MP3: The Mighty Angels of Daniel 12 Continued
Hosts: Nathan Jones & Vic Batista
Confuse the Prophet
Vic Batista: One of the virtues the Bible extols is patience, especially as we wait upon the Lord for the fulfillment of events He proclaimed will one day happen. What God says will happen, well, it’s going to happen. I love the accuracy of Bible prophecy!
What #God says will happen, well, it's going to happen. I love the accuracy of #BibleProphecy! Click To TweetFor example, some people remain confused and are wondering, is the Rapture going to happen or not, or is it just a fairy tale? Well, the Apostle Peter revealed that sometimes for the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. So, from God’s perspective, we have only been waiting like two days since Pentecost for the Lord to snatch up His Church.
Nathan Jones: Right! With an eternal God, what’s a mere two millennia?
Speaking of being confused, we left off in Daniel 12 with the old Prophet Daniel surely confused. He’s been listening to three angels. One actually hovered over the Euphrates River! Daniel 12:5-6 describes the scene.
“Then I, Daniel, looked; and there stood two others, one on this riverbank and the other on that riverbank. And one said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, ‘How long shall the fulfillment of these wonders be?'”
So, these three angels are talking to God’s mighty messenger angel. I can imagine they had heard three chapters worth of prophecies just as Daniel had, and they were shaking their heads in confusion along with Daniel. The hovering messenger angel’s answer perplexed the group even more, as verse 7 revealed.
“Then I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand to heaven, and swore by Him who lives forever, that it shall be for a time, times, and half a time; and when the power of the holy people has been completely shattered, all these things shall be finished.”
Daniel didn’t quite understand that the angel was denoting 3.5 years. He even said so in verse 8, “Although I heard, I did not understand.” The aged prophet then asked, “My lord, what shall be the end of these things?” Daniel was feeling like the odd man out there. These angels were talking about heavenly things that at least the messenger angel understood, but Daniel certainly did not. And so, Daniel interjected and asked when all of God’s prophecies the angel delivered would come to pass.
Notice the lowercase “lord” for, of course, Daniel was not talking to the preincarnate Jesus. So, yes, Daniel was confused, just as many of us can be confused today when we don’t study all of Bible prophecy and put the puzzle pieces together. New Testament revelation and fulfilled prophecies since Daniel’s time some 2,500 plus years ago have filled in the gaps.
Vic Batista: We’ll also face confusion if we don’t observe the signs of the times. God’s revealed a number of signs that point to when these prophesied events are going to occur. We are that generation Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 which would see Israel become a nation once again. We’ve also witnessed the level of sin rising as high, “as it was in the day of Noah, so shall it be in the coming in the Son of Man.” And, we are seeing many other signs right now being fulfilled, such as an increase in natural disasters and the whole world coming against Israel.
The first segment of this series on the mighty angels of Daniel began with a tragic back story. In the eighty-fourth segment, we’ll marvel at the end times explosion in travel as prophesied.