THE key-note of the book of Daniel is the great truth that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” This was the great culminating lesson in the instruction to Nebuchadnezzar. It was the disregarding of this great lesson by Belshazzar, that caused to be written the terrible handwriting on the wall, announcing the doom of Belshazzar and of Babylon, which fell upon both “that night.” That great truth was acknowledged, and its lesson was learned, by Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian. And by prophetic sketches in the seventh, eighth, and eleventh chapters of the book, that great truth is so fully and so clearly illustrated that no one, whether the ruler of a world’s empire, or a poor peasant, can be without excuse in ignorance of it.ARSH May 31, 1898, page 348.1

In the seventh chapter of Daniel, the course of the kingdom of men is outlined from the days of Babylon to the end of the world, by four great beasts, representing the four great world-empires; then ten horns on the head of the fourth, representing ten kingdoms, into which the fourth would be divided; and finally, another one, arising among the ten, uprooting three of them, and continuing until “the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end;” and then “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”ARSH May 31, 1898, page 348.2

In the eighth chapter of Daniel the course of the kingdom of men is again outlined, from the rise of “Media and Persia,” through the domination of “the king of Grecia” and the four divisions of his empire, to and through the rising and working of another power, of “fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,” whose power would “be mighty;” which would “destroy wonderfully, and pros- per and practise;” which, “through his policy also,” would “cause craft to prosper in his hand;” which would “magnify himself in his heart,” and even “by peace” would “destroy many;” which would set itself up to reign in place of “the Prince of princes,” the Lord Jesus himself; and which, at the last, would be “broken without hand” in the mighty breaking caused by that “stone cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces,” when “the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold” are all “broken to pieces together, and become like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carries them away, that no place is found for them.”ARSH May 31, 1898, page 348.3

In the eleventh chapter of Daniel the course of the kingdom of men is yet again outlined from the “third year of Cyrus,” through the reigns of his “three” successors, and even of “the fourth,” who was “far riches than they all,” and who, “by his strength through his riches,” would “stir up all against the realm of Grecia;” then through the reign of the “mighty king” of Grecia, who would “rule with great dominion, and do according to his will;” then through the breaking of his kingdom, and its dividing “toward the four winds of heaven, and not to his posterity, nor according to the dominion which he ruled,” but it would be “plucked up, even for others beside those;” then through the reigns of six kings “of the north” and six kings “of the south;” then through the exalting of the “children of robbers” “to establish the vision;” then through the reign of the children of robbers themselves, and their successors down to the “king of the north,” who “shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain,” and “come to his end,” with none to help him,—to “that time” when Michael shall “stand up, the great Prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”ARSH May 31, 1898, page 349.1

Thus fully, and thus specifically, is sketched in the book of Daniel, and by the hand of Daniel, five hundred and thirty-four years before Christ, the history of the kingdom of men from that day to the end of the world. And all this was so fully and so specifically written, “to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” And this is the key-note, and the one great lesson, of the book of Daniel.ARSH May 31, 1898, page 349.2

Next week we purpose to go over this ground again, and put the names of the empires, kingdoms, and kings in place of the symbols.ARSH May 31, 1898, page 349.3

May 24, 1898

June 7, 1898