Preterism and Daniel 7
As I said on Sunday, there is simply too much in (and about) Daniel 7 to fully explore in a single sermon. I mentioned that I am approaching Daniel’s visions from a preterist position, and I wanted to share a bit more about that. Preterist comes from the Latin word praeter, meaning ‘past.’ Preterism understands the fulfillment of Daniel’s visions to have occurred in our past, but in Daniel’s (and Judah’s) future.
The other three methods of interpreting prophecies like this are historicism, futurism, and idealism. Historicism looks for the fulfillment down through church history. Futurism expects the fulfillment to occur in ‘the end times,’ which is sometime in our future. And idealism does not necessarily expect specific fulfillments, but looks for spiritual lessons communicated in the symbols.
One of the biggest questions we ask when we’re interpreting any passage of Scripture is something like, Who was the original audience and would would this have meant to them? Remember that Daniel was an exile in Babylon along with others from Judah. Why did God give these visions to his people during their exile?
In his book on Daniel, In the Days of These Kings, Jay Rogers says,
“Daniel is not a prophecy given to Protestants to describe the time of the Reformation. It is not a prophecy given to Christians today that describes events in our future. It is a prophecy given to the Jews to prove the time of the coming Messiah. [Note: Daniel 2:44 says, “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.”] The context and purpose of the passage point to a first century fulfillment. … If we say, for instance, that the ‘Little Horn’ is the papacy … in the Middle Ages, or a future Antichrist figure who will come out of the Middle East, then we also have to show how that is specifically applicable to the context and purpose of Daniel’s prophecy.”
And listen to what John Calvin says Daniel 7 and the intended redemptive effect it had on God’s people who received it:
“Here [regarding the little horn] interpreters begin to vary; some twist this to mean the Pope, and others the Turk [i.e., Muslims]; but neither opinion seems to me probable; they are both wrong, since they think the whole course of Christ’s kingdom is here described, while God wished only to declare to his Prophet what should happen up to the first advent of Christ. This, then, is the error of all those who wish to embrace under this vision the perpetual state of the Church up to the end of the world. But the Holy Spirit’s intention was completely different. We explained at the beginning why this vision appeared to the Prophet—because the minds of the pious would constantly fail them in the dreadful convulsions which were at hand, when they saw the supreme dominion pass over to the Persians. And then the Macedonians broke in upon them, and acquired authority throughout the whole of the East, and afterwards those robbers who made war under Alexander suddenly became kings, partly by cruelty and partly by fraud and perfidy, which created more strife than outward hostility. And when the faithful saw all those monarchies perish, and the Roman Empire spring up like a now prodigy, they would lose their courage in such confused and turbulent changes. Thus this vision was presented to the Prophet, that all the children of God might understand what severe trials awaited them before the advent of Christ. Daniel, then, does not proceed beyond the promised redemption, and does not embrace, as I have said, the whole kingdom of Christ, but is content to bring the faithful to that exhibition of grace which they hoped and longed for.”
One objection to preterism is that it makes prophecies in Daniel, Matthew 24, or Revelation “pointless” to those of us alive today. But that’s not true. Scripture is full of Spirit-inspired history and fulfilled prophecy that was written down for our benefit (1 Cor. 10:11). The already-fulfilled prophecy in Daniel 7 informs and encourages us. It reveals a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how and when God crowned his Messiah as King of the world, giving him dominion over all peoples, languages, and nations.