In Daniel viii. we read that a king will come, “of a shameless face, and understanding dark sentences.” He will lay all things waste and destroy the mighty and the people of the saints according to his will. “Craft shall be successful in his hands and his heart shall be puffed up. He shall rise up against the prince of princes, and shall be broken without a hand.” His coming will be “after many days.”[394] The king thus prophesied is generally admitted to have been Antiochus Epiphanes, while the words “after many days” do not refer to the Last Day or to the End of the World, but to the latter end of the Jewish people. Luther, however, took these words and the whole prophecy in an erroneous, apocalyptic sense. He brought the description of the king into connection with the passages on Antichrist, and the great apostasy, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Second Epistle to Timothy and the Second Epistle of Peter, etc.[395] There seemed to him not the slightest doubt that the Papacy, with its pernicious arrogance and revolt against God, was here described in minutest detail. This idea he finally elaborated while writing his violent work “On the Babylonish Captivity.” He therein promised to tell the Papists things such as they had never heard before. This promise he fulfilled soon after in the detailed reply to Ambrosius Catharinus, which he hastily wrote in the month of March, 1521. In this Latin work he proved in detail to the satisfaction of learned readers, whether in Germany or abroad, that the Papacy was plainly depicted in the Bible as Antichrist, and likewise its approaching great fall.[396] “I think that, through my exposition of the Prophet Daniel, I have carried out excellently what I promised the Papists to do.” Thus to his friend Link, on the completion of the work.[397]