Daniel 12:1-4 “Awaken to Everlasting Life”
If you recall from last week’s long discussion about chapter 11 of Daniel in this sermon series on Daniel, I said that Daniel was prophesying about things that would happen centuries into the future from the actual time of his life. Those things that were told in Chapter 11 happened just as Daniel said that they would. They were the future to Daniel, but they are now the past to us. How does one know if a prophecy is true? Well, it happens as foretold, right? So, in chapter 11 we have an incredible affirmation of the power and veracity of Daniel’s words.
Chapter 12, the last chapter of Daniel, is still about the future; however, we can be affirmed in the fact that everything that Daniel has foretold in the past has come to happen. In this regard, we really have no reason to doubt that what Daniel has written is the God’s honest Truth for our lives. The chapter is about the end time. It is about our ultimate “Independence Day.” It is about that day when we give up this mere earthly existence and come into the heavenly kingdom. This is the most exciting part of Daniel!
In verse 1, and I will be looking at this very much verse by verse this morning, we read that the Angel Michael, one of the archangels that guard the throne of God in heaven, will “arise.” That is to say, he will be called up by God to the service of God’s people. This is standard language for Hebrew that when one is called to serve God that the first command from God is “arise.” You can check that out for yourself in your personal Bible time. Start with Jonah who is called to “Arise and go to Nineveh.” So, Michael is called to arise to serve God’s purpose.
We read also that there will be a time of anguish. This is an interesting word in the Hebrew. I would like to translate it from looking at the meaning of how it is used in other contexts: “There will be a time of ‘tzirah,’ burning, bleeding, hell on earth.” This is a little bit stronger than the term “anguish.” This is going to be the worst anguish in the history of all nations—as the Bible tells us. Fortunately for us, there is an addendum to this statement that says that in spite of this horror, those people of faith who believe in God will be delivered. Everyone who is written in the book is to be delivered. This word means that we will be taken out of the time of anguish. We will not need to suffer this burning, bleeding, hell on earth. That is not for us.
Before I move away from the topic of this anguish, I want us to consider the one question of why should people have to suffer at all. This is especially poignant when reading the Book of Daniel which is written from a standpoint of the suffering of the people of Israel in captivity in Babylon. Why did the people get taken into captivity? They worshipped other gods and they did evil. They then were made to suffer the wrath of God through the destruction of their homeland and their own captivity in a foreign land. This is the overriding theme of this whole book—forsake God, and you will be forsaken! Do not find yourself on the wrong side of God’s wrath! We do not talk about the wrath of God enough in our day. It is real.
I am not saying that if you are suffering in your life you necessarily incurred the wrath of God. Jesus himself was blameless and suffered. Job was blameless and suffered. However, if you know you have sinned, and you have not confessed those sins to God and have not yet accepted God’s grace over your life through Jesus, then you may have some of that wrath from God to contend with. Right? I hope you understand the difference between suffering and the wrath of God because I want to move on.
The next verse in Daniel, verse 2, tells us that those who are “asleep in the dust” will arise again. Some will find themselves in heaven. Others will be in that other place. What does it mean to be “asleep in the dust?”
This reminds me of one of the first times that I went out to the Navajo Indian reservation on a mission trip. There were ten of us in a van driving across Arizona and into New Mexico. One day as we were driving we happened to notice a Native American’s body stretched out kind of under the shadow of a cactus quite out in the middle of nowhere. We slowed down as we came closer. Some of us thought he might be dead. We pulled over and walked to where the body was. The body was just there in the dust of the desert. My friend John called out to him. All of the sudden he awakened and stood up.
He looked at all of us staring at him. We asked if he were all right. We explained that we had been passing by on the road and were worried. He dusted himself off and told us that he was fine. He was tired as he was walking through the desert. He just decided to take a nap right there. That was not the last time that I noticed a Native American simply sleeping on the ground in the middle of nowhere. I like their philosophy. No matter where they are, if they are tired, they just pull up a piece of dirt and take a siesta!
Daniel is talking about a different kind of sleep. You see, in the Bible we see two things happening. There is the physical death, and there is that final moment when you are either taken to heaven with God or you go down to hell. In the Bible, that first physical death is referred to again and again as “being asleep.” Paul in the New Testament uses this term in Ephesians 5:14. The second death is when your soul is lost. The first death is physical, the second is spiritual. Jesus himself tells us this in John 5:28-29: “The hour is coming when all who are in their graves shall hear his voice—those who have done good to the resurrection of Life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.” Amen to that!
When Jesus talks about this, he does not say two different places, by the way. And, I find this interesting. He talks about one resurrection! Those who have done good are resurrected perhaps to the same place as those who have done evil—it is just that heaven might be hell to a sinner! I am not sure. We will have to wait to see how this works out! So, that is just an idea.
So, we will fall asleep to this physical world and awaken in another place. Teri did not read that far in the sharing of the Word from the pulpit. We need to read on from verse five to the end of the Book of Daniel. Here we get a wonderful glimpse into the heavenly realm.
Daniel sees first that two others appear. That is to say, not only is there the Angel Michael whom he had seen before, but now there stand two other angels in that same place. We are not told which angels they are. A river flows between the two angels. We are to understand that this is the river of life. It is that spring of everlasting life that Jesus spoke about to the woman at the well in Samaria. Check out John 4:14, “. . .those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
This is also the river that flows from the throne of God in the Book of Revelation that Pastor Ed will be sharing with you next week. You see how this sermon is going to flow right into the next!
This river is like the springs of water that came out of the ground to water the Garden of Eden. It is like water gushing from the rock in the wilderness when Moses struck the stone. It is the river that John the Baptist used to baptize people. It is the river of everlasting life from God. These are the waters mentioned in Psalm 23: “He leads me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul.”
This is a very beautiful vision of the time when we shall awaken from our sleep. In the last few lines of the Chapter, Daniel does wonder aloud and asks the Angel Michael “What should be the outcome of these things?” In other words, how is this to come about? The angel answers with answer that we would all like to know “When.” When is this to all happen? The angel says, “This shall all happen in one thousand, two hundred and ninety days.” This matches the one time, two times and a half as three and a half years. This is not that anything would happen three and a half years form the time that Daniel had this vision of the end time however. It is still unclear exactly what this is referring to.
Some have said that the times refer to the building of the first temple in Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple after the exile to Babylon, and the third rebuilding in the time of Herod the Great. The “half time” would then refer to the idea that there would be a fourth temple in Jerusalem and that half way through its rebuilding the end time would break forth. That is an interesting idea. I don’t know.
I like to think of this as a reference to Jesus himself who preached during his ministry for about three and a half years. Add the difference of the next number mentioned (1,335-1,290=45) and you get the number of days from the time of Christ’s resurrection to the coming of the Holy Spirit right after the Ascension of Jesus. Indeed, “happy” are those who have received the grace of God through the coming of the Spirit.
Again, unfortunately we may not know for sure what these numbers mean until the end time has come and passed over the world.
I like the last lines of this book. The angel tells Daniel to just go his way and rest. He will get his reward in the end of days. Whatever is going to happen, we need only have faith. We must only go and rest. And, when we wake up, we shall be with God in heaven. Amen!