack and overcome the Saracens.
II. The parties predicted. These are twofold, designated according to the phraseology already employed in the former part of the prophecy in relation to two other powers, namely, the kings of the North and of the South. Formerly these terms were applied to the kings of Syria and of Egypt, the most prominent parties in that part of the vision, and so called from their situation in relation to Judea. Now, in the latter part of the prophecy, in the time of the end, they appear to mark the Saracens and the Turks, the latter rising in Scythia, to the north, and the former in Arabia, to the south of Palestine, and hence with equal truth designated the kings of the North and of the South. [332] These powers appear to be represented as acting against that previously predicted, namely, the Roman empire and its representative, the Papacy or Little Horn. They are apparently introduced as the power that was to check and weaken the Wilful King. The Turkish armies, which chiefly consisted of cavalry, appear to be pointed out in the prophecy, which represents the king of the North as coming “like a great whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen.” They are said also to have many ships, without which, as Bishop Newton remarks, they could not have vanquished Venice, or taken Constantinople, Rhodes, Cyprus, or Crete. The description corresponds with that of the Euphratean horsemen, generally understood to represent the Turkish power. “The number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred thousand thousand” (Revelation 9:14-16). This Euphratean power appearing under the sixth trumpet, or in the time of the end, is also represented as having their appointed period of rise and duration, being “prepared for (or, as in the margin, at) an hour and a day, and a month and a year (R.V., for the hour and day and month and year), to slay the third part of men.” The application of the king of the North to the Turkish power confirms that of the king of the South to the Saracens, their predecessors; that power being, according to general opinion, predicted in the locust army or first woe, which after “five months,” or a century and a half, of mischief, was to be succeeded by the second, or horsemen from the Euphrates (Revelation 9:3-10).
[332] Bishop Newton, agreeing with Mede, observes that the terms North and South are to be taken and explained according to the times of which the prophet is speaking. Dr. Cox observes: “The sovereignties of Egypt and Syria, before called the king of the South and the king of the North, disappeared when they were absorbed in the Roman empire; and the new powers, or the Saracen and Turkish empires that succeeded, are now brought into view. But let it be observed that the Saracens became masters of Egypt, the original territory of the king of the South, and the Turks possessed Syria, or the kingdom of the North, and still retain it.” Calvin, who considers the power previously introduced, viz., the Romans, to be still described, thinks that the king of the South or Egypt, assisted by the king of the North or Syria, was to carry on war with the Romans, who are here compared to a deluge which should come and overflow, burying all the forces both of Egypt and Syria, and should also invade Judea. Junius and Willet think that the king of the North is still Antiochus, who should come up against the king of the South or Egypt, viz., Philometor, in order to aid his brother Physcon. Bullinger, like Mede and Brightman, understands by the kings of the North and South the Turks. and Saracens. Pfaff and Osiander thought the king of the North to be Antichrist, and the king of the South to be Christ Himself. Roman Catholic writers after Jerome, as well the Futurists, refer the passage to an infidel Antichrist who is yet to arise, and to the last conflicts in the land of Judea, Antichrist being here the king of the North. Kliefoth thinks that the prophecy relates to Antichrist, whom he distinguishes from the kings of the North and South, both of whom will in the time of the end attack him. Keil considers the first “him” to refer to the hostile king, the chief subject of the prophecy, but the second “him,” against whom the king of the North comes, to be the king of the South named immediately before; the king of the North, however, being the hostile king himself, thought of as the ruler of the distant North, reaching far beyond Syria, from which in his fury he comes against the king of the South.
III. The doings of the parties. Those of the Turkish power or king of the North mainly described.
1. “The king of the South shall push at him” (Daniel 11:40). Mr. Birks remarks: “The Saracens, however wide their other conquests, did really push, with furious vehemence, against the papal dominions, whether we interpret them in a narrower sense of St. Peter’s patrimony, or more widely of the nations in communion with the See of Rome. How violent their inroads on the Western nations at large, till their defeat by Charles Martel, is known to the most cursory reader of history or romance.” He quotes Gibbon, who says: “A fleet of Saracens from the African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tiber, and to approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the Christian world.” The “African coast” marks the invaders as a power from the South.
2. “The king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots,” &c. History decides what the construction seems to leave uncertain, whether the attack of the king of the North was to be directed against the same power pushed at by the king of the South, or against the king of the South himself. We read of the attacks made by hordes of Turkish cavalry, first on the provinces of the Eastern empire, and then on the papal kingdoms of the West, as if following in the steps of the Saracens. Gibbon, speaking of the conquests of Togrul and Alp Arslan, says: “The Asiatic provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.” After overthrowing the Greek empire, by means of their horsemen and their ships, they directed their attack on the West, more particularly predicted in the words, “He shall enter into the countries, and overflow, and pass over.” Mr. Birks remarks: “These words aptly describe the first passage of the Turks into Europe. They had already entered into the countries of Asia Minor, and established themselves there as kings of the North. But they were not restrained within these narrow bounds.… The results of this first overflow of the Turks into Europe are too well known, and too legible on the map of Europe for centuries, to require further details.” He observes that Sismondi describes Italy and the pope as the true objects, at that time, of the Turkish aggression; and quotes Gibbon, who says: “The grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades.… The devastation advanced towards the West, and every year saw a new kingdom fall.” These attacks of the king of the North, like those of his predecessor, were the divinely appointed chastisement of the idolatry which had already found so large a place in the Christian churches. The words of the Sultan Mahomet II., read in connection with Revelation 9:20, at once show this to have been the case, and to confirm the view of this power being identical with the second woe and the king of the North: “I will not turn my face from the west to the east, till I overthrow and tread under the feet of my horses the gods of the nations; these gods of wood, of brass, of silver, and of gold, or of painting, which the disciples of Christ have made with their hands,”—as if he had read the passage above referred to,—“and the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils (demons, or departed spirits), and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood.”
3. He (the king of the North) shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown; but these shall escape out of his hand, Edom, Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon” (Daniel 11:41). No question as to what is meant by “the glorious land” here and in Daniel 11:16. Palestine or Syria, the tract lying between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, “has been more favoured by nature, and is more richly stored with the various delights of climate, of soil, and of scenery, than any other space of equal extent on the surface of the globe. Were one asked to point to that region of the earth which is the happiest in respect of natural conditions, it is to this tract that he would turn.” The glory and beauty, however, were more especially in the manifested presence and gracious goings of Him who deigned to call it peculiarly His own land. Into that land the victorious Turks entered in 1517, and left, as the trace of their presence and conquest, the present grey walls that surround Jerusalem, erected by the Sultan Suliman in 1542, the land continuing in the possession of the Turks to this day. [333] Those here said to escape out of his hand are Bedouin tribes of Arabia, who, as sons of Ishmael, still make good the prediction of Genesis 16:12; whom the Turks have never been able entirely to subdue; and to whom, ever since the time when the Sultan Selim conquered the adjoining countries, they have paid an annual pension for the safe passage of the pilgrims to Mecca. It might seem strange, as Calvin remarks, and not a little trying to the covenant people, to learn that while they and their country, which God had given to Abraham and his seed, and which He had promised to watch over, should be invaded by this hostile power, those other countries, inhabited by their hereditary enemies, should be permitted to escape, and to remain in peace and safety. But they might remember the words of the prophet, “You only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.” Egypt, however, was not to escape (Daniel 11:42-43). Selim, among his other conquests, put an end to the government of the Mamelukes, and established in its stead that of the Turks, who continue to this day, as Bishop Newton remarks, to drain immense treasures out of that rich and fertile but oppressed and wretched country. That it is held now by a Khedive or viceroy, only another evidence that the reign of the Turk is drawing to its close. With Egypt, the chief power in the south, should also fall the other nations of Africa,—the Libyans and the Ethiopians or Cushites, still farther to the south, who should become the obsequious followers of his march (Judges 4:10), but who also now give evidence to the drying up of “the great river Euphrates” (Revelation 16:12).
[333] Brightman observes that the Sultan Selim, about the year 1514, on his way to Egypt, took his journey by Judea, and carried Jerusalem by assault. Edom, or in general, Arabia, the Turks did not attack, being content to open themselves a way to Egypt through Syria and Palestine, which in the following year they brought under their subjection.
4. “Tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many; and he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain” (Daniel 11:44-45). The tidings out of the east and the north which shall disturb this victorious power in the midst of his conquests in the Holy Land and the adjacent countries, are such, doubtless, as would inform him of risings among the subdued nations, or invasions from other quarters, which should endanger his acquisitions, or perhaps his own dominions. [334] These tidings should arouse his indignation and draw him from Africa, where he appears then to be, again to Palestine, where he would seem to encamp at Jerusalem, the metropolis of the country, pitching his tent on the “glorious holy mountain, between the seas,” the Mediterranean on the one side and the Dead Sea on the other, [335] his purpose being, like that of his Syrian type, to wreak his vengeance on the people by their utter destruction. [336] How the Turks took and retained possession of Jerusalem we have already seen. It is scarcely likely that the doings of Sultan Selim in reference to that city are here referred to; history only relating concerning him that, having been greatly annoyed by the arrows of the wild Arabs from the hills in the south, he advanced towards Gaza, and thence to Rama, where he revenged himself on the habitations, wives, and children of the Arabs, and soon after turned aside with his cavalry to visit Jerusalem. It is more than probable that, as it is there that this hostile power is to come to his end, the prophecy has not yet received its fulfilment. Probably another power is first to come upon the stage. [337]
[334] “Tidings from the east and from the north.” Bishop Newton thinks that Persia in the east, and Russia in the north, of the Ottoman empire, may be the quarters from which the tidings referred to may come, and that these nations may hereafter be made the instruments of divine Providence in the restoration of the Jews; quoting a current tradition among the common people in Turkey, that their empire shall at some period be destroyed by the Russians. Pfaff and Osiander, understanding the passage of the Roman Antichrist, regarded the tidings as those of the breaking out of the Reformation, and the preaching of the Gospel in Germany. Melanchthon understood it of the Turks, whose rage the Lord should stay from heaven when no human force could resist them. Bright-man, writing in the seventeenth century, observes that the things hitherto predicted are already past; those which follow, to the end of the chapter, are still to come. No tidings from the east troubled Antiochus, nor the Romans after the battle of Cannæ: nor did the Romans plant their tabernacles in Judea. He thinks the tidings out of the east and north that shall trouble the Turk, is the conversion of the Jews according to Revelation 16:12, which brings him in great fury to the Holy Land, where he is to perish.
[335] “He shall plant the tabernacles Of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain.” Mr. Birks inclines to think, with Melanchthon, that in so far as the Turkish power is viewed as the subject of the present prophecy, Constantinople is the place referred to as the “glorious holy mountain,” or, as he says the words might be rendered, a “mountain of holy delight;” the occupying of that place as the seat of empire being the main event of the history between the time of the conquest of Egypt by the Turks and their final overthrow. Regarding the king of the North, however, as the Antichrist yet to arise, he thinks Palestine and Jerusalem the places intended, whither he will lead the confederate nations of Europe, the power of Russia, and the districts held long before by the king of the North. Dr. Cox thinks the passage intimates that the Turk will plant his tabernacles, or fix his encampment, in the Holy Land at Jerusalem, between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean; and that there, having enjoyed a termporary triumph, he will experience a signal and fatal overthrow. He adds, “Whether the Russian and Persian powers are destined to inflict the providential visitation, as many have supposed, must be left to the disclosures of futurity.” Keil thinks that the expression נָטַע (nata’), “plant,” probably alludes to the great palace-like tent of the Oriental ruler, whose poles must be struck very deep into the earth; these tents being surrounded by a multitude of smaller ones for the guards and servants, which accounts for the use of the plural, “tabernacles” or “tents.” He renders the words הַר צְבִי־קֹדֶשׁ (har tsebhi-qodhesh), “the holy hill of the delight,” i.e., of Palestine; and considers it to be the hill on which the Temple stood. He disagrees with Kliefoth and others, who think that the “seas” are the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; and regards the word “seas” as only the poetic plural of fulness for the great Mediterranean. The term אֲפַדְנוֹ (aphadhno), “his palace,” as our own and Luther’s version render it, has been variously understood. Theodotion and the Vulgate leave it untranslated, while the Septuagint omits it altogether. Porphyry understood it to be the name of a place, and Junius regards it as that of the country of Mesopotamia or Syria, the “seas” being its fens or marshes. Jerome renders it “his stable,” as referring to cavalry. Calvin has “his palace,” as indicating a permanent abode fixed by the Romans in those countries. The word is used by the Rabbins in the sense of a palace. Dr. Pusey remarks that this is one of the four Syrian words which have been singled out by the opponents of Daniel, as making against his Hebrew, but as agreeing with the situation of a Jewish writer in the time of the Maccabees. The word, he says, survived in heathen and Christian Syriac as well as in the translation of the Scriptures, and was also, in a slightly varied form, probably introduced into Arabia from the Syriac, and had certainly been known in Mesopotamia, since it became the name of a place, Apadnas, near Amida on the Tigris; but was wholly lost in Chaldea, being unintelligible to all the Greek translators, and rendered in the Syriac version, not according to the meaning of the actual Syriac word, but according to the common meaning of padan, which forms part of the name Padan-aram.
[336] “To destroy and utterly make away many.” לְהַשְׁמִיד וּלְהַחֲרִים (lehashmidh ulehakharim), to smite and to ban, or uproot, implying utter destruction. So Antiocbus in his wrath resolved to make Jerusalem a grave for the whole of the Jews.
[337] Mr. Birks, who interprets these last verses of the Saracen and Turkish powers, is inclined to extend their bearing to a power that should combine in himself all the forms of Antichristian hostility that had preceded, and believes there is a further accomplishment in events which will complete and close the Gentile dispensation. Keil also views the latter part of this chapter as pointing to a power, whom he designates Antichrist, the antitype of Antiochus Epiphanes, and remarks: “The placing of the overthrow of this enemy with his host near the Temple-mountain agrees with other prophecies of the Old Testament, which place the decisive destruction of the hostile world-power by the appearance of the Lord for the consummation of His kingdom upon the mountains of Israel (Ezekiel 39:4), or in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2, &c.), in or at Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:2); and confirms the result of our exposition that the hostile king, the last enemy or world-power, is the Antichrist.
IV. The end of the hostile power. “He shall come to his end, and none shall help him” (Daniel 11:45). This being the first time we read of the end of the power whose doings are described in the preceding verses, since the introduction of the vile person in Daniel 11:21, some have been led to think that the same power is spoken of throughout. It is probable, however, that the end here foretold is that of the hostile power under its last form, which is at the same time the termination and destruction of all the world-powers that have set themselves in opposition to God’s people whether in Old or New Testament times, and which, of course, is still future. The blending, in the prophecy, of one Antichristian power, or of one form of Antichrist, into another has its parallel in the prophecy of the Saviour Himself, in which the prediction regarding Jerusalem’s destruction blends into that of His second appearing, when He shall take “vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of His Son,” and when the “Man of Sin “shall be destroyed “with the brightness of His coming.” It seems certain, from chap. Daniel 12:1, that the end of the hostile power here predicted is connected with the great tribulation, and the resurrection from the dead which is probably soon to follow it. The angel then adds: “And at that time”—the time referred to in the end of the preceding chapter—“shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” This time of trouble, again, is connected with the resurrection from the dead, which appears to follow it chap. Daniel 12:2), and which we know to be the result of the Lord’s second appearing (1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). The manner in which the end of this and, at the same time, of every hostile power is described, corresponds with this view of the time and circumstances in which it shall happen. It is simply said, “He shall come to his end, and none shall help him.” As if a breath from the Lord’s mouth, or a glance from His eye, brought him and all his chivalry in a moment to destruction. No word is spoken as to the means by which, or the manner in which, the end should be brought about. The scene closes in sublime and mysterious silence. For a fuller description of the solemn event we must, doubtless, look to the prophecy of Zechariah, Zechariah 14:3-4, and especially to the awful and magnificent picture of the battle of the great day of God Almighty presented in Revelation 19:11-21. May both reader and writer be prepared for the terrors and solemnities of that infinitely momentous and rapidly approaching day!
HOMILETICS
SECT. XLIII.—THE INFIDEL AND FINAL ANTICHRIST. (Chap. Daniel 11:45.)
“He shall come to his end, and none shall help him.” It has been remarked that in this last prophecy of Daniel one predicted hostile power appears to merge into and blend with another that succeeds it. This prophetic blending sometimes takes place almost insensibly; so that the same power would almost seem still to continue to be spoken of. Of these various successive powers Antiochus Epiphanes, who is introduced in Daniel 11:21, seems to be regarded as a kind of general type. The powers themselves may be regarded as so many Antichrists,—for, according to the Apostle, “there are many Antichrists,”—or Antichrist under so many different forms. The destruction of all these Antichristian powers would seem to take place together, and to be that “end” predicted in the closing verse of the chapter, of which the sudden and signal end of Antiochus was a type. As the papal Antichrist seemed to blend into the Mahometan in Daniel 11:40, so the Mahometan would appear to blend into the infidel and final one in the last verse of the chapter. From what is said to take place when the power thus predicted comes to his end, viz., the time of great tribulation, the deliverance of the Jewish remnant, and the resurrection from the dead, there can be little doubt that this power is the last enemy that shall appear against the people of God, till the end of the thousand years’ reign of righteousness and peace (Revelation 20:7-9). That last enemy is apparently still the Little Horn of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, and Paul’s Man of Sin; but, as may be gathered from the book of Revelation, under an openly infidel form, as the scarlet-coloured beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit and goeth into perdition, “full of names of blasphemy,” having seven heads and ten horns, who with the false prophet gathers together the kings of the earth and their armies, to make war against Christ in the “battle of the great day of God Almighty,” and who with the same false prophet shall then be taken and “cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Revelation 17:3; Revelation 16:14; Revelation 19:20).
Following Mr. Frere in his “Combined View of the Prophecies,” Mr. Irving observes that in the book of Daniel we have four main streams of prophecy, all commencing from the period at which the prophet lived, and running down to the time of the end. The fourth stream is contained in this eleventh chapter, which connects itself with the time of Daniel by the mention of certain “kings” immediately succeeding it, and then makes large leaps to reach the description of a third blasphemous and ungodly power, which was to arise in the form, not of an institution, but of an individual, close to the time of the end; these three powers being the Papal, Mahometan, and the Infidel; all to arise within the bounds of the four great monarchies, which may be called the prophetic earth. The prophet, he remarks, gives a most particular account of one king who should, at the time of the end, exalt himself against God, and prosper in war, till he should “come to his end, and none should help him.” This end of the infidel king, for whose manifestation the whole history was given, shall also be the end or accomplishment of God’s purposes in dispersing the Jews; which, he observes, was most important for Daniel, and is still most important both to the dispersed Jews and the Church of the Gentiles, whose fulness comes not in till the dispersed are gathered again; inasmuch as the prophecy makes this ingathering contemporaneous with the downfall of the great infidel king. Much to the same effect, Mr. Faber, in his “View of the Prophecies regarding Israel,” observes that nearly every prophecy that treats of the restoration of the Jews treats likewise of the contemporary overthrow of some great and impious combination of God’s enemies; a confederacy of which an infidel power, which should appear at the time of the end, should be so powerful as to take the lead, and which should include the ten-horned beast or Roman empire under its last head, the ecclesiastical power represented by Daniel’s little horn, and certain kings of the earth, apparently in a state of vassalage to that sovereign power. All these are said to come to their end, and to be destroyed by some divine interposition after the expiration of a certain period (a “time, times, and half a time”); and that in Palestine, a region between the seas, in the neighbourhood of the glorious holy mountain, or Mount Zion, and in the more immediate vicinity of the town of Megiddo. At the close of the same period, he observes, the prophet teaches (chap. Daniel 12:1) that the restoration of the Jews, the goal to which the angelic communication pointed, should take place. The restoration, contemporaneous with the overthrow of the infidel power, Mr. Faber regarded as prepared for by the fall of the Ottoman empire, or the drying up of the river Euphrates (Revelation 16:12), which takes place previous to the gathering together of the great confederacy. A writer on prophecy already quoted remarks that the manifestation of the last Antichristian apostasy or infidelity consists, like that of the former two, the Papal and the Mahometan, of two parts; the latter and the chief part being the account of the infidel person, his acts, and his destruction; the other part being the historical chain which connects the account with the time of the giving of the vision,—a chain of persons, remarkable kings, who were to intervene. This chain, Mr. Irving observes, brings us to a new dynasty (Daniel 11:18), when the Roman arms under Scipio took the sovereignty of the parts that had constituted the Grecian monarchy; and then the prophecy at one stride brings us down to the immediate predecessor of the infidel king, who is said to be in his estate a “raiser of taxes” (Daniel 11:20). The chain, he thinks, thus brings us to the first manifestation of the infidel power in the “vile person” (Daniel 11:21), whose acts the prophet describes through the remaining part of the chapter. The countries he enters into (Daniel 11:40) he considers to be already prepared, by the dissemination of his infidel sentiments, to give him a welcome; when he will “overflow” and level, like a terrible inundation, ancient thrones and establishments before him. This first manifestation of the infidel power he, with many others, believed to have its realisation in the first Napoleon, to be succeeded by a second like to him. He thinks that the prophet then immediately carries the infidel prince over to another scene of action, quite out of the bounds of the ten-horned papal empire, to the Holy Land (Daniel 11:41), and gives a narrative of his conquests there, carried on probably from a motive of mad ambition: Perhaps, having subdued the western Roman empire, he is to be God’s instrument to bring the Turk to his end, and may thus pass over to the Asiatic and African states, to possess himself of Egypt and the neighbouring kingdoms, to rally the nations of the ancient empire under his banner, the time of the destruction of the fourth beast being nigh at hand. The tidings out of the east, he, with Brightman, thinks refer to the event predicted in Revelation 16:12, regarding the kings of the East, while those from the north refer to Russia. Thus troubled and “moved by what natural impulse we know not, but overruled by all those prophecies that have doomed him and all his chivalry to fall upon the mountains of Israel, in the valley of Jehoshaphat, by the rock of Zion, he plants in Jerusalem the ‘tabernacles of his palace,’ the insignia of his royal state, upon the ‘glorious holy mountain between the seas,’ and there he comes to his end by a mighty overthrow, in a great battle of God Almighty, to which the nations have been gathered together.” He characterises the infidelity or infidel apostasy, contemplated here in the light not of an institution but of a person, as that which has grown like a disease out of the body of the papacy, and been nourished by the very grossness of that superstition, and gathering every evil and corrupt humour out of the wicked mass, till we see it, as it now is, all over its kingdom, ready to burst out and destroy the very organisation of the body. This impersonation of infidelity, or infidel chief, he considers, is to conduct and guide that infidelity to its sure purpose of dissolving that constitution of evil which has so long sat as an incubus upon the spirit of the Church. This infidel Antichrist, having obtained the victory over the papal constitution in order to destroy every vestige of lingering life within it, and being then led onwards to the East where he shall find the Mahometan superstition in its last throes; and thus coming in time to take up the abandoned sceptre of the Eastern empire, and having under him that power of nations and of kingdoms, which both the apostasies of the East and West once possessed,—“he hath accomplished his end, and his time is come.” With his destruction, which is accomplished at Armageddon, the three apostasies are all finished, and Satan’s last desperate throw is ended, and “the kingdom of Christ in good earnest spreads with all the prosperity of the divine blessing over all the earth.”
In Mr. Faber’s view, which is similar, the person who forms the subject of the closing verses of the chapter is the infidel king, the leader of the great Antichristian confederacy of the last days, who will, at the time of the end, or the close of the time, times, and half a time, be opposed by a king of the North and a king of the South; yet, in spite of this opposition, will succeed in overflowing many countries, and in conquering Palestine, Egypt, Libya, and the land of Cush or Ethiopia. In the unidst of these victories, he, being in Egypt, will be disturbed by some untoward tidings out of the North and out of the East, probably of the arrival in Palestine of the navy of the great maritime power with the converted of Judah. Enraged at such ungrateful news, he will hasten to Jerusalem, which he will succeed in taking. This, however, will be his last victory. Advancing to Megiddo, a town near the shores of the Mediterranean, in the great plain of Esdraelon, where, according to St. John, the conflict is to be decided, he will come unexpectedly to his end. The triumphant “Word of God” shall break his confederacy, and super-naturally overthrow him with a sudden destruction. The king of the North Mr. Faber thinks to be Russia; some terrible invasion from that quarter, symbolised by the great hailstorm of the Apocalypse, being made upon the papal Roman empire during the time that the infidel king is prosecuting his conquests in Palestine and Egypt.
Keil also views the latter verses of the chapter as all pointing to such an infidel power, whom he designates the Antichrist, the antitype of Antiochus Epiphanes. He says: “The undertaking of this king (Antiochus) to root out the worship of the living God, and destroy the Jewish religion, shows in type the great war which the world-power shall undertake against the kingdom of God, by exalting itself above every god, to hasten on its own destruction and the consummation of the kingdom of God. The description of this war, as to its origin, character, and issue, forms the principal subject of this prophecy.… From the typical relation in which Antiochus, the Old Testament enemy of God, stands to Antichrist, the New Testament enemy, is explained the connection of the end, the final salvation of the people of God, and the resurrection from the dead, with the description of this enemy, without any express mention being made of the fourth world-kingdom [the Roman empire], and of the last enemy [the little horn] arising out of it—already revealed to Daniel in chap. 7.… In chapter 8, the violent enemy of the people of Israel, who would arise from the Diadoch-kingdoms of the Javanic world-monarchy [the four divisions of the Grecian empire after Alexander’s death], was already designated as the type of the last enemy who would arise out of the ten kingdoms of the fourth world- [or universal] monarchy. After these preceding revelations, the announcement of the great tribulation, that would come upon the people of God from these two enemies, could be presented in one comprehensive painting, wherein the assaults made by the prefigurative enemy against the covenant people should form the foreground of the picture, for a representation of the daring of the antitypical enemy, proceeding even to the extent of abolishing all divine and human ordinances, which shall bring the last and severest tribulation on the Church of God at the end of the days, for its purification and preparation for eternity.”
We conclude our remarks on the infidel Antichrist, and on the whole of this deeply interesting though somewhat obscure chapter, with the words of Auberlen: “It cannot be proved with absolute certainty that a personal Antichrist will stand at the head of the Antichristian kingdom; for it is possible that the eighth, like the preceding heads (of the beast in Revelation 7), designates a kingdom, a power, and not a person; and the same may be said concerning the Antichristian horn described by Daniel, when compared with the ten horns. But the type of Antiochus Epiphanes is of decisive importance; for this personal enemy of God’s kingdom is described in the eighth chapter of Daniel, as a little, gradually increasing horn, just as Antichrist is spoken of in the seventh. And this is corroborated by the Apostle Paul (2 Thessalonians 2), who describes Antichrist (Daniel 11:4) with colours evidently furnished by Daniel’s sketch of Antiochus, and who calls him, moreover, the “Man of Sin,” the Son of perdition, which, if explained naturally, must refer to an individual (Compare John 17:12, where the same expression is used of Judas). In favour of the same view may be adduced, likewise, analogies in the history of the world; the previous world-kingdoms (or universal empires) had extraordinary persons as their heads, as Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander the Great. The spiritual and universal character does not exclude individual, personal representations. Every spiritual tendency has its distinguished representatives, and when it has reached its perfection, provides its representative κατʼ ἐξοχήν (par excellence). Hence Antichristian tendencies produce different Antichrists; and it is a sober historical view when Christianity maintains that these separate Antichrists shall, some future day, find their consummation in an individual far excelling them in the intensity of his evil character (Lange). In conclusion, we must not omit to mention that Paul and John agree in speaking emphatically of the destruction of Antichrist.… His triumph is but of short duration; judgment speedily overtakes him. The man of sin is of necessity a child of death, the son of perdition.… The return of the “beast” (Revelation 17:11) is represented, or at least prepared, in that principle which, since 1789, has manifested itself in beast-like outbreaks, and has since then been developed both extensively and intensively. This principle has appeared in various forms, in the Revolution, in Napoleon, [338] despotism sanctioning revolution; proving, at the same time, that the beast, even in this shape, can carry the “harlot” in Socialism and Communism. But we may yet expect other manifestations. [339] At present, it is the endeavour of churches and governments to keep down this monster; but it has shown its teeth more than once, and given unmistakable signs that it is regaining life and strength. How long its development shall last,—whether it is to grow up rapidly,—through what different phases it has yet to pass,—at what period the seventh kingdom shall pass over into the eighth (Revelation 17), is not known to man: God alone knows it. It is not for us to know the times or the seasons (Acts 1:7); but it is for us to take to heart the word of our Lord, “Can ye not discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16:3).
[338] Mr. Irving and others find a remarkable correspondence between the prophecy concerning the “vile person” and the first Napoleon. The “raiser of taxes,” who preceded him, is identified with Louis XVI., whose death was brought about “neither in anger nor in battle,” but in cold blood, by the sentence of that very power to which his raising of taxes had given birth. The rise of Napoleon is considered to be described in Daniel 11:21, “with a general comprehensiveness as wonderful as in the former verse was the Bourbon’s fate.” Daniel 11:22, Mr. Irving thinks, describes the first act of Napoleon’s career in Italy almost in his own words which be addressed to his troops: “You have precipitated yourselves like a torrent from the summit of the Apennines.” The “prince of the covenant” he views as the pope, who declared his submission in a league which terminated the campaign. In correspondence with Daniel 11:23, he remarks, that Napoleon, after the league just mentioned so wrought with men of science and letters as well as with the common people, to induce them to regard him as the harbinger of light, reason, and liberty, that he was able, with a small force, so to increase his power as to enter the richest provinces of Italy, and levy upon them exactions of every kind, which he scattered among his soldiers; at the same time plundering churches and repositories of art of their treasures which no conqueror had hitherto done. Daniel 11:25-27 were fulfilled in the surprising victories gained over the emperor of Austria, the king of the South, through secret intelligence had with one high in the Austrian counsels; the emperor concerting the campaign with the pope or prince of the covenant, plotting mischief together, viz., the continuance of the mystery of iniquity,—but in vain, as its end was determined; the result being that Rome became a republic, the priests were banished, and the pope died in exile. Daniel 11:28 is viewed as giving the key to his future wars and animosities, viz., his “indignation against the holy covenant,” or that people who continued to maintain the cause of religion and righteousness against his usurpation and the confederacy to perpetuate the mischiefs of the papacy, viz., the British nation.
[339] Faber, Frere, Gauntlett, and others, expressed their conviction, previous to 1820, that a second French emperor, exactly like the first, would arise nearer to the end, and would constitute the last great Antichrist. More than twenty other writers, according to Mr. Baxter, up to 1861, considered the late emperor, Napoleon III., to be the eighth head of the apocalyptic beast or future personal Antichrist. Points of resemblance between him and the first Napoleon were not wanting; enough to show that the idea of a repetition might easily be verified, and to strike the attention of those who, according to the Lord’s direction, seek to discern the signs of the times. That two potentates, so closely related to each other, should arise and, after a brief interval, succeed each other, both so unlikely in themselves, and with such humble beginnings, and bearing so strong a resemblance both to each other and to the prophecy, was certainly remarkable, and fitted at least to keep men on the watch. But the end was not yet. “Deus habet sus horas et moras.” Notwithstanding the expressed presentiment of the first Napoleon that his nephew should be the ultimate representative of the Napoleonic dynasty, and the profound conviction of that nephew, even from early life, that he had a great mission and destiny to fulfil in relation to France; notwithstanding that, singularly, after becoming president of the French Republic in 1851, he became emperor of France in 1852, being crowned on the anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz and the coronation of Napoleon L, thus restoring the Napoleonic dynasty, when the French people inscribed on an arch erected in his honour the remarkable words, “The uncle that was, the nephew that is,” as if in literal fulfilment of Revelation 17:8; Revelation 17:11; notwithstanding that from 1849 to 1870 he maintained military occupation of Rome, and declared that the temporal power of the pope was incompatible with the advance of civilisation and must be put down, being termed the “modern Augustus, nephew and heir of Cæsar;” and finally, notwithstanding that he succeeded in acquiring an almost paramount influence over Spain and Italy, while he extended his power in Algeria and the northern coast of Africa, and appeared determined to possess himself of Palestine, and that, as in the case of the first Napoleon, Great Britain appeared to be the only impediment to his attainment of uncontrolled dominion over the Roman world; yet he passed away, broken apparently in the zenith of his prosperity and power, and left the prophecy still unfulfilled.