Page 78 - New English Book L

77

Now let us examine and find out who the Little Horn
is. Having once definitely ascertained the identity of
this eleventh king, the identity of the Bar Nasha will be
settled per se. The Little Horn springs up after the Ten
Persecutions under the reigns of the emperors of the
Roman Power. The empire was writhing under four rivals,
Constantine being one of them. They were all struggling
for the purple; the other three died or fell in battle; and
Constantine was left alone as the supreme sovereign of
the vast empire.

The earlier Christian commentators have in vain
laboured to identity this ugly Little Horn with the Anti-
Christ, with the Pope of Rome by Protestants, and with
the Founder of Islam. (God forbid!) However, the later
Biblical critics are at a loss to solve the problem of the
fourth beast that they wish to identify with the Greek
Empire and the Little Horn with Antiochus. Some of
the critics, e.g. Carpenter, consider the Medo-Persian
Power as two separate kingdoms. But this empire was not
more two than the late Austro-Hungarian Empire was.
The explorations carried on by the Scientific Mission of
the French savant, M. Morgan, in Shúshan (Susa) and
elsewhere leave no doubt on this point. The fourth beast
can be, therefore, no other than the old Roman world.

To show that the Little Horn is no other than Constantine
the Great, the following arguments can safely be advanced:

(a) He overcame Maximian and the other two rivals
and assumed the purple, and put an end to the persecution
of Christianity. Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire is, I think, the best history that can
instruct us about those times. You can never invent four
rivals after the Ten Persecutions of the Church, other than
Constantine and his enemies who fell before him like the
three horns that fell before the little one.