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The “end times” are featured in the Bible as times of trouble and distress – terrible times not just for Christians but for all mankind. The purification of faith through tribulation will set to separate the genuine from the counterfeit; the tares from the wheat where both were allowed to grow till harvest. J Denney has this to say about the “end times”: “It is a progress in which good and evil alike come to maturity, bearing their ripest fruits…the progress is not in good itself or in evil itself but in the antagonism of the one to the other.”
For Christians, our names are written and recorded in God’s “Book of Life”. There will be a gathering, a rising, an awakening of the faithful – the final resurrection of the body. God’s righteous ones will see the ultimate triumph of His Eternal Kingdom and the everlasting hope of eternal life.
Prophet Daniel’s last great vision points to the finale, a fullness of time when all that had been told and unveiled to him but he has not understood. The realities, visions, and promises are also immediately beyond the scope of our understanding and reasoning. For these are sometimes bigger and much more mysterious than our minds can master and our understanding can unfold. What is Daniel required to do but to exercise patience and be steadfast. Like Daniel, we are to be prepared to simply wait and be confident that when the end comes we will recognize these things and be ready like the five wise virgins ready to welcome the Bridegroom. When the end approaches and the times are hard, we are to be wise. “This calls for wisdom” (Rev. 13:18) which is a gift to be sought from God. More crucial than any other qualities, both books, Daniel and Revelation, stressed the need for wisdom in the last days.
Daniel was told by God to “Go your way till the end and you shall rest” (Dan. 12:13). His path had been marked out and he had been allotted a place where he can stand unshaken in God’s presence and find rest. Each one of us as believers also have a God-defined destiny for we have been called by name and elected to service. Amidst the conflicts of world empires, ravages of time, meaningless changes that take place in the course of history, “the man who is greatly beloved cannot lose the way and will not be allowed to be lost” (R Wallace). God’s promise to Daniel and to us who believe is: we will find rest.
