Truth For Life

Alistair Begg: As we are nearing the end of our study of the apocalyptic visions found in the Old Testament book of Daniel, the inevitable question is: How long will it be before these events take place? And many have speculated on the details to try to determine the exact timing of these events. Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg highlights what we can know with certainty.

Daniel chapter 12, and reading from the first verse. 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. 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.

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. 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. Then I, Daniel, looked, and behold, two others stood, one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream.

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?" 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.

I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, "O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?" He said, "Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. 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.

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. Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days. But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days." Amen.

The verses to which I should like to draw your attention begin in verse 5 and end with verse 13. The title that I've given to our study this morning is a question that is routinely asked by the average nine-year-old boy sitting in the service with his parents, and it’s a question that some of you have been asking since the beginning of chapter 7. Our title is: How Long Till the End? It's not chosen arbitrarily. You'll find that it actually is there in the text. And so as the first of two important questions in the text, I've taken it as our title.

Now, if you turned just for one moment back to the middle of chapter 7, let me remind you that it is there that we have this vision that Daniel receives of one like a Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days. And to him is given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

It's almost as if that little section of the middle of seven can serve adequately as the fulcrum for our studies in Daniel, in as much as the first half of the book leading up to that balances on one side, and then the unfolding story of conflict and battle and war that we have been looking at for the last while is on the other side of that fulcrum. And it is the reality of that vision concerning the Lord Jesus Christ himself that enables us not to get bogged down and not to get lost in our studies throughout the book.

Because between chapter 7 and chapter 12, we are dealing with these conflicts which are cosmic in as much as they take place in the heavenly realms, but they are also temporal in so far as they have been worked out on the earthly plane. And the whole historical framework takes us from the time of Daniel and all the way through to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And it is only when the people of God, as you can see here in verse 7, when the conflicts come to an end, it will be within the context of the shattering of the people of God.

You will see that just in the final phrase or two of verse 7: "when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished." So that gives us a fixed point to which this book finally refers. And according to what we find in the book is that the final fixing of the world's brokenness is going to be preceded by the shattering of the power of God's people. I think it’s important for us to allow that to settle in our thinking for just a moment.

One of the ways we can get to it is by asking ourselves rhetorically, as we view the process that will lead us to the end of the world: Do we think in terms of the gradual Christianization of our world? In other words, are we anticipating that, along with the Beatles, you've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time, and that eventually, when it is supremely better, then there will be the great final note that is sounded, the trumpet blast, and the ushering in of the kingdom?

Well, we can pray to that end and preach to that end and live to that end, but we will be disavowed of that kind of notion by just a straightforward reading of the Bible. Not just here in Daniel, but just reading the Bible in its entirety. One commentator puts it like this: There's going to come a point in history where it appears that darkness has really won the day. It will seem as if the Antichrist is going to continue forever. It will seem as if the church has been entirely obliterated, for there will no longer be any sign of it.

That's a staggering thought when you think about us sitting here talking about building into the next generation. And someone might immediately say, "Well, is there any point in doing that?" Yes, of course there is, as we will see as the text unfolds. Luther in his commentary actually went so far as to suggest that there may well come a time when the pulpits will be completely silenced and the preservation of the church would be in the hands of the fathers within their own families.

Now, that may seem like a bizarre notion to us sitting here in this kind of context this morning, but it wouldn't be regarded as bizarre by our brothers and sisters in North Korea, nor in certain parts of the Middle East. Nor would it have been regarded in the 1930s in mainland China as a strange notion. Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution decides to burn the churches, to chain the gates, to destroy the entire impact of the Gospel. Well, the people that were living in that moment may well have said, "Well, that makes perfect sense, because we seem to be facing such persecution that the very Gospel itself is obliterated from our land."

Now, let's set that in our minds as we go through the text and try and see whether we can work this out. First of all, you will notice that down by the riverside, verse 5, Daniel is confronted by someone asking what seems to be just an obvious question. Now, you'll remember that back in the beginning of chapter 10, we said that 10, 11, and 12 formed one long piece. And if you go back to the beginning of chapter 10, you will discover that it was there by the great river, by the Tigris, that these visions were unfolding.

Well, here we are towards the end, and we're not sure just how many people are here in this scene, but there were two others definitely: one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream. And someone, presumably one of these two—or it could have been Daniel himself, I suppose; he could be speaking in the third person—and someone said to the man clothed in linen. That man clothed in linen, we've also met in chapter 10, which I'm sure you immediately made note of yourself as you were listening. Aha, that must be the same person as we saw in chapter 10, and you're right.

The question is addressed to the man clothed in linen who, according to the ESV, that's our text, was above the waters of the stream, verse 6, and then in verse 7, who was above the waters of the stream. I think it's the King James Version that says that this individual was hovering, hovering over the waters. I think that's quite helpful because the angelic notion of this personage is such that he—it's an enigmatic character at best. And so he was, probably as the King James Version is suggesting by its translation, in that kind of quasi-mode that is conveyed in that way.

The question, as straightforward as it is, is there at the end of verse 6: "How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?" or these astonishing things, as in the NIV. Now, this is not an unfamiliar question. Back in chapter 8, the question was asked, and here, as it is asked once again, presumably I'm going to take it by one of these two on either side of the stream, it is a reminder to us that even angels do not have a perfect knowledge of the things in which they themselves are involved.

You say, "Well, that's a small point." It's a small point, but it's worth noticing. Remember in 1 Peter chapter 1, where Peter begins by talking about the wonder of salvation, how it has been planned by God the Father, procured by God the Son, made available to us, real to us by the Holy Spirit. And he goes on to speak of these things, and then he says even angels desire to look into these things. They, as it were, stand on the outside, marveling at it.

They are present at the incarnation. They announce the news that this child has been born who will deal with the sins of men and women, but they do so as objective bystanders, not as participants in the scheme of things. One of our elders of old who has now gone on to heaven, when I preached on 1 Peter, reminded me of a hymn that I'd forgotten, which begins "Holy, Holy is what the angels sing." Some of you of a certain vintage may know it; others of you have decided that you don't want to know it.

But anyway, the verse that he reminded me of goes like this: "Holy, Holy is what the angels sing, and I expect to help them make the courts of heaven ring. But when I sing redemption's story, they will fold their wings, for angels never knew the joy that our salvation brings." So what is true of salvation is also true in terms of these visions. The angels do not have a perfect knowledge of that in which they participate, and that is revealed by the fact that they are actually asking the question: "Is this going to go on forever?"

Now, in verse 7, that is responded to by the man clothed in linen who was hovering above the water of the stream. And it was responded to in a way that is marked by three things. Number one: by gravity. I don't mean because he was hovering above the stream. I mean by gravitas, by the solemnity is what I mean. The process of oath-taking when you read it in the Old Testament is often accompanied by the raising of a hand, but not by the raising of two hands.

For homework you can check this out. For example, in Genesis 14 there is the raising of a hand. In Exodus 6 there is a raising of a hand. But here in this context you will notice that "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." In other words, again, there's no underlining. One of the ways in which we can detect a matter of peculiar emphasis is the way in which it is conveyed.

And so there he makes this statement in a way that is both solemn and grave. Secondly, it is marked not only by gravity but also by mystery. What mystery? Well, the mystery that attaches to the phraseology that "it would be for a time, times, and half a time." Now, those of you who've been around for these studies know that this is not new phraseology to us. We encountered it again back at the beginning of this section in chapter 7.

And on that occasion, we said we can spend a long time here on a "time, times, and half a time," or we can stand far enough back from it and say, whatever else it means and conveys, it conveys this: that many years, periods of time, must elapse before God fulfills what the prophet by this vision has declared. So, in other words, it is not something that is immediate. It is something that is over an extended period of time, and those periods of time identified in this way take Daniel well beyond his own time. That's why we noted last time that these things relate to the time of the end.

So gravity, mystery, and certainty. And what is the certainty? It is that what God says will happen will actually happen, that God is sovereign over all of the events. And the mysterious time is tied, as we noted at the beginning, to the shattering of God’s people. Says Joyce Baldwin: "Suddenly and surely, at the appropriate time, divine intervention will interrupt history's course. Divine intervention."

You see how radically different it is to have a view of the world that begins with a sovereign Creator God who exists outside of time, who establishes the parameters geographically, historically, of the unfolding story of history, and who, at dramatic moments in time, intervenes with time in order to set forward his purposes. And an angel came and said, "the child that you are going to bear, Mary, will be called the Son of the Most High, and he will sit on David's throne and his kingdom will never come to an end."

A dramatic intervention in time. Preceded by many interventions by God: the Exodus of the people of God from Egypt, the falling of the walls of Jericho, the experience of the exile over which he is sovereignly controlling, the repatriation, the ongoing dramas of persecution and tribulation. Think it out. Either we live in a random universe and our world is completely chaotic, or the Bible’s record of things is as stated. And that's the certainty that is conveyed in this: that there is going to be a moment in time.

Now, what we need to face up to—and that’s why I asked the question at the beginning—is the fact that the visible sign of that moment will be the helplessness of believers in the face of persecution. Isn't that what it says? "It is then going to be, when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end, that all these things will be finished." So, in other words, the kingdom of God in all of its fullness is not going to come in on a great triumph.

It is going to intervene in history at the point where it appears as though the persecution has been so fierce that there is no recovery from it at all. In other words, when the people of God are at their most helpless, at their most hopeless, as Luther says, perhaps where the church pulpits are completely decimated and silenced, that the kingdom of God then will appear. Remember Jesus says, "In such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man will come." When you think not!

Well, when would you think so? You would think so whenever everything is going tremendously well; this would be a great time to come in on the triumph of it all, the expansion of the world's evangelism and so on. But no. The word here: he lifts his hands, both of them, and swears by he who lives forever and he says, "you'll get the end at the time when there is the shattering of the people of God." So the idea that we are just sort of moving inexorably in some great triumph just is not true to the Bible.

Now, think this out. When you review history and when you focus on periods of history where those who have named the name of Christ have faced fierce persecution, what do you realize? You realize that they have often seen it as the end. They've often said, "This is the end." And they weren't mistaken, in the sense that these very things that they experienced will mark the end. It wasn't the end of the end, but it was like the end is going to be.

It was, if you like, a microcosm of what will ultimately happen. But what we find here is that the danger, I suppose, is that when you focus on that, some people are tempted then to use that kind of thing to calculate when the real end is going to be. Don't worry about when the real end is going to be. Pay attention to today. Pay attention to today. What's on your diary for the rest of today? Today is dealt with in light of what is in here in Daniel 12.

It's not in here in order to give you fun with your calculator in the afternoon or to develop some bizarre program of the end times. That's such a bizarre idea and yet routinely enjoyed. No. There we go. Here's what's going to happen. Here's the solemn pronouncement. One of the classic things in reading this again is Daniel's response to revelation. God reveals himself in a dramatic way in a vision, gives to him a word of prophecy, and he then goes to his bed for a week because he's so overwhelmed.

Or he turns completely white and goes into a dead swoon. Or he says, "I was appalled. I heard, but I didn't understand." What does that tell me? It tells me that being a man of faith does not mean you understand everything. Being a man of faith does not mean you understand everything.

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. We'll hear more about Daniel’s final vision tomorrow. Alistair often points out how God has revealed enough about himself in creation and in our conscience to hold every one of us accountable on Judgment Day. And today we want to recommend to you a book that really brings home how clearly God's glory is revealed in nature.

The book is called *The Language of Rivers and Stars*, and it's an exploration of some of God's magnificent work, a look at what he's created in nature through the lens of his word. Alistair describes this book as unlike any I've ever read. It's full of reflections about the world God has created for us: the plants, the animals, the skies, the seas. And it invites us to slow down and enjoy these divine gifts, to meditate on what God is saying to us through the world he has created.

This is a unique and beautifully written book that flows almost like poetry. Ask for your copy of *The Language of Rivers and Stars* today when you donate to Truth for Life. You can give a gift online securely at truthforlife.org/donate, or you can call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to us at Truth for Life, P.O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139.

I'm Bob Lepine. How can we faithfully endure all the way to the end if we don't have answers to all of our questions? Tomorrow, we'll consider two very different responses to that question. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the learning is for living.