Page 177 - Daniel

historical world-kingdoms which are represented by Nebuchadnezzar’s
image (ch. 2), and by Daniel’s vision of four beasts rising up out of the
sea? Almost all interpreters understand that these two visions are to be
interpreted in the same way. “The four kingdoms or dynasties, which

are symbolized (ch. 2) by the different parts of the human image, from
the head to the feet, are the same as those which were symbolized by
the four great beasts rising up out of the sea.” 3

Keil noted also that the commonly accepted view in the church was
that these four kingdoms were Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and
4
Rome. But when faith in the supernatural origin and character of
biblical prophecy was shaken in later centuries, the authenticity of the
book of Daniel was rejected, and the identity of the fourth kingdom as

the Roman world-monarchy was denied.
Conservative scholarship has solid reasons for interpreting the fourth
kingdom as Rome. Porphyry, the third-century A.D. pagan antagonist of

Christianity who invented the idea of a pseudo-Daniel writing in the
second century B.C., did not find Christian support until the rise of
modern higher criticism. The whole attempt, therefore, to make the
book of Daniel history instead of prophecy has been considered

untenable by orthodoxy. With it, the view that the fourth kingdom is
Greece and not Rome has also been rejected by conservative scholars as
unsupported by the book of Daniel and contradicted by the New
Testament as well as historic fulfillment.

In Matthew 24:15 Christ Himself presented the abomination of
desolation predicted in Daniel 9:27 and 12:11 as being future, not past.
Prophecies in the book of Revelation written late in the first century also
anticipate as future the fulfillment of parallel prophecies in Daniel. For
example, Revelation 13 parallels the final stage of Daniel’s fourth

empire. This could not, therefore, refer to events fulfilled in the second
century B.C. Daniel 9:26 announces that the Messiah will be cut off and
the city of Jerusalem destroyed—events that occurred in the Roman
period. The Jewish historian Josephus believed that Daniel had
predicted the rise of Rome, and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (cf.
Dan. 9:26). “in the same manner Daniel also wrote concerning the

Roman government, and that our country should be made desolate by