II. Hinton-Firm on Historical Interpretation

The influential English-born Baptist clergyman, ISAAC TAYLOR HINTON ^{9ISAAC TAYLOR HINTON (1799-1847) was born at Oxford, England, his father being pastor of the Open Communion Baptist Church at Oxford, and conducting a Baptist school as well. For a time Isaac was a printer at Oxford and in London. In 1832 he came to the United States, where in time he served in four important pastorates-Richmond, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans. In Chicago he was pastor of a kind of community church, chiefly Presbyterian and Baptist. Then the financial panic of 1837 obliged him to teach school for a time, until called to St. Louis. In 1843 Union College of Schenectady, New York, conferred upon him the degree of M.A. In 1844 he transferred to New Orleans. While in Chicago he wrote a sizable History of Baptism, Both From Inspired and Uninspired Writings.} attracted large audiences in his Chicago church in the 1830’s, and again in St. Louis in 1842, with his lectures on the prophecies, which were published by request in 1843. Hinton’s 375-page exposition, The Prophecies of Daniel and John, Illustrated by the Events of History (1843), was a learned, sound, and comprehensive work. He cited the expositions of the great post-Reformation interpreters like Mede, and Sir Isaac and Thomas Newton, and used the condensed materials of nineteenth-century British writers like Bicheno, Faber, Croly, and Keith, whose essential unity upon the fundamentals of prophecy impressed him, but he had no affiliation with the Millerites. Prophecy, Hinton noted, “has engaged the attention of minds of the highest order of piety and intelligence since the period of the Reformation.” ^{10Isaac Taylor Hinton, The Prophecies of Daniel and John, Illustrated by the Events of History, p. v.} (Portrait of Hinton appears on p. 331.)PFF4 353.2

He follows the plan of direct quotation, with documentation. And there is much discussion of Romanism, for “the writings of Daniel and John are a picture gallery of Romanism.” ^{11Ibid., p. vii.} Not only is “History the key to Prophecy, but Prophecy is no less a key to the philosophy of history,” and Daniel and John are “chronological” prophecies, presenting a “complete chain of events.” Yet these are almost entirely in symbol. ^{12Ibid., pp. 14, 15.}PFF4 354.1

1. STANDARD HISTORICAL VIEWS OF Daniel 2 and 7

The structure of prophecy, Hinton held, is built around the four great empires of the prophetic outline—the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman-and finally the fifth empire, Christ’s kingdom, or the church, first persecuted and finally triumphant. ^{13Ibid., pp. 26, 34, 46, 173, 343, 345, 359, 360.} Here are details: Daniel 2 and 7 are parallel prophecies, the three ribs in the mouth of the Persian “bear” being Lydia, Babylon, and Egypt. On the four divisions of Alexander’s empire—Macedonia, Thrace, Syria, and Egypt—he makes an extended citation from Lardner to sustain his position. And Syria and Egypt are declared to be the kings of the North and South, in Daniel 11—north and south of Judea. ^{14Ibid., pp. 37-59.} Hinton emphatically denies the Antiochus Epiphanes theory of Porphyry, declaring:PFF4 354.2

“Nothing can be clearer than that the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, and the clay, are designed to cover the history of the world in all its successive ages.” ^{15Ibid., p. 27. Elsewhere he adds emphatically, “The reference cannot be to Antiochus Epiphanes.”}PFF4 355.1

2. PAPACY SEEN IN MANY SYMBOLS

The Little Horn of Daniel 7 is not Antiochus but the Papacy, arising out of the divisions of Rome (the ten kingdoms being listed according to Machiavelli, Mede, Lloyd, and Isaac Newton). ^{16Ibid., pp. 227. 232-237. The Little Horn of Daniel 8, however, he applies to the Moslems. (Ibid., pp. 86, 87.) Hinton avers that the preterist Moses Stuart, of Andover, errs in restricting most of Daniel and Revelation to the times of Antiochus and of Nero. He even goes so far as to say that Stuart, who leaves out “a hundred historic facts referred to in the symbols of Daniel and John,” has really “earned a Cardinal’s hat” because of his ingenious help to Romanism—by eliminating it from prophecy.} The first beast of Revelation 13 is the Roman Empire, both pagan and Christian, and the second beast is the Papacy, just as the dragon of Revelation 12 is pagan Rome, and the seven heads are its seven forms of government. The Papacy is also the “willful “king, the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, and Babylon (whose daughters are all national established churches.) ^{17Ibid., pp. 232, 240-284.}PFF4 355.2

3. ENDS 70 WEEKS IN A.D. 33

It is under Rome that the 70 weeks of years ended—probably extending from Artaxerxes to A.D. 33. But again Hinton dissents, this time from Miller’s position that the 70 weeks are the first part of the 2300 years. The two beasts of Revelation 13 are the secular and ecclesiastical aspects of the papal Roman Empire. The woman in scarlet likewise symbolizes the Papacy, up-borne by the Western Roman Empire. ^{18Ibid., pp. 186, 190.}PFF4 355.3

4. TIES 2300 YEARS TO MOHAMMEDAN POWER

The Mohammedan power, Hinton holds, appears in both Daniel 8 and Revelation 9, and is also found in Daniel 11. And the “five months” of the Saracenic locusts (5 X 30 = 150) in Revelation 9:5, represent 150 years, and are from 612, “when Mohammed first began to propagate his imposture,” to 762. ^{19Ibid., pp. 89, 90, 110, 111.} This involves the 2300 year-days, or twenty-three centuries, at the close of which ends the trampling the sanctuary underfoot by Turkish Mohammedanism. As the ram and he-goat are symbols in this chapter, so this long time period introduced “must be regarded as symbolical, and interpreted as years.’PFF4 355.4

Hinton does not, however, agree with the Millerites that these 2300 years end in 1843, or that their close brings the destruction of the world by fire. Cleansing the sanctuary is, to him, not synonymous with gathering out the tares in the day of harvest and the destruction of the wicked by the consuming fires of the last conflagration. It must be the antithesis of its defiling. The Horn (of Daniel 8), the Mohammedan power, has polluted the sanctuary-either the Christians or the Holy Land. At the end of the period-date uncertain, but probably 1820-he believes the dissolution of the Mohammedan power will occur, typified by the drying up of the Euphrates, which has already begun. ^{20Ibid., pp. 116-126; cf. p. 186, note.}PFF4 356.1

5. REMARKABLE AGREEMENT ON TURKISH POWER

The Turk’s special time of power—the hour, day, month, and year of Revelation 9:15—is “one of the most singular chronological calculations contained in the prophetic writings.” This period of either 391 or 396 years terminated, said Hinton, either in 1672, with the victory of the Turks over the Poles, or 1453, with their capture of Constantinople. He refers to the remarkable agreement among expositors on the identity of the Turkish power for the sixth trumpet. ^{21Ibid., pp. 145-152.} (On this see tabular chart, pp.1124, 1125.)PFF4 356.2

6. MILLENNIUM TO BE A GRADUAL PROCESS

Hinton sees 1793 as the end of the 1260 years (evidently from Justinian’s decree), and the beginning of the end of the Papacy. The destruction is to be completed at the end of the 1335 years in 1866, when the authority of Christ as king will be acknowledged in the world. On the millennial reign of Christ, Hinton is not dogmatic, but expects it to be literal and personal, with the saints resurrected at the beginning, and the progressive resurrection and judgment of the wicked and the conversion of the world extending throughout the period.” ^{22Ibid., pp. 233. 359-375.} So Hinton, the Baptist, accords with Presbyterian and Protestant Episcopal expositors on many points, though differing on some.PFF4 356.3