Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart.
My cogitations much troubled me - showing that the Holy Spirit intended much more to be understood by Daniel's words than Daniel himself understood. We are not to limit the significance of prophecies to what the prophets themselves understood (1 Peter 1:11-12).
Remarks:
(1) The great powers of the world are herein contemplated under the image of four beasts arising up successively from the sea. The great sea agitated by tempests is a fitting emblem of the perpetual turmoil, restlessness, and commotions out of which have emerged the four great world-empires. The wicked are said in Isaiah (Isaiah 57:20) to be "like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt;" and though in politics law has necessarily, from the principle of self-defense, had its place, yet it cannot be denied that wickedness, lawless violence, and unscrupulous self-aggrandizement have played a large part in the origin, consolidation, and progress of all great empires.
(2) With all the outward pomp of the world-kingdoms, when they are regarded in their inner essence, they are seen to be, in a spiritual point of view, brutish: physically, indeed, they are, like the larger wild beasts, superior to man in strength; but really they are fallen from the true dignity of man, which consists in spiritual union and communion with God. Severed from God, the world-powers are degraded to the level of the beasts, the creatures of blind impulse and passion. Willing subjection to the blessed God is what truly ennobles man. The moment that man tries to be independent of God, he falls to the level of the beast, with eye and head turned down earthward. It is only from above that the kingdom can come, Which is at ones perfectly human and perfectly divine: it is only in the coming kingdom of the Son of man, which is to descend from heaven upon earth, and to supplant the world-kingdoms, that the true ideal and destiny of man shall be realized. Then shall the lower creatures, too, which in part have suffered by the fall, share in man's blessedness; and the cherubic four living creatures (Revelation 4:6) of which man is the noblest part, the redeemed elect at the head of creation, shall take that rightful authority under Christ which the four beasts have usurped and abused.
(3) With all Babylon's brute strength, and lion-like animal courage, and eagle-like rapidity of conquest, it nevertheless passed away: an emblem of the transitoriness of all power that rests on mere force, and not on a spiritual basis. The only fact thought noteworthy here by the Spirit of God in its history is, the remarkable visitation whereby Nebuchadnezzar was taught that pride and independency of man in relation to God only degrades him to be the fitting associate of the brutes; whereas humility toward God and conscious dependence on God, raise him to the true dignity of man, so that he "is made stand upon his feet as a man," with head and eyes no longer downward, but lifted upward, and a man's heart is given to him. Let us learn hence that, if we would be exalted, we must abase ourselves, and be clothed with humility.
(4) The characteristic features of Medo-Persia and Greaco-Macedonia are accurately delineated by the cruel, all-devouring bear, and the four-winged four-headed leopard respectively (Daniel 7:5-6). The astonishing rapidity of Alexander's conquests in Asia, and the speedily-ensuing division of his empire among his four successsors, the Diadochi were foreseen and foretold in Holy Writ ages before the event. God foreorders, and therefore must foresee the end from the beginning. The cruelty and rapacity of earthly conquerors are kept within appointed limits by Him, as wild beasts restrained within an enclosure which they cannot pass. He constrains the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath shall He restrain (Psalms 76:10). This is the comfort of the saints, that the hostile world-powers can do them no real or lasting hurt. God will overrule the enemy's violence to His glory and to His people's good.
(5) No particular kind of beast is made to represent the fourth kingdom (Daniel 7:7), to imply that no one beast could adequately represent it, for that in it are concentrated all that is dreadful, terrible, and strong in all the previous world-powers, and in all other kingdoms. With this fourth and last beastkingdom we Europeans of the present day are most concerned. For we live under it; our civilization, language, constitution, laws, and politics being essentially connected with imperial Rome. Indeed, the Germanic empire and the Russian empire expressly profess to represent the western and eastern Roman empire respectively. The title of the Russian emperor is czar, a contraction for Caesar. Out of its ten kingdoms (Daniel 7:7-8) springs the Antichrist, with eyes like the eyes of man-that is, with the high intellectual culture of man seemingly, while really and essentially beastly, as being severed from God, This Antichrist has "a look more stout than his fellows" (Daniel 7:20), and "a mouth speaking great words against the Most High" (Daniel 7:25). In him shall be concentrated all the God-opposed principles of all the four world-kingdoms, of the fourth and last especially. As Popery and the Greek apostasy are the products of the corruption of the Church, so Antichrist is the offspring of the God-opposed world-powers; and the former prepare the way for the latter, and in their last form, as "the false prophet," are the handmaids and ministers to this self-deifying, blasphemous, and persecuting Antichrist, who "shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws." Let us beware of any self-vaunting science, art, and civilization which shall ignore God. Let us seek not to be conformed to the God-opposed world, however plausible be the guise which it assumes, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
(6) The pseudo-son of man Antichrist's power is of limited duration and gives place to the manifested kingdom of the Son of man. The judgment from the Ancient of days (Daniel 7:9) that destroys Antichrist, the last and worst head of the fourth kingdom, prepares the way for the fifth kingdom, the millennial reign of Him who shall set aside the God-opposed bestial world-kingdom, and set up a kingdom wherein God and man shall be in blessed union and harmony. Judgment must first pass upon the world, as being under the curse before the glory comes (Daniel 7:10-11); whereas Antichrist offers glory without the cross-a regenerated world without a previous judgment. The fourth kingdom, though now externally Christianized, is regarded in Scripture as still in its essence to be ranked among the God-opposed beastlike world-powers, not only not better, but actually worse, than its three predecessors, in the ultimate intensity of its opposition to God and His Christ.
Christ's kingdom is now, indeed, in the world, but it is not as yet of the world-for the world is still opposed to God. Christ was invested with the kingdom at His ascension with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of days (Daniel 7:13), and has invisibly exercised it since. It is a hidden kingdom now, and shall only be manifested when Christ Himself shall be manifested (Colossians 3:3-4), to destroy all His anti-Christian foes first, and then to render the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of God and of Himself (Revelation 11:15). He has the title already; but will not visibly exercise His full dominion until then. Christianity is not at present Christianizing the world, but saving souls out of it, so as not to be condemned with it, but to reign over the regenerated nations during the millennium. There must be a regeneration of the world, as well as that of the individual-a death previous to the resurrection, a destruction of the world-kingdoms before they rise anew as the kingdoms of Christ. This is the regeneration in which the elect shall sit on thrones, judging and reigning over the earth (Matthew 19:28; 1 Corinthians 6:2; Revelation 5:10; Revelation 20:4). Finally, the world of nature shall be renewed after the millennium, as the world of history was before it. Then comes the perfect heaven and earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness without any alloy whatever. Thus, there is presented before the believer's eye a continual progression from one degree of glory to another. Let us, then, ever be waiting for the "coming of the Son of man with the clouds of heaven," in accordance with the promise given us at His ascension (Acts 1:11), and for His "everlasting dominion" and kingdom, which "shall not pass away" or "be destroyed," as all the preceding world-kingdoms have been (Daniel 7:13-14).
(7) Not only "the Son of man," "the Ancient of days" (Daniel 7:22), shall reign; but also "the saints of the Most High" (Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:22; Daniel 7:27): they have been with Him, virtually or actually, in His temptations and sufferings, and therefore shall share with Him also in the kingdom and the glory. Satan, the representative head of all that is bestial, made man, who once bore the image of God, to become, through the fall, beastlike. God, by becoming the Son of man-that is, the Representative Head of man-makes man become once more God-like from being beastlike. Christ, vindicating the world-kingdom from the misrule of the God-opposed world-powers, will rule it for God, and the saints shall be the administrators of His reign under the Most High.
(8) It is very sad to think that the present outward Christianity is to give place for a time to an almost universal apostasy under the last Antichrist. But the triumphing of the wicked shall be short (Daniel 7:25). Those times of "trouble, such as never was since there was a nation" (Daniel 12:1), shall be shortened for the elects' sake, The inner and true Church shall come forth the brighter for the fiery ordeal through which it shall have passed, whereas Antichristianity in every form shall be "consumed." But the last Antichrist, who shall have "worn out the saints of the Most High, spoken great words against the Most High Himself, and thought to change times and laws, shall be destroyed" (Daniel 7:26). The saints' remembrance of the great tribulation through which they shall have passed, shall enhance the blessedness of the dominion and kingdom which shall be theirs with Christ forever (Daniel 7:27). See Revelation 7:14-17. Whether we be found alive or asleep at Christ's coming to set up this kingdom, may we be numbered among His saints in glory everlasting!