Daniel 12
Go your way
(Daniel 12)
Jason Procopio
One of the most common questions I get as the pastor of a church filled with young people is completely predictable: “How do I know God’s plan for my life?” Invariably when people ask this question, what they mean is, “What does God want me to do with the next fifty, sixty, seventy years of my life? Does he want me to work in ministry, or in finance? Does he want me to take this job or that job? Does he want me to get married or stay single? Where does he want me to live?” and so on. And they ask this question because they’re worried—worried that if they somehow can’t figure out what God’s plan for their life is, they’ll miss it, and ruin their lives, and end up old and bored, living alone with eight cats knitting sweaters.
It’s probably obvious from the way I talk about this that I don’t think that’s the right question. Or rather, the question’s okay, but the thoughts behind the question—career and family choices and geography—are misplaced. They’re important, but they’re not fundamental.
In this last chapter of the book of Daniel, God gives us the right thoughts to put into the question of What is God’s plan for my life?
If you remember, Daniel was once a young man full of life and energy. He was exiled in Babylon with the rest of his people, and went into the service of the king of Babylon. Then into the service of the next king. And the next. The Babylonian Empire is no more—now it’s the Medo-Persian Empire—and Daniel has had several visions telling him of even further upheaval to come.
Now, Daniel is an old man, standing by the river Tigris. He’s been fasting and praying for twenty-one days. And once again he receives a vision. An angel comes to him and begins to tell him (in chapter 11, which we saw last week) an absolutely insane story of two empires which will fight each other endlessly, with all kinds of upheavals; and one king in particular will come and usher in unprecedented suffering and persecution against the people of God.
That is where we pick up the story in Daniel 12—in the original text there wasn’t a new chapter here; the angel simply continues to speak. He’s just told Daniel that this final king—or perhaps other leaders like him—will come to a swift and unceremonious end at the hands of God.
And this conversation continues in v. 1.
The Time of the End (v. 1-4)
“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. 2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. 4 But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”
Now before we get into this, let me just say one thing, which I probably should have said last week. It would be a mistake to look at everything that happens at the end of chapter 11—from v. 36 on—and the beginning of chapter 12 as simply chronological, with one event necessarily following the previous one.
When I was a kid we lived in Washington State, in the northwest United States. Washington is divided almost squarely in half: on the western half, there are mountains and forests; in the eastern half, there is desert. We lived in the desert half. We’d often pack up the car and spend time in the mountains, and as we drove west we could see these mountains off in the distance. At first they were so far away that they looked like one big line of rock filling up the horizon. But as we got closer, we could begin to see the individual peaks, and realize that these peaks were in reality very far apart from each other.
The angel presents all these occurrences together—“at that time”, the time of the end. But if we take into account what the Bible says elsewhere, it is clear that even now, we are living in what we could call “the end times”, and have been for some two thousand years. So many of the things the angel describes here happen very far apart in time, but because they are so far away to Daniel, they are described together, as one block period of time—one long line of rock which is, in reality, several individual mountains.
He says that “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people.” I don’t know if this thrills anyone else, but I think it’s awesome. God’s people have angelic protectors, chief among whom is Michael, the archangel, the angelic representative of God’s people, whom God will send to help them. This isn’t Michael Landon in Highway to Heaven (a reference which will be lost on 99% of you). This Michael is a warrior capable of fighting demons.
The point is that, no matter how bad things get (and as we saw in the previous chapter they will get very bad indeed), God’s people won’t be alone. They’ll have help. From warrior angels. (Seriously, how great is that?)
So the angel speaking to Daniel repeats something he said before in chapter 11, when he spoke of all the terrible things which would happen “at the time of the end” (11.40). He says “there will be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time.”
There’s a lot of debate about what this means, but the gist of the message is simple: things will get worse before they get better.
There will be—and there have been—particular, pointed and vicious attacks in history against God’s people. We saw this with Antiochus IV, who set the pattern of what was to come. We saw this with the persecution of Christians by Rome—persecutions which nearly wiped Christianity off the map. And even though it’s hard for us to realize this living as we do in the modern West, this kind of persecution is still ongoing in many, many parts of the world today. As the faith of the gospel advances in the world, it meets opposition. And the angel says that opposition against God’s people will increase as time goes on, rather than decrease.
But that state of affairs will not last forever.
He says (second half of v. 1) that “At that time” (the time of the end) your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found in the book.
What is this “book”?
It’s a basic principle of hermeneutics that if a text is unclear, you interpret that text in the light of other texts on the same subject which are clearer—the clear texts help you figure out what’s going on in the unclear texts. For this chapter in Daniel, certain passages in the book of Revelation are particularly helpful.
Revelation 13 speaks of a “beast” who will come and who will have a certain authority over the world. A lot of possibilities have been offered about the identity of this “beast”—some say it’s the “Antichrist”, whom we spoke of last week. Whoever this “beast” may be, it’s clear that it is also representative of Satan’s power over the world: this world broken by sin, and its inhabitants who naturally resist God’s Savior, Jesus Christ.
So John says this beast will come, and he says in Revelation 13.8:
…and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
So the whole world will worship this beast—they will be under Satan’s power—except for those people whose names are written in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. The Lamb who was slain is Jesus Christ, offered up as a perfect sacrifice for his people, like a sacrificial lamb under the law of Moses. And this “book” is a kind of symbolic record of all those who are and will be saved by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The angel tells Daniel that at that time—the time of the end—your people shall be delivered: everyone whose name shall be found in the book. All those who have faith in Christ, Jews or Gentiles, will be delivered.
The question is, What will that deliverance look like?
V. 2:
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
This verse describes what the Bible calls “the resurrection”—not the resurrection of Christ, but of the rest of us. Revelation 20.12 is much more specific about who these many are: they are “the dead”—everyone who is dead at that time. That’s a lot of people.
So just so we’re clear about this, let me say it very carefully.
There will come a day when Christ will return to this earth, and everyone who is dead at that time, everyone who ever lived before that day, will be raised to life again. And we will stand before him, and we will all be judged according to what “the book of life” says of us. Everyone who has placed their faith in Christ will be resurrected to live forever in the new heavens and the new earth with Christ; and everyone who has rejected Christ will be resurrected to live forever in eternal condemnation apart from Christ.
This is what awaits every single one of us—death, resurrection, and then eternal glory or eternal condemnation. (Unless Christ comes back first, at which point those who are still alive will skip right to the last part.)
The implications of this resurrection are just huge. First of all, it means that we won’t live merely spiritual lives in eternity. We will be raised, as Jesus was raised. Just as Jesus had a body after his resurrection—just as he still has a body—we will have bodies. THESE bodies.
Which means that for those who reject Christ, the eternal condemnation they endure will not be spiritual, ethereal torment. It will be real, it will be physical, and it will be forever.
And by the same token, whatever renewal the children of God receive will also be physical, and will also be forever.
Whatever decay and wear they will have taken on after our death will be reversed, and these physical bodies will be made perfect—free from decay, free from sickness, free from death.
We know this because Paul tells us in Philippians 3.21 that Christ will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. When Christ was raised, his body was recognizable, but not immediately. He was the same man, but he was changed. All the physical limitations of his body—fatigue, hunger, and so on—were removed. And when he ascended into heaven, he ascended in his body. Christ doesn’t reign from heaven as a spirit; he is reigning in heaven, right now, as a physical, real, human being.
As he is, so we will be.
And as we will be, so will the earth be. All of the effects of sin on this earth—the same sickness, decay and death that is removed from us—will also be removed from the earth itself.
This is the deliverance promised to the people of God. No more sickness, no more death, no more pain. Eternal life, in perfected bodies, on a perfected earth.
V. 3:
And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
This is the call of the gospel. Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations—that’s what it looks like to “turn many people to righteousness.” The gospel—the good news of what Jesus Christ did for us—is the essence of God’s wisdom. It is the end game of his plan. It is the means by which we receive righteousness—the righteousness of Christ, which he gave to us. And our call is to take this wisdom he has given us—the message of the gospel—and bring it to the world, so that they might turn to Christ’s righteousness and be saved.
So the point here isn’t to suggest that we’ll glow in heaven. The point is that the things we do for the sake of the gospel are not in vain. No matter how small these things are, no matter how insignificant they seem, their impact will last forever.
So the angel tells all this to Daniel, and then he says something curious in v. 4:
But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end.
On first reading, it almost seems as if the angel gives Daniel this massive vision, explains what it means, and then says, “But sshhh, make sure not to tell anyone.”
That’s not what he’s saying, of course (Daniel wrote this book, after all). So what is he saying?
He’s not talking about hiding, but about protecting. Joyce Baldwin notes that the words “‘Seal the book’ [have] the double sense of authenticating and of preserving intact.”
It becomes a little clearer when we see this same kind of language elsewhere. In Revelation 5.1-5, the apostle John has a vision of a scroll sealed up with seven seals, and an angel asking, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break the seals?” He looks, and finds no one in heaven or on earth who can do it…until Christ shows up, and is able to break the seals and open the scroll and fulfill the prophecy.
Now this scroll probably isn’t the same “book” as we see in Daniel 12, but it’s the same idea: essentially, by breaking the seals and opening the scroll, Christ shows that he is the one to fulfill God’s plan.
The resurrection, the final judgment, the deliverance of God’s people, everything prophesied in Daniel 12, happens through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
So when the angel tells Daniel to shut up the words and seal the book, he’s saying that these words are protected until they are meant to occur—the things they speak of will come to pass, at the right time.
God’s Timing: Definite and Mysterious (v. 5-9, 11-12)
Now at v. 5, the angel’s message to Daniel, which has been going since the beginning of chapter 11, finally comes to an end—but the vision does not.
5 Then I, Daniel, looked, and behold, two others stood, one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream. 6 And someone said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, “How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?” 7 And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream; he raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time, and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished. 8 I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” 9 He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. 10 Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand. 11 And from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days. 12 Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days. 13 But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”
Daniel looks and sees on either side of the river two men. One of them isn’t even described; the other is the same man in linen Daniel saw back in chapter 10. As Arnaud told us two weeks ago, this is more than likely Jesus Christ himself, pre-incarnate, before he took on a human nature. But even if it’s not him, it doesn’t matter; he is clearly a representative for God.
The other, unidentified man asks him how long it will be until all these things—everything prophesied in chapter 11 and the first four verses of chapter 12—will end; and then the man in linen does something strange. He raises both hands to heaven and makes an oath in God’s name that these things will continue for “a time, times and half a time” (v. 7).
This sounds strange, but we’ve already heard it before—in 7.25, when the angel interpreted Daniel’s vision of the four beasts and the little horn. In Daniel 7.25 the angel tells Daniel of this unnamed ruler, the “little horn”:
He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.
If you remember, the point is that these persecutions against God’s people would be allowed to continue for the right amount of time.
I know this sounds vague, and it is—in v. 8 we see that Daniel himself didn’t understand what the man in linen was talking about. So we’re in good company. And rather than explain, the man adds another layer of confusion in v. 11. He says the length of time he’s talking about is 1,290 days—about three and a half years.
When you take it that way, “a time, times and half a time” seems to make more sense : a year, years (plural), and half a year—1 + 2 + 1/2 = three and a half years. And that sort of works, because if you count the time of Antiochus IV’s persecution of the Jews as beginning at his first attacks on the Sabbath (in 167 B.C.) and continuing until his death in 164 B.C., that’s close to three years (give or take a few months).
But there are two problems with this idea. Firstly, it is very difficult to interpret the passage in Daniel 7 as speaking of Antiochus IV—Antiochus was the king of Persia, which came out of the Greek Empire; but the fourth beast, out of which the little horn sprang, was Rome, not Greece or Persia.
Secondly (and this is the big one): in v. 11 he says that the period of persecution would be 1,290 days; but in v. 12, he says, “Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days.”
WHAT?!
This isn’t a case of clerical error; these two figures are too close together for Daniel to have made a mistake. And they are too weirdly specific to be simply symbolic.
So what is going on here?
The answer to that question is ridiculously simple: We have no idea.
No one does. Some people have offered theories, but those theories all fall apart very quickly when you start digging. I love this, because this is one of the few places in the last half of Daniel where people who would ordinarily be debating and defending their own position, are all forced to sit back and admit, “We don’t understand what these numbers mean.”
And I’m pretty sure that’s the point.
We know these numbers are referring to God’s timing—he gives us lengths of time, numbers of days. But why did God give us these weirdly specific lengths of time—not just a hundred days or a thousand days, but 1,290 days and 1,335 days—without being remotely clear about to what these numbers are referring?
I think God did this to show us two things about his timing.
First of all, he did it to show us that his timing is definite. God has a specific timeframe for every part of his plan. He knows exactly when these things will happen. He’s not vague about it; he gives very specific numbers. His plan is perfectly and specifically timed.
But at the same time, the lack of explanation for these numbers reminds us that while God’s timing is definite, it is also mysterious. God has a definite timeframe for these events, but he alone knows what that timeframe is, and he reserves the right to keep that information to himself.
It’s like in cryptography. Imagine you found a bit of encrypted code. Trying to figure out the meaning of the encrypted message on your own will be next to impossible. You know there’s a definite, clear and specific message there, but you can’t find it. If you have the key, the code can be solved in an instant. But for now, God alone holds the key.
My guess is that once Christ returns, we’ll be able to look back at history and see with no trouble whatsoever, “Oh, that’s what he meant by a time, times and half a time. That’s what he meant by 1,290 days and 1,335 days.” We just can’t see it yet, on this side of history; we don’t yet have the key.
But God does. His timing is definite, and his timing is mysterious (to us). He will bring this part of human history to a close at exactly the right time, and in exactly the right way, and only he knows when and how that will be.
Application (v. 10, 13)
Now just as we’ve often asked in the last few chapters, what’s the point of all this?
Well, in v. 10, we start to get to the heart of this text—or as we would call it in modern church, this is where we start to see the application.
If you’re not familiar with that language, here’s what I mean. If you’ve been with us for the last few weeks, think back over this book. The first six chapters are incredibly easy to apply, for the most part. Daniel tells us about his life in Babylon, and how God delivered Daniel and his friends; and nearly every time, we can draw a straight line between, This is what happened, and This is what it means for us. This is how Daniel lived, so this is how I should live.
How hard did that become when we got to chapter 7? When we started seeing these visions with mysterious symbols and monsters and numbers all over the place? How many times did you ask yourselves, OK, but what difference does any of this stuff make for my life?
I hope we helped you figure out answers to those questions along the way, but in case it wasn’t clear, in chapter 12 verse 10, we see it spelled out for us much more clearly than before.
V. 10:
Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand.
The “many” who “purify themselves” are clearly God’s people; and “the wicked” are clearly those who are not God’s people. So if we are Christians, if we belong to God’s people, he says that we will “purify ourselves.”
Now we need to be really clear about what this means.
It does not mean that through our own efforts we can make ourselves acceptable to God because of how “pure” we are. We know from the rest of the Bible that that’s not how it works. We are, by our fallen human nature, sinners. That is, we have all rejected God, because we were born inclined to that rejection. Just as we are all born naturally inclined to like certain foods and have certain personality traits, we are all born with a natural inclination to rebel against God—to sin. We’ll do it in different ways, but we’ll all do it.
There is only one human being in history for whom this wasn’t the case—and that is Jesus Christ himself. He is the only human being who was ever pure in and of himself. And Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5.21 that Christ lived a perfect life, and then switched places with his people: he took on our sin, and suffered God’s wrath against that sin; and he gave us his perfect life in exchange. So now, when God looks at his people, his verdict for us is no longer “sinner” but “saint.” Because Christ has given us his righteousness, his purity, God calls us just as righteous as his Son—just as holy, just as innocent, just as pure.
For all of us who have faith in Christ, this has already happened—it happened the day the Holy Spirit gave us faith.
The question is, What happens AFTER that?
We meet Christ, we are declared pure, right then and there. It’s done.
But after that, we have all the remaining years of our life left in front of us. What do we do with the rest of our lives?
The answer is, because God declares us pure, we become in practice what God says we are.
1 John 3.2-3:
2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
Do you see it? Our hope is in Christ—it is only in him that God declares us pure. All the assurance of our salvation comes from him. So if we hope in Christ, we grow in holiness. If we have faith in Christ, we pursue faithfulness to Christ. If we are in Christ, we become like Christ.
If we have been declared pure in Christ, we purify ourselves.
In contrast, the man in linen says in v. 10, “the wicked”—those who don’t belong to God—“shall act wickedly.”
Now it’s risky to say that, because if we misunderstand him, we could take that to mean that we can judge a person based on what they do—we can look at someone’s actions and say, “Well you’re definitely not going to heaven.”
But we can’t say that—we don’t know what God is going to do in them tomorrow, or a year from now, or fifty years from now. So by saying the wicked shall act wickedly, he’s not telling us that we can definitely tell who belongs to God and who doesn’t.
He’s simply describing the way life will play out for those who reject God until the end. He’s saying that for those who don’t belong to God, their sin, their wickedness, will always touch every part of their lives. They will, until their death, act in accordance with their deepest desires, none of which include the glory of God.
By the same token, “none of the wicked shall understand.”
Again, this is how it will play out for those who reject God until the end. They hear the gospel, they read the Bible, and they come away with no understanding. They may understand something, and they may even seem affected by it in some way—but not in the way that actually causes them to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Christ. They look, but they don’t see.
Or to put it another way, the gospel is also like an encrypted message, and the faith God gives us is the key to understanding it. But these people who resist God until the end, they don’t have faith, so even though they read or hear the words, it does nothing to them. They may find it pleasing or admirable…but it won’t get them to repent of their sin and follow Christ.
But, he says, “those who are wise shall understand.”
Again, none of us are wise on our own. None of us can see the wisdom of the gospel on our own. But when the Holy Spirit saves us, he opens our eyes to the sense of the gospel, the good and saving meaning of the message. He gives us faith: he gives us the key to the encryption. And once you have the key, you can’t not see the message.
So now, when we hear the gospel, we understand why this gospel saves us. We understand what Christ did for us, and we understand why doing anything but following Christ and loving him and being like him is absolutely unthinkable.
We may not understand every detail of how it works, but we understand that we need Christ, and through his grace, we understand that we have him; our understanding of the “how” of it all grows as we grow in him.
And the result of growing in him is that we become more and more like him. We purify ourselves and make ourselves white and refined—we become in practice what God says we are.
Now of course, the question everyone wants to ask is, What does that look like in practice?
And that is where v. 13 is so helpful.
V. 13—the man in linen says to Daniel:
“But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”
What does that mean? What did it mean for Daniel to “go his way”? We’ve already seen this in past chapters—after receiving these crazy visions, what did he always do? He went back to doing what God had given him to do: he went back to faithfully serving a pagan king in a pagan nation, representing God well in the place God had placed him.
And that is quite simply what the man in linen calls Daniel to do once again: to go his way, and continue to faithfully serve the king God had placed him under, resting in the knowledge that his place with God at the end of the days is assured.
Daniel: Conclusion
I know this book included a lot of heavy lifting, guys, and I’m grateful to everyone for hanging in there. We wouldn’t have asked you to do this hard work if we didn’t believe it was profoundly worthwhile—that everything in this book is worth proclaiming and living.
So as we come to the end of this book, what should we take away from it?
As we said in the very first message, the major theme of the book of Daniel is God’s sovereignty over human history—God has a plan, and will bring it to pass. That is the point of this book, and rarely have we been given so many reasons to believe that he will exercise his sovereignty to bring his plan to pass.
And that news—the news of God’s sovereignty over every aspect of history—is incredibly good news for us, because it means that we are free. Because God has a plan, and will bring that plan to pass, there is now a whole host of things we no longer have to worry about.
We don’t have to worry about “being good enough”—we’re not.
We don’t have to worry about “saving the world”—we can’t.
We don’t have to worry about “achieving our dreams”—that’s not up to us. (And our dreams are probably terrible for us anyway.)
We don’t have to worry about “building the lives we want for ourselves”—we can try our best, but we have zero control over the outcome.
We don’t have to worry about our sin getting in the way of God’s plan for us—nothing can do that. If we belong to him, he takes everything about us—the good and the bad—and uses it for his purposes, for his glory and our good.
All of those things are God’s domain. He’s the one who decides how our lives end up going; he’s the one who decides the trajectory our lives end up taking.
He is sovereign, and he will fulfill his plan. Which means that we are free to do the main thing he calls us to do: to live the life he has given to us as faithfully as we can, knowing that even in the minutest details of our lives, he will fulfill his plan.
So let’s come back to that frequently-asked question I mentioned at the beginning. What is God’s plan for your life? What does he want you to do?
As the man said to Daniel, “Go your way till the end.”
Ask yourself: Where has God placed you, and what has he given you to do? Not tomorrow, not a year from now, not ten years from now—today, where has he placed you, and what has he given you to do?
Whatever it is, that’s what he wants you to do. You don’t know what he’ll have for you tomorrow, or decades from now; but we all know where he’s put us today, and what he’s given us to do today—even if it’s nothing more complicated than do good work at your job, for the glory of God. We look around; we see where he has put us; we see the gifts and burdens he has given us; learn to know our Bibles, so that we can know how God would have us live in this situation…and then we do it, because we know that God will take care of the rest—our place with him at the end of the days is assured.
And for some of you listening today, you may not know Christ at all. You may not be Christians today; you haven’t placed your faith in Christ; you’re not living for him.
But guess what? God has placed you here, right now, in front of this screen, or with this podcast coming through your headphones. He’s placed you here, where he has presented you with the good news of what Jesus Christ did for you—how he lived a perfect life in your place, how he was punished in your place, so that you might live for him, and one day be resurrected to everlasting life. That’s what he has given you today. So he calls you to respond to that good news—to turn away from your sin, and place your faith in Christ, and trust him for your salvation, and spend the rest of your life from this point on learning how to be like him.
Whether you’re not a Christian at all, or you’ve been a Christian for years, the call of this book is the same for all of us. Go your way till the end, knowing that God’s plans for you, and the world, will come to pass, through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
