“But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall
stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”
The very last verse of the book of Daniel is a personal promise from a mighty angel to an Old Testament saint
three
times called
“greatly loved”. It assumes something the Old Testament refers to rarely and about which Judaism today says next to nothing: a future for godly men and
women beyond this present life.
The angel doesn’t formally teach this so much as he simply takes it for
granted: “You will lie in your grave for a bit, then God has something specific
in mind for you after all that.”
I wonder what Daniel thought about it, but not even the greatest Bible expositor or translator can tell
me that. The book of Daniel ends there. As usual, God gets the last word.
A Man Greatly Loved
Daniel was greatly loved. That’s quite a serious commendation for a servant of God. That statement
is made about no other man or woman in all the Old Testament.
The English word “loved” is a translation of one of several Hebrew words [all related to chemdah] that mean desirable, precious, delightful, pleasant or even coveted. Achan and
Eve both felt the intensity of that same emotion, but what they coveted was forbidden; their response inappropriate and ultimately disastrous. Israel had
that same intense desire for a king to reign over them, much to their detriment. When God expresses such a sentiment, there is nothing negative or inappropriate about it. Little better
may be said about a human being.
By way of comparison, “greatly loved” is the precise linguistic
opposite of what is said about King Jehoram of Israel, who died in agony
of an expulsive bowel disease. As the chronicler puts it,
“He departed with no one’s regret.”
Not greatly loved. May you and I never go that way.
In Your Allotted Place
If even a “greatly loved” man like Daniel must go to his
rest, maybe you and I ought to be a little more okay with going to ours.
Human death may be a product of the fall of mankind, but it also provides a
welcome relief from the trials and temptations of this life and an appropriate
last chapter to the story of our earthly lives. There remains to us a prospect,
then, by God’s grace, of ending well rather than merely petering out.
I like that idea.
But it gets better, of course. Daniel had an “allotted place”
in which he is destined to stand at the “end of the days”. What that means,
once again, is not absolutely clear.
The Hebrew phrase is literally “stand in your lot”, a “lot” being the portion assigned to a man by the casting of pebbles. The
casting of lots was a common Old Testament practice that had its legitimate
uses within the priesthood, in the
division of land, and the
settling of inheritances.
Indeterminate, But Not Random
The practice survived into the New Testament era, where the
apostles used it to determine a successor to take the place of the late unlamented Judas Iscariot.
A lot thrown by the right person in the right spirit was
thought to have the blessing of God, so the sense of the word “allotted” is not
of some random outcome, but of a specific place in the predetermined counsels of God.
What is Daniel’s “allotted place”? Only the Lord knows.
Could a resurrected Daniel have a specific role to occupy during the Great Tribulation
or in the Millennial kingdom? It is not ours to say. All we can say with
confidence is that he will “stand” in that place just as surely as the two
witnesses of Revelation 11 will “stand” before the Lord of the earth. Daniel returned to dust, as do we all, and he will
rise from it at the end of the days.
From our limited human perspective, Daniel’s role in that
future economy is currently indeterminate. It is certainly not random.
A Promise With Qualifications
Can you and I as believers in Jesus Christ claim a similar
promise? With some minor qualifications, certainly. Daniel’s role is not ours. You or I could
no more stand in his sandals than those of any of the other great men and women
of faith. But I do believe there is a specific place in God’s purposes for
each of us at “the end of the days”. Just as Daniel was known and loved by God,
we are known not just as members of a great Body, but as individuals with
specific personal value to Christ. In Revelation, the promise to the believer who
overcomes is “a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that
no one knows except the one who receives it.”
Why mention that? Well, back to the tossing of pebbles.
The word “stone” in Revelation 2 is psÄ“phos. It’s not a gemstone, which might be the first thing we would think of in a heavenly setting. No, it’s a small pebble worn smooth, often cast in ancient courts of justice ... an “allotment”, if you like. There is what may be a double implication here. To have a white stone thrown in your favor was to be acquitted of whatever crimes you may have been accused. To be in possession of a white stone was to have been granted a voice or a vote in judicial proceedings; to have a role in determining the fate of others. Or, as Paul put it:
“Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels?”
Furthermore, each of us is not simply being drafted to fill some slightly inconvenient vacancy on the heavenly judicial circuit. Rather, we receive a white stone with our own personal name engraved on it. We are unique in God’s purposes. What you and I bring to the table because of our individual gifts, experience and personality cannot be replicated. If that’s not a one-of-a-kind award, I’m not sure what is. You have a place in God’s plans that no other being in the universe can fill.
While the details are not spelled out for us, we look to a
future in which all the Daniels will surely stand in their allotted places, and
in which you and I will just as certainly stand in ours.
Wherever those places may be.
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