Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to find their own modern history foreshadowed in the ancient prophecies of the Book of Daniel. In their 1999 publication Pay Attention to Daniel’s Prophecy!, virtually every vision in Daniel is applied to events surrounding the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization. From calculating the end of the “Gentile Times” in 1914 to identifying contemporary nations as the “king of the north” or “king of the south,” the Watchtower’s interpretations are highly novel. A Catholic response exposes these interpretations as unstable and eisegetical, contrasting them with the stable, historically-grounded exegesis preserved in classical Catholic commentaries and consistent Church tradition. The following critique will address several key points of divergence: (1) the misuse of Daniel 4’s “seven times” to yield a 2520-year timeline ending in 1914, (2) the shifting identifications of Daniel 11’s northern and southern kings to fit current events, (3) the misapplication of Daniel 12:4 (“knowledge shall increase”) to justify changing doctrine under the guise of “new light,” (4) the egocentric reading of Daniel’s visions as if they all point to Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves, and (5) a defense of the Catholic Church’s traditional interpretation as theologically and historically sound in contrast to the Watchtower’s speculative novelties.
The “Seven Times” of Daniel 4: Unraveling the 2520-Year Calculation
Nebuchadnezzar’s madness, as depicted by William Blake, illustrates the biblical king’s humbling that lasted “seven times” – traditionally understood as seven literal years. In Daniel chapter 4, King Nebuchadnezzar is punished for his pride by being driven insane, “eating grass like an ox” for a period of “seven times” (Dan 4:16, 32). The Watchtower claims this incident secretly encodes a 2520-year prophecy: they interpret “seven times” as seven prophetic years of 360 days (total 2520 days), then convert days to years, yielding 2520 years. Starting from 607 B.C.E. (their asserted date for Jerusalem’s fall), they count 2520 years forward to reach 1914 C.E., which they teach marks the end of the Gentile Times and the invisible enthronement of Christ as King. This elaborate timeline is the cornerstone of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ eschatology, yet it rests on shaky foundations.
First, the chronological premise is wrong. Historians, archaeologists, and indeed all standard biblical chronologies, date the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem to about 587/586 B.C., not 607 B.C.. There is a 20-year discrepancy manufactured by the Watchtower to make the math work for 1914. No independent evidence supports 607 B.C. as the date of Jerusalem’s fall – Babylonian records and numerous scholarly sources place that event in 587/586 B.C., which would make 2520 years later fall in 1934/1935, not 1914. The Watchtower’s insistence on 607 B.C. is driven purely by prophetic scheme, not by historical fact. Starting a prophetic countdown from an inaccurate date fatally undermines the 1914 calculation.
Second, the scriptural basis for extending Daniel 4 beyond Nebuchadnezzar is untenable. In its immediate context, the “seven times” are clearly the period of that Babylonian king’s insanity – a judgment and later restoration meant as a lesson in humility (Dan 4:24-34). Traditional Catholic commentators have always read this passage in its straightforward sense: “seven times” in Daniel usually denotes years, and thus Nebuchadnezzar’s madness lasted seven years until God restored his reason. Nowhere does the text hint that these seven times represent a much longer epoch or a second fulfillment. In fact, “each prophecy in Daniel had only one fulfillment,” as one critical analysis observes, yet the Watchtower asserts an unprecedented second fulfillment for Daniel 4 that the prophet himself makes no mention of. This is eisegesis of the highest order – reading a modern timeline into an ancient narrative.
Third, the Watchtower’s methodological inconsistency becomes evident. Why should a tree dream about Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation encode the timing of Christ’s kingdom? The Society selectively invokes the “day for a year” principle (drawn from Numbers 14:34 or Ezekiel 4:6) here, yet it ignores that principle elsewhere when inconvenient. Even some Adventist groups (from whom JWs originally borrowed the 2520-year idea) have abandoned this interpretation as unscriptural. The Watchtower’s 2520-year doctrine actually originated with 19th-century Second Adventist preachers, not from any apostolic or patristic source. It is a novel invention, unknown to the Church Fathers or authentic Christian tradition. Indeed, the early Church and Catholic magisterium have never taught that 1914 (or any date calculated from Daniel 4) had eschatological significance. This stands in stark contrast to the Catholic approach, which sees Daniel 4 as a moral lesson about God’s sovereignty over proud rulers, possibly a type of how God humbles the mighty, but not as a secret chronograph for Gentile world dominion. Our Lord did speak of “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24), but He gave no numeric duration – and certainly did not tie it to Nebuchadnezzar’s seven years of madness.
In sum, the Watchtower’s 1914 calculation is built on a faulty starting date and a forced symbolic reading of Daniel 4 that finds no support in Scripture or ancient Christian teaching. It is no surprise that outside observers flatly reject this interpretation as unsound. For example, the ex-Witness scholar Raymond Franz noted that if one must twist historical dates and biblical text so much, perhaps the interpretation itself is misguided. The Catholic believer can be confident that nothing in Daniel 4 validates 1914 – instead, we uphold what the text plainly says and how it was consistently understood: God’s power can reduce a king to a beast for seven years, to teach him (and us all) that “the Most High rules the kingdom of men” (Dan 4:17). No further 2520-year puzzle needs to be imposed on this edifying story.
Kings of the North and South: Watchtower’s Moving Targets in Daniel 11
Map of the Hellenistic world (c. 200 BC) showing the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Egypt, south of Judea) and the Seleucid Empire (Syria-Mesopotamia, north of Judea) – the original “king of the South” and “king of the North” in Daniel 11. Daniel chapter 11 vividly foretells a series of struggles between two dynasties in the centuries after Alexander the Great. Classical Catholic interpretation, along with virtually all mainstream scholarship, recognizes these adversaries as the successors of Alexander: the Ptolemies (based in Egypt, to the “south” of the Holy Land) and the Seleucids (based in Syria and Babylon, to the “north” of the Holy Land). Indeed, the Haydock Commentary notes that after Alexander’s empire split, “the kingdoms of Egypt and of Syria are more noticed, as they had much to do with the Jews… Seleucus Nicator, king of Asia and Syria, whose successors are here called the kings of the north”. This historical fulfillment in the 2nd century B.C. (culminating in the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid “king of the North” who persecuted the Jews and desecrated the Temple) is a stable interpretation found in Catholic commentaries for many centuries.
In contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses have reinterpreted the “king of the north” and “king of the south” repeatedly to apply to changing world powers in modern times. What Daniel intended as a precise prophecy about specific ancient kingdoms has been turned into a kind of theological chameleon by the Watchtower, shifting its colors with the geopolitical landscape. In Pay Attention to Daniel’s Prophecy! (1999), the Witnesses do acknowledge the Seleucid vs. Ptolemaic struggle for the early portion of Daniel 11. But as soon as verse 20 and onward, they leap forward in time, claiming the identity of the kings changes multiple times. At various points in Watchtower teaching over the past century, the “King of the North” has been interpreted as: the Roman Empire (for the verses around Daniel 11:20), later imperial Germany during World War I, then the Axis Powers during World War II, then the Communist Bloc (Soviet Union) during the Cold War. The “King of the South” has correspondingly been seen as the opposing power – at times Britain or the Anglo-American alliance, at other times an entity like Egypt or the allies. These identifications were altered whenever history rendered a former interpretation implausible. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses once taught confidently that the King of the North was the USSR and the King of the South the Anglo-American world power; but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the 1999 Daniel book candidly admitted “we cannot say” who the King of the North is now, and that he “has changed identity a number of times before… Only time will provide answers”. Such an admission highlights the inherent instability of their approach.
This interpretive chaos is a clear sign of hermeneutical error. The Watchtower’s method is to read current events into prophecy (“newspaper exegesis”), treating Daniel 11 like a secret code about the 20th and 21st centuries. But authentic interpretation respects context and the sensus fidelium. Daniel’s original readers would have understood the prophecy as concerning the near-future of their people under Greek domination. Indeed, the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV (167 B.C.) is the obvious climax of the chapter. The Catholic Church, in her tradition, often sees Antiochus as a type or foreshadowing of Antichrist, which means Daniel 11 may also mystically point to persecutions of the Church at the end of time – but never has the Church taught that every verse corresponds to a parade of modern political entities like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. By contrast, the Watchtower’s “kings” of north and south have become a slideshow of world powers: what was Papal Rome in one era of their teaching became Hitler in another, then Stalin, and now some amorphous question mark for the future. This inconsistency betrays a purely human attempt to retrofit prophecy to unfolding events, rather than a divine insight.
Furthermore, the Watchtower’s shifting interpretations carry a theological irony: earlier in the 20th century, the Witnesses often identified the King of the North with the Roman Catholic Church or its political influence (at times claiming parts of Daniel 11 referred to a Catholic conspiracy or the papacy). Later they abandoned that and fingered secular powers instead. Such flip-flops underscore that there is no guiding Holy Spirit behind these interpretations, only the exigencies of socio-political events pushing the leadership to revise their commentary. Truth does not change, yet the Watchtower’s version of prophetic “truth” has changed many times – a hallmark of unreliable private interpretation. As Scripture says, “meddle not with those who are given to change”.
By anchoring Daniel 11 in its historical fulfillment, Catholic exegesis provides a consistent, coherent understanding. The prophecy marvelously came to pass in the wars between the Seleucid (north) and Ptolemaic (south) kings, and then (according to many Fathers and scholars) it shifts to describe the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes in detail – a cruel tyrant whose desolation of the Temple (Dan 11:31) prefigures the final Antichrist. This reading has remained essentially the same from St. Jerome’s time through modern Catholic commentaries. We do not wake up to find that the “King of the North” suddenly “really” means some contemporary politician. Thus, the Catholic Church’s prophetic interpretation is stable – rooted in historical fact and consistent hermeneutics – unlike the Watchtower’s, which changes with the political winds. This stability flows from the Magisterium’s guidance and the sensus patrum (mind of the Fathers), who collectively guard against wild conjectures. The result is that Daniel 11 strengthens our faith in God’s providence (seeing how accurately it was fulfilled in antiquity and how it foreshadows the ultimate victory of God’s people), rather than becoming a speculative guessing game about tomorrow’s newspaper headlines.
“Knowledge Shall Increase”: Is New Light a License for Doctrinal Flip-Flops?
Toward the end of Daniel’s book, the angel says: “Seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Dan 12:4). Jehovah’s Witnesses frequently cite this verse in connection with their doctrine of “new light” – the notion that God progressively reveals clearer understanding to their organization, thus justifying changes in doctrine or interpretation. They argue that as we near the end times, the fulfillment of “knowledge shall increase” means God is enlightening His people more than ever before, often using this to excuse why their teachings in, say, 1925 differ from those in 2025. An ex-Witness recounts how, in Watchtower studies, “the knowledge” mentioned in Daniel 12:4 was explicitly equated with “new light,” the idea that “we know more about the Bible now than ever before”. The Witnesses see it as a Biblical mandate that doctrinal knowledge will keep getting refined – or in practical terms, that older understandings can be discarded in favor of newer interpretations as part of divine illumination.
A Catholic critique must respond on two levels: biblical context and principle of doctrine. First, in context, Daniel 12:4 does not mean what the Watchtower claims. The verse is speaking about the words of the prophecy being “sealed” until the end – indicating that the full meaning of Daniel’s visions would not be understood until the events occur or are imminent. “Knowledge shall increase” likely refers to an increase in understanding of God’s plans when the prophesied time arrives. Some commentators also see “many running to and fro” as an image of people diligently searching the Scriptures, or even an increase in general knowledge in the world. Nowhere does the text imply a continual revision of doctrines by a central authority. The Catholic Church, while acknowledging that our understanding of revelation can deepen over centuries, rejects the idea that essential truths once taught can later be reversed under the banner of “new light.” Public revelation was completed with the apostles; what increases is our insight into that deposit of faith, but never in a way that contradicts or nullifies prior truth. The Church speaks of development of doctrine (as Bl. John Henry Newman articulated), which is organic growth consistent with the seed already planted – not a series of U-turns. By contrast, the Watchtower’s notion of “new light” has often been used to paper over false predictions or failed interpretations (1914 being a classic example: when their expectation of Armageddon that year failed, “new light” was promptly spun to redefine 1914 as an “invisible” event). This is not an increase in true knowledge but a coping mechanism for error.
Indeed, an examination of Watchtower history reveals that “new light” usually shines not to illuminate previously unknown doctrine, but to correct old mistakes that the organization had insisted were God’s guidance. The pattern of frequent doctrinal changes – about the identity of prophetic characters, the nature of Jesus’ presence, the understanding of “this generation,” and so on – suggests not divinely guided progress, but human leaders scrambling to adjust. For example, when their early teaching that Christ’s Second Advent occurred in 1874 became untenable, “new light” was claimed to push it to 1914; decades later, further “new light” tweaked the timeline again. Using Daniel 12:4 as a proof-text for such vacillations is a gross misuse of Scripture. If anything, Daniel’s sealing of the words implies that God, not man, reveals the meaning at the appointed time – and certainly the true meaning would not involve repeated wrong guesses. The Watchtower’s 100% failure rate in predictive prophecy up to now (numerous dates from 1878 to 1975 have come and gone) is evidence against divine light. Truth guided by God does not require multiple revisions and about-faces. Proverbs 4:18 (another verse JWs cite: “the light grows brighter until full day”) indeed describes the path of the just growing clearer, but it does not imply that light first goes wrong or dim, which one would have to conclude if “new light” replaces “old light” that was error. As one former Witness wryly observed, “new Light” in Watchtower usage often functions as a euphemism for overturning yesterday’s teaching – something fundamentally at odds with an unchanging God of truth.
From the Catholic vantage point, doctrinal development is cautious, anchored to the past. The Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, guards the deposit of faith so that any development is harmonious. When controversies arise, the Church looks back to Scripture, apostolic Tradition, and earlier magisterial statements to ensure continuity. An authentic “increase of knowledge” (Dan 12:4) in the Church might be seen in, say, the deepening understanding of Christ’s two natures in the early councils, or the clarification of Marian doctrine – never a wholesale reversal of what was taught. In contrast, the Watchtower’s “light” has often behaved like a flickering lantern on a stormy night, swinging this way and that. For instance, the identity of the “Superior Authorities” in Romans 13:1 was taught as secular governments, then changed to God and Christ (for decades), then changed back to secular authorities – all under claimed new light. Such instability would be unthinkable in Catholic teaching, where even non-infallible teachings are treated with reverence and not casually discarded. Daniel 12:4 was never meant as a get-out-of-jail-free card for false prophecy. Increasing knowledge should mean we come to more deeply appreciate the truth once delivered, not continuously rewrite it. In the Catholic view, the Watchtower’s appeal to “new light” is an attempt to sanctify doctrinal chaos with a biblical-sounding rationale – but it fails, because God is not the author of confusion (1 Cor 14:33).
Reading Themselves into Scripture: Watchtower Eisegesis in Daniel’s Visions
One striking feature of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Daniel commentary is how nearly every vision or prophecy is applied to the modern history of the Watchtower Society itself. Rather than seeing the Book of Daniel as centered on Christ and the broader sweep of salvation history, the Witnesses interpret it as a secret allegory about the rise of their own organization in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is a classic case of eisegesis – reading one’s own story into the text. The Witnesses are far from alone in this tendency (many sectarian groups have fancied themselves the fulfillment of Scripture), but the extent to which they do this in Daniel is extraordinary and calls for critical examination.
For example, the Watchtower teaches that the “holy ones” persecuted by the little horn (Daniel 7:25) represent the Bible Students (early Jehovah’s Witnesses) who were allegedly oppressed during World War I, and that this culminated in 1918 when their leaders were imprisoned by American authorities. They go on to claim that Daniel’s prophecy of “a time, times, and half a time” (3½ times = 1260 days) in that context was fulfilled literally in the 1,260 days from late 1914 to early 1918, during which the preaching work was impeded. In fact, Watchtower publications have boldly tied Daniel’s days to specific dates: one book stated that the 1,260 days began November 7, 1914 and ended May 7, 1918, “when all the officers of the Watch Tower Society…were arrested”. They similarly interpret the 1,290 days and 1,335 days mentioned in Daniel 12:11-12 as literal periods in the early 20th century, relating to events like their 1919 conventions and organizational developments. The 1999 Daniel’s Prophecy book even suggests that Daniel foresaw the exact years of certain Watchtower magazine articles and assemblies in the 1920s! In the opening chapter, they unabashedly ask the reader to see their own modern religious history in Daniel’s writings. As one critic observed, “the organization sees those prophecies as fulfilled in itself” – hence the wry remark that the chapter titled “The Book of Daniel and You” would be more honest as “The Book of Daniel and Us.”
This approach amounts to a grandiose self-insertion into the Biblical narrative. It is reminiscent of how certain extreme sect leaders (to give a dramatic example, David Koresh with the Seven Seals) claimed that Scripture spoke directly about their actions. While Jehovah’s Witnesses do not claim their leaders are themselves written into Daniel by name, they come close: they teach that Daniel foresaw the Watchtower Society’s Board of Directors being jailed in 1918 and released in 1919, that he foresaw their international conventions, and even that various beasts and horns in Daniel symbolize conventions, proclamations, or organizational milestones of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Such claims find no support outside Watchtower publications – no reputable biblical scholar (Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant) finds Rutherford’s 1919 convention or a 1931 Watchtower article in the Book of Daniel! It is biblically unfalsifiable only because the interpretation is so subjective. If one already believes the Watchtower is God’s sole channel, one might accept these correlations; but to any objective reader, they appear as arbitrary connections driven by confirmation bias.
Consider an example from the Watchtower’s interpretive timeline-spinning: They taught that the “2300 evenings and mornings” (2300 days) in Daniel 8:14 corresponded to a period from 1938 to 1944 during which the Watchtower organization was “trampled” but then restored (“the sanctuary brought into its right condition”) – supposedly fulfilled when Jehovah’s Witnesses reorganized and experienced renewal after WWII. Yet previously, in the 1920s, they applied the same 2300 days to a different time frame. It’s as if these prophetic numbers are a lump of clay to be molded into whatever timeframe fits the Society’s narrative of persecution and vindication. None of this is derived from the text itself, which in context is speaking about the desecration of the Jewish Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes and its reconsecration by the Maccabees. Catholic commentators like Cornelius a Lapide, Bishop Challoner, or modern scholars see in that verse a prophecy of the Maccabean period (roughly 2300 days the Temple sacrifices ceased under Antiochus). The Witnesses, however, lift it out of context and apply it to themselves – ignoring that Daniel 8 clearly refers to the Greek king (the “small horn”) arising from the breakup of Alexander’s empire (Dan 8:8-9, 21-25).
What drives this interpretive pattern? Fundamentally, the Watchtower leaders have long inculcated the belief that the Bible is an encoded map of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own divine mandate. They see their organization foreshadowed in Scripture much as Christians see the coming of Christ foreshadowed. This stems from a kind of theological narcissism – a conviction that God’s grand plan from ages past was really about us, in our day. It is not unique to JWs (we’ve seen similar attitudes in various sectarian movements through history), but it is strongly pronounced in their literature. They effectively place their organization at the center of eschatology: the “holy ones” are their members, the “constant feature” (daily sacrifice) is their preaching, the oppressors are governments that banned them, the deliverance is the freeing of their president from prison, and the final triumph will be their vindication at Armageddon. Missing in this picture is Jesus Christ as the central figure – His Church, His sacraments, and the universal story of salvation take a back seat to an almost bureaucratic chronicle of Watchtower activities.
From a Catholic standpoint, this is a tragic distortion. Daniel’s prophecies ultimately point to the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of an everlasting Kingdom of God (Dan 7:13-14, Dan 2:44, Dan 9:25-27). Traditional Catholic exegesis sees Christ and His Church as the fulfillment of the hopes in Daniel: for instance, the stone that becomes a great mountain (Dan 2) is interpreted as Christ’s Kingdom which is the Catholic Church, growing to fill the earth. The “Son of Man” who receives dominion (Dan 7) is our Lord Jesus, and by extension His saints who reign with Him – not a corporation in New York. The trials of the Maccabean era (Daniel 8 and 11) are seen as foreshadowing the trials of the Church under Antichrist, not as foreshadowing legal troubles for a sect. The focus is the cosmic battle between God’s kingdom and the powers of evil, centered on Christ’s victory. Watchtower interpretation shrinks these majestic prophecies to parochial proportions, making them about convention attendance figures and legal victories in the 20th century. It would be as if one claimed the Acts of the Apostles was secretly foretelling the founding of a 19th-century religious publishing company – an absurd diminution.
Moreover, this egocentric interpretation is dangerously self-validating. By claiming the Bible itself prophesied the rise of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the organization reinforces its followers’ belief that it is indispensable and divinely guided. After all, if even Daniel spoke about our leaders, who would dare leave “God’s organization”? It puts the Watchtower beyond critique – because any failing or change can be spun as part of the prophetic story (“see, Daniel foretold we’d have a period of refinement”). This circular reasoning is the opposite of how the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church discerns truth. The Catholic Church does not need to find vague references to popes or councils in Scripture to prove its legitimacy; its legitimacy comes from apostolic succession, fidelity to Christ’s teaching, and the witness of the Holy Spirit through the ages. By their fruits you shall know them – not by tortuous allegorical self-portraits in Scripture.
In summary, the Watchtower’s application of Daniel’s visions to itself is a prime example of private interpretation run amok. It lacks support from external critical scholarship (which universally identifies Daniel’s prophecies with either historical events of antiquity or the person of Christ and the eschatological future, but not the history of any modern sect). Even some fair-minded Protestants have criticized the Society for reading everything as “prophecy about Jehovah’s Witnesses”, calling it a form of spiritual pride. A healthy approach to Daniel recognizes God’s sovereignty and faithfulness to all His people through time – culminating in Jesus – rather than funneling everything into one narrow channel. The Catholic Church’s reading of Daniel is God-centric and Christ-centric: it draws moral lessons (e.g. Daniel in the lion’s den prefiguring perseverance in faith), it upholds God’s providence in history (the rise and fall of empires before Christ’s advent), and it looks ahead to the ultimate fulfillment in Christ’s Second Coming and the resurrection (Dan 12). It does not reduce Daniel to an encrypted yearbook of an organization. Thus, Catholics rightly label the Watchtower’s Daniel commentary as eisegesis, foreign to the text and foreign to how Christians have always understood Scripture.
Tradition vs. Novelty: The Reliability of Catholic Exegesis
Having scrutinized the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ eschatological interpretations in Daniel, we find a common thread: novelty and instability. Dates that don’t align with history, prophetic identities that shift with the times, doctrines that reverse course and an insistence that an ancient Jewish prophet was forecasting their relatively recent movement – all these are hallmarks of an interpretive tradition that began in the late 19th century and has been in flux ever since. Against this stands the weight of Catholic tradition, almost two millennia of consistent scriptural interpretation guided by the Holy Spirit through the Church. We maintain that truth is not reinvented in each era, but handed down (in Latin, traditio, “handing on”) faithfully, even as our comprehension deepens. The Catholic approach to Daniel exemplifies this fidelity. It hews closely to the insights of the Church Fathers like St. Jerome (who wrote one of the first extensive commentaries on Daniel), and it stands the test of time.
One might ask, why does this matter? It matters because Jesus founded a Church, endowed with teaching authority (Magisterium), to “make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19-20). This Church, led by the successors of Peter and the Apostles, has the charism to safeguard the deposit of faith. So when the Catholic Church interprets prophecy, it does so with a profound sense of responsibility and continuity. The “prophetic word” is not of private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20) – and Catholic exegesis embodies that principle, avoiding idiosyncratic readings. In Catholic tradition, Daniel is a beloved book that affirms God’s lordship over history and gives comfort that despite tribulations (whether under Antiochus, Nero, or the Antichrist to come), God’s kingdom prevails. There is a remarkable consistency in how Church teachers have understood Daniel’s major prophecies:
- The four beasts of Daniel 7 are almost universally taught to be the four great empires of antiquity (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome), with the fourth beast (Rome) giving way to the kingdom of the Messiah – a kingdom “not made by human hands” (Dan 2:45) which Catholics recognize as Christ’s eternal Kingdom, inaugurated in the Church. This interpretation goes back to antiquity and is echoed in the Haydock Commentary, which draws on patristic sources. The Watchtower, notably, also teaches four empires but then inserts a twist that this prophecy continues beyond Rome into Anglo-America and the United Nations – concepts entirely foreign to any earlier Christian exegesis.
- Daniel 9’s famous prophecy of the “Seventy Weeks” has been consistently understood by Catholics as a prophecy of the coming of Christ the Redeemer. The Angel Gabriel essentially gives Daniel a timetable pointing to the arrival of the Messiah and the atonement (Dan 9:24-27). Every Catholic commentary from the Douay-Rheims footnotes to modern Catholic scholars sees the fulfillment in Jesus Christ’s ministry, death, and the New Covenant. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, divert even this Christ-centered prophecy to make it fit their 1914 chronology (they start the 70 weeks in 455 B.C. to land at 36 C.E., and weave it into their narrative of when “anointing” of Christians ended – missing the rich Messianic import that the whole Christian world rejoices in). In defending the traditional interpretation, we uphold that “to him [Christ] all the prophets bear witness” (Acts 10:43) – Daniel is no exception.
- The Catholic Church doesn’t shy away from saying some parts of Daniel remain mysterious or point to the end times in a way we shouldn’t speculate about rashly. Daniel 12, for instance, speaks of the resurrection of the dead (Dan 12:2) and a time of great trouble. The Church teaches this will have ultimate fulfillment in the future consummation of the age, under God’s providence. But what the Church does not do is say, “Perhaps this refers to our church president’s speech next year.” There is a reverence and sobriety in the Catholic handling of prophecy – fulfilling the angel’s instruction to Daniel to seal the words. Contrast this with the Watchtower’s dogmatic, and often erroneous, attempts to pinpoint every last detail. The result? The Watchtower has had to “un-seal” and re-“seal” their explanations repeatedly, whereas the Catholic understanding, once articulated, doesn’t need backpedaling. It is built to last, because it wasn’t concocted to serve a transient agenda.
It is also important to highlight the theological soundness of the Catholic approach versus the theological pitfalls of the Watchtower’s approach. The Witnesses, by focusing Daniel on themselves, foster a kind of organizational messianism – the notion that loyalty to God is essentially loyalty to an earthly organization that claims a monopoly on truth. Catholic interpretation, grounded in Tradition, always directs the focus back to God’s action in history and the person of Jesus Christ. Even when Catholic commentators identify, say, the little horn of Daniel 7 with a persecuting power, they usually see it as a symbol of all anti-Christian persecution and ultimately of Antichrist. And who overcomes? Christ the King, whose dominion is given him by the Ancient of Days. The Catholic Church sees herself as the humble recipient of that kingdom (the “people of the saints of the Most High” who receive the kingdom in Dan 7:27), not the object of worship or the secret key to prophecy. The Watchtower, however, effectively teaches that salvation history stalled after the apostolic age and resumed in the late 19th century with C.T. Russell and his Bible Students, which is why they think Daniel would leap over the Church age and speak directly about them. This is a profoundly unbiblical notion – it ignores Christ’s promise to be with His Church always and the continuous operation of the Holy Spirit throughout the Christian era. It’s as if they believe the lamp of true religion was snuffed out until their founders rekindled it. Catholic apologetics strongly refutes that idea: the Church’s survival and consistent teaching through centuries is itself a living miracle, a fulfillment of Christ’s words that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Matt 16:18). Therefore we do not need a “new” interpretation of Daniel that skips over the first 18 centuries of Christianity.
Finally, to bolster the credibility of the traditional exegesis, we can even turn to neutral historical scholarship. Secular and religious historians alike note that Jehovah’s Witnesses’ interpretations have had to be revised due to failed predictions, undermining their claim to a unique channel of insight. On the other hand, one might note that Catholic interpreters, by largely sticking to time-tested understandings, have not needed to revise their commentaries in embarrassment. The Haydock Bible Commentary from the 19th century reads just as sound and relevant today regarding Daniel as it did then, because it wasn’t predicated on guessing a date for Armageddon or identifying the King of the North as a current political regime. Its explanations draw from ancient sources and consistent logic. It carried the same identifications of Daniel’s symbols (the four empires, Antiochus as a figure of Antichrist, etc.) that you will find essentially echoed in the latest Catholic Study Bible. Truth doesn’t expire. As the Psalmist says, “Thy word is true from the beginning”. This stability is a powerful witness in itself. It is not that Catholic scholars cannot discover anything new – they can uncover nuances and historically contextual details – but they do so within the framework of the Church’s consistent teaching. The Watchtower’s interpretations, by contrast, read like a chronicle of self-correction: each decade brings a new tweak. Such an approach would cast doubt on any secular theory, let alone a religious teaching claiming God’s guidance.
In conclusion, a Catholic assessment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ eschatological reading of Daniel finds it wanting on multiple counts: historically inaccurate, exegetically fanciful, hermeneutically inconsistent, and theologically myopic. The Catholic Church offers a saner, holier alternative: an interpretation rooted in the living Tradition that gave us the Bible in the first place, illumined by the collective wisdom of saints and scholars through the ages, and verified by continuity and sound fruits. Daniel’s prophecies are indeed fascinating and faith-strengthening – when read in union with the Church, they reinforce our trust in God’s sovereignty and point us to Jesus Christ, the true center of all prophecy. The Watchtower’s approach, however, turns Daniel into a grab-bag of apocalyptic code to elevate their sectarian narrative. As Catholics, we can confidently challenge those claims, armed with Scripture (properly understood) and history. We invite Jehovah’s Witnesses to step back from the intricate web of 607s and 1914s and shifting “kings,” and to see the bigger picture of God’s plan – a plan that far predates Charles Taze Russell and is securely grounded in the Church Christ established. In that Church, the Book of Daniel finds its authentic home: not as an organizational blueprint, but as a prophetic testament to God’s unchanging lordship over history and the promise of the Messiah, fulfilled in Jesus and operative in His Church until the end of time.