Intermediate group of prophets, and their Jewish, Gentile, and Messianic
predictions. Sketch of the interval from David to Daniel.-The
Captivity crisis.-Condition of nations. -Gentile magnificence on the
Euphrates.-Babylon and its builder.- Remains and inscriptions of
Nebuchadnezzar.-Character of Daniel.-His section of the Divine
programme gives-(1) an outline of the history of the Gentile world
for twenty-five centuries.-Double prediction of four great empires,
to be followed by the kingdom of God.-Angelic interpretation of
essential symbols.-Babylonian conquests.--Medo-Persian empire.
-Herodotus and Xenophon. The Canon of Ptolemy.-Greek
empire.-Theodoret. -Thucydides.-Connection of Alexander the
Great with the Jewish people.-Josephus.-The fourth, or Roman,
empire predicted clearly by Daniel, though not referred to in later
writings of Herodotus.-Its iron character and universal sway.-
Gibbon's description of its extent and power.-Its division into ten
kingdoms. The sphere of these-Western, or Latin, not Eastern, or
Greek.-Sir Isaac Newton's demonstration of this.-Machiavelli's
list of the ten at the fall of the Western empire. Lists of the
actual kingdoms occupying Western Europe, at intervals of a
century apart, from the 9th to the 19th centuries.-The present ten.-
The persecuting little horn which reigns over the ten identified with
the Roman papacy.-The fall of the stone not the First Advent.—
(2) A chronological prediction of the First Advent.-The prophecy of
the "seventy weeks”—Dan. ix.-Response to the prayer of the aged