THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM.
We have now to consider the dealings of the two beasts, the final Roman emperor and his false prophet, with
The Jews.
With the Romans the Jews joined in the death of Christ, and with the rulers of this fourth empire they will be in agreement for a time at the close of their long course of apostasy. This was especially made known to Daniel in the prophecy of
The Seventy Weeks
(Dan. 9). These weeks (lit., hebdomads, or periods of seven, i.e., seven years each) had been divinely decreed (or "cut off," i.e., from the period of "the times of the Gentiles") upon his people and his city. From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Anointed One (the Messiah), the Prince, would be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks. After this the Anointed One would be cut off, and would have nothing (Dan. 9. 24-26). This period is 69 times 7, or 483 years, and to the very day this was the period commencing with the command of Artaxerxes Longimanus, King of Persia, for the restoration of Jerusalem (Neh. 2. 1-9), and ending with the triumphal entry of Christ into the city (Matt. 21. 1-11).[B] Four days later He was crucified, "the Anointed One was cut off and had nothing," i.e., He did not enter then upon His Messianic kingdom. The prophecy predicted that the people of the prince (lit., "a prince") that would come would destroy the city and the sanctuary. That took place in A.D. 70, under Titus Vespasianus. But Titus is not "the prince that shall come." This, apart from other considerations, is clear from what follows: "And his (the prince's) end shall be with a flood (or rather, 'in the overflowing,' i.e., of the wrath of God)," a prediction at once inapplicable to Titus. The mention of
The Last "Week"
is deferred, indicating an interval between the sixty-ninth and the seventieth. Now the events predicted for the seventieth had no historical fulfilment immediately after the sixty-ninth. The one, therefore, did not follow the other consecutively. At the commencement of the intervening period the Jews were scattered from their land. At the seventieth they will have been restored, and the events of that week concern "the prince that shall come," the last world-emperor, and his dealings with them. "He shall make a firm covenant with many (lit., 'the many,' i.e., the great majority of the nation) for one week" (v. 27). This covenant is described in Isaiah's prophecies as a "covenant with death" and an "agreement with Hell." The covenant, he says, "shall be disannulled," and the agreement "shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it" (Isa. 28. 18). That this refers to a time yet future and not to past Israelitic history may be gathered from verse 22, where the theme and the language are similar to those of the passage in Daniel now under consideration. Daniel tells us the mode of the disannulling. "In the midst of the week (R.V., margin) he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease." Accordingly after three and a half years the Antichrist, manifesting his real character, will prove himself a traitor and break the covenant, and thus Isaiah's prediction will be fulfilled.
[B] See "The Coming Prince," by Sir Robert Anderson. Price, 5/.
Apparently at the very time when he thus breaks his league with the Jews the Antichrist will determine upon his public deification and the establishment of his worship in the Temple. For he it is who "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2. 4). This, with the setting up of his image, will doubtless be the fulfilment of the prophecies recorded by Daniel, that "upon the wing (or pinnacle) of abominations shall come one that maketh desolate" (Dan. 9. 27, cp. 11. 31 and 12. 11), and "they shall profane the sanctuary, even the fortress, and shall take away the continual burnt offering, and they shall set up the abomination that maketh desolate" (11. 31, cp. 12. 11); a fulfilment also of the Lord's prediction that "the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet," will "stand in the holy place" (Matt. 24. 15). In the establishment of this blasphemous worship of the emperor, the false prophet will play a prominent part, as we have seen from the latter part of Revelation 13.