Also, what “sense” does it make to say Rome isn’t the 4th beast when it follows in chronological and historical order from the first 3? Christ was crucified by this beast power, and Christianity began within it as well. Doesn’t make sense to say otherwise.
This from Daniel 9:26 raises a very interesting question:
“...As for the city and the sanctuary,
the people of the coming prince will destroy them.”
Broadly, Rome is accepted as having destroyed “the city and the sanctuary” in 70AD.
Closer reading, however, reveals that the will of Titus was NOT to destroy the sanctuary, but rather to PRESERVE it as a trophy of conquest owing to its splendor. Nonetheless war has its business, and with a last band of holdouts barricaded in the sanctuary, Titus directed his forces to burn and batter the gates to break through and effect an end.
At some juncture, and unnamed conscript to the Roman armies took up a firebrand and heaved it through a window into the interior of the sanctuary, where it ignited flammables inside; tapestries and cedar paneling both abounding within. Being diverted away from the immediate site on another matter, Titus was enraged to learn of the fire within the sanctuary and attempted with all haste and vigor to achieve the demolition of the gates so as to gain entry and quell the flames.
However, neither he nor his commanders, could by an means achieve order among the conscripts; they all being from surrounding regions, and mostly hostile to Judea, seeing the temple of the Jews alight in flame roused them to a frenzy that no threats of punishment in any degree of severity could abate.
And herein lies the question of Daniel 9:26: if it were, as seems nearly certain to have been the case, some conscript to Rome from one of the regions surrounding Judea who effectively set the sanctuary on its fiery course of destruction, WHAT, then, is the identity of “the people of the coming prince”?
The certain answer in this case would necessarily be, “NOT Roman.”
If only to carry the point I note that actual Italian Romans were so rare in Judea that Paul notes the existence of a so-called “Italian Regiment” among all the Roman troops garrisoned in the land.
Am I here being conclusive? No.
But I highlight that what we think we know from a surface grasp of things may NOT be what God knows according to His COMPLETE grasp of things. More humility in regard to what we “know” seems evidently prudent.