To Musicmaster ---I would like your opinion on Daniel 12:12 on the Blessed day and the 1335th day
Hmm. Good question. Let's make sure we get the context:
Daniel 12:9-13
9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for
the words [are] closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
10
Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but
the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but
the wise shall understand.
11 And
from the time [that] the daily [sacrifice] shall be taken away, and
the abomination that maketh desolate set up, [there shall be] a
thousand two hundred and ninety days.
12 Blessed [is] he that
waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.
13 But go thou thy way
till the end [be]: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot
at the end of the days.
From Daniel's perspective, that was obviously all a future period as it is unique in its ferocity (Dan. 12:1). "There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation." That time period will indeed be marked by the deliverance of Daniel's " thy people," Israel, which is mentioned twice in Dan. 12:1.
Then, following the time of trouble spoken of, there will be partial resurrection and a judgment that will follow for those who have been resurrected. The Hebrew term
rab, rendered in English as "many," serves as a limitation to the number of those who will be resurrected, as there are Hebrew words such as
kōl, which expresses the concept of totality, meaning that all or 'everyone' had it been used in the context of Dan. 12:2. The "thy people" people of the verse also limits this resurrection to the people of Israel. Collectively, this goes along with Isaiah 26 and 1 Thesselonians 4:13-17, which defies the idea of a single general resurrection of both the saved and the lost.
Michael (the archangel) limits these events to the
time of the end as stated, not some interlude in the midst of an approach to the end. Such would have prohibited this from having already taken place from our perspective right now, when Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the temple in 167 BC or in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans (and that's only assuming the Romans did that in the midst of an attack where they burned the temple in order to get all the gold melted down into and onto the lower stones, and hightail it back to Rome with the loot).
Also, Daniel 12:5-13 is linked to Dan. 12:1-4 by the question made by one of the two men Daniel saw in Daniel 12:6, "How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?" The man clothed in white linen described the time of the end, which was earlier called the "time of trouble" as a time period that extends for "it shall be for a time, times, and an half." Some of us suggest that this is consistently defined elsewhere as 3 1/2 years, 1260 days in a 30 day-month calendar. There are a number of passages that describe a period of 3 1/2 years, Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7; Revelation 11:2; 12:6, 14; 13:5.
In Daniel 12:11, two events are described that are distinct, and yet that are often put together in terms of time:
* The daily sacrifice will be taken away, and
* There will be an "abomination that maketh desolate."
With a split in time between these two events, this may partially explain the differences in days that are found in the various passages. Some of the dates are counted from the stopping of the sacrifices while others from the desecration of the temple.
The event described in Daniel 12:11 is the "abomination that maketh desolate," which is commonly called the abomination of desolation, right? In Matthew 24:15, Yahshuah refers to a future event that he calls "abomination of desolation" while adding that this was previously spoken by the prophet Daniel, so in 33 AD, Yahshuah said that Daniel 12:11 would be fulfilled in the future.
This prohibits this from having been fulfilled in 167 BC at the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes, and I'm sure we can all agree on that. Unless one is willing to call Yahshuah a liar, or they deny that He actually spoke those words, that creates some serious problems, obviously. To those who hold to the doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy, that simply isn't possible. In Daniel 12:1-4 this period is followed by a resurrection, so that puts s top to assigning this to 70 AD as well. Why?
Simply stated: To assign Matthew 24:15, and with it Dan. 12:11 to 70 AD, all creates a couple of problems. The events described in the larger context of Matthew 24:4-14 must be allegoricalized into oblivion, or outright ignored. There will be a time when a number of wars and rumors of wars will be taking place. The context of the Jewish rebellion doesn't fit in here. Those wars will involve many nations, not the two nations of Rome and Israel that were present in the Jewish rebellion of 70 AD. A great deal of physical judgments will come in the form of "famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places," all suggesting a larger context than the narrow context surrounding Jerusalem in 70 AD.
The strongest argument for a future time period for this is the description in Matthew 24:16-31. The abomination of desolation marks the beginning of a period, not the end of it. The temple is destroyed at the end of the siege of Jerusalem and therefore it would have made no sense for Yahshuah to tell people to flee once they saw the abomination. In 70 AD it would have been too late, the Romans had by then already surrounded and destroyed the city. Yahshuah, in Matthew 24:21, also calls this a period of unequal ferocity with the added phrase that it will occur once -- οὐδʼ οὐ μὴ γένηται (and never will be). Given that the events of 70 AD were terrible in their ferocity and suffering, we have seen numerous times where the suffering has far exceeded the events of 70 AD. It is known that Jerusalem has been destroyed and rebuilt more than 30 times throughout its history. Once again, to make Dan. 12:11 as having taken place in 70 AD requires the idea that Yahshuah was utterly wrong when He said there would never again be a time period as horrific as the "Great Tribulation."
Therefore, in answer to your question, I will say for now that Daniel 12:1-13 rightfully coincides with the time period known as the Great Tribulation and the events right after the tribulation. There will be great wrath poured out by the Lamb upon His second coming, such as the sheep and goat judgment. This too may explain some of the differences in the number of days. There are quite a few other passages that could also be used to show the consistency in Scripture of describing a future time period. Couched within the context of those passages we see descriptions of other events that, when taken literally, can only be seen as a yet future event.
MM
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