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Thank you, Mr. Chairman Saar, for your kind and generous remarks. It has been a pleasure for me to be with you here again, and as you heard Mr. Dornan say, I sincerely thank my elders in this church. I mean it seriously. To see them so diligently leading the groups and organizing these sessions is a joy to one's heart. Thank you too, who have come to lead groups. Any value that there is in the talks is multiplied ten times over by the fact that responsible leaders are prepared to come and give of their time and lead groups.
Be encouraged to those, all of you who have come. The reports that have come to me have been that, quite apart from the learning that we have to get together done, the fellowship over these brief Saturdays has been exceedingly enjoyable. Studying the Word of God is meant to be, at some levels, a very tough thing as we attempt to love the Lord our God with all our mind, soul, and strength. We really so love him, we shall be prepared to think as seriously in Scripture as we do about our physics or our flower arranging or our, uh, cookery. Truthfully, which can be a very complicated art.
Uh, your presence, therefore, and adding to the social occasion, the fellowship together, has been a real contribution, uh, to these sessions. Reggie was trying to, is up to his tricks, of course, wanting me to tell you where I'm going to be before I have another one of these. You see, that's his artfulness. I will simply tell you where in God's will I hope to be this year. I shall presently be going to Belgium to help with some missionaries there and their studies of the word, where God has exceedingly blessed them. They have planted, I should think, about twenty two churches in this last fifteen years.
Most of them, ninety nine percent, are folks converted, not stolen from other churches. After that, I shall be down the south to celebrate Saint Patrick, which is important, and then to, uh, Spain for a month, perhaps, of meetings and lectures and study groups there. Later in the year, if God will, in Poland once more, and then to the States to be with the missionaries there for some intensive studies. Then in August again, back to Spain, uh, for, uh, another month of the warm, hot weather and some intensive studies. I would value your prayers on all these things.
And we come to the final v- vision that extends through chapters ten, eleven, and twelve. Now we have been saying today that there are in the final chapters of Daniel four visions of the end time, and that they, each one of them, while having much in common with others, each one deals with certain predominant themes. In the first one, blasphemy against the Most High. In this one, the question of truth versus deceit, and standing up against the Messiah, the Prince of Princes, and the vindication of the temple.
The third one, chapter nine, not the temple so much, though it is mentioned, but the question of Jerusalem City, and here God's discipline of Jerusalem City and the things that determined how long that discipline lasted. Now here it's going to be once more the discipline of the holy people, but looked at from another point of view, uh, the suffering that comes upon them, under God's permission, of course, by the persecution of the great Gentile powers, and more than that, and behind them, the great principalities, powers, mights, and dominions in heavenly places that influence world politics, fight against the purposes of God, and thus attempt to break in pieces God's holy people.
And this shall be turned, in spite of all the malevolence of the enemy, in God's hand it shall be used for the purifying of Israel and his people under that persecution. And the whole thing, uh, controlled right from the start by the writing of truth. And when the end is reached, then God swears an oath to the fact that it shall be brought to its consummation, and his people shall be delivered. Now, these are long chapters, and our time is short.
So by your leave, I once more am going to concentrate more than ever on the spiritual, uh, moral principles that come to light as we study this final vision. Here, just to remind you, is the content of chapters ten, eleven, and twelve. Daniel has a vision of the man above the river, and is told certain things by that man and the attendant angels. And then there is, in chapter eleven two to twelve four a long, long section recording, for the most part, the endless wars between the Seleucid rulers in the north, the kings of the north of Israel, and the Ptolemaic rulers in the south in Egypt, the kings of the south.
And as they battle the one against the other, they come through the land of Israel, uh, of course, and uh, uh, destroy it in various ways. So we shall have to think first of this, uh, vision here, the man above the river and what it meant to Daniel. Look briefly at what this long, long chapter may be about, and then finally return to considering the man above the river and what he had to say. And I fear this slide won't come out, but let's see whether it will or not. And if it doesn't, it doesn't really matter.
Oh, it comes out some, perhaps. The river, ladies and gentlemen, the river Hiddekel, the Tigris, here. Forget about this. Here goes the river. And compared to the little Jordan in Israel, it was a mighty river. So let's sit back a moment and listen to Daniel. He tells us that as for me, in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed to me, even a great warfare. And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river which is Hiddekel, I lifted up mine eyes.
Now you should imagine the river, and Daniel, now a very elderly man, apparently is on government business or his holiday or something, and in the eastern part of the empire, and he comes to stand on the bank of the great river Hiddekor. Wonder what he would have been feeling like. I remember myself the first time after the war, the first time ever, I went to Germany on holiday and came at length to the great river Rhine at Cologne.
And there I stood and watched its stately waters going by, and I said to myself, now, is this the Rhine? Wow. This is Germany then, the great river of Germany. Wow. And this is where the doodlebugs came from, the V one s and the V two s that we used to listen to in earlier years, scared out of our lives by whether the old doodlebug would run out of petrol and come down on our chimney, and in most unchristian fashion, we hoped it would had enough petrol to go by us and come down somebody else's chimney. That wasn't very Christian, was it? But there you are, you know what it is when V two s are flying around, and they were coming over with alarming regularity from the Dutch coast and Germany to our part of the world.
I lived in Suffolk in those days, just twelve miles from the coast. Now, after all the destruction of Coventry and London, Birmingham, Norwich, Bristol, now I stood by the great river, the Rhine. A foreigner's river, I tell you, it was at that moment. And Daniel comes as a very elderly man, now standing on the banks of the great Hiddekel, the Tigris, one of the major rivers of the empire. Yes, he had lived there now since a young man in that part of the world.
Perhaps he was more at home there in one sense than he would have been in Israel. But as we read his book, we are aware that he never lost love for Jerusalem. An Israelite he remained, with all the hopes of the promises of God made to his nation and to his people. I wonder if in his youth he had hoped and hoped and hoped he would be strong enough eventually to go back with the returning exiles. As far as we know, he never went back. Now old and elderly, I say, standing by the river. And I wonder, did he begin to feel? Hm. Has a lot of water passed down this river.
A lot of water, as we say, under the bridges. Oh, he remembered his early youth and hearing Jeremiah and the shock of the fall of Jerusalem, the excitement of his university course and how he tried to stand for God in his university, the wonderful experiences in the civil service and how he'd proved God and the waters of the river were running by. And then as his eye would follow the sparkle in the river, there it goes, there it goes, there it goes down there, look, and now over the horizon and gone. What lies over the horizon?
I wonder if any of you, some of you may be, yes. You can remember absolutely sixty years ago, can't you? With happy memories of the water that has flown down the river of time since then. And then our eyes are caught by the ongoing river, and it's going still, isn't it? Presently it will disappear over the horizon, my brother. Where do the waters of the river lead. What would happen in the subsequent years? Ah, what a story he now had to stand and listen to.
Sometimes it was so strong, it had him on the ground, almost unconscious, such was the terror of it. And if you will allow me to use the imagery of the river, then I shall assure you that I'm simply doing what the ancient Hebrews did. For when they thought of the river and some of the great rivers, the river Euphrates or this one, then on occasions they used it as a metaphor for, as now you see, some of those low-lying rivers were given to overflowing their banks and channels sometimes, and when they did it, those mighty rivers, they caused such devastation in the surrounding countryside, like Bangladesh, when it gets a monsoon or something or a tidal wave.
They were things to be feared. They could just ruin your home, ruin your farm, years of hard work, all swamped by an overflowing river. But it wasn't the river so much that did the damage. It was the great armies. Here is Isaiah talking of the great armies of the king of Assyria. And he says, now the Lord brings upon Israel the waters of the river. That's the river Euphrates, presumably. Heart of the Assyrian Empire. But you see how the imagery goes on. The river now is the king of Assyria with all his armies.
For a little nation like Israel, it was a catastrophe when a great army came through with all its battalions and chariots and war instruments, and they just swept through your country and ate up everything on your farm and bashed your home down and took your wife away. It was like the devastation of an overflowing river. And when the army had passed and the battle had been fought, it's like when the waters of a flood go down. Oh, the sorry little things. There's a baby's rattle there, look. Oh, that used to be the kitchen stove. Wow. There's a picture of Aunt Sally. There's a drowned dog. That was old Fido. Oof. That's a human being that got drowned.
What a mess when the flood waters go down, and in the ancient world, when an army had been through and fought its battles and gone, all the debris, the broken homes, the destroyed villages, men and women with their minds broken with the shock, they never would recover their mental abilities. I have asked flooding river. What a terrible thing armies have been, haven't they, in the course of this world. And Daniel uses that same metaphor, or rather it is used to him, even in the course of chapter eleven.
And his sons shall war, and shall assemble a multitude of great forces, which shall come on and, here we have it, and overflow and pass through. What is going to be told about in this great long prophecy of chapter eleven uh are the wars between the kings of the north, that is the Seleucids, and the kings of the south, as they war in each other, and as they war, the great armies would come sweeping down from the north and through Palestine and on into Egypt. And the way would come back, the kings of the south and their armies, and flow back this way, and whichever way the tide went, Israel got it, of course.
So very frequently being a corridor with all the damage and the destruction of the overflowing armies. So this was where the r- waters of the river were going. You say it would have been kinder not to tell the man. Who the mercy you can't see where the waters of the river are going in your life? What's over the horizon, my brother? Ah, thank God. Before Daniel was shown all these overflowings and catastrophes, he said, I looked up and I saw a man.
From chapter twelve we gather he saw him standing above the waters, and the waters went by, and he stood still. What a wonderful thing. There is another world. That day, Daniel was given to see this bright vision, the man above the waters of the river.
You say, who was it? I think it was the Lord Jesus myself, one of his pre-incarnate manifestations. A lot of theologians don't, of course, and will correct my, uh, uh, imagination by saying, oh, it can't be, because at one stage he says, uh, the prince of the Pers- of Persia withstood me, and he's talking of great spiritual battles, and then he says, Michael came along to help me, and they say that could never be said of the Lord Jesus. He doesn't need anybody's help in his battles against Satan and his hosts. No? Well, if it is so, it is so.
So it's an exalted angel then, and that may well be the answer. For my own part, I can't help remembering what Deborah said in Judges chapter five. She was fighting along with Barak, Sisera, and Jabin, king of the Canaanites, and, uh, she has to utter in the name of God, cursed be Meros. Why? Because they did not come to the help of the Lord. For in this battle, the Lord was fighting, and the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, and the kings came and fought, and God fought them. Then the people of God had the opportunity to come to the help of the Lord. Judges chapter five.
and they didn't come. So perhaps the divine persons do need some help, according to Judges five. not in the sense that they are utterly dependent on our puny powers. But now Daniel had revealed to him a great warfare. And we notice another level, that away and beyond the level of our world where the rivers run and no human being can stand on the water, there are others involved. This blessed one, he stands above the water, and he tells of a great warfare, of great spiritual princes in heavenly places that strive in the affairs of men.
And of course, we Christians understand, do we not, what is being said? Ephesians chapter six tells us we wrestle not against flesh and blood, we wrestle against the powers, spiritual wickedness in high places, the powers of darkness, thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers. To us is given the privilege of fighting the Lord's battles at that level. And this is an interesting thing, for in earlier chapters of Daniel, we've seen many a chapter that has asked us to think of man in relation to the animal beneath him.
Now, in this final chapter, we're asked to think of man in relation to the great spirit powers that are above him. We are involved in a gigantic warfare. Things are more than the armies of the Ptolemies going up and down, more even than the damage that they do. For behind them stands the great principalities and powers set to try and defeat the purposes of God. Daniel is comforted with the assurance that in spite of all they can do, what is written in the writing of truth shall be fulfilled.
Stand a moment with this man above the river. We learn as he speaks in chapter 12 that because he stands above the river, he can see the end from the beginning. Daniel can't. But the man is already looking, and he says, you know, now at such and such a time, you'll see many that sleep in the dust shall arise. Oh, he can see the resurrection already. Isn't that lovely? Here's you, and you are wandering around Apsley Street and Dublin Road and whatnot. You can see about two streets at a time. You get on British Airways and you get buzzing across Belfast, you can see the whole lot.
You can see the mountains of morn and beyond. This man standing above the river, he can see the end and the end time. What lies beyond the end time? He sees the beginning and the end from the beginning. What is wonderful to know him. If you could only see Earth's history, what a shambles it would be. You'd look in vain for any purpose, wouldn't you? Where is there any pattern or purpose? Here comes Napoleon and thousands of men and women are ruined in their minds and in their bodies, and Europe is put to the sword. Here comes the Spanish emperor, and he fights against the Netherlands and destroys thousands of people.
Here come the bright armies, all with their colors and their bands, and the young men think it's marvelous and romantic. You should see it after the battle's over, and the broken bodies and the broken minds. Where's the pattern of it? Here comes Mussolini, here comes Hitler, and what's left when they've departed? Where is there any rhyme or sense or reason in the whole of history and its mad militarism? Now you'll look in vain in history. If you're going to see the purpose in history, you'll have to get above the river and look at it from above. That is your privileged position as a believer in the Lord Jesus, as a believer in God.
From above the river, he can show you there is a purpose in history, and he can show you where the thing is going. Oh, courage, here is tremendous courage. In him we have knowledge of what the end shall be. Just as one night there were twelve weary men in a boat, rowing against storm and wave and hoping one day they would come to, one hour they would come to the end of the journey, and there drew near a man walking above and on the water, and they asked him in their boat, and they were at the end, they were at the harbor, whither they would go.
Blessed are those that have found this great Lord of time over the waters of life, seeing the end from the beginning. Trust him, and he'll bring you through. He'll bring you right to the end, and you, like Daniel, will stand in your lot at the end of a day. So with these comforting words, Daniel is now given a vision of the intervening history, and I don't want to, um, detain you long. Time would fail us anyway, and I couldn't do it for another thing.
All the endless details of the wars between Ptolemies and Seleucids. I'm going to suggest to you just a very simple thing, and you may care to work it out in your own studies if you have not done so. In the prophecies of the wars that we get largely in chapter eleven, I suggest you will find that there are four major periods, and I have listed them there for your observation. They have this in common, that in each of them, a king of the north comes down to fight the king of the south.
And either on his way through or on his way back, he poses a threat to the land of Palestine and to the city of Jerusalem and to the people of God and indeed to the temple of the Lord. In all of these, so that they have that in common. And yet, in the first one, he passes through and goes home again. If you had been living in that period, you might have thought, goodness me, we're coming near the end.
Here is this great evil power. Look at him standing in the Holy Land. Look at him threatening the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary. Wow, we're in the end time. But then it didn't turn out. It all fizzed out and he went home. And the same thing happens here. Two evil kings get together, they hit upon plans, it looks as though it's going to be now the end, and together they're going to obliterate Palestine and Jerusalem and the temple of the Lord, and just when it seems to go to be the end, then it turns out not to be the end. Nothing comes of it. In this third period comes Antiochus Epiphanes with all his desperate goings on.
If anything looked like the time of the end, it looked like it when Antiochus Epiphanes was holding forth and banning ban- banning the worship of the Lord, uh, and all those other horrors that we thought about earlier today. But when you come to the end of that period, verse thirty five, look what scripture says. And some of them that be wise shall fall to refine them and to purify and to make them white, even to the time of the end, because it is yet for the time appointed. So even in this third one, it wasn't the end then. The real vision is for the time of the end. It's not yet, says the prophet, even in the times of Antiochus Epiphanes. It is only finally in this fourth part that we get a description of the time of the end.
Now, perhaps if that is true, if that is a true observation, one can immediately see certain practical lessons that would have been a help to the Jews, who were called upon to live through those weary ages. And it would be this, that while they would have to be on their guard and learn to apply the principles of their faith in their daily life, they were not to decide too quickly that they were living in the end time. Because many previous periods have had features that look like the end time, and they weren't.
Secondly, they are warned that during some of these times, the violent, as Daniel puts it, the violent of your people will rise up thinking to fulfill the vision by their own strength, and they shall fail, of course, because the vision isn't going to be fulfilled by the Maccabees or anybody else. It shall be finally fulfilled by the coming of the Lord Jesus. You say, what is it then that distinguishes the time of the end, the real time of the end, from the others that have gone before? Therein lies the value, one of the value of the practical lessons of the passage.
Antiochus, I say, is so like, in many respects, the final form, so like the performance of that king that shall come in all his super ungodliness at the time of the end, that you could have forgiven folks who lived in that time for thinking that the end was already here. But it wasn't. You know, when I was a boy, some believers told us that the end was going to be next Thursday. I remember, I think it was nineteen thirty five, I lived in Exning near Newmarket, where the horses are, and the rumor was strong that the Lord was going to come. Oh, they said, but look at the features, you see, and this is this, and this is that, and this is something else.
Oh, the Lord will be here very soon now. But it didn't happen. Here I am old and gray-headed and bent, and goodness me, it didn't prove true. We need to be looking for the Lord to come, firm in our faith that he will come. We need to be very cautious when we read the signs of the times, for the simple reason that it is a phenomenon in history that the Holy Spirit points out, that period after period have from time to time given rise to situations that look like the time of the end, but prove in the end not to be the end. The end time is described in those verses.
It will, of course, see an altogether huge expression of man's defiance of God, man putting himself in the place of God, a time of tribulation unprecedented in human history. It should be marked, of course, at its end by the resurrection. With those thoughts, I leave you now, except now to say just a word or two about the comfort that was given Daniel as we come to the third part of this vision. If this is the great course of history coming to the end, well then, so what now? Daniel is told, verse twelve, chapter twelve, verse one: um now some exceedingly comfortable things.
In all the intervening disasters, trials, persecutions, and the unprecedented time of suffering at the period of the end, and nonetheless, look at it. At that time, says chapter twelve verse one, shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people. There shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time. And at that time, thy people shall be, shall be, shall be, shall be delivered. Ah. You will notice that every scripture that talks in s- in the Bible about the Great Tribulation, every scripture without exception emphasizes that the people of God shall be delivered.
We need to remain, to retain the emphasis. My people shall be delivered, everyone that is written in the book. And we can leave Daniel and leave his people and leave things prophetic. And my brother, you've got your eye upon the river, and it's going over the edge, and you say, what lies between me and glory? Where do the waters lead? He knows the end from the beginning, and you too, you who belong to this age, you too, he assures. You'll be written in his book, my brother. You shall never perish. Oh, rejoice, said Christ.
Rejoice in this supremely that your name is written in heaven. Then, of course, Daniel was bid to, uh, be glad because of the resurrection that is to come, mentioned here in chapter, uh, twelve verse two. Many that sleep in the dust shall awake and shall come forth, the great resurrection. Again, we can leave all nice distinctions between one age and another. We're thinking of the end of the river, resurrection to life, resurrection to damnation. Then the surge of armies and the history of the world will shrink to insignificance as the real issues of life face men and women.
It's the resurrection of life. Or it is the resurrection of damnation. You're looking for the Lord to come, you are, aren't you? You're hoping he comes before you die anyway, so that's another glorious thing. Ah, but in what comfort you sit. Let the waters of the river run. We know whither it leads for us. Our names are in the book. We wait for the Lord to come, and even are we asleep when he comes, he shall raise us to eternal life. Yes, and in the meantime, Daniel is told of the, uh, prizes that there shall be, the rewards for those who in this life have been faithful.
Look at verse three: They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. Oh, my brethren, when the river has run its course and the Lord comes, what will have survived out of life? What would it all have meant? Happy the man and woman who are not only redeemed, but can point to the converts that they have led to Christ, can point to the Sunday school children that they counseled and turned to righteousness, can point to families and others that have been helped in the ways of God, and in this temporary life, as they battled with the waves of the river, have led many to righteousness.
All the joy when at last they shine with the Savior. Only the river is moving fastly, isn't it? Fast its current, and we shall soon be there. God give us the grace while the time lasts to do this very thing and turn many to righteousness. And what about life's trials? Here, God in the first place is comforting the nation of Israel. Thus it is. And Daniel naturally asks how long the terrible persecution and the spite of Satan is to last.
And in that sacred moment, the man who stands above the river, he lift his right hand and his left hand to heaven and swear by him that liveth forever and ever, that not one minute will it be longer. The wisdom of God sees necessary for the purifying of his people. We too take comfort from that. We too have our tribulations in life, and know the spite of his satanic majesty as we attempt to stand and witness for the Lord. And he who measures the throb of every heart and the pains of the battle, lifts up his hands still and swears by him that liveth forever and ever that he stands faithful to you, my brother and sister, and life's trials and oppositions shall not last one minute longer than is required to do its sacred task of conforming you to the image of God's Son.
In view it, they that are wise will purify themselves. Verse uh ten of chapter twelve, many shall purify themselves. And we take the lesson from the Jew and we apply it to ourselves. He that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is. And we go our way, and so did Daniel. Goodbye, Daniel, said the man above the river, pro tem, goodbye, Daniel. But you shall stand in your lot at the end of the day. The idea is, of course, that the Israelites, when they entered the land of Canaan, were issued with a bit of the land, and their name was put upon that land.
It was their lot. And the farmer sang merrily, the lines have fallen unto me in goodly places. I have an excellent lot, an excellent heritage. Daniel now has asked to lift his eyes higher, not just three acres in Palestine, at the end where the river goes, there is a lot, an inheritance, and Daniel's name is on it. Oh, my brother, is there such a lot, such an inheritance for you in a world that is eternal. Because you've been redeemed with the blood of Christ and are now being purified, and at the end of the road, and for all eternity, prepared of the Father before the world was a lot with your name in it.
You too shall stand in your lot at the end of the day. Daniel won't mind if we've taken prophecies that relate to his people and this afternoon applied them to ourselves. What other reason do we read prophecy than that? Go your way likewise. You too, if you are the Lord's, shall stand in your lot at the end of the days.
