“Before trying to answer the previous question, we must ask ourselves the following three questions: Could Rome represent the little horn of Daniel 8, if Rome could not defile the sanctuary during the PERSIAN EMPIRE in the year 457 BC, to begin the prophecy of the 2,300 evenings and mornings that ended in the year 1844? Can the little horn of Daniel 7 represent the papacy that exercised papal supremacy for 1,260 years starting in the year 538 of our era, if the pope in office at that time was the persecuted and put in captivity, and not the persecutor of the saints? How did the Ostrogoths -the main obstacle for papal Rome to rise to political-religious power- come to an end or receive the mortal blow in the year 538, if that barbaric tribe was able to assault and plunder Rome in the years 540, 546 and 550?
If we cannot give an affirmative answer to the previous questions, we must seek a better interpretation of the powers represented by both horns, before interpreting them as representing the same power. Regarding the first question, we find a double interpretative discourse, because, on the one hand, our scholars assert that Rome, which emerged in the mid-2nd century BC, approximately 300 years after the year 457 BC, represents the little horn of Daniel 8; but, on the other hand, the same scholars affirm the following: ‘Daniel 8’s vision left the prophet prostrated by the vision he had just seen. He had witnessed the suffering of the sons of God and the devastation of the sanctuary PERPETRATED BY THE LITTLE HORN; then, he heard that 2,300 years had to pass before the sanctuary could be purified.’ (The future of the world revealed in the book of Daniel, page 214). ‘Remember that verse 14 is the answer to the angel’s question about how long the vision would last; in other words, the attack of the little horn in verses 10-12.’, “Two hundred years ago, many interpreters understood the 2,300 days represented years, and large number of them ended the period in 1,843, 1,844 or 1,847. However, as far as I know, Seventh-Day Adventist today, are the only ones who adopt the view that the 2,300 days symbolically represent 2,300 literal years, beginning in the Medo-Persian period and extending to the middle of the 19th century”, (The Investigative Judgment, pp 164, 168)”. Other scholar claim the following: ‘Only after 2,300 evenings and mornings would the destructive devastation of the little horn cease’; ‘Chapter 8 is even more explicit; the reign of the little horn lasts 2,300 evenings and mornings.’ The previous statements confirm our traditional interpretation that the little horn of Daniel 8, must have defiled the sanctuary in the year 457 BC, a defilement that would last 2,300 years, before the sanctuary could be purified in the year 1844.
After considering the above, we must ask ourselves: With which interpretation do we stay? With the interpretation that asserts that the little horn defiled the sanctuary in the year 457 BC – even though we cannot identify who this little horn is?; or, with the interpretation that Rome represents the little horn of Daniel 8, even though with this interpretation we find a three-century differential with the events that marked the beginning of the prophecy of the 2,300 evenings and mornings in the year 457 BC?
Definitely, we must seek a better interpretation of what power the little horn of Daniel 8 represents. In relation to the little horn of Daniel 7, considering everything discussed in the first articles of this blog, it is evident that this horn is not represented by the papacy; because the Ostrogoths did not receive the mortal blow in the year 538, which led to the rise of the political-religious power of the Roman pontiff, nor that in that year, papal supremacy began; because the pope at that time was captive in Constantinople for at least the last ten years of his pontificate; and also because history does not record that the papacy was a power that dominated over emperors, kings, and princes, who obeyed its orders for hundreds of years; on the contrary, history records that the papacy was submitted to the emperors of the East, the Lombards, the Normans, and the Germans for at least 800 years after the year 538.
At this point, we must ask ourselves: Does it make sense and is it founded to continue to affirm that the little horn of Daniel 7 is the same little horn recorded in Daniel 8; when both horns emerged in different moments of history? Blessings.”
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