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[0:00] Well, we are going to engage chapter 12 of the book of Daniel, and I must say it's been very enlightening to me. I don't know how many times in the last 60 years I've been through Daniel, but each time I go through it, I'm a little bit embarrassed because I always manage to find a couple of verses that I was sure weren't there before.

[0:23] Where did they come from? They didn't make sense before. So it's easy to just kind of gloss right over them and not see them. But that's the nature of the Word of God. It is inexhaustible.

[0:34] There's no bottom in this book. And I am satisfied that when we get the glory, we're going to get all kinds of surprises about things that we missed, and some of them will have been right under our nose, and we didn't connect the dots.

[0:48] So what we are doing now is simply a little bit of that, trying to connect the dots, realizing that in our fallenness and in our minds that are all a little bit skewed and warped because of the fall, we sometimes reach faulty conclusions and faulty assumptions about things.

[1:07] And then we build doctrine upon that faulty assumption, and the next thing you know it's found in somebody's statement of faith, and this group is separated from that group, and that group is separated from this group, and all because they have arrived at different interpretations of passages of Scripture.

[1:24] And that really, believe it or not, that really is the basis for the difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant and Jewish, and it is also the difference between Methodist and Presbyterians and Nazarene and Church of God and Baptists, and on and on it goes.

[1:44] And you know what? Almost all of those differences were arrived at in good faith by people who honestly believed the position that they took.

[1:56] And yet, believing something and being sincere about something is no guarantee that it is the truthful position. And it takes a lot more than sincerity, as we've learned.

[2:10] So, here in Daniel chapter 12, at that time, Michael the great prince, Michael is the archangel who apparently has a special kind of assignment from the Almighty on behalf of the nation of Israel.

[2:34] Gabriel, the other archangel, has already made himself known in the annunciations that he has made to Zechariah about the birth of John the Baptist, and it was Gabriel who informed the Virgin Mary that she was to be the mother of the Christ child.

[2:52] And Gabriel and Michael seem to be a pair, a special pair of archangels. And we know that Michael apparently is on a level or very close to the level of the original who was referred to as Satan or Apollyon or the devil.

[3:17] The name that was originally given to him is Lucifer. And Lucifer, from our best information, Lucifer in his disobedience became known as Satan.

[3:32] And the word Satan literally means adversary. He is adverse to everything that God is about. He is the chief opposer.

[3:44] And in his wisdom, God has appointed these two and given them a special charge and special ability. And it's almost as if there is a kind of standoff between Michael the archangel and Satan.

[4:06] Because we read, I think it's in, if memory serves me correctly, I think it might be in the book of Jude, where it's just a tiny book and just a passing reference that it said something to the effect that that even Michael durst not stand against Satan.

[4:29] Which means that there is a kind of parity there between the two, like it's a standoff drawl kind of between those two individuals.

[4:42] But the time is coming, by the way, when Michael will be given the opportunity and the assignment of literally hurtling the adversary into the lake of fire.

[5:03] And that's in Revelation 19 and 20. And it will become a reality. And you get the impression that this is something that Michael is looking forward to. And it's going to be his responsibility to do that.

[5:17] He will dispatch the adversary at the end time. But we aren't there now. We're talking about the time of the end. At that time, Michael, the great prince.

[5:29] And by the way, this is the one who was on his way to give information to Daniel. In an earlier chapter in Daniel, we read, and he was opposed by the adversary.

[5:40] Remember that? He was opposed by the one who was called the prince of Persia. And that prince of Persia was an angelic being also, a fallen angelic being.

[5:52] And he opposed Michael and tried to prevent him from getting to Daniel. And we talked a little bit about the kind of conflict that goes on between spirit beings. And we have no idea what that would be like.

[6:05] We know what it's like with flesh and blood because we have arms and legs and we wrestle with flesh and blood. But like Paul said, our conflict is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and so on.

[6:21] So those are spirit beings. And these are what's involved here. Michael is a spirit being. He is a great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people.

[6:32] And this expression, your people, is limited exclusively to Daniel's people. And who are Daniel's people? The Jew. There can be no question about that.

[6:45] They are the people of Israel. And he stands guard over the sons of your people. He will arise. And there will be a time of distress.

[6:57] Some translations render this a time of tribulation. Such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time.

[7:11] And at that time, your people, that's the nation of Israel, everyone who is found written in the book will be rescued.

[7:23] And this, I think, has reference to the end time for Israel. And by the way, our Lord references this particular verse. In the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, Jesus said, For there shall come a time such as the world has never seen before.

[7:43] And this is what he's talking about. Daniel's talking about the same thing. And Christ is quoting from this in Matthew chapter 24. And it is the great tribulation period.

[7:54] And the principal players, the principal players during the great tribulation will be the Antichrist and those upon whose backs the Antichrist has drawn a bullseye.

[8:13] And that will be the Jewish people. We are now seeing, in undeniable ways, anti-Semitism raising its ugly head.

[8:25] We are even finding it in the halls of Congress. And there's some controversy going on right now about who said what about who. And there are apologies.

[8:36] And there's backpedaling and all the rest. And what is this all about? It is about an ingrained hatred that many people have for the Jew.

[8:47] And it is, by the way, it is an utterly irrational hatred. We have made the statement a number of times, and I want to reinforce this, that we are all born, all of us are born with a fallen intellect.

[9:05] That means our thinking and reasoning capacity is compromised, so that we are not able to fully assess and understand situations as we might, because our thinking is skewed.

[9:23] Everybody's is. Yes, that applies to Einstein and da Vinci and all the rest. Everybody is. It's part of the human condition. Because when our first parents fell, everything about them fell.

[9:36] It wasn't just their physical body. It was everything about them. Our reasoning processes and everything. And it causes, it allows people to think in extreme irrational terms, like Adolf Hitler, for instance, and this total bunkum about the superiority of the Nordic race, and how that the Jewish people were swine, and that they really weren't fully human, and they are contaminants for the human race, and people like them need to be eliminated.

[10:09] And they came up with the final solution to the Jewish problem, and of course that was kill them. And they succeeded in killing a third of the world's population of the Jews.

[10:23] And look at what communism has done under Stalin. Fifty million of his own people were eliminated in this failed experiment called communism.

[10:43] And someone said the only difference between communism and socialism is that socialism tries to bring about change, whereby authority will be rendered completely to the government, and they want to do it through legislation and voting.

[10:58] But under communism, they want to do the same thing, only they won't take time for legislating and voting. They do it through the point of a gun. And that's the basic difference.

[11:08] Yes, communism is nothing but socialism on steroids. That's the only difference. What is it that allows people to think like that?

[11:20] It's that fallen nature. It's that fallen intellect that creates assumptions that are not valid, but they think they are.

[11:32] And they build on those, and they have a big mouth, and they create a following, and the next thing you know, a handful of Germans that started out in a beer hall became the Nazi party.

[11:50] And the Nazi party thrust the whole world into a conflict called World War II in which they were there, and this is apart from what Stalin did in Russia, but in World War II, there were 50 million people killed, most of whom were civilians.

[12:13] What do you attribute that to? And in addition to man having this fallen intellect and applying it, when he gets in positions of power and authority, he pushes his agenda and so on, and there are some people who sign on, and the movement grows and develops and so on, and guess who is at the forefront egging them all on?

[12:36] It's the adversary. As I pointed out before, Satan is the merchant of deception and death.

[12:48] He is all about disaster. He's all about destroying. He's all about deceiving. That's one of his principal names. He is the deceiver. And he loves a high body count because he is the prince and the merchant of death.

[13:06] As God is the creator of life, Satan is the creator of death. And this tribulation period is going to be enormous. It is going to result in, and we saw this in our Revelation study, it's going to result in two-thirds, not one-third, but two-thirds of the world's population of the Jews being absolutely eliminated.

[13:27] This is going to make the Holocaust pale by comparison. But these who are going to be survivors will be that group that is holed up in Petra, I believe, in the southern part of Transjordan.

[13:42] This is in the ancient area of the Edomites where Esau and his kindred group, his descendants, settled.

[13:54] And there they are going to enjoy, during this tribulation period, they are going to enjoy the miraculous intervention of the God of heaven, and he is going to protect them so the Antichrist cannot get to them, and he is going to feed them even as he fed their ancestors when they came out of the land of Egypt with the manna.

[14:17] This whole period is going to be spiced with the supernatural, both angelic and God will be involved in that. So this is partly what Daniel is talking about here when he says, there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time.

[14:37] And at that time, your people, Daniel, the Jew, everyone who is found written in the book will be rescued.

[14:50] This ties in with that verse in Romans chapter 11 that is often misunderstood by a lot of people when Paul's conclusion about the involvement of the Jew when Paul says, and so all Israel shall be saved.

[15:06] Some people misinterpret that and they think that means that everyone who has ever been a Jew is going to be saved. That's not what it's saying and it isn't even close.

[15:17] But what it is saying is the Jews who are alive at that time and comprising that small band of believers, and they will be relatively small, I don't know how many, we're not given a number, but we do know, we do know that in that group there will be 144,000.

[15:37] They will be in that group, but that group will not be limited to the 144,000 because there will be many other Jews who will be added to it and they are all going to survive there in that area and they shall be the all Israel that will be saved at that time.

[15:53] And everyone who is written in the book will be rescued. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake.

[16:04] These are those who have already died during the tribulation. They did not survive. And by the way, scriptures make it very, very clear that this time of tribulation is going to be a time, it's synonymous, it's synonymous with the time of the receiving or the rejecting of the mark of the beast.

[16:27] And those who have the mark of the beast, of course, will be under the authority of the Antichrist. Those who do not will be simply trying to survive as best they can because they will not be able to buy or sell.

[16:43] Everything they obtain will have to be through bartering. And I suspect that one of the premiums that will be high on the list during this tribulation period will be drinkable water.

[16:57] You're not going to be able to go to Kroger's and buy a case of bottled water during this time. It's going to be very difficult to survive.

[17:09] And if you do not have the mark of the beast, you will be fair game for the adversary. So, when he says in verse 2 that many sleep in the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, these, of course, are believers.

[17:27] And by the way, those Jews who are in that position during this time of tribulation, they are also the same ones of whom Zechariah is speaking when they come to national repentance.

[17:44] This is the Jew that has naturally and nationally rejected Jesus as their Messiah. They will reverse themselves and they will go the opposite direction of their ancestors, which they, whom they, they rejected Christ beginning with Acts chapter 2 and, and the persecution that followed and they've been in a rejection mode ever since.

[18:13] But these Jews will, the text tells us in Zechariah 12, I think it's verse 10, that they, the surviving Jews who are holed up there, they will look upon him whom they pierce and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son.

[18:36] This is Israel coming into stark realization that their ancestors were wrong. They did, in fact, crucify the Messiah and God has sent him back again and here he is.

[18:51] And when he comes, he's coming to Petra and those there will follow him north, the Antichrist will be coming from Armageddon and he will be coming south.

[19:02] They will meet in the middle and the Antichrist will be dispatched and our Lord's sword that proceeds out of his mouth will be nothing more than his spoken word and he will decimate the Antichrist and his minions who are with him.

[19:20] Everyone who's found written in the book will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust to the ground will awake, not all, but many, these to everlasting life but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.

[19:36] And that can only be the opposite of what the everlasting life is. You call this hell, call it the lake of fire, call it the absence of God, call it whatever you want. But whatever it is, it is the absence of the others.

[19:48] And someone has said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't have any idea what hell is going to be like, whether the fire is going to be literal, whether it's going to be some kind of spiritual fire, supernatural fire, I don't know.

[20:02] All I know is hell is going to be everything that heaven isn't. They are going to be opposites. We do know that. And those, verse 3, those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven.

[20:20] and those who lead the many to righteousness or to salvation as well, like the stars forever and ever.

[20:32] Well, where are these who have insight? Where are they going to get that insight? Insight means the ability to properly look into.

[20:45] That's insight. The ability to properly look into and reach a conclusion as to what's there. That's insight. But if we all have a fallen intellect, skewed logic, where are you going to get that insight?

[21:02] It's in the book that you're holding. Because this word of God is designed and provided to counter our lack of insight.

[21:12] it is designed to counter our misunderstandings and our faulty assumptions by providing us with the truth.

[21:25] Thy word is truth. Jesus said to his disciples, the words that I speak unto you, they are truth and they are life. Wow! Are they ever.

[21:36] This book, the content of this book is the only thing on the planet that has the ability to actually enlighten an individual with the truth of God.

[21:47] And it gives us the real scoop. That's why this book is so valuable. This is why God has given it. It is a priceless commodity of the planet. And we get this insight from this book.

[22:00] And, but as for you, Daniel, verse 4, conceal these words and seal up the book until the time of end.

[22:15] And I don't know how to interpret that other than to say that this is a reference to the 70th week of Daniel, which is described as the end time period.

[22:29] And this content is going to be fully known particularly by those who are holed up at Petra who comprise that believing remnant of Israel.

[22:43] I don't know how many there will be. We know there will be 144,000 because these are men who are indestructible during this period of time.

[22:55] They have the seal of God in their foreheads and even though the Antichrist will want to destroy them, he won't be able to. So they're going to be the 144,000 plus there are going to be probably hundreds of thousands more.

[23:09] They will make up the contingency of the surviving people of Israel during that time. And they are those who are going to benefit from, guess what, the book of Daniel and Daniel chapter 12.

[23:27] This to them is going to be like reading the daily newspaper. To us it is prophecy, but when they read this, they're going to realize they are the objects of whom this is speaking.

[23:41] And Daniel is told, in the meanwhile, seal it up. And that means that we have a certain amount of access to this information, but much of it is lost to us.

[23:51] We just, it's sealed and we don't know the particulars, but they are going to know them in a way that we do not. And he says, seal up the words, seal up the book, until the end of time, many will go back and forth and knowledge will increase.

[24:08] This is an interesting expression because we are all inundated today with knowledge, news on every hand, you get news 24-7, while we even get fake news today.

[24:21] We get all kinds of news, you know. We get information, it is unbelievable, unbelievable how much information is available to you just by clicking a button, you know.

[24:35] I mean, you can go just about anywhere in the world and hear anything, and you can get it in about any language you want. And every time I read this verse, I always come to the same thought.

[24:48] You know, the technology, the event, you know, they call this the information age, and for good reason. I mean, you've got more information available from more sources than what man ever dreamed of.

[25:01] And it says that knowledge will increase. But I'm always reminded it never says that wisdom will increase. It just says knowledge will increase.

[25:12] And what wisdom is, wisdom is the judicious application of knowledge. Wisdom is the proper use of information.

[25:25] information. But don't we have a lot of improper use of information today? Oh my goodness. It's just epidemic.

[25:36] It's out there. Knowledge will increase. Then I, Daniel, looked, and behold, two others were standing, one on this bank of the river, and the other on that bank of the river.

[25:49] These are supernatural beings. And as I pointed out to you when we went through the revelation, grace, that the supernatural is going to revisit planet earth in a way and in a fashion that the planet has not seen since Jesus Christ was here 2,000 years ago performing the miracles that he did.

[26:13] This tribulation period is going to be fraught with miracles of all kinds. Supernatural is going to be on display. Angelic involvement is going to be obvious in ways that it's never been before.

[26:25] It is really going to be something. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 24 that it will be a time such as the world has never seen before and will never see again. This is going to be the planet's last ditch stand, and it's going to be something.

[26:43] One said, verse 6, one said to the man dressed in linen who was above the waters of the river, how long will it be until the end of these wonders?

[26:55] And I heard the man dressed in linen who was above the waters of the river as he raised his right hand and his left toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time.

[27:15] Do the math, and you end up with the number three and one half. A time is one, times is two, two plus one, and then the half a time is three and a half.

[27:32] That is one half of the 70th week of Daniel, which will be a period of seven years. Half of that will be three and a half years. Sometimes the Bible calls it 42 months.

[27:44] Same thing. Sometimes the Bible calls it 1260 days. Same thing. However you figure it, it's the same period of time referring to the same event.

[27:58] And as soon as they finish shattering the power of the holy people, all these events will be completed. This is, the nation of Israel is going to be entered into a stage of peace with the Antichrist.

[28:21] They are going to sign a peace treaty that will guarantee the security of Israel. This is in Daniel chapter 9, remember that, and it will be valid for seven years.

[28:34] It's a contract. The Jewish nation and the Antichrist, who will be the supreme ruler on earth, is going to enter into a contract, a mutual agreement that will guarantee the peace and security of the nation of Israel for seven years.

[28:50] But in the middle of that week, three and a half years in, the Antichrist is revealed to be who he really is. And this is the one of whom Jesus is speaking in Matthew 24, when he says, when you see the abomination that desolates, that is, the abominable one that defiles, and contaminates the holy place, this is the Antichrist in the temple that will be rebuilt.

[29:19] When you see him standing there, proclaiming himself to be God, he rips off his mask, and the Jewish people discover that they have entered into a seven-year contract with the Antichrist, and he causes the oblations to cease, and he stands in the holy place, and he announces that he is God, he is deity, and he demands worship, and Jesus says, when you see these things happen, to the Jewish people, when you see these things happen, head for the hills, run for your life, get out of Jerusalem, because you are going to be targeted for destruction, and this is going to be the beginning of the demise of what is left of the nation of Israel.

[30:03] This is what he's talking about when he says, when he talks about shattering the power of the holy people, all these events will be completed.

[30:14] Daniel says, as for me, I heard, but could not understand, so I said, my Lord, what will be the outcome of these events?

[30:25] And he said, go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time. many will be purged, purified, and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly, and none of the wicked will understand.

[30:47] There again is that faulty thinking. But those who have insight, those who are relying upon the revelation that God provides, they will understand.

[30:58] And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the time of the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days.

[31:11] Now this is a foreign number because we've been dealing with 1260. That's three and a half years. This inserts an extra 30 days. And that too will be significant.

[31:23] I wish I had time to go into it. How blessed is he who keeps waiting and attains to the 1335 days. But as for you, go your way to the end, then you will enter, Daniel, then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.

[31:49] And this of course is simply foretelling Daniel's resurrection in the future. And by the way, we're all going to have one of those. It's going to be a resurrection in the future.

[31:59] Yes, Joe. Just a little thing here. Okay. He mentions that Daniel will rest and Jesus is the one that introduced falling asleep as a term for dying.

[32:10] Yep. Falling asleep. That's a God thing. It is. It's a God thing because the disciples right after that said, well, if Lazarus is going to fall asleep, then he'll be all right.

[32:21] What's you worrying about, you know? But they didn't know that Jesus meant he was going to die then. Right. Absolutely. So that's a wonderful term to give us a good feeling.

[32:31] You know, it's just rest, you know? And what happens when you sleep and you rest? You rise. Absolutely. At the end of your sleep in the morning, you rise. So that's it. Amen. That's our hope and that's a good note to conclude on.

[32:43] I appreciate that. Thank you, Joe. Okay, guys. Well, tune in next week for the next exciting episode of I Don't Know What It Will Be. Mike.

[32:55] That statement they were warned when they see the Lord, that doesn't necessarily mean that that leads to their salvation, does it? Well, it's involved with their conversion.

[33:13] And they will be, I am, personally, I am convinced that those who are there in Petra will be believing Jews.

[33:25] They will be believing Jews. And one of the reasons they will be is that they will be recipients of the message that the 144,000 have been preaching. The 144,000 are going to persuade many of the Jews at that time to put their faith in the Messiah.

[33:43] And by the way, a lot of them will, and they will be martyred. There's going to be an enormous amount of Jews and Gentiles that are not going to survive the reign of the Antichrist.

[33:58] They will be martyred. And many of those who do not receive the mark of the beast are going to be put to death. And by the way, the method of execution that will be utilized by the Antichrist is beheading.

[34:13] Isn't that significant? Beheading. And John in the Revelation says that he beheld the souls of those under the altar who have been beheaded for the witness and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

[34:30] And they cried out saying, How long, O Lord? How long before you exact justice upon those who took our lives? That's, I think, in Revelation chapter 6. So, all of these things really come together.

[34:43] And our difficulty, of course, is sometimes seeing the exact sequence in which they will occur. But it's going to be quite a package. And it is generally referred to as the tribulation, the great tribulation.

[34:57] Sometimes it is called the time of Jacob's trouble. And that's precisely what it will be because the Jew will be right at the center of it. And so much of what we have experienced historically as anti-Semitism is going to reach its epitome, its peak, during that time.

[35:17] And there will be an open season on the Jew. And it's going to be a time of unprecedented events such as Christ described in Matthew 24.

[35:29] Yeah, Pat? Are we raptured at that point? I think we're gone before that. If you hold to a pre-tribulation rapture, we will not be here for that, although we will return.

[35:41] And when Christ goes to meet the Antichrist, we're going to be there. We're going to be there. We're going to witness it. We will not be combatants. We will not be combatants.

[35:51] The only combatant will be our Lord Jesus Christ and his only weapon will be his spoken word. And if we're gone, then we are raptured. then when it says that they'll have knowledge but not wisdom, isn't that because if we're gone and the Holy Spirit's gone?

[36:08] Well, that'll play into it. That'd be one more dynamic that they would be missing. Absolutely. And that's going to contribute more and more to the chaos and the evil and everything that's taking place. It's going to be something.

[36:20] Well, thank you all, guys. I appreciate your presence and enjoy your breakfast and the day ahead. Thank you.