Daniel, His Life and Times

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1888 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII DANIEL'S APOCALYPSE. Daniel at the close of the Captivity--A further vision--Supplementary character of it--Change in the language of the book--Was Daniel actually at Susa?--The little horn--Explanation of the vision--Antiochus Epiphanes--His crusade against the Law--The measure ot time--Importance of this vision to the Israelites--The Psalms of Solomon arose in the time of Antiochus--The Messianic hopes contained in them. The vision which we considered in the last chapter was vouchsafed to Daniel in the first year of Belshazzar. We now come to speak of one which he saw in the third year of the same king, at a time when the generals of Cyrus were rapidly concentrating their forces upon Babylon. Daniel's thoughts at this time must have been fixed upon the long-looked-for return to Jerusalem. He had been nearly seventy years in captivity himself, and he well knew that the hard slavery of Israel was nearly completed. But he had his difficulties about the matter. Should he be able to return himself, or would it be his lot to remain behind in Babylon? Again was Daniel favoured with a revelation from heaven, which spoke to him about the future of his people, but this vision in particular, concerning the ram and the he-goat, important though it was, told him nothing whatever about the time and the season of the end of the Captivity and of his own destiny. It told him, as we shall see, that the empire which was about to be established in the place of the Babylonian would come to an end, and that another empire would arise out of it, which would be of vast import to his people. But before proceeding, let us take a rapid risumi of what Daniel had learned about the future from the visions which he had already seen. He had learned (i) from the revelation m...