Daniel: Does God Reign? Does God Care? - Reading PlanSample

Start with prayer, then watch the video and read Daniel 11v36-12v13.

When you’re watching a film, the experience is completely different if you know how it ends. All the anxiety and tension is taken away – which for some people ruins the surprise, but for others enables us to enjoy each detail or dénouement more.

Imagine now though that we’re talking about your life. Wouldn’t you like to know how it all ends? Is it a Shakespearean tragedy, or are you in the land of happy endings? If you’re a Christian, you can know. And it’s glorious – a happy ending to make fairy tale endings look grim and foreboding.

In the final chapter of Daniel, we find the wonderful news that ultimately God, and the people of God, will triumph. At the end of time, all people “will awake” (v2). If we’re followers of Jesus, we will be among those who awake to “everlasting life…[and] shine like the brightness of the heavens” (v3).

That can often be dismissed as irrelevant to the here and now. And yet Daniel 11-12 makes very clear that it’s not. The context of this prophecy is persecution and suffering.

We saw yesterday how knowing that God is still in control, and that the darkness will end, can help us through the most difficult times. But for that to be a comfort and strength, we also need to know how it will end – and that what comes after is worth waiting for.

At the start of our passage, the vision shifts from history in the 160’s BC to the end of time. God wants us to know that his message of comfort and sovereignty is not just for the Jews in the 2nd Century, but for all his people through time. Crucial to that message is the revelation of how it will end for us all – and the glories and joys awaiting us eternally.

Part of the message though is that in this life hardship and darkness will come to us all. As a pastor I have often seen how pain and grief and suffering can derail and unravel us. In those moments we need something to hold on to. Far from an irrelevant dream, the promise and certainty of eternal life and glory is exactly what we need in that moment. When you struggle, look to God and put your hope in his eternal promises.