Exploring Daniel Chapter 12: Prophecies and Their Significance

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Greetings to the brightest audience in the country, and welcome to Bob and Yart Live. Today, we’re getting into a study of the Book of Daniel done by my father and predecessor, Bob and Yart. And if you want, you do not want to miss this. If you want to get all of Bob and Yart’s Bible studies for just $10, you can get that at nyart.shop that has all of these Daniel studies. You do not want to miss those. But today, we’re getting into this study of Daniel, So exciting. Hey, if you can’t afford that $10, email us, service at kgov.com, and we will find a way to get you those Bible studies. Hey, this is Daniel, Bob Enyart’s study of Daniel. So exciting. I’ll see you on the other end.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:42

Welcome to the end of the book of Daniel, to Daniel chapter 12. The previous chapter was, I think, the hardest of the book to comprehend because And that is mostly because we are so far removed from its historical setting. One king succeeding another king, a general, a battle. This is all very distant from us. So now that we’ve reached the end of the book, I would like to begin tonight with two comments. The first, about why would God give us such detailed historical prophecies as in Daniel chapter 11? And secondly, I’d like us to skip down to near the end of this chapter in a few minutes and talk about a popular false interpretation from a century and a half ago about the 1,335 days that are mentioned there. So, as to why would God give such prophecies of the succession of empires and kings, well, the Lord had a plan and a time frame for when the Messiah would come. And God, as is his style, did not want to perform constant miracles, nor did he want to provide prophets constantly with to repeat the same warnings to the same people over and over, month in and month out, year in and year out, through the decades, through the centuries, until the time of Christ. So God gave to Israel 12 minor prophets and four major prophets. And the only difference between those two groups is the length of their writings. The major prophets write lengthy books, and Daniel is one of those four, and his is the shortest. And the minor prophets write books that are much shorter. And so they could all be included on one scroll, in fact. And from antiquity, they have been considered as a unit, the minor prophets, the 12 prophets. Those 12 minor prophets, I’ll list them for you. You’ll find them at the end of the Old Testament in our Christian Bibles. Jewish Bibles have the same material as our Protestant Bibles in the Old Testament, but some of the books are in a different order, but it’s the same books, the same material. The Catholic Old Testament is different. They add books that the Jews never considered as Scripture. So the 12 minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. So the Old Testament ends for us with Malachi, who was the latest prophet to write. The four major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. And Daniel’s ministry extended the closest to the coming of Christ, time-wise, to almost 500 B.C. Remember, he wrote a 490-year prophecy that was given to him from God, and that would bring us up to the time of the crucifixion of the Messiah. Now, the time from when the minor prophets began to write was about 800 B.C. with Joel, and it goes through to the time of Malachi, which was written about 430 years, as accurately as scholars can calculate, before Christ. 430 years before Christ’s first coming Malachi wrote, and then there is silence. 430 years of quiet. Centuries of silence from heaven and a waiting until the first coming of the Messiah. And I believe this is why God gave the specific historical prophecies in Daniel chapter 11 and earlier of the rise and fall of different empires and kings. So that during that time of silence, the Jews would continue to revere his word. And they would preserve it. And at the appointed time, that there would be an entire nation in expectation of the coming of the Messiah. There’s a bit of a parallel earlier in the Old Testament. In the book of Genesis, we find out that God… told Abraham that his descendants would go and they would be in a foreign land and they would become slaves there. But it turns out that when there were only 70 Jews in Canaan, or the Promised Land, God wanted them to become a great nation, but any of the surrounding tribes could utterly destroy them on a whim because there were only 70. So God had an option. Either find a way to protect Israel long-term as they grew through the natural interactions of men and women and marriage and children till they would become a mighty nation of a million or more people, find a way to protect them on earth, or intervene almost weekly doing miracles to protect them so that they could grow. Well, God chose the first of those two options. Rather than doing a miracle a month to protect them, instead he set them up in Egypt. Through Joseph, saving all the people of the realm from a terrible seven-year famine, and through the gratitude that Pharaoh had for Joseph and his family, he allowed… Joseph’s relatives, the Jews, to come into Egypt, take the best of the land, the land of Goshen, and they would be there protected by the most powerful king of that day in that part of the world. And so the period of time that is given by Moses in Exodus chapter 12 of how long they were there is 430 years. And I just find it interesting that that’s the same period from the writing of Malachi to the coming of Christ. Let me read to you from Exodus 12, verse 40. Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was 430 years. And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, on the very same day, it came to pass that all the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. So it’s interesting to me that the last prophet who wrote in the Old Testament was Malachi, and he wrote his very short book. Scholars estimate just about 430 years before Christ. I mean, pretty much to the year. There’s some debate on exactly at the beginning or at the end of that period. Is it this year or the following year? Is it this year or the previous year? But it’s about 430 years. And I have never seen a commentator make the connection in those two time frames. For Israel’s time in Egypt and the time from Malachi until Christ, or until John the Baptist, whom Jesus said, if you recall, represented Elijah as spoken of by Malachi the prophet, so that there would be a forerunner before the coming of the Lord. So it seems to me that God prepared these two lengthy time periods of 430 years each in the same way. He didn’t want to have to perform miracles on demand to keep Israel on track toward the appointed time of the coming of the Messiah. He didn’t want to provide never-ending succession of prophets giving divinely inspired prophecies. Rather, he set up Israel with the tools they would need to survive in the circumstances they would need and to continue looking backward to his promise to Abraham and forward to their coming deliverance. So to make that just a little bit more clear, I believe that God gave those prophecies to Daniel that would be fulfilled over the coming centuries as a way to keep Israel in the Scriptures, to keep them studying, to keep their scribes reproducing the scrolls of Israel. the Bible. Even though he planned for heaven to be silent for 430 years, much as heaven was silent during the entire period that Israel was in Egypt until the time of the deliverance through Moses, with a great similarity, his plan was to keep Israel going then for 330 years from Malachi until the coming of Christ. Now, I said I wanted to mention two issues before we start. The other, I’d like us to talk about the dangers of misinterpreting prophecy and then an opposite danger of preterism, which I characterize as throwing prophecy out. You get tired of people misinterpreting end times prophecies, so you come up with a scheme to just do away with them. Now let’s peek down to the end of the chapter and read Daniel 12, verses 11 and 12. And from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1,290 days. Blessed is he who waits and comes to the 1,335 days. Now these verses speak of days. Not years, but days. There is a very popular Christian commentary on the whole Bible, Jameson, Fawcett, and Brown, published about 140 years ago. And interestingly, in their notes on this chapter, they give space to interpretations that change the days to years. Now, why would you do that? Well… A scholarly commentary might do that, even though they do it with caveats. And they say, you know, we really think you can’t know the day or the hour of the second coming. But they put it in there anyway, and they say, only time will tell if this interpretation is correct. And that interpretation changes the days to years, and then with some rather imaginative and subjective calibration of the beginning of the prophecy, and then they add 1290 years and 1335 years, lo and behold, guess when the end times would occur during their lifetimes. And I think that is a pattern we could see in Christian interpretation where our bias, that we want to be in the end times, so we read it into the text. This is what Hal Lindsey did with his Lake Great Planet Earth, selling tens of millions of copies. And I love Hal Lindsey. He brought many, many people to the Lord. I’ve had the honor of interviewing him. I think his book, Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, is very significant, especially what I think was the last chapter on living by grace and not being condemned under the law. I think Hal Lindsey had a tremendous influence on the body of Christ, yet he calculated the end times to be in our day. now that’s a very convenient isn’t it of course if you’re interpreting the Bible why not make the end times prophecies point to your own time that’s far more interesting than simply saying we can’t know but in reality We can’t know because the detailed prophecies were for Israel and God has temporarily cut off Israel and grafted in the body of Christ. And so all the dates and years and signs that were for Israel to determine the end times will not be valuable as indicators until God returns to his program for Israel. And that’ll be at a time of his own decision when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. That’s our only real indicator of when God will return to Israel and therefore the end times calendar for Israel. And so the fullness of the Gentiles is not a condition that enables us to calculate a date, not a year, not a decade nor even a century. We just can’t do it. So I think we should learn from the beloved who have come before us 10,000 times over when they have misinterpreted the scriptures to force an end times date in their own lifetimes. The lesson, though, should be taken with care, but not with abandon. For there is a system of doctrine called preterism, which likewise points out these sad examples of Christian misinterpretation of prophecy. But what they do is to reinterpret all preterism. or virtually all prophetic End Times passages to claim that all such prophecies are either symbolic or that they have already been fulfilled, and that occurred about 2,000 years ago. So the End Times is past, and it was passed almost 2,000 years ago according to preterism. Now, Christians… from early times when they wrote about the book of Revelation, Christians recognized, not only from early Christian tradition, but from the book of Revelation itself, that the Apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos by a Roman emperor, and it has been believed that he wrote the book of Revelation in 95 AD or thereabouts. He was eventually exiled released from his exile, returned to Ephesus, lived out his life in Ephesus, as apparently Mary also did. Recall that Jesus gave John responsibility to take care of his mother. So, if that’s true, The earliest Christian recollections and dating of the writing of the book of Revelation say that John wrote it in A.D.

SPEAKER 1 : 17:31

95.

SPEAKER 02 : 17:32

Now, preterists say all the fulfillment of end times prophecy occurred right around A.D.

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70.

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So it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have the book of Revelation prophesying of end times prophecies that are all past. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. So conveniently, what preterists do, and you could see this, for example, in a book titled Before Jerusalem Fell by Kenneth Gentry, they redate the writing of Revelation to be about A.D. 68, conveniently. So I, of course, reject that, and I reject, from my study of the Scripture, the preterist claim that there is no coming tribulation. They say there’s no coming tribulation, there’s not a coming rapture, and the most extreme preterist even deny that the Lord will return one day to the earth. The most extreme. Now, Back 60, 80 years ago, when America’s influence was growing around the world and we were sending out missionaries, we were winning world wars, America was the most Christian of nations, you could see how some Christians might optimistically think that the world is going to be Christianized. We’re becoming more and more Christian. But fast forward to 2011, and we should be able to look back and say, that optimism was completely wrong. It was completely misguided. The world is not becoming more Christian. Further, Jesus said that the end times would be like it was in the days of Noah. Now, that’s exactly the opposite of preterism, which implies that the earth will become increasingly righteous, at least a significant camp of preterists. The Reconstructionists, they say that the kingdom of God is ushered onto earth merely by the church living like the church should live and evangelizing and Christianizing the world, whereas Jesus said the end times would be like it was in the days of Noah. And we see in the days of Noah, that’s when God judged the earth because it was filled with violence and the thoughts of men’s heart were only evil continually. So that is the opposite of Reconstructionism and the views of many preterists. We dispensationalists believe that there is a future rapture, a great tribulation, a seven-year tribulation. a second coming, a judgment, a thousand-year millennial reign, and then eventually a new heaven and a new earth. And that is, for the most part, the most straightforward reading of biblical prophecies. So while we point out centuries of Christians misinterpreting end times prophecies so that they can predict the end times will occur sometime in their lifetime and how convenient that is. After all, millions of people would not rush out to buy a book that said that the end would be in 400 years from now. People wouldn’t rush to buy those books. So we point out these examples of misinterpretation so that we will avoid the same error, but we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, whereas preterists point them out, those kinds of errors, to discount almost everything that the Old and New Testaments say about the future and the future end times. They say, oh, no, no, that’s all either symbolic or it’s already fulfilled. So now, with those two issues addressed, I’d like us to go into the chapter, beginning with verse 1, Daniel 12.1. At that time, Michael shall stand up. Now, Michael, Michael who? Well, this is the Michael we’ve been hearing about for the last couple of chapters. And so as God’s servant, he fills out the last three chapters of Daniel’s book, Daniel’s prophecy. And I’d like to quote for you two passages that reference Michael. The first is a verse in Jude. Jude is only one chapter, so you don’t have to say Jude 1.9. You could just say Jude 9. It says, “…yet Michael the archangel…” in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke you. So notice that Michael is an archangel, and we’ve gone through the Bible showing how God uses the number three so extensively, not only in Scripture then, but in the creation as And it would be appropriate if God had created three archangels, and it appears that he did, Michael and Gabriel and Lucifer. And when Lucifer fell, about a third of the angels followed him, and they very well could have been the angels who Lucifer was given authority over. It’s certainly possible. And notice Michael’s humility. He doesn’t presume to use his own power and his own authority against the devil. But instead, he says, the Lord rebuke you. So notice that he doesn’t get carried away with his own righteousness, which is undoubtedly extraordinary. He never sinned. He’s not fallen. So his innocence and righteousness and might must be without parallel for anyone we’ve ever met here on this earth. But yet he was humble to lift up the Lord even as the champion against someone he was currently battling with. And that matter about disputing the body of Moses Some have seen in that that easily the Israelites could have begun worshiping Moses’ body as Christians tend to do. They tend to become superstitious and they worship religious relics. Even if it’s a clump of hair, they say this was the hair of Thomas the Apostle. And people will get down on their knees or a piece of bone and they’ll kiss it. or kiss it inside of a glass case. And that, of course, is creepy, and it’s wrong. And so that could have been the dispute regarding Moses’ body, because he was 120 years old, yet he seemed to be perfectly fit. Michael’s also mentioned, this is the last passage, in Revelation 12, verse 7, So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the devil and Satan.” who deceives the whole world, he was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him. So Michael has a very significant role in serving God and as an influence over the affairs of men, at least at times in history and in heaven. One comment about this phrase, the dragon, this phrase that the devil is called the great dragon, was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan. I’ve read in a couple Bible commentaries that when you add up the letters of that phrase, they come to a very interesting number, which is 13 cubed, 13 times 13 times 13. Now, if that’s true, that’s really interesting because 13 seems to be the number for rebellion. So I, years ago, took out an Excel spreadsheet and put the Greek letters of that extended phrase in the spreadsheet and with next to each letter, the numerical value of the letter, which is very well known. And this is significant. God uses such things as in 666 and as in the number of Jesus’ name. Eight is the number for eternity or new beginnings. And Jesus, Jesus in the Greek, comes out to 888. So that’s pretty amazing. I recall wondering what would Jesus’ name come out to be 20-some years ago. And I got out my Greek alphabet and my Greek New Testament text, and I put the letters, and I was just stunned that it was 888. So when I heard this, that this is 13 times 13 times 13, I thought, well, wow, that would be astounding if it’s true. And so it turns out that it’s pretty tough to get that number out of these words. If you take these words, about 10 words or so, and you exclude a few of them,

SPEAKER 01 : 28:08

It’s a bit uncanny. and get all of Bob Enyart’s Bible studies for just $10. You do not want to miss that. That’s decades of Bible studies for just $10. What a steal. If that’s too expensive for you, reach out service at kgov.com, and we will find a way to get that to you. No charge. We want to be a blessing to you. Again, enyart.shop. That’s E-N-Y-A-R-T dot S-H-O-P. Hey, may God bless you guys.