Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/201

 chapter of Daniel upon Mahometan history, we shall not enter into any historical disquisition concerning that part of it which all commentators, whether Catholic or Protestant, admit as referring to the immediate successors of Alexander the Great, especially to Antiochus Epiphanes, such a disquisition being foreign to our purpose; but we shall at once pass on to that which they all equally agree refers to Antichrist.

The thirty-fifth verse of the eleventh chapter appears to wind up that portion of the prophecy which more properly belongs to Alexander's immediate successors, the Syrian kings on the one hand, and the Egyptian kings on the other. And it intimates a transition to another subject, to the history of another great monarch, who was destined to arise and to reign upon the same platform or stage.

The transition is ushered in by these remarkable words: "And some of the learned shall fall, that they may be tried, and may be chosen, and made white, even to the appointed time, because yet there shall be another time." These words are understood by commentators to refer to the persecution of the servants of God amongst the Jewish people, that took place under the tyrannical government of Antiochus Epiphanes; and when the text tells us that