Page 211 - Daniel

7:26–28 “‘But the court shall sit in judgment, and his dominion shall
be taken away, to be consumed and destroyed to the end. And the
kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under
the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most
High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all

dominions shall serve and obey them.’ Here is the end of the matter.
As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color
changed, but I kept the matter in my heart.”

As Daniel had indicated, the interpreter confirmed the vision as
describing judgment upon the fourth beast and its ruler, the taking away
of his power to rule, and how he is destroyed, either at the end or
destroyed eternally. At the destruction of the fourth empire, the kingdom

then becomes the possession of God’s saints. This does not mean that
God will not rule, as verse 14 plainly states that dominion is given to the
Son of Man. But it does indicate that the kingdom will be for the benefit
and welfare of the saints in contrast to their previous experience of
persecution. Contrary to the preceding kingdoms, which are terminated
abruptly by God’s judgment, the final kingdom will be everlasting, and
in it all powers and peoples will serve and obey God.

Daniel then penned a postscript to the interpretation of the vision. He
described again how his thoughts troubled him, but he kept the matter

in his heart, that is, did not reveal it to others. Thus ends one of the
great chapters of the Bible that conservative scholars recognize as a
panoramic view of future events revealed to Daniel in the sixth century
B.C.

Until the rise of modern criticism, the majority view was that the
fourth kingdom is Rome. There is nothing in this chapter to alter the
conclusion that Rome’s final state has not yet been fulfilled, and that it is
a genuine prophetic revelation of God’s program for human history.
Today, when attention is again being riveted upon the Middle East, and

particularly upon Israel, these issues are not merely of academic interest
because they are the key to the present movement of history in
anticipation of what lies ahead.

NOTES