XIII. Revealings of Prophecy Are Progressive

The revealings of prophecy have been progressive. ^{17This principle has been well described “God is the same throughout all eternity, but He has seen fit to reveal more and more about Himself as His people were prepared to receive more It should be recognized also that the Conservative emphasizes the term ‘progressive revelation’; he does not think of the Bible as simply the record of the progressive discovery of truth.” (Cartledge, op. cit., p. 21.)} Through Daniel, the early church learned of the coming of the Son of man in connection with the destruction of the dominion of the Little Horn and the establishment of Christ’s future kingdom. Through Paul, the Thessalonian error was corrected and the Little Horn, the persecutor of the saints, was expounded as the Man of Sin to sit before long in the “temple of God.”PFF1 161.1

In Second Thessalonians it was revealed that the “day of Christ” begins with the stroke upon “that Wicked” (Anti christ), whom the Lord will consume with the “breath [A.R.V.] of His mouth,” and destroy with the “brightness of His coming.” (2 Thessalonians 2:8.) To the New Testament church was revealed what before had been expressed only in prophetic symbols. Thus the initial visions of Daniel are the effulgent torch illuminating the entire second-advent teaching of Paul, John, and even of Christ Himself, flaming across the whole of the New Testament.PFF1 161.2

The doctrine of the establishment of the glorious, visible kingdom of God at the second advent, with the putting away of all earthly kingdoms, which had its foundation rooted in the prophecies of Daniel, was completed in the visions of John. It was given to Daniel to specify the vain splendor, the time of duration, and the catastrophic fall of the succession of earthly kingdoms that should ultimately give place to the kingdom of God to rise upon their ruins. The prophecies of Daniel were a prophetic outline of future events, projecting a series of four successive world empires, with the Little Horn continuing until the finishing of the mystery of God.PFF1 161.3

Now, more than six hundred years after Daniel’s day, the beloved John amplified the steps that would mark out the way for the establishment of the new kingdom, as inaugurated by the second advent. So the prophetic page of John came to be regarded as a compend, only more in detail, of the chief events and results of history in relation to the coming kingdom. It was looked upon as a further development of the vision of Daniel, depicting particularly the rise and fall of the apostasy variously called Antichrist, the Man of Sin, and the Little Horn; for the first three of the world empires had already passed away, and Rome then ruled the world in John’s time, although its final overthrow through division was then in the offing.PFF1 161.4

The fulfillment of the prophetic outline had progressed from Babylonia, then Persia, on through Greece, and now for more than two centuries Rome had been the leading world power. And it still ruled, and so constituted a “let,” or hindrance, to Antichrist’s emergence. But this restraint would pass, and then Antichrist would come. This was accepted as a foundational fact generally among the early Christians in the Roman Empire.PFF1 162.1