Elements of Prophecy: 8. General Conclusions

Maxims have been drawn from traditional views of Old Testament prophecy, applied to Daniel in particular, which it seems well to notice before passing on to those of the New Testament.
1. The law of departure, which has been thus stated: every detailed prophecy must be viewed as commencing with the chief present or next preceding event at the time when it is given, unless direct proof to the contrary can be brought forward.
2. The law of continuity, which supposes that each prophecy is to be viewed as continuous, unless when there can be assigned some strong internal proof that the continuity is broken.
3. The law of progressive development, which conceives each prophecy that is added to give a fuller expansion of what was seen more briefly before.
4. The law of prophetical perspective, or the notion that distant events are described more briefly in comparison with those near at hand.
5. Now no sober believer will be disposed to doubt the general truth of the first principle, though he might not think it reverent to treat the word of God as one speaks of creation around us, and to formulate canons of interpretation in prophecy as theologians have done to the great detriment of revealed truth in general. As the rule, prophecy, especially detailed prophecy, starts from facts present or imminent. It supposes failure in what is actually before us, the judgment of which God pronounces, in order to make way for “some better thing.” But herein lies the fatal defect of the first.” law,” that it is a mere intellectual deduction, even if true, which is not always apparent, leaving out man's sin and God's judgment, as well as His intervention another day. The moral side is thus overlooked, as well as the divine glory; that is, all that is of chief moment for God or man. But it is plain that in this cold, scientific dissection of the prophetic word the alleged law cannot be justly applied to the famous Seventy Weeks. If the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem was only in the days of Artaxerxes Longimanus, the terminus a quo of the series, this can scarcely be said, without extreme harshness, to have been either the chief present event, or one preceding the prophecy which followed immediately after the fall of Babylon. The object of all this is mainly to involve the reader in a preconceived theory of the Apocalypse, as well as of the Lord's prediction on Mount Olivet, which evidently are each as distinct from one another, as both are from the book of Daniel with its distinct visions, going down from each respective starting-point to the end of the age.
The Apocalypse alone contemplates not only the millennial reign from first to last, but the events which follow, and even the eternal state. How groundless, then, to frame laws from the book of Daniel for what is so obviously different!
Then we have seen that though there may be a measure of continuous order, every vision of Daniel from which the law is avowedly drawn shows a break, more or less distinct; and the same principle is certainly true of the Lord's prophecy. It is confessed that there is one apparent break in the last. It would be truer to say that they all exhibit, after a certain continuity, a distinct gap, before resuming the commotion of each with its results in divine judgment at the end of the age.
If it be merely meant that each successive prophecy adds more light to what was already vouchsafed, the third maxim would be true enough, and almost a truism.
The alleged “prophetical perspective” seems to be as purely imaginary as can be conceived. The fourth empire has far more details than any of its predecessors in Nebuchadnezzar's reign, as it has also in Daniel's vision of the beasts. So have the little horns in Dan. 7; 8 On the Seventy Weeks the law does not in the least bear; and it is reversed by the enormous disproportion given to Antiochus Epiphanes in the last vision, and still more by the space occupied by the final struggle (Dan. 11:36-45; 12).
But further, to reason from the state before Christ to the eighteen centuries under the gospel, to assume that now we ought very plainly to expect a peculiar fullness of prophetic revelation, and this respecting the ordinary events of God's providence, proves nothing but the extreme pre-occupation of a special pleader. We must weigh the predictions of the New Testament themselves, without drawing rules from the visions of Daniel, so obviously different in order, to control their application as men desire. It is as true in prophecy as in the truth as a whole, and in practical conduct, that “if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be fall of light.”