Daniel 12.1-3.
The book of Daniel was probably written two centuries before Job. In its last chapters (in Protestant bibles; Orthodox and Catholic bibles include two extra chapters from the Septuagint, also known as “Susanna” and “Bel and the Dragon”) we have Daniel’s apocalyptic visions of the End Times. Daniel wanted to know the future, so God told him… and told him, buried under some weird imagery, pretty much all the future.
End Times prognosticators, from Pharisees and Qumranis to our own cranks today, have tried to turn Daniel’s visions into some sort of timeline of events, and insist the future’s gotta unfold exactly the way they see it. Which is why Pharisees utterly missed Jesus’s first advent: They expected him to conform to their timeline. He didn’t. He has his own timeline; something today’s prognosticators need to keep in mind lest they miss out exactly like the Pharisees did.
Daniel’s visions conclude with what’s obviously some sort of tribulation, then resurrection, then some sort of wheat-and-darnel sorting out. An angel, probably Gabriel, is describing all these things to Daniel. Goes like yea.
- Daniel 12.1-3 KWL
- 1“At that time, Michael will stand—
- the great leader taking a stand
- for your¹ people’s children.
- A time of distress has come,
- one which hasn’t happened
- from the time you became a nation
- till that time.
- Your¹ people will escape at that time;
- all who were found written in the book.
- 2Many who are sleeping in the earth’s dust—
- some of these will awake to eternal life,
- and some of these to eternal shame and contempt.
- 3“The wise will shine like the bright sky,
- the many righteous like the stars forever and ever.”
Daniel was then ordered to stop writing and seal his scroll till the End Times. Da 12.4 Which is clearly not the scroll we’re currently reading, since it wasn’t sealed, and people were reading it in Jesus’s day, and basing wonky End Times theories on it. Most interpreters figure Daniel’s sealed scroll is meant to be the one the Lamb unseals at the beginning of Revelation—and even then the heavenly host don’t read it to us; the Lamb unseals it and John gets a freaky vision every time another seal is opened.
But I digress. It’s advent, and I’m writing about resurrection, so I wanna zoom in on verse 2, where Daniel describes what’s basically a resurrection. “Many who are sleeping in the earth’s dust,” i.e. the dead, will be raised either to eternal life or eternal misery. Christians presume the miserable are headed for hell, and the rest are headed for New Jerusalem. And that’s how the End Times end.
After Michael stands.
Though Daniel identifies Michael only as a great leader of Israel, Da 10.13, 21 Jesus’s brother Jude identifies Michael as a head angel (Greek ἀρχάγγελος/arhángelos), Ju 1.9 and John describes Michael and its angels fighting the dragon and its angels. Rv 12.7 So Michael appears to be an angel, which is why I keep calling it “it”—angels are spirits and have no gender. Doesn’t matter if some of ’em look like men; you know that weird uncanny-valley feeling you have whenever you see an AI drawing, or a robot which creepily doesn’t look enough like a man? There’s a reason humans have that feeling built into us: There have always been man-like creatures out there who are not men.
We don’t know Michael’s duties. Jewish and Christian myths abound, and make it sound like it’s God’s chief general in the war against evil. Maybe that’s what Michael does; more likely that’s what it did, at one time, but we don’t know what it currently does. I know plenty of Catholics who call it “St. Michael” and keep praying to it to defend them; I’m pretty sure its response would be, “You wouldn’t be so helpless if you’d fight temptation for once!”
Anyway at some point Israel’s gonna have a time of distress (Hebrew
צָרָ֔ה/chará,
“need, distress, anxiety, rivalry”) worse than it’s experienced before. Notice it says distress, not tribulation—so it doesn’t automatically mean a crisis as great as the Babylonian Exile, Jewish-Roman War, or the Holocaust. It could mean that, but it doesn’t have to mean that, despite what your favorite prognosticators claim. It’s gonna be something which makes Michael take a stand with Israel, and having a mighty head angel on your side should be a great comfort.
And in that same verse, Gabriel points out Israel will escape. Well, those of Israel who are written in the book. Which book? The book of the faithful, Da 10.21 also called the book of truth and, in the New Testament, the book of life. These’d be the people who stuck with God throughout. They get to inherit eternal life. The others, not so much.
Has this time of distress happened yet, or is it meant to happen in the future?—is it some future great tribulation, in which the Beast runs amok and persecutes Christians? I believe in a preterist interpretation of the End, so I would say it’s happened already, and there are plenty of historical crises Israel has suffered which can easily fulfill this prophecy. Israel’s suffered a lot! I see no reason Jesus can’t return at any time, and fulfill the rest of this prophecy. The sooner the better.
But of course fearful prognosticators are gonna insist the worst is yet to come, and that Israel just hasn’t suffered enough. You’ll hear plenty from them. Ignore them and focus on Jesus.
