What does the Bible mean when it says, blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1335 days. Daniel Chapter 12. Verse 12.
Well, let's talk on this video about calculating the end of days. We have this passage in Daniel chapter 12, verse 11. From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. Then it says, blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days. We have all kinds of references to days and months and years in the book of Revelation.
It's no wonder. that people have tried to calculate the end of days, calculate the time of the return of Jesus. It's happened for many centuries. It continues to happen in our day. And I want to give a word of strong caution about that and suggest what we should be doing.
In light of the second coming of Jesus. Here's just a little list. Are you ready? A little list of dates, major dates that were projected in church history for the return of Jesus. A D 500.
Yeah. AD 500, based on the dimensions of Noah's Ark. the end of the age was calculated well we're off by over 1500 years so far ad 800 Yeah, the completion of 8,000 years from creation, according to some chronologies. AD 1000. Of course, these are all AD dates.
So the year 1000. Yeah, I mean, isn't that it? A thousand years seems like the right time.
Well, nothing happened. Oh, no, no, a thousand years since the crucifixion. If the crucifixion was 33 AD, then 1,033. What we'll know, the new age is going to begin in the year 1260. Yeah.
It's going to be 1284. And in some cases, you had major Christian leaders making these predictions, and they were influential. Uh 1524. It's going to be some momentous event. No, it's 1534, 1535.
No, no, it's actually 1588. Um Allegedly Christopher Columbus. suggested that the end of the age would be sixteen fifty six. No, there was uh sixteen sixty six tying him with the Number 666 in the in the Antichrist. 1694, prominent American Christian leader suggested that, early American colonial history.
A 1716 seventeen thirty six. Maybe the most famous failed prediction, 1843 to 1844. This is William Miller. It's going to be between March 21st, 1843 and March 21st, 1844. That didn't work.
It got moved to October 22nd, 1844. Seventh-day Adventism is ultimately birthed out of this. 1874. This now comes in with the Jehovah's Witnesses 1914. They say, well, he returned spiritually.
They were predicting Jehovah's Witnesses' physical return, but well, he returned spiritually. And they still say that. 1918 was another date. 1925, 1941, 1975. 1981, how about the famous 1988?
88 Reasons Jesus Is Coming in 1988 by Edgar Wisnant. And then of course he put out the next, and it was going to be September 12th. of 88. You put out another edition. 89 reasons is coming in 89.
Another edition, 90 reasons, and 90. I'm not kidding you. This actually happened. 1992, the Korean groups, some Korean groups prophesied that. 1994 was one of the failed predictions of Harold Camping, a family radio.
Year 2000, Y2K, oh, this is it. And then Camping revised things to 2011, and then that famously, tragically failed. A 2012, tying in with the Mayan calendar. 2017, 2018. I've refuted videos about Jesus coming in 2018, Jesus coming in 2023, Jesus coming in 2025.
No, no, it's going to be 2030, 2,000 years after the crucifixion. No, no, date the crucifixion to 33, and it's going to be 2033.
Okay, so the one common denominator is everybody's been wrong so far. There's even a Jewish teaching that says, blasted be the bones of anyone who predicts the end. Because when the days don't happen, then people are going to lose faith, a paraphrase of the teaching. Of course, everyone wants to try to figure things out, and it's a natural inclination to do it. But Here's what we know.
Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5 to the Thessalonian believers and says, He's coming as a thief in the night. When everyone speaks of peace and safety, sudden destruction is going to come. He says, But for you, the children of God, He's not coming as a thief at night because you're not asleep. Thief in the night implies people sleeping. He said, you're children of the day, so we live in the light, we live in the day.
He said, I don't need to write you about times and seasons, because when everyone's saying peace and safety, sudden destruction is going to come. Oh, does that mean the Abraham Accords or everyone's saying peace and safety, sudden destruction is going to come? Does that mean after, well, after Japan surrendered, Germany surrendered in the Second World War, peace and safety? We can always speculate. But this much we know.
there will be such upheaval. Such shaking, such intense times that we will look up because our redemption is drawing near. You say, Well, how do we know for sure?
Well, here's the deal. All the speculation up to now has been false and it's done. absolutely no good. It hasn't helped people live more practically. It hasn't helped people plan more efficiently.
It hasn't helped us warn the world. All the predictions so far have been wrong. and have done no overall good and it could be argued in many ways they've done a lot of harm. They created disappointment. They created false expectation.
In 1988, people fell heavily into debt.
So they're going to leave their debt to the Antichrist. Instead, they left their debt to the bill collector.
So There there's no fruit in doing this. People fell away after other failed predictions or started cults or new religions to try to live up to the false prediction. Better to recognize this. The one thing guaranteed is every human being who ever lived so far died. with the exception of an Enoch or an Elijah.
Every everyone who lived died. And we don't know the day of our death. We live ready to meet God every day of our lives. We live ready to meet God because we love him and we want to serve him and honor him. And we also live knowing we only have one life.
We only have one life. Let's make it count for the Lord. That's what we do know, and we live with urgency because lives hang in the balance. the people being saved, people being lost. Lives hang in the balance and we only have one life to get the job done.
At the same time, we know God's called us to rest in this world and to enjoy his blessing and goodness in this world and not to live on the edge of our seat.
Well, any second, we could be out of here. It's unproductive. It's unhelpful. And of course, since I don't believe in a pre-trib rapture, I'd say it's unscriptural as well. If you want more info on that, you can check out the book that Professor Craig Keener and I wrote together, Not Afraid of the Antichrist.
why we don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. Not afraid of the Antichrist. Yours truly, and Craig Keener, why we don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. But. That's not the focus.
Here's the focus. Let us live soberly. as those who have been saved from sin and saved from death by the blood of Jesus. Let us live anticipating his return, longing for it, hoping for it, wanting to see him come and put an end to suffering. Let that be our great goal.
Oh, to see your return in our lifetimes. At 71, that's still my great heart cry. I'd love to see it. But let's live with sobriety. We only have one life after which we will give account to God.
And what we do in this world. will have an eternal impact, for better or for worse. Please hear me. There are things happening in our day that have never happened before. the rise of artificial intelligence, AI being one.
We're watching in America and other nations an unprecedented rise in violent Jew hatred. What does that lead to? Does that tie in with the final attack on Israel according to Zechariah 12 or Zechariah 14? Or is this just another cycle that could end in a terrible way? Or is it just something we need to push back against?
Those are all questions to which we do not have specific answers. You say, but doesn't it say that we should know the times and seasons? Yes, understand the day in which we live. understand how we should live and my own belief is this. As we get close to the return of Jesus, we're not going to have to sit around date setting.
It's going to be clear enough on the earth that something is happening and his return is drawing near. Oh, to be alive in that day. Wait, wait, wait. There's one more thing. You said, Dr.
Brown, you never got back to Daniel. You started reading those verses in Daniel. Are you going to explain them? I I wish I could. I I wish I understood the exact significance of the days.
and how they're going to count out. and what we're to make of it. I can only say that my understanding would be as we get closer to the end, They'll make more sense.
So it becomes self-evident. everything that's been said so far in terms of speculating. and date setting and trying to figure out exactly where we are in the scheme, recount those days. It hasn't worked so far. I'm not so presumptuous to think that I'm now just going to figure it out Nora.
As God called me to spend years and years figuring it out or to believe that God's just going to tell me. But he hasn't told anybody else up to now.
So I read the verses to say. They're there, but some we just don't know what they mean at present. And at the end, they should become clear. You see, is he talking about something historic that already happened? I've read those explanations, but nothing fully works.
Certain things we have to let sit. until they become more clear.
