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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadThe Revelation of Law in Scripture by Patrick Fairbairn: 22. Appendix K, Page 273: Who Are The Saints, That In Dan_7:18-22, Are Said To Possess The K...
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Appendix K, Page 273: Who Are The Saints, That In Dan_7:18-22, Are Said To Possess The Kingdom
THE representation given in the text of Daniel’s vision proceeds on the assumption, that in the kingdom of Messiah, as there disclosed, there is no distinction of tribes and races, and that its subjects are simply the righteous as opposed to the wicked—“the saints of the Most High.” The words themselves and the whole character of the vision seem to make this plain enough. But interpreters with Jewish leanings cannot so view it; the warping influence of their opinion as to the future ascendency of Israel induces them to impose on the passage a limitation, of which there is no trace in the passage itself. Their literalism is exchanged here for the most unwarranted license, and the saints of the Most High shrink into merely “the people of Israel.” Thus Auberlen, in his work on Daniel and the Apocalypse, writing of this vision, says at p. 219, “By the people of the saints of the Most High, to whom the dominion is to be given, Daniel could manifestly have understood only the people of Israel, as contradistinguished from the kingdoms and peoples of heathendom, who up to this time are to reign; so that we also with exegetical right and propriety can think of nothing else, therefore not immediately of the church.” Here, in the first place, we have a groundless assumption—that Daniel could only understand by the expressing the people of Israel. What Daniel understood is not stated, nor generally are we informed of the prophets how far their insight carried them into the real import of the visions given them. It, no doubt, differed in one prophet as compared with another; and also in the same prophet with respect to different parts of the communications he received. Of them, therefore, as of the ancient believers generally, it cannot be said with certainty in any particular case, how far precisely they understood the meaning of their predictions. But, secondly, whatever their understanding might be—if Daniel, here, for example, understood by the saints of the Most High simply the Jewish people, that is no reason why we should hold such to be what was properly meant. We are no more obliged or warranted in such a case to abide by his understanding, than we ought to abide by the partial and mistaken senses, which the apostles often put upon our Lord’s words up till the day of Pentecost. The words are not so properly the words of Daniel as those of the Spirit of God, and to ascribe to them a certain sense, different from what they naturally bear, as not only that put on them by him, but because so put, their only valid and proper sense, is to embrace the old rationalistic principle, which treated the prophetical writings as simply the productions of men, incapable of bearing any other or higher sense than the men themselves fully understood. Such a principle is utterly at variance with the proper inspiration of prophecy-and with the real circumstances of the prophets of the Old Testament In regard to the things which were given them to make known concerning the Christian dispensation, they themselves saw through a glass darkly; they had consequently to search, as St Peter tells us, 1Pe_1:11, what in certain respects the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify. The very search implied a measure of darkness in the prediction, and of ignorance in the prophet; and in regard to the opinion itself, to which this search in any particular case conducted, we have, in the first place, no certain means of knowing what it was, and, in the second, even if we knew it, we should not be bound to abide by it; the judgment of the prophet, as Horsley has justly said, “must still bow down to time as a more informed expositor.” This holds particularly in respect to such a prophecy as the one now before us, in which Daniel merely reports what he saw in vision and heard in a dream. Neither the matter nor the words of the prophecy are in any proper sense his own—not his own, that is, as to the ultimate meaning and intention of them. They were his only in so far as they accurately described what he saw and heard; but for all that this pointed to, and required for its proper realization, Daniel was merely on a footing with other believers, and far less favourably situated for understanding it than believers now are. The very absence of any peculiar reference to Israel in the words of the prophecy is strong evidence that none was intended.