“And in the final part of their kingdom, as the transgressors act to a completion, there will stand up a king fierce in countenance and understanding ambiguous sayings.

Who, then, is that fierce political power? According to history, it was an offshoot of one of the four symbolic “horns,” the one farthest to the west, namely, the Hellenic kingdom of General Cassander over Macedonia and Greece. Later, this kingdom was absorbed by the kingdom of General Lysimachus the king over Thrace and Asia Minor. This left now just three symbolic “horns.” But in the second century before our Common Era those western Hellenic domains were taken over by Rome.

24. (a) How did Rome become the Sixth World Power of Bible history? (b) Despite its anti-Christian record, why could the Roman Empire not be the symbolic ‘small horn’?

²⁴ In the first century before our Common Era imperial Rome took over the eastern Hellenic domains, and finally the southern domains. Thus Rome became the Sixth World Power of Bible history, in the year 30 B.C.E. So, then, did the Roman Empire prove to be that ‘small horn,’ that “king fierce in countenance”? No! For it did not keep existing down to the “appointed time of the end.” According to what the angel said to Daniel, then is when the fulfillment of the prophecy is due to occur. (Dan. 8:19) Of course, the Roman Empire did cruelly persecute the spirit-begotten followers of Jesus Christ, who were worshiping and serving Jehovah in his spiritual “sanctuary.” These were in the spiritual condition pictured by the Holy of the earthly temple. Rome is said to have put the apostles Peter and Paul to death, after that great fire in Rome for which Emperor Nero blamed the Christians. Also, Revelation 1:9 shows that the Roman Empire exiled the apostle John to the penal island of Patmos. But such persecution ceased shortly before the claimed conversion of Emperor Constantine. Still that was sixteen hundred years before the “time of the end” that began at the close of the Gentile Times in 1914 C.E. Even the Holy Roman Empire passed out of power long before the year 1914.

25. (a) What relationship did the ‘small horn’ have with the Roman Empire, and what did it prove to be? (b) How was it a “king fierce in countenance”?

²⁵ What, then, does history show to be the symbolic ‘small horn,’ that aggressive “king fierce in countenance”? It was a northwestern offshoot of the Roman Empire, namely, Britain, forasmuch as there were Roman provinces in what is now England down till the early part of the third century C.E. In the course of the following centuries England came to be the seat of an empire, which, from the seventeenth century onward, included colonies in North America. By the year 1763 the British Empire had defeated Spain and France, both of which were powerful sections of the Holy Roman Empire. From then on, the British Empire demonstrated herself to be the mistress of the seas and the Seventh World Power of Bible prophecy. Even after the thirteen American colonies broke away to establish the United States of America, the British Empire grew to embrace a quarter of the earth’s surface and a quarter of its population. The Seventh World Power gained still greater power when the United States of America collaborated with Britain to form the Anglo-American Dual World Power. Economically and militarily it was indeed a “king fierce in countenance.”