July 21: THE HORN FROM LITTLENESS
“I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words.” Daniel 7:8
Daniel’s vision moves directly to the time of pagan Rome’s end and papal Rome’s beginning. The Roman Empire had imploded by 476AD, but not due to conquerors from the outside. The brutal intimidation tactics of Roman rulership had anything but a character-building effect. This internal deterioration was accompanied by gross fiscal irresponsibility through overspending, heavy taxation, lack of accountability, and general corruption. These internal problems precipitated such instability that Rome had become cracked and ready for carving up by various barbarian tribes who had a presence in the sprawling lands of the empire.
The ten horns (v.7) are symbolic of the smaller kingdoms that took shape following the fracturing of empirical Rome. These powers are named by historians as: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, Vandals, Suevi, Alamanni, Anglo-Saxons, Heruli, Lombards, and Burgundians. In referring back to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a statue, these would be represented by the toes of the feet (2:33).
As Daniel pondered the ten horns on the fourth beast, he saw another horn, a little one, coming up among them. Though this horn is “from littleness”, we will soon read that it eventually grew to become more stout than his fellows (7:20 KJV). This would explain how three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. These were removed to make way for the little horn that was gaining power even as the fractured Roman empire lay in disarray.
As history has shown, and Protestant reformers confirmed, the little horn symbolizes the papacy. Its eyes like the eyes of a man tell of its leader, now known as the pope. The pompous words spoken by this religious leader, succeeded in rallying support which was harnessed to eliminate the three horns of the ten who did not support the ideas and swelling power of the little horn. These three, the Ostrogoths, the Heruli, and the Vandals, were not only stamped out of existence, their libraries and writings were utterly destroyed in order that later findings would not exist to defend their position before the face of history. The destruction of the third of the three was made irreversible by 538AD. In this pivotal year, Justinian “crossed the barrier” from his civil mandate to self-proclaimed theologian. It was a quest for unification of the broken empire by using the power of the church. Justinian vehemently upheld papal supremacy, and the Code of Justinian was an instrument of persecution, specifically of Seventh-day Sabbath keepers. The year 538 was a fulcrum upon which Roman law shifted from pagan to papal law.
Although Daniel did not have the benefit of hindsight as we do, his trust and obedience to his God wrought an amazingly accurate description of what was to come upon the world. The vantage point afforded us today, full access to God’s Word as well as the historical record, must be augmented and refined by the infilling of the Holy Spirit daily (see Luke 11:13). Jesus said:
“Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:36