The Future And A Big Jesus - Anchored

Derek unpacks the prophetic visions in Daniel 10-12, encouraging us to see a bigger picture of Jesus in the face of an uncertain future and to find peace in the assurance of God’s deliverance.

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Transcript

Hey Bethel, it’s Derek, thanks for joining me to dive into Daniel chapters 10-12. Boy, what a strange piece of the Bible, huh? I’ll admit, I don’t always know how to handle prophetic and apocalyptic literature when I read it in the Bible. Am I even supposed to understand all this stuff? What are normal Christians like you and me supposed to do with these parts of the Bible? My first rule of thumb is that, if reading the parts of the Bible about the future lead us to build a bigger safety net, instead of seeing a bigger Jesus, then we are missing the point!

There is a lot in these chapters of Daniel that may lead us to confusion or fear. There is an angel who says they are held up in the delivery of their message. There are specific time scales mentioned a couple times, specific people groups mentioned as escaping genocide and others that will be destroyed. In all this, specifically the 11th chapter of Daniel, we see across these 45 verses many of the specific world events that will play out over the next 500 years after Daniel. If you want to know more, grab an ESV study Bible and read the commentary, but to help us see a bigger Jesus, I want to focus on the person of Daniel during all of this vision.

At the beginning of chapter 10, Daniel is responding to the vision he had in chapter 9 by mourning and fasting. All of a sudden, he’s visited by another angel and he falls to the ground, powerless from lack of strength. But the angel touches him and reminds him in verse 11 and again in 19, “O man greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you; be strong and of good courage.” This reminder that he is loved by God, that he doesn’t have to fear, and is covered by God’s peace is enough to revive Daniel’s spirit to hear the angel’s vision. And here, in verse 14, the angel gives Daniel a pointed purpose of the vision, that Daniel would “understand what is to happen to [his] people in the latter days”.

The purpose of the vision isn’t that Daniel would know and communicate specific timing of events to prepare the people. In fact, when Daniels asks about the exact time, the angel says in chapter 12, verse 9 “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.” That is not for Daniel to communicate, but what he IS to say is stated earlier in chapter 12, verse 1 “But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.” That’s what it comes down to. We may know the details or not, but as Daniel communicated to his people and is also true of our future right now, the fundamental understanding that we know is that we will be delivered!

God worked the events of history to deliver Daniel’s people and He also does this for us by sending His Son Jesus as a human who walked on this Earth to live a perfect life, die on a Cross, and be resurrected from the dead so that those of us who know Jesus, agree that He is our only way to a right relationship with God, and rest in what He has done, our names will be written in that book! Not because of what we’ve done, but because Jesus is just as much the guarantee of our future as He is of our past and present. This truth then gives Daniel rest. In the last verse of His prophecy, chapter 12, verse 13, the angel states that Daniel “shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”

Friends, will you join me in looking to the future, see a bigger Jesus, and rest in Him? Go and be blessed.