Absence of the Beast

Another important signal that the Adventist pioneers should have not dismissed was the absence in their eschatological picture of Daniel one of the main figures of the eschatological ending of Revelation - the beast from the dry land. While asserting that Revelation was a key to the book of Daniel, the pioneers generally failed to apply this principle to unlock Daniel's eschatological narrative and to identify the kings.

Josiah Litch at his early attempt to decipher this prophecy came close to associate the kings with the prominent players previously mentioned in Revelation as: "proceeding from Mohammed­anism (the dragon), popery (the beast), and infidelity (the false prophet)."^[31] However, he failed to understand, that while the beast is bound to the popery, it has its distinctive identity.

James White at some time also supported a similar view, however he also failed to see the activity of the second and the last beast in the battle of the kings. To him the king of the North was papacy in its pure form - or the first ten horned beast. It is not altogether clear why he excluded the second beast from the apocalyptic scene. Ignoring the second beast might have been a key cause of the failure of the creative dialog between the two interpreters, as they both excluded this essential eschatological player from their view. We will return to this question later as we discuss the reasons for such an omission, as well as the implications of it.

Weakness of Egypt

Another alarm light should have come from a suspiciously weak and insignificant appearance of the proposed king of the South. In their attempt to consistently follow the geographical and geopolitical principle majority of the pioneers ignored a simple fact, that in their days Egypt had long since lost its prominence. In fact, Egypt lost its prominence already before the First Coming of Jesus Christ. Bringing up Egypt into eschatological picture could by no means be justified by the fact that in the first part of Dan 11, up until verse 22, Egypt played an important role in the political affairs of the world and was prophetically represented by the King of the South.