Four kingdoms of Daniel
)[citation needed] An interpretation proposed by Swain (1940)[8] sees the "four kingdoms" theory, an import from Asia Minor, becoming the property of Greek and Roman writers in the early 2nd century BC.
[15] Full Preterists, Idealists, certain Reconstructionists and other non-futurists likewise typically believe in the same general sequence, but teach that Daniel's prophecies ended with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and have few to no implications beyond that.
Most Adventist groups in the Millerite tradition hold similar beliefs about the Great Apostasy, as do those of other Restorationist types of Christian faith.
In 533 AD Justinian, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, legally recognized the bishop (pope) of Rome as the head of all the Christian churches.
[26] Ellen White writes, His word has given warning of the impending danger; let this be unheeded, and the Protestant world will learn what the purposes of Rome really are, only when it is too late to escape the snare.
[30] Methodist theologian and historicist Adam Clarke proposed an alternative to the 1844 date as used by Seventh-day Adventists and followers of Baháʼí Faith.
In his 1831 commentary on Daniel 8:14, he states that the 2,300-year period should be calculated from 334 BC, the year Alexander the Great began his conquest of the Persian Empire.
[33] The "four monarchies" theory existed alongside the Six Ages and the Three Eras, as general historical structures, in the work of Augustine of Hippo, a contemporary of Jerome.
This is the case for example in the tenth-century writer Adso, whose Libellus de Antichristo incorporated the characteristic medieval myth of the Last Roman Emperor.
A series of Protestant theologians, such as Jerome Zanchius (1516–1590), Joseph Mede (1586–1639), and John Lightfoot (1602–1675), particularly emphasized the eschatological theory of four monarchies.
[40] Mede and other writers (such as William Guild (1586–1657), Edward Haughton and Nathaniel Stephens (c. 1606–1678)) expected the imminent end of the fourth empire, and a new age.
[41] The early modern version of the four monarchies in universal history was subsequently often attributed to the chronologist and astrologer Johann Carion, based on his Chronika (1532).
Johann Sleidan in his De quatuor imperiis summis (1556) tried to summarise the status of the "four monarchies" as historical theory; he had already alluded to it in previous works.
Sleidan's influential slant on the theory was both theological, with a Protestant tone of apocalyptic decline over time, and an appeal to German nationalist feeling in terms of translatio imperii.
It cast doubts on the Holy Roman Emperor's universal imperium by pointing out that the historical "monarchies" in question had in no case held exclusive sway.
He devoted a chapter to refuting it, alongside the classical scheme of a Golden Age, in his 1566 Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.
[47] In 1617, sculptures representing the four kingdoms of Daniel were placed above the doors of Nuremberg town hall:[48] In the conditions leading to the English Civil War of 1642–1651 and in the disruption that followed, many Englishmen advanced millennarian ideas, believing they were living in the "end of days".
