Daniel: End Times
Notes
Transcript
This past Thursday, we wrapped up the Bible Study on the Invisible War - the conflict in the spiritual realm that we are all engaged in whether we are aware of it or not. Our last lesson was on Victory and how we may lose battles along the way yet still win the war when we keep our eyes on Jesus and follow him.
It is from this position of victory that we can, like the Apostle Paul as he sat chained in prison thinking his time was up, say with all confidence:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
From the moment Paul encountered the risen Christ - he set it in his mind to follow Him come what may. He was faithful and obedient to His Lord - withstanding much suffering and hardship as he advanced God’s kingdom - he was stoned, beaten, shipwrecked, cursed, rejected by many, yet he endured to the end.
Suffering, loss, setbacks, danger, devastation - are as much a mark of the Christian walk as the more positive “fruits of the Spirit”:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
To follow Jesus means to do just that - walk in His way. And His way led to the cross.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
Imagine the despair and anguish felt by those women looking on from a distance - watching a bloodied Jesus breath his last as he hung on that cross.
What if the story ended there?
Too many people today believe that the story ends there. That we live and then we die and that is it - end of story.
And if that is the end of the story - then you mind as well live your life on your own terms - find your own meaning - and take the path of least resistance in order to find some measure of peace and prosperity.
But what if the story doesn’t end there?
We have come to the end of our series on Daniel. For the last two months, we have witnessed Daniel’s faith tested multiple times and each time, he held fast and true and therefore experienced victory. We have listened to the dreams and visions that Daniel received and the interpretations of those dreams by God’s messengers. Daniel was shown things to come - the rise and fall of world empires and we can look back today and see that history has validated his visions. As we heard last week, it was even revealed to Daniel the timeframe of when Messiah would come - and sure enough, Jesus was born right on time.
We now reach the final chapter, and we hear the conclusion of a vision that started in the previous chapter. Daniel is shown what will happen at the end of this age. His has recorded his vision in a scroll and is instructed to seal the book. The revelation is finished - there is no more to add to it. According to Dale Davis, “One sealed a document not to hide it but in order to preserve and authenticate it.”
Now it is good to remember, the primary audience in mind for the book of Daniel it is the Jewish people living in exile and those who would come after them. It is a book that prepares God’s chosen people for what is to come and encourages them to keep their hope in God.
Daniel identifies Michael, the archangel, as the great prince who has charge over Israel. Whatever they face, they are not alone, there are spiritual forces in the unseen realm standing with them.
In the vision, it is revealed to Daniel that a time of trouble is coming - unlike anything ever experienced before. One only need to look back at the history of the Jewish people, including present day events, to appreciate just how devastating this time will be.
“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.
Your people shall be delivered....
How will that deliverance come?
In a time of great national tribulation, a time of persecution, death and destruction, in what form shall they be delivered?
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.
There lies the true deliverance: Deliverance through resurrection.
Not deliverance from impending death, but deliverance from death itself.
But not everyone will be delivered. Everyone is resurrected, but not everyone is delivered. Those who endured to the end, those who kept the faith, those whose names are written in the book of life - they will rise to everlasting life and “shine like the brightness of the sky above.” Whatever hardships they faced, what ever injustice was laid upon them, whatever the rest of the world thought of them as they were silenced - there resurrection will serve as a vindication of their life of obedient faith.
But for those who did not. Those who denied their faith, who lived life on their own terms, who were enemies to God…as the psalmist writes in Psalm 69:28
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
Even though Daniel was written with a Jewish audience in mind, the words apply to all who are called children of God. In the New Testament, in the gospel of John we hear Jesus teach....
John 5:28–29 (NKJV)
... for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.
And John is shown visions as recorded in the book of Revelation that affirm what Daniel saw.
The resurrection of the righteous is found in Rev 20:1-4
Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
Conversely, the resurrection of the unrighteous is found in Rev 20:12-13
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.
How we live our lives now and to whom we give our allegiance matters. A decision must be made and hopefully, for the sake of your soul, that decision is for Christ. It is your decision to follow Jesus that enters your name into the Book of Life. Therefore, your mind must be set on who you follow before the trials and testing come.
The message found here at the end of Daniel is this: Endure! Be counted among the righteous.
Daniel is shown the agonizingly difficult environment that people of faith will have to navigate as the world turns against them.
As Dale Davis asks:
Will the people of God endure when evil does its worst? Will they endure to the end, in the very last and most severe period of suffering?
And the answer is yes - those who walk in faith and keep their eyes on Jesus will endure. Because they are not alone and they already know the outcome. Just as Daniel sees the angel Michael arise, we know that the Spirit of God dwells in us and gives the power to rise up and endure.
And just as the words captured in the book of Daniel provided encouragement for those who read its words and shared it with others during dark days, so to do we have strong witnesses among us who help us see the bigger story.
I read the following story of two young men who lived in dark times and yet one was able to encourage the other to endure.
The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail 1. We Will Have Security in the Greatest Trouble (1–4)
It was like that one day in 1540, when two Scots lads, Alexander Kennedy and Jerome Russell, were condemned to burn at the stake for their faith. As they plodded to the execution site, Russell noticed some signs of depression in his companion and so heartened him with: ‘Brother, fear not; greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world. The pain that we are to suffer is short, and shall be light, but our joy and consolation shall never have an end. Let us, therefore, strive to enter in to our Master and Saviour by the same strait way which he has trod before us. Death cannot destroy us, for it is already destroyed by Him for whose sake we suffer.’ And so they walked on, to the stake. But what a help it can be to have one of the wise come along beside and keep you on your feet.
We may not face the kind of suffering and trails that Kennedy and Russell faced - or the kind that Daniel saw in his vision - or even the kind Paul faced in prison - but each of do face suffering, loss, setbacks, danger, devastation to some degree in life.
Set your mind now on Christ!
Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit so you to can endure and declare as Paul does in 2 Cor 4:8-10, 16-18...
2 Corinthians 4:8–10 (ESV)
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
And with that, I say...
Amen.