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BEASTS, HORNS, AND CROWNS #9
THIRTEEN CENTURIES IN THE WILDERNESS
There’s a cartoon strip where the always adventurous and wildly imaginative kid, Calvin, is digging for treasure with the assistance of his faithful sidekick and tiger buddy, Hobbes. They’re following the mysterious cryptography and the clues on a map, and amazingly, the coded directions are right on target. “‘X’ marks the spot,” and as Calvin and Hobbes dig in the appointed place, there is indeed treasure. “This is incredible,” says Hobbes in admiration. “You followed all the clues, and right where you said to dig, here’s treasure! Tons of money!”
“Yeah,” says Calvin, pulling the loot out of the hole. “It’s Dad’s wallet; I buried it here last week.”
Well, friend, we do thank the innovative creator of Calvin and Hobbes, cartoonist Bill Watterson, and we’ve borrowed bits of theology from him before. But here in the prophetic book of Daniel, chapter 7, I’ll be the first one to confess that it’s easier to look back at a prophecy’s numbers — and find a way to make them fit — than it is to take an apocalyptic vision and apply it to the uncharted waters of the future. And yet I think it’s certainly true that the prophecies that have already been fulfilled, the foretold numbers that have already proven to be accurate, give Christians courage and confidence to believe that the Word of God is exactly that: the infallible Word of God.
For several days of study now, we’ve paused right here in verse 8 and weighed some of the clues Daniel provides about this unique “little horn” power. Considering the great sweep of history involved in Daniel’s vision by the sea, and also what we now know from the history books about the aftermath of the Roman Empire, many credentialed scholars are confident in determining that this little horn power, which uproots three other horns or tribes as it comes into global influence, is none other than the Christian church of the Middle Ages. Other views are out there; I’ll be the first to acknowledge that — and respectfully so. But bear with me as we look at the part of this prophecy that really does have specific numbers with it. Yesterday we addressed, in passing, verse 25:
“He [the little horn power] will speak against the Most High and oppress His saints and try to change the set times and the laws.” And then this prediction: “The saints will be handed over to him for a time, times and half a time.”
Now, where do we take that cryptic expression? I happen to agree — and my own denomination has always interpreted it this way — with Bible scholar Wayne Jackson in his essay, “The ‘Little Horn’ of Daniel’s Sea Beast,” which you can read in its entirety at “christiancourier.com.” Here’s what he says:
“The saints were to be under the oppressive power of the little horn for ‘a time, times, and half a time.’” “Time, times, and the dividing of time” says the King James. Jackson continues: “Clearly, this is the most difficult aspect of the prophecy. A number of novel views have been suggested as to the significance of this expression. The most reasonable conclusion is that it likely represents three and one half years’ worth of prophetic days, i.e., a total of 1,260 days, symbolizing 1,260 years.”
He goes on to suggest that the span of time probably covers the period when the church of the Middle Ages “almost completely dominated and suppressed the religious world, until its power was broken by the influence of the reformation movement.”
Now, before we come down to specifics on that, here’s something very interesting. Go with me to the book of Revelation, which was written hundreds of years later by a Bible prophet, John, who never met or knew Daniel. And we read in chapter 12, which our NIV Bible entitled “The Woman and the Dragon,” this piece of numerical mystery:
“The woman [God’s pure, unsullied church] fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.”
Notice that it’s the same number as in Daniel: 1,260. And very likely, if days mean years in Bible prophecy (there’s abundant evidence for that here in Daniel, by the way) then we have the exact same number mentioned twice now. But here’s stanza three of this mysterious song. In Revelation chapter 13, one of the most frightening in the Apocalypse, John describes how a beast coming out of the sea will have a mouth and speak proud words. Remember the “boastful” mouth of this little horn? And in verse 5 John writes:
“The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months.”
By the way, John, just one chapter earlier, uses the same expression as Daniel in referring to when the pure church would be protected in the wilderness for . . . “a time, times, and half a time,” “out of the serpent’s reach.”
So we have both Daniel and Revelation talking about a time when the powerful and tragically corrupt Christian church of the Middle Ages would persecute saints of God. For how long? For 1,260 days (or years,) says Revelation. Or for 42 months. Do a quick piece of math and 42 months times 30 days in a month comes out to the same number: 1,260. Or . . . for three-and-a-half years. Using the traditional Jewish reckoning of 360 days in a year, 360 times 3½ or 3.5 — and you get the same number a third time. One thousand two hundred and sixty years. In three different ways, the Bible gives us this time prophecy.
But does this mean anything? Admittedly we’re reading our way BACK into the historical accounts. But we discovered yesterday that the last of those three “Arian” tribes, the Ostrogoths, the last holdouts, were defeated by the Church of Rome and its armies in the year 538 A.D. Emperor Justinian, a devout and militant Catholic, commissioned a General Belisarius to lay siege to the Ostrogoths. It’s a fascinating story: with just 5,000 men, Belisarius occupied Rome, and was immediately surrounded by an Ostrogoth force of 150,000 men. What a potential wipeout! He was prisoner in the city he was hoping to liberate. What happened? The Goths, thinking to dehydrate Belisarius’ army, cut the 14 aqueducts leading into the city. But the move backfired; the gushers of water from the busted water mains created a soggy swamp outside the city. Malaria broke out, the Gothic army was decimated by disease, and in March of 538, Belisarius and his small army easily defeated the enemy, essentially exterminating the last of the three renegade “horns.” You can read all of this, either in Dr. Mervyn Maxwell’s wonderful book, God Cares: The Message of Daniel for You and Your Family, or in standard history works like Procopius’ incomparable History of the Wars.
The Bible commentary for Daniel used by many in my own denomination summarizes:
“Not until the rule of the Goths was broken could the papacy be free to develop fully its power. In 538, for the first time since the end of the Western imperial line, the city of Rome was freed from the domination of an Arian kingdom.”
For more than twelve centuries, then, the Christian Church, fallen and infected with growing apostasy as it was, had almost full dominion over the populated world. Many positive achievements did happen during these years, but the persecution of the saints during the Inquisition was a very real tragedy.
As Wayne Jackson has described on his web site, we can thank God for the courageous reformers who came along: Wycliffe, Huss, Luther. Huss and many others were burned at the stake, branded as heretics and traitors for the crime of believing in a different gospel.
Well, what event or events marked the ending of this time prophecy? In his scholastic work, Christianity and the French Revolution, A. Aulard tells how 30 bishops of the church came before the revolutionary government of France, which was endeavoring to bring to an end the subservient position all of France’s clergy had to the Holy Father in Rome. The revolutionaries wanted the religious leaders to now report directly to their government, not to the papal hierarchy. “What?” protested the priests. “For more than 1,200 years” — does that sound familiar — “one supreme faith had been ‘maintained by the piety of our fathers and by all the laws of the State.’” Was France going to abandon that?
The subsequent victories of Napoleon “put the pope at the mercy of the revolutionary government,” which advised the pontiff that “the Roman religion would always be the irreconcilable enemy of the Republic.” In February of 1798, at the orders of Napoleon himself, his underling, Marshal Berthier, marched into Rome unimpeded, and escorted away Pope Pius VI as a prisoner; he died in exile in France. That symbolic act really marked the end of the Church’s civil power in the world; across the Atlantic Ocean, a new nation called America was being birthed with something called the First Amendment in its constitution, guaranteeing for all time the separation of church and state. And you can do the math very easily yourself: from 538 A.D. to the year 1798 A.D. . . . is exactly . . . 1,260 years.
Let me say it again: friend, this is OUR heritage, OUR history. The bad and the good. Our brothers and sisters in the faith, our spiritual ancestors, went though all this. Thank God for the faithful people who survived: the Reformers and also the dedicated Catholic clergy and laity who followed God according to their consciences. And thank God, too, for the sure word of His prophets, giving us hope and comfort here at the very end of time.
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