The Visions. 

        Very few who lightheartedly embark on prophetic speculation have much idea of the variety and number of the explanations of Daniel that have been seriously put forward by Christian expositors worthy of respect. All too often these explanations are mutually exclusive. It is remarkable, too, how seldom the supporter of one view is won over to another. There is not even much evidence that students of prophecy are drawing gradually nearer to one another in their explanations. If we were simply to give an outline of our own inter­pretation, it would for these very reasons be largely waste of time. For a survey of all the principal lines of exposition we lack both space and inclination, so we have contented our­selves with laying down certain general principles which we are convinced must underlie any sound exposition of the visions in Daniel.

        à) Daniel is a book “sealed even to the time of the end” (12:4, also 12:9; 8:19, 26). If we add to this an element of uncertainty about the text, and even more about the exact translation, we shall recognize that every detailed and dog­matic interpretation should be treated with reserve.

        b) Ever since Jerome (a.d. 340-420) there has been a wide degree of general agreement on broad lines of exegesis among expositors. Seeing that we have to do with a “sealed book,” this is rather remarkable, and it rather disposes of the argument of some more recent writers that we can now understand the book because we are in the end-time. When that comes, we may reasonably expect something startlingly new.

        c) The one prophecy where unanimity might reasonably be expected, that of the Seventy Weeks (9:24-27), has produced almost as wide a variety of interpretations, many mutually in­compatible, as any other passage in this book. This seems to confirm the note of caution already struck.

        d) This dogmatism comes largely from the certainty with which we can apply some parts of the visions to Antiochus Epiphanes, viz. ch. 8 and the bulk of ch. 11. But Lattey is surely right in principle, when he says, “The full exegetical exposition of the Book of Daniel must take into account, as it were, three historical planes, that of the persecution of An­tiochus IV Epiphanes, and of the first and second comings of Christ, our Lord. This is part of the mystery’of the book, and is not fully expounded in it… (Lattey: The Book of Daniel, p. vii.). The fact that we can so fully understand the book, when it refers to the past, does not imply that the past has exhausted the meaning of any part of the book, or that the past is a sure guide to the understanding of the book in its future aspect.

        e) The most important thing for the average reader is to discover what the Holy Spirit would have us learn from Daniel for to-day. Though he may get a thrill of awe as he realizes how completely the past has been in God’s hand, we may be sure that this is not the book’s chief value. Still less will it be a purely hypothetical picture of things yet future. We may be sure that the chief purpose of Daniel to-day is to bring strength and comfort to the individual or Church faced by apparently overwhelming and irresistible difficulties and opposition. Its picture of God’s absolute sovereignty in the crisis of the present and in the yet unveiled future is a guaran­tee of God’s succour for all who trust Him and of His ultimate and complete triumph.