Page 81 - Daniel

Daniel could not have predicted.
But these critics do not take into consideration that Rome already had

taken the western Mediterranean and subdued Greece and parts of
western Asia. While they might be expected to claim that a writer in the
second century B.C. might have guessed that Rome was the fourth empire,

they are unwilling to admit that even a spurious Daniel writing in the
second century could refer to the Roman Empire, for it is obvious that
apart from prophetic insight he could not have predicted the extent of
the empire and its fall in the way Daniel prophesies.

In substantiating the identification of the four empires normally
accepted by conservative scholars, R. D. Wilson points out that the
supposed confusion in the mind of Daniel regarding his facts is actually
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in the mind of the critics. In brief, Wilson points out that the critics do
not have sufficient evidence to support their objections to the data
supplied by Daniel. Most of their criticisms assume Daniel must be

wrong. A similar objection to the account of the fall of Babylon as
recorded by Daniel has the same answer. The objections rely on
unproved assumptions on the part of critics. Remaining problems arise
from insufficient records, not from express contradictions.

Again, the basic difficulty is that the critics cannot admit that the
fourth kingdom is Rome without attributing genuine prophecy even to a
second-century Daniel. But many problems disappear when Daniel is
recognized as prophecy rather than pseudo-prophecy. The revelation of
chapter 2 does not give sufficient detail to identify the kingdoms

completely; but when this revelation is coupled with that of chapters 7–
8, the identification becomes clear and unmistakable.
Daniel did not make any comment on the symbolic meaning of the

chest, which contained the heart, or of the lower part of the body
containing the abdomen. It is probably reading too much into the
Scriptures to infer from this that Cyrus the Persian was a noble man with
some compassion for Israel and to conclude, according to oriental
custom, that this is supported by the fact that the abdomen is considered
the seat of affection. More important and significant is the fact that the

third empire ends with the upper part of the legs, or the thighs,
indicating that the third empire would territorially embrace both East
and West. This will be quite significant in analysis of the next world