Daniel 9-12 • Rest Then Rise to Receive Your Inheritance
Are you curious about the end times? What do you need to know and not know? Though we should not fill our time obsessing on end times prophecy, we can saturate our minds with what has already been fulfilled and what is promised to us personally. Those two things are the Messiah coming and the resurrection. God spoke to us through Daniel about both of those. In the last blog, we learned from the book of Malachi how faithful hearts embrace God’s love and respond to that love in God-honoring ways. This is post #12 in the Ezra to Malachi blog series. In this post, we will learn from Daniel chapters 9-12 why we can rest in God’s plan for the end times and have confidence that we will one day rise to receive our inheritance.
Listen to this post as a similar podcast from our Identity: Sticking to Your Faith in a Pull-Apart World Bible Study covering the last 7 written books of the Old Testament.
God’s Plan and Preparation
As you may have seen in this study, God gave a lot of information through Daniel to His people regarding future events. Most of what you read in Daniel chapters 2, 7, 8, and 11 already happened before Jesus came. The 69 weeks of Daniel chapter 9 already happened. The 70th week is still in our future. The end of chapter 11 is still in our future.
Trying to understand all the prophecies about the end times is like having a bunch of puzzle pieces that look similar but without the picture on the box top to tell you how to arrange them. All we know for sure are the border pieces. We can put the four sides of the puzzle together. Those are events we know will definitely happen. But we do not know when or how the rest of the pieces fit inside the border.
Border piece #1: The Rapture of the Saints
One day, Jesus Christ will appear as Savior to gather His own together in the clouds. That is described beautifully in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. All those who are in Christ, dead and alive, will receive resurrection bodies immediately as they meet Christ in the air.
Border piece #2: The Great Tribulation
This is the time when God’s wrath against sin is directed toward earth. That is introduced in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 as “the day of the Lord” and described further in Revelation chapters 4-19. According to Daniel chapter 9, this is the 70th week so it will last seven years. We Christians up to the time of the Rapture will not be on earth. We are saved from the wrath of God. We will not endure it. And God will make it happen just as He says.
Border piece #3: The Antichrist
A ruthless leader will proclaim himself first as a peacemaker then break his promise in the middle of the seven years. Daniel 9:27 says this about him,
He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him. (Daniel 9:27)
It is pointless to try to figure out who the Antichrist is. As 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 clearly states, the Antichrist will not be revealed until after the restrainer is removed. The restrainer is the Holy Spirit. So, the Rapture of living believers will remove His presence in their lives throughout the earth. And since we will not be here when he is revealed—remember it is during the time of God’s wrath on all wickedness on the earth, just believe God will make it happen as He said and leave it there.
Border piece #4: Christ and the Kingdom
Christ will return back to earth to exact justice against unbelievers and set up His kingdom on earth. That is clearly taught in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and Revelation chapters 19-20.
Those are the four sides to our puzzle. The Rapture, the Great Tribulation, the Antichrist, and the Second Coming of Christ. These will happen as God says it will. We are not responsible for making any of this happen.
Is the time for Jesus’ coming for believers getting closer? Yes. Every day it gets closer. But sitting around waiting for it to happen is not pleasing to God. Obsessing on end times prophecy is also a waste of time.
That was also the advice of the angel to Daniel when he asked the angel, “My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?” The angel replied,
“Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end. Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand. (Daniel 12:9-10)
The words are rolled up and sealed until it is time for God to act.
God is a God of order.
God is a God of order. He deals with us in orderly ways. He spent centuries patiently preparing the world in an orderly fashion for the arrival of His Son, Jesus Christ, at just the right time. And He has spent centuries patiently preparing the world in an orderly fashion for Christ’s return to set up His kingdom on earth. During those centuries of waiting, many have trusted in Christ and have been purified, made spotless, and refined since His first coming. Those are the ones who will live in the kingdom to come.
Though we should not fill our time obsessing on end times prophecy, we can saturate our minds with what has already been fulfilled and what is promised to us personally. Those two things are the Messiah coming and the resurrection. God spoke to us through Daniel about both of those.
Let us start with what the Jews expected to happen.
The Expectation of Resurrection
Many Old Testament passages prophesied the resurrection of the body.
We read one in Daniel chapter 12 which says this,
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2)
Resurrection of the body is coming one day.
Long before Daniel, and even before the nation of Israel was formed, Job declared this,
I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:25-27)
My redeemer lives. That is Christ. In the end, he will stand on the earth. That is described in Zechariah 14. After my skin has been destroyed, in my flesh, I will see God. That is resurrection, my friend.
Several years ago, I read a book called, The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright. This insightful book helped me to understand what the term “resurrection” meant to people living 2000 years ago as well as for us today. It meant receiving a new physical body after a time of death. It was never a way of talking about a ghost or spirit. It is exactly as Job described it. A new body of flesh.
A thousand years after Job lived, David affirmed this in Psalm 16,
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. (Psalm 16:9-10)
Like Job, David was confident in the physical resurrection of his body.
Three hundred years after David lived, Isaiah wrote this,
But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise—let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy—your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. (Isaiah 26:19)
Isaiah is confirming what he knew to be true. “Your dead will live, Lord.” Our bodies belong to the Lord whether dead or alive. Our bodies will rise—wake up and shout for joy. For sure! Amen! Hallelujah!
When you read the gospels, you see the Pharisees rejecting Jesus for the most part except for this. They were on Jesus’ side when it came to believing in the resurrection of the body. Only the Sadducees dismissed the resurrection. The rest of the Jewish people believed their bodies would rise from the grave and be made new. They just did not expect this of their Messiah.
The expectation of the Messiah
The Jews of Jesus’ day had certain expectations about the Messiah and the resurrection. Their thinking was this: when the Messiah comes, God would begin a new age—His kingdom—first by resurrecting and judging all the dead, then giving the Holy Spirit to the righteous, and finally righting all the wrongs on planet Earth. The Messiah would reign as king over the whole earth from Jerusalem. All those things were true expectations. They just did not know that God’s plan would be a two-stage process. First, a dead Messiah would be resurrected. Then later everyone else would be raised when the Messiah comes back.
But the Old Testament predicted the Messiah would die and be resurrected from the grave on the third day. Jesus claimed that about Himself as He taught His disciples. Listen to Mark 8:31,
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. (Mark 8:31)
No wonder Peter objected. There was no room in his theology for a dead Messiah.
Yet, Isaiah chapter 53 describes Jesus coming to us, living among us, dying for us, and coming back to life for us. Starting with verse 10,
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:10-11)
The Lord made His life an offering for sin. He died. After that, He will see the light of life. That is becoming alive again. You cannot see any light if you are dead. But where was it predicted this resurrection would happen in three days? Jesus said it came from Jonah being in the whale.
Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:17)
It also comes from Hosea chapter 6 verse 2,
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. (Hosea 6:2)
Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day. He said He would, and He did just as He said.
When the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised from the dead, they were claiming that something happened to Jesus which had never happened to anyone else—yet. The resurrection declared that what Jesus did in His life and in His death was the work of God’s son—the Messiah. Because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross, God could give His Spirit to faithful believers. If you want to understand that better, I suggest you read The Gospel: God’s Cure for Our Sin Disease blog series.
UNTIL He Comes
What the Jews expected was their best guess. Jesus fulfilled the first part and promised to come back to finish the job. Jesus was taken up to heaven before witnesses in a cloud of glory. Two angels declared to His followers that He would return in the same way—bodily and visibly. UNTIL then, He is in heaven as the God-Man, instantly recognizable to us as a man. There, He waits as king in His glorified human body UNTIL the Father says it is time to return in the same way to set up His earthly kingdom. We are living in this UNTIL time.
This is what Peter said in Acts chapter 3 about God’s timing,
That he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. Heaven must receive him (Jesus) until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. (Acts 3:20-21)
To restore means to go back again and set in order. It is used of restoring estates to their rightful owners or restoring someone to good health. The Bible says that creation is groaning in pain because of sin and God’s curse on it. God will restore His creation to its initial glory. The Resurrection began the process.
Until the time comes for God to restore everything, there is waiting involved. We are waiting until God acts. This UNTIL time is also called the “time of the Gentiles” in Scripture. God’s Church began as mostly Jews. Because of Israel’s rejection of their Messiah, the gospel of God has primarily gone out to the Gentile nations. God has been adding Gentile believers to His Church for 2000 years. According to the New Testament, this UNTIL time will last until the fullness of the Gentiles is reached—whatever that means in the mind of God. It is futile to speculate on what that means.
On earth, the Rapture of the believers is the signal that the time of God’s grace to the Gentiles ends. Judgment of all the nations happens during a period of 7 years called “The Great Tribulation.” The 70th week of Daniel chapter 9. Most of the book of Revelation covers this time period. It sounds awful!
Truth for Now
We will not know the complete prophetic picture, but we can know some things for sure that will help us now. These give us biblical perspective for the time in which we live. We get this information from Daniel, Zechariah, the gospels, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 2 Peter, and the book of Revelation.
Here are some things we can know for sure:
#1. What We Can Know for Sure—
Jesus is coming back to gather His own, and not one believer is going to miss it—whether you are dead, sleeping in your bed, or taking a shower. You will not miss His coming. Isn’t that good news? We just do not know when He is returning.
#2. What We Can Know for Sure—
Jesus said conditions on this planet are not going to get better but worse! We can forget the whole idea of world peace until He comes back. Although believers are encouraged to individually live in peace with each other and with unbelievers, we humans can never bring about world peace. Only Jesus as king on earth can. Mark 13:7-8
#3. What We Can Know for Sure—
Jesus described a great time of worldwide, massive tribulation. This Great Tribulation has not happened yet. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. was not the worst that had happened before that or even since that time. It is still to come, dear listener. Mark 13:14-23
#4. What We Can Know for Sure—
Jesus is returning to planet Earth with His angels and saints to defeat the evil forces against Him and set up His Kingdom in Jerusalem. We live in a world of people who are at war with God. The war will continue in this direction until the King ends it, which He will do. Revelation 19-20
In this time of waiting, you and I can do as the angel told Daniel at the end of chapter 12,
“As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” (Daniel 12:13)
Isn’t that wonderful assurance?!
We hope you have enjoyed this Ezra to Malachi blog series. You can read more of our blogs at melanienewton.com/blog.
Let Jesus satisfy your heart with complete trust in Him so that you will follow His way of living life instead of the world’s way or your own way.
All of the above information is covered in the Identity: Sticking to Your Faith in a Pull-Apart World Bible Study covering the last 7 written books of the Old Testament.
Related Resources:
- Identity: Sticking to Your Faith in a Pull-Apart World Bible Study
- Satisfied Series 18 Podcasts (Ezra-Malachi)
- Daniel 1-8: Trusting God with Opposition and Dreams
- Zechariah 9-14: Your King Comes
AI was not used to generate this post.
