Daniel 12:8-9 “Balancing Act”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁸And I heard and I did not understand and I said, “My Master, what [will be] the end of these [things]? ⁹And He said to me, “Go, Daniel, because stopped up and sealed [are] the words until time of end.”

I want to pause and think more about v.9. The NIV translates it, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.” This isn’t the first time he’s heard these words. Back in 8:26, Gabriel told him, “The vision…that has been given to you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.” Then in 12:4, the angel speaking to him by the Tigris had told him, “But you, Daniel, close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end…”

Interestingly, in Rev. 22:10, the angel tells the Apostle John, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near.” I observed earlier that these words about “closing up” and “sealing” the prophecies seem a bit enigmatic to our modern American ears. If we said that, we’d mean something like, put them all together in a file and lock it away and hide it somewhere. Yet, obviously, that isn’t what Daniel did with them. Here we are actually studying them! There they are lying there in our open Bibles. That doesn’t seem very “closed up and sealed” to us.

As I suggested then, I think the words are some kind of ancient idiom that is simply lost on us. It’s like when we say someone “kicked the bucket,” and mean they died, or if we tell someone to “stop and smell the roses.” We mean simply they need to slow down. Just imagine what it would be like for someone two-thousand years from now trying to translate our words. They would scratch their heads and wonder why on earth anyone would “kick” a bucket, or what on earth do roses have to do with anything? Those are some of our many idioms and ancient peoples had theirs. God spoke to people in words they understood at the time and, every once in a while, it’s us who are scratching our heads and asking, “What in the world…?”

So, the words don’t really make sense, but we get the idea. The prophecies given to Daniel contained truths that we simply can’t fully understand, and no one will until “the time of the end.” Then John is told not to “close them up and seal them” precisely because “the time is near.”

My heart tells me we should stop and consider these words, even if, at first pass, they’re a bit strange in our ears – and especially when Daniel was told one thing and John the complete opposite. As we’ve noted before, one thing these words teach us is we need to accept that there are aspects of prophecy we will only understand when they’re fulfilled. As Jesus told His disciples, “I’ve told you these things, so that, when they are fulfilled, you will believe…”

When I read what “scholars” write about prophecies, it seems to me there tend to be two camps. Reformed theologians tend to just throw up their hands and give the impression there’s really very little we understand. On the other hand, the Dispensationalists tend to want to assign precise meanings to every word and phrase, as if they can confidently piece together everything into absolutely confident interpretations, timelines, and so forth.

As usual, I think they’re both in the ditch – just on opposite sides of the road, lobbing their grenades at each other. The truth lies somewhere in between. The few of us who try to stay in the center of that road end up getting caught in the crossfire from both. That said, I’m guaranteed, no matter what I say, I’ll be accused by one side or the other (or both) of some sort of prophetical heresy.

What is my point? Obviously, if the Lord gave prophecies to His servants and told them to write them down, and if those prophecies are in our Bibles, then we should study them and do our best to understand what is all too clear. That is precisely what Daniel did. He studied Jeremiah’s writings and when it said the Babylonian Captivity would last seventy years, Daniel immediately understood that seventy years equals seventy years, did the math, and realized it was about to be fulfilled.

On the other hand, even when our favorite Bible student Daniel asked “What does this mean?” he was told, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.” So, what do we learn? Like Daniel, we should study prophecies. We should not throw up our hands and call it all hopelessly mysterious. But, as we study, we should happily accept that there may be much we do not and cannot understand. Our challenge then is simply to be honest. Some things are very clear. Others are not.

The Reformed guys have their very generalized sort of interpretation of prophecy, while the Dispensationalists act like every word is crystal clear and draw up elaborate timelines. The Reformed guys gather up all the prophecies of the Bible, dismiss them all as mysterious, and leave us with just one Second Coming of Christ and one general resurrection at the end of time. They mock at the Dispensationalists and their detailed timelines. On the other hand, the Dispensationalists clutch on to their particular timelines and call anyone a heretic if theirs is any different.

I once attended an ordination council where the young man confessed he’d come to believe in a “Mid-Trib” Rapture. The group almost didn’t ordain him over such a heresy! I personally am convinced from my studies that the Church will be (and must be) raptured out before the Jewish timeline resumes and Seventieth Week of Daniel occurs – the “Pre-Trib" position; however, that is exactly the point of what I think we learn from Daniel, John, and even Jesus Himself – that we should study prophecy, draw our conclusions, but then hold them with “open hands.” When someone differs from us, our attitude ought to be, “Oh, really? Why do you think that?” Maybe we could learn from them.

Prophecies are not necessarily a hill “to die on.” Salvation by faith alone, the Inspiration of Scripture, the Deity of Christ – all are doctrines or “hills” we should be determined to die on, but I would suggest we all need to trim our sails a bit when it comes to prophecies. Our commitment should be to the prophecies themselves, not necessarily to whatever sort of timelines we’ve constructed or read about in someone else’s book.

That is a balancing act and perhaps a precarious one at that, but I think Daniel would teach us that is exactly what we should expect. If we stay out of the ditches and keep to the King’s Highway, we’ll catch grenades from those on the extremes, but, hopefully, as those prophecies are being fulfilled before our very eyes, we’ll be like the men of Issachar in I Chron. 12:32, who “understood the times, and knew what Israel should do.”