Daniel 11:40-12:13 brings the book of Daniel to a close, but we probably remember this passage much less than the stories we saw earlier in the book. One of the reasons people struggle with the last couple chapters of Daniel is that we think, “Well, that is interesting but I don’t really see what it has to do with my life.” Much of Daniel 11 was a prophecy that is now history. And we would think that ancient troop movements do not have much to do with us today. Then we read the rest of Daniel 11 and the opening verses of chapter 12, which do not fit what we know from history books. It is easy to miss the shift being made in verse 40 by the phrase, “at the time of the end” and how that fits the opening verse of chapter 12, “At that time.” But when we study the text and notice these markers we realize that the angel has just fast-forwarded to the end of history, which is not over yet. So this is a prophecy that is not yet history. Still that might leave us wondering what these troop movements have to do with our lives. There is a whole industry out there that will try to equate such movements with events going on in the world around us, which also might be interesting but it still leaves us unsatisfied. We do live in the end times, but thankfully these verses do not just relate to us troop movements, they actually show us how to live until the end of the time of the end.
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