Recent Expositions of Daniel. By Prof. W. H. Green, D. D. [pp. 397-424]

-Recent Expositions of -Daniel.
What is meant by the statement that these undefined periods
of uncertain duration are measured by the number seven?
We do not see why, on this hypothesis, they should be called
"weeks" at all, nor why the numbers should be attached to
them which we here find. If there might be thought to be a
symbolical fitness in connecting the numbers seventy and
seven with periods which are fraughlt with such sacred issues
as the advent of the Messiah or the final consummation, what
symbolical or sacred meaning can be imagined to be associated
with sixty-two? This disregard of the numbers and chronolog,ical measures of this prophecy is the more unwarrantable
because the seventy years of Jeremiah, which was the theme
of DanTiel's meditation and suggested the form of the response
made to him, had their literal and exact fiulfilment. This
naturally creates the expectation that the seventy weeks are
also to be strictly computed; and so, as we have seen, they
are according to the common view of the prophecy, which
makes them weeks of years, and finds them to correspond with
precision to the historical intervals which they represent.
While Keil denies the chronological value of the seventy
weeks, and fails to find any revelation of the timne of Messiahll's
advent in the flesh, Judge Taylor goes to the opposite extreme
of subjecting to computation times which we are expressly
told it is not for us to know, Acts i. 7, and which are declared
to be not only unknown to men, but to the angels in heaven,
and even to the Soni of God himself; Mark xiv. 32. Calculations are given to show that " the antichristian despotism of
the Roman hierarchy" was to come to its end A. D. 1867;
that "the Mahomnetan delusion shall die away and disappear,
so far at least as the Holy Land is concerned," in A. D. 1897;
that " the restoration of the Jews to Palestine shall be accomplishled" in the forty-five years next ensuing; that the second
coming of our Lord shall take place in A. D. 1942, when the
millennium shall begin.
There are several weak points in the attempted demnonstration, which it is not necessary here to specify in detail. It is
sufficient to explode this and all similar endeavors to fix definite dates for events still future; that they are all based on the
unproved and fallacious assumption that in prophetic language
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[JULY,