The Book of Daniel

V. Unavoidable Predictive Prophecy in Daniel
The evidence examined above clearly proves that the book of Daniel is filled with clear predictive prophecies. Many of these prophecies pertain to the kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece. Since Daniel wrote his book in the sixth century B. C., as demonstrated above, the predictions pertaining to these three kingdoms are genuine predictions. Despite the strong evidence for the book’s sixth-century date, anti-supernaturalist critics date Daniel to c. 165 B. C. in order to evade the force of its predictive prophecies. However, even a 165 B. C. date does not eliminate the genuine predictive prophecies in Daniel, because the fourth empire of his visions is Rome, not Greece, and his prophecy of the coming of the Messiah in Daniel 9 cleary was fulfilled after 165 B. C.

A.) Daniel’s Fourth Kingdom: Rome, not Greece
To eliminate the predictive character of Daniel’s visions, anti-supernaturalist writers attempt to make the four kingdoms of Daniel 2 and 7 into Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece¹⁴² instead of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Since it is utterly impossible to date Daniel as late as the rise of the Roman empire, Daniel must by no means be allowed to predict the rise of Rome if one is to expunge the miraculous from the book. However, denying the fourth empire is Rome requires a plain distortion of what Daniel itself plainly teaches.

First, Daniel clearly affirms what is also apparent from history, that the world empire following Babylon was a united Medo-Persian kingdom, not an initial Median empire which was swallowed up by a later Persian one. The book states that the Babylonian “kingdom is . . . given to the Medes and Persians” under the sign “Peres” for “Persians” (Dan 5:28),¹⁴³ with the result that “Darius the Mede took the kingdom” (5:31). The “Mede” executes “the law of the Medes and Persians” (6:1, 8, 12, 15), and “kings of Persia” are in the same empire as the “Mede” (11:1, 2). The single empire represented as a “ram . . . having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia” (8:20), which single animal with its “two horns” was defeated by the he goat representing the “king of Grecia” (8:7-8, 21). Other books of the Bible likewise refer to the united realm of “Persia and Media” (Esth 1:3, 14, 18, 19, 10:2). Archer explains:

It is fair to say that the weakest spot in the whole structure of the Maccabean theory is to be found in the identification of the fourth empire predicted in chapter 2. In order to maintain their position, the late-date theorists have to interpret this fourth empire as referring to the kingdom of the Macedonians or Greeks founded by Alexander the Great around 330 B. C. This means that the third empire must be identified with the Persian realm established by Cyrus the Great, and the second empire has to be the short-lived Median power, briefly maintained by the [supposedly] legendary Darius the Mede. According to this interpretation, then, the head of gold in chapter 2 represents the Chaldean empire, the breast of silver the Median empire, the belly and the thighs of brass the Persian empire, and the legs of iron the Greek empire. . . . [T]his identification of the four empires is . . . scarcely tenable in the light of internal evidence. That is to say, the text of Daniel itself gives the strongest indications that the author considered the Medes and Persians as components of the one and same empire, and that despite his designation of King Darius as “the Mede,” he never entertained the notion that there was at any time a separate and distinct Median empire previous to the Persian Empire.
In the first place, the symbolism of Dan. 7 precludes the possibility of identifying the second empire as Media and the third empire as Persia. In this chapter, the first kingdom is represented by a lion. (All scholars agree that this represents the Chaldean or Babylonian realm.) The second kingdom appears as a bear devouring three ribs. This would well correspond to the three major conquests of the Medo-Persian empire: Lydia, Babylon, and Egypt (under Cyrus the Great and Cambyses).¹⁴⁴ The third empire is represented as a leopard with four wings and four heads. There is no record that the Persian empire was divided into four parts, but it is well known that the empire of Alexander the Great separated into four parts subsequent to his death, namely, Macedon-Greece, Thrace-Asia Minor, the Seleucid empire (including Syria, Babylonia, and Persia), and Egypt. The natural inference, therefore, would be that the leopard represented the Greek empire. The fourth kingdom is presented as a fearsome ten-horned beast, incomparably more powerful than the others and able to devour the whole earth. The ten horns strongly suggest the ten toes of the image described in chapter 2, and it should be noted that these toes are described in chapter 2 as having a close connection with the two legs of iron. The two legs can easily be identified with the Roman empire, which in the time of Diocletian divided into the Eastern and the Western Roman empires. But there is no way in which they can be reconciled with the history of the Greek empire which followed upon Alexander’s death.
In Dan. 8 we have further symbolism to aid us in this identification of empires two and three. There a two-horned ram (one horn of which is higher than the other, just as Persia overshadowed Media in Cyrus’s empire) is finally overthrown by a hegoat, who at first shows but one horn (easily identified with Alexander the Great) but subsequently sprouts four horns (i.e., Macedon, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt), out of which there finally develops a little horn, that is, Antiochus Epiphanes. . . . From the standpoint of the symbolism of chapters 2, 7, and 8, therefore, the identification of the four empires with Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome presents a perfect correspondence, whereas the identifications involved in the Maccabean Date Theory present the most formidable discrepancies.¹⁴⁵

Clearly, Daniel identifies the fourth empire as Rome, not Greece.¹⁴⁶ Anti-supernaturalists must torture the plain meaning of the text to affirm otherwise.

Furthermore, there was no separately existing Median empire at the time of the conquest of Babylon. On the contrary, the Medes and Persians had been united as a single body for many years when that conquest took place. Anti-supernaturalist commentators allege that Daniel created “a historical inaccuracy . . . by placing the Medes subsequent to the Babylonians and preceding the Persians, whereas historical records make it clear that Media had been absorbed into the Persian empire of Cyrus before the collapse of Babylonia.”¹⁴⁷ That is:

Vital to this theory, then, is the proposition that the Maccabean author, confused and ill-informed as to the historical situation in the sixth century, supposed incorrectly (1) that it was the Medes and the Medes alone who overthrew the Chaldean Empire in 539; (2) that Darius the Mede was ruler in his own right and sovereign over the entire Middle East and the Near East as well; and (3) that, even though his reign lasted less than two years, his “empire” was put on the same level with the Babylonian Empire, which endured for 67 years, and the Persian Empire, which lasted for over 200 years, and the Greek Empire, which had been going on for over 160 years by the time of the Maccabees. The supposed Median stage could have lasted no more than a year and a half, according to the author of Daniel himself, since he never spoke of a later date than the “first year of Darius son of Xerxes” (9:1). The extremely brief and ephemeral character of this supposed “empire” is a very telling argument in its disfavor. It looks like a desperate evasion of the obvious inference from the text that the four empires represented the series: Chaldean, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman.¹⁴⁸

If the plain meaning of Daniel is accepted, then the second empire is Medo-Persia; the last empire is Rome; and there are no historical errors in Daniel’s sequence of events. To eliminate Daniel’s prediction of the Roman Empire, not only must the plain signification of the text be altered, but also historical accuracy must be altered into historical error.

It is not surprising that allusions elsewhere in Scripture identify the final empire of Daniel’s vision as Rome. Matthew 24:15; 2 Thessalonians 2; and Revelation 12:3; 13:1ff. indicate that the Lord Jesus and the Apostles believed that the final empire spoken of in Daniel was not something that pertains to times of Greek domination in centuries past but to Rome. Early interpreters of Daniel also viewed the fourth empire as Rome. Thus, for example, the Pharisees in both pre-Christian and post-Christian times viewed the fourth empire as Rome.¹⁴⁹ Likewise, for “Josephus . . . the 4^th kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue vision represented Rome.”¹⁵⁰ “Daniel also wrote concerning the Roman government, and that our country should be made desolate by them,”¹⁵¹ the ancient Jewish historian stated, as well as evidencing elsewhere his belief that the fourth empire seen by Daniel was Rome.¹⁵² Indeed, that Rome was the fourth empire was the view of pre-Christian Judaism, early post-Christian Judaism, and early Christendom:

On a strict reading of what is known of the history of the ancient Near East the three empires that in turn succeeded the neo-Babylonian would have to be the Persian, Greek (divided after the death of Alexander the Great), and Roman. This interpretation has found wide acceptance among commentators both early and recent. It is to be found consistently in the Talmud (e.g., ‘Abod. Zar. 2b) and among medieval Jewish commentators such as R. Saadiah Gaon, R. Moshe ben Maimon, and R. Moshe ben Nachman. This lead has been followed, in the main, within traditional Judaism. . . . Early Christian exegesis . . . [likewise] identif[ied] . . . the fourth kingdom with the . . . Roman empire.¹⁵³

Thus, early Jewish interpretation was clear, and the “evidence in the writings of the Church fathers is massive and in unison in favor of the Roman view”¹⁵⁴ also. In contrast, the view that the fourth empire is Greece did not exist for hundreds of years after the composition of Daniel.¹⁵⁵ The reason for the unanimity of the early interpretation of Daniel is that the book plainly identifies Rome as the fourth empire predicted. Even granting the utterly unjustifiable late Maccabean date for the book of Daniel does not expunge predictive prophecy from the inspired work.

Daniel’s prediction of the rise and reign of the Roman empire is undeniable evidence of predictive prophecy in Daniel, even on the false and late Maccabean dating of the book. Pusey notes:

Men will hardly turn round and say, that, in the times of Antiochus Epiphanes, it could have been foreseen that the Roman commonwealth, with its annually changing Consuls, would become a kingdom, and that, a kingdom of the world. Men’s consciences will surely hardly allow them. All these various strivings . . . to make the four empires end with Alexander’s successors, bear witness to their conviction, that it was beyond human sagacity, within any time which could be assigned to the book of Daniel, to predict the Roman Empire. Else they would not have invented so many farfetched and contradictory ways of excluding it.

But look at its state, 164, B.C. the year when Antiochus Epiphanes died. A generation only (37 years) had passed since the close of the 2nd Punic war, when the war had been carried to its own gates; Carthage, its rival, still stood over against it. It was felt by Romans to be a formidable foe. Witness the “delenda est Carthago,” [“Carthage must be destroyed”] and the unscrupulous policy adopted in encouraging the aggressions of Masinissa. Enriched by the commerce of the West, Carthage was recovering its resources, and fell through its intestine divisions. Egypt and Antiochus had lately mustered powerful armies: Perseus, king of Macedonia, had been but recently defeated, and might have repelled the Romans, but for his timidity and avarice. They had defeated Antiochus the Great, and, by their enormous fine for the expenses of the war, had crippled him. But, true to their policy of dividing and conquering, supporting the weak whom they feared not against the strong whom they feared, they had diminished the empires, which were their rivals, by giving a portion of their possessions to the weaker, to be taken at their own will hereafter. Who should foresee that all these nations should remain blinded by their avarice; that common fear should never bind them in one; that they should never see, until their own turn came, that Rome used her instruments successively, and flung each aside, and found some excuse of quarrel against each, as soon as she had gained her end? The absence of any such fear on any side shews how little human wisdom could then foresee the world-empire, which as yet existed only in the embryo; and which the nations, whom Rome in the end subdued, were, in God’s Providence, the unwilling, unconscious, blinded, instruments of forming. To us it seems inconceivable that no experience should have opened men’s eyes, until it was too late. Each helped in turn to roll round the wheel, which crushed himself.
Rome had at that time (B.C. 164) no territory East or, except Sicily, South of Italy. Masinissa held the throne of Numidia; Rome had not a foot of ground in Africa. In Spain, she only held so much as had before been in the power of Carthage, the Western and Southern Provinces, now Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, Grenada: two centuries almost elapsed before it was finally reduced. Gaul and Germany were almost unknown countries. Even Cis-Alpine Gaul had not been formally made a Roman Province; Venetia was friendly; Carniola unsubdued; Istria recently subdued; (B.C. 177) Illyricum had been divided into three, yet left nominally free. The Battle of Pydna had destroyed the kingdom of Macedon four years before, (B.C. 168) but it seemed as if Rome knew not how to appropriate territory. It took nothing which it could not at once consolidate. Macedonia was only divided into four independent Republics. The territory which it required Antiochus to cede, it gave to Eumenes: Lycia and Caria, which it took from the Rhodians, it made independent.
Such was the impenetrable mask which it wore; everywhere professing to uphold the weak and maintain justice; every where unjust, as soon as the time came; setting free in order to enslave; aiding, in order to oppress. . . .The facts coincide with the instinct of Porphyry and his followers, that no one could have anticipated, in the days of Antiochus, that Rome would become the empress of the world. He then who foretold it must have had, on this ground also, a Divine foreknowledge.¹⁵⁶

Daniel’s predictions concerning the Roman empire are unavoidable evidence of the ability of the God of the Bible to perform miracles as the living and true Lord of all.

B.) Daniel’s 70 weeks Prophecy an Unavoidable Prediction
Furthermore, Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks (Daniel 9) cannot be honestly explained away, but constitutes a genuine and clear predictive prophecy. Anti-supernaturalist explanations that somehow attempt to make the prophecy fit a Maccabean context run into insuperable difficulties. Advocates of a Maccabean date for the end of the seventy weeks are divided upon when the prediction begins, upon when it ends, and upon whom it refers to. The prediction is turned into gobbledygook, with no consensus upon anything that it means. For example, one anti-supernaturalist (who totally ignored the Christian interpretation of the passage but examined only anti-supernaturalist interpretations, a practice which is sadly common) wrote:

[T]his leaves the “anointed leader” [KJV, “the Messiah the Prince”; “anointed leader” is a very inferior and biased translation in this passage¹⁵⁷] unidentified, since we know of no particular person who fits this description[.] . . . The problem is further exacerbated by the next phrase in the verse . . . “and sixty-two ‘weeks.’” . . . [S]uch a calculation puts the anointed one in 55 BCE—a year in which no notable “anointed leaders” arose within Jerusalem. We cannot really argue from silence for a prominent leader at this time who is simply unknown to us, because our knowledge of Judah at this time (the Roman era) is quite well-informed. . . . There seems no satisfactory answer to this question. . . . It seems, then, that we are back to “square one”: however we calculate and identify the portions of the seventy “weeks” in the rest of the narrative, we are at an impasse with the first part of it here. Some commentators have recognised this and therefore tried to work through the problem backwards, but with little success. None of the proposed solutions is convincing, unless we allow considerable latitude for inaccuracy in matching the calculations to known events—that is, we think about “ballpark” matches between the numbers and the historical events, rather than specific matches. Such approaches, though, do not really “solve” the problem[.]¹⁵⁸

Other anti-supernaturalist commentators make similar statements. Collins argues that readers “should dispel any expectation of exactitude in the calculations” as the decree is connected to things “fictional.” Seow states: “The years are symbolic and, at best, only approximate historical periods. They are probably not literal and precise years.”¹⁵⁹ Such conclusions are contrary to the plain indication of the context that specific years with a specific starting and ending point are in view:

[T]hose who argue for a symbolic understanding of the seventy weeks of years are overlooking the obvious. Daniel’s prayerful confession and plea on behalf of the nation in Daniel 9 began with his reading Jeremiah 25:11–12 and 29:10 that the nation’s exile in and servitude to Babylon would end after seventy years (not after 490 years) and the Babylonian king would be punished. Judah lost her independence in 609 B.C. when Pharaoh Neco II of Egypt killed King Josiah and Judah became a vassal state of Egypt, only to be made a vassal state of Babylon four years later. In 539 B.C.— seventy years later—Babylon was overthrown, and the prophecy of Jeremiah was literally fulfilled. Daniel hoped that Jerusalem’s desolations would be complete with Babylon’s downfall, but the Lord showed him that seventy sevens of years would still be needed for her desolations to be fulfilled. Since the latter was established on a foundation of seventy literal years, logically the extended period should be viewed as literal as well.¹⁶⁰

Furthermore, every system of interpretation of Daniel’s seventy-week prophecy prior to A. D. 70—Hellenistic, Essene, Pharisaic, and all others—viewed the weeks as a literal period of 490 years.¹⁶¹ What is more, those living in the first century expected the fulfillment of the prediction of Daniel nine in their time.¹⁶² The Talmud continued the earlier Jewish view that the Messiah would come during the time of Daniel’s fourth empire, Rome: “The son of David will come . . . when the evil kingdom of Rome will overspread the entire world. . . . [and the] son of David will come . . . when the monarchy [of Rome] will spread over Israel.”¹⁶³ It recognizes that Daniel “contains the time of the Messiah”¹⁶⁴ in his prediction in chapter nine. Every ancient interpretation of Daniel 9’s prophecy, whether Zealot, “Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, and early Christian . . . aim[ed] at precision . . . trying to achieve exactness,” with “many Jewish and Christian interpretations” believing that the prophecy would be fulfilled around the time that the Lord Jesus actually fulfilled it, even if “inadequate chronological information” prevented them from determining every detail perfectly. What is more, the Jews living in the Maccabean period “did not regard [Daniel 9] as a fulfilled prophecy” pertaining to their own time “but as one yet to be fulfilled . . . relate[d] to . . . the Davidic Messiah.”¹⁶⁵ Thus:

There is strong evidence to show that the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Zealots all thought that they could date . . . the time when the Son of David would come, and that in each case their calculations were based upon Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 weeks (Dan. 9:24-27), understood as 70 weeks of yaers. The later attempts of the Christian Fathers to show that this prophecy was fulfiled by the coming of Christ, and accord with the time at which He came, had therefore a considerable tradition behind them.¹⁶⁶

Many first century Jews likewise recognized the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the people of the fourth world empire of Daniel, was a fulfillment of Daniel 9:26: “the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” As the Romans surrounded Jerusalem before its fall in A. D. 70, the bitter lament arose: “[W]ho is there that does not know what the writings of the ancient prophets contain in them,—and particularly that oracle which is just now going to be fulfilled upon this miserable city[?] . . . It is God therefore, it is God himself who is bringing on this fire, to purge that city and temple by means of the Romans, and is going to pluck up this city, which is full of your pollutions.”¹⁶⁷ Jerusalem and its temple was only “destroyed”¹⁶⁸ twice in its history—at the time of the original exile in 586 B. C. and in A. D. 70. Nothing like this happened in the Maccabean era. Thus, one has two options when approaching the prophecy of Daniel 9. Out of an unshakeable and blind faith in absolute naturalism and the impossibility of miracles, one can allegorize the passage, conclude that the prophecy has no clear starting date, no clear ending date, no clear reference to any particular person, and, indeed, no significant meaning at all. Alternatively, one can take the passage literally, in which case its timeline begins at an actual decree issued in 444 B. C. and continues to the actual year and even the actual day that the Lord Jesus presented Himself as the Messiah in Jerusalem in A. D. 33, as well as the Messiah’s substitutionary death shortly afterwards, followed by the predicted destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A. D. 70. That the latter is the correct option is obvious. Daniel 9 constitutes a clear and astonishingly specific instance of genuine predictive prophecy that even the anti-supernaturalist Maccabean dating system for the book cannot explain away.

Since Daniel clearly predicted both the Roman empire and the coming of the Messiah, even the anti-supernaturalist Maccabean dating system for the book does not explain away its clear and specific predictive prophecies. This fact validates that the God of the Bible is the living God. Therefore, His statements must be heeded: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: . . . yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it” (Isa 46:9-11).

VI. Conclusion: The Bible: A Supernatural Book—

The Meaning for You
In the book of Daniel, the God of the Bible has provided overwhelming evidence that He is the true God by predicting the future. Composed around 530 B. C, Daniel chapters two, seven, and eight predicted the rise and fall of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires with a significant amount of detail. In chapter eleven, the future history of Israel from the prophet Daniel’s day to the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes c. 165 B. C. is foreseen in breathtaking specificity. Then, in chapter nine, Daniel predicts the exact year and day of Jesus Christ’s presentation of Himself to Israel as the Messiah on March 30, A. D. 33, His subsequent death for the sins of the world, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in A. D. 70 by the Romans. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, as much as if God Himself spoke directly, and it powerfully validates its claim through the prophecies of the book of Daniel. Furthermore, we have considered the prophetic content of only one book of the Bible; the Scriptures contain hundreds of other prophecies of similar power that validate its inspiration.¹⁶⁹ The God of the Bible says “I am God, and there is none like me,” and He “declares the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:9-10); but no other religion, nor any other book that claims to be from God, has anything comparable to Biblical prophecy. The writings of Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Nostradamus, all western philosophers and eastern teachers, and every other religious and secular book whatever, contain nothing like the specific, detailed, and clear predictive prophecies of the Bible. Only the Bible is the Word of God (Revelation 22:18-19). Since it is the Word of God, its prophecies concerning events still future are also infallibly sure. Daniel 12:2 predicts that a time is coming when those that “sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” You will either be one who has everlasting life or one who receives everlasting contempt. Thankfully, the Bible says that “ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13) and are in fellowship with God! You need to know four things: