Daniel 12

Daniel looks: two others, one on this bank and one on that. Wesley: two angels waiting on Christ. The stream is the same water already in the vision; the new thing is company on both sides. The prophet is not left to guess in an empty landscape.

Looking is an act of a servant who has already heard more than he can carry. Wesley keeps the two as attendants of Christ, not as a code for later maps. The banks will frame the question of v. 6. Stay with what Daniel saw.

Calvin: other angels standing on each bank of the river, the Tigris already named. He beheld—so the vision is not a private haze. They appear as men because of outward form; they do not become men. God may clothe angels in bodies for a time without the Word’s incarnation.

The scene is ordered. Shared with Wesley: two figures, one bank each, before the question. The prophet’s gaze is the gift that lets us hear the oath.

Someone asks the man clothed in linen, above the waters: how long to the end of these wonders? Wesley: the man is Christ, who seemed to stand in the air above the waters, or upon them. The question is the church’s old cry, asked here by an attendant, not by a headline.

“How long” is permitted. Wesley does not scold the asking. Wonders have an end; the linen-clad one is the right addressee. The verse trains patience without pretending the wait is easy. No chart is required to join the question.

Calvin: one angel questions another. God works in his Church so as to cause even angels admiration, leaving many things unknown to them. The interrogation stirs our attention: if angels ask how long, we may not yawn. “Wonderful things” are what the speaker does not grasp. Linen is splendor, separating them from the common herd.

The question is holy, not idle. Calvin will not assert that the linen-clad one must be Christ, though the passage may be referred to him; he is content with the angelic scene. The answer will be an oath, not a timetable for tomorrow’s paper.

Both hands toward heaven: an oath by him who lives forever. Time, times, and half a time; when they have finished breaking in pieces the holy people’s power ends, all these things finish. Wesley: both hands for sure and solemn confirmation, and to denote the unchangeableness of God’s decrees, good to the church and evil to her enemies. He swears by the Father and by himself that liveth for ever: the eternal God only knew what He decreed and would bring to pass. “An half”—a year, two years, and half a year; so in the Revelation, three days and a half for three years and a half, or forty-two months, or twelve hundred and sixty days. Finished: which reaches to the calling of the Jews upon the destruction of antichrist.

Arminian hearing stays with Wesley, not with later party systems. The oath is unchangeable. The holy people are shattered, then the wonders end. Wesley’s 3½ years is how he reads this text beside Revelation—not a license to name this year’s tyrant. Decrees stand; the church is not forgotten under the shattering.

Calvin: both hands double the oath because the matter is weighty. He objects to those who think one year, two, and a half are here intended. Time means a long period, times a longer, half the end or closing period: many years must elapse before God fulfills what His prophet declared. A time is not precisely one year, nor times two years, but an indefinite stretch. Half a time is added for the comfort of the pious, lest they sink under delay. The holy people’s hand is worn down or dispersed; the end is still promised.

The oath comforts a long wait. Calvin refuses to let the numbers become a toy. Wesley agrees: hands raised, God living forever, a measured trouble, a finish. They do not read the length the same way.

He heard, but did not understand. Then: O My lord, what will be the outcome of these things? Wesley: what is the meaning of all this? The prophet is not too proud to say he is lost. The question follows the oath; understanding is not automatic even for Daniel.

Piety may ask without being given the full map. Wesley’s brief gloss honors the confusion. Outcome is a fair request. The next word will not scold Daniel for wanting light; it will send him on his way with a sealed book. Faithfulness is not omniscience.

Calvin: Daniel asks after the angel’s example. “Hearing” proves it was not ignorance from sloth. He was not stupid; he could not attain the meaning of predictions so obscure. Prophets received enough for their office, yet none of them perfectly understood all they delivered. They ministered more for our times than for their own (1 Pet 1:12).

Not understanding is compatible with faithful hearing. Agreed on both sides: the outcome is asked because the oath was dark. God will answer by sending him forward, not by pouring the whole calendar into one servant’s lap.

Go your way, Daniel: the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. Wesley: they shall not be clearly understood till the event make them good. The seal of v. 4 is said again as pastoral direction. Daniel is not told to decode; he is told to go.

Waiting for the event is obedience, not failure. Wesley will not let curiosity become a substitute for going your way. The time of the end belongs to God. Sealed words still prepare a people for sufferings with hope, as Wesley will say at v. 13. No claim to have unsealed what the linen-clad one shut.

Calvin: Daniel’s wish was pious, yet God did not grant the request. Some predictions were to be partially understood; the rest concealed until the fitting time. Closed and sealed: no fitting occasion yet for revealing them. Nothing predicted vainly, but the full blaze has not been thrown upon them. Wait until the truth is proved by the event. Until the time of the end: neither Daniel nor the rest of the faithful were deprived of all advantage; God explained what was sufficient for their own times.

Go your way is mercy. Wesley reads it the same way: sealed till the end; event will make the words good. The prophet is dismissed in peace, not in disgrace. Enough light for the day; the rest is kept.

Many purify themselves, make themselves white, and are refined; the wicked act wickedly. Wesley: the afflictions of the church are to prepare them, by taking away their filth, for the bridegroom, as gold and silver are tried and refined.

Refining is holiness under trial, not a slogan. Wesley’s bridegroom keeps the purpose kind. The many who purify are the church in the fire; the wicked’s acting wickedly is a warning, not a fate-story that makes wisdom impossible. The wise understand because they submit to the refining the verse names. Stay with Wesley’s gold and silver—no party use of “the wise.”

Calvin: multiplied purifications arm the faithful for conflict. Cleansed as wheat from chaff, whitened as cloth, melted as metal from dross. One cleansing is not enough; as long as we are clothed in flesh we need many. The impious will act impiously and never understand, given over to a reprobate sense; the prudent shall understand if they apply to heavenly doctrine and do not imitate the blind.

The furnace is for welfare, because God changes the nature of what would otherwise destroy. Common ground with Wesley: trial takes filth away; the wicked do not understand. Calvin stresses many meltings and the blindness of the impious; Wesley, preparation for the bridegroom. Both refuse to let the wicked’s example become the church’s pattern.

From the taking away of the regular burnt offering and the setting up of the abomination that makes desolate: 1,290 days. Wesley writes no note on this verse. He has already tied time, times, and half to three years and a half, and to Revelation’s twelve hundred and sixty days. He does not add a new arithmetic here.

Wesley offers no chart here, and none should be supplied for him. The verse names a counted wait after offering ceases and desolation is set up. With Wesley’s v. 9, the numbers wait on the event to make them good. Counted days are a pastoral limit on anguish, not a hobby.

Calvin will not refer this to Antiochus’s profanation; he reads a complete destruction of the Temple after Christ’s manifestation, when sacrifices cease and the shadows end. From that period, 1,290 days—three years and a half, spoken metaphorically. As he put a year, two years, and half a year for long duration and a happy issue, so now days. When a sick man languishes, he counts the hours as longer than they are. The angel puts days for years: the time may seem immeasurably prolonged and frighten the pious, yet it must be endured. There is no reason to despair: if afflictions await for a time and times, the half time will follow.

Calvin is “no conjurer” in numerical calculations. Shared intent with Wesley’s silence here: do not let 1,290 become a toy. The burnt offering’s end and the abomination are inside God’s measure. The call is to persist.

Blessed is he who waits, and comes to the one thousand three hundred thirty-five days. Wesley is silent again. Blessing is attached to waiting, not to solving the extra forty-five. The man who arrives is the man who did not quit the wait of v. 11.

Application: wait is a free act of hope. Wesley’s whole chapter already taught sealing until the event, searching in gospel-times, and a people prepared for sufferings with a glorious deliverance in view. Do not draft Wesley into a 1,335-day scheme he never wrote. Blessed waiting is enough to preach.

Calvin: happy is he who shall have waited and endured until the 1,335 days. In numerical calculations he is no conjurer; those who expound with too great subtlety trifle and detract from the prophecy’s authority. He rejects turning the days into 2,600 years and splitting 1,290 from 1,335. They refer to the same period with a slight exception: although half the time should be prorogued, the faithful ought constantly to persist in the hope of deliverance. About a month and a half more: God may put off, and still succor.

The point is endurance, not arithmetic. Shared with Wesley’s silence: the extra days are not a second gospel. The charge is to wait and to arrive. The beatitude is for the one who does not let a lengthened half-time undo hope.

Go your way until the end. Wesley: these things were revealed that thou and thy people might be prepared for sufferings, and yet not without hope of a glorious deliverance. In that hope thou shalt die, and rest from trouble, till the resurrection of the just. It ought to be the great concern of every one of us to secure a happy lot in the end of the days, and then we may well be content with our present lot, welcoming the will of God.

Go your way is a life, not a riddle. Wesley makes the lot every hearer’s concern—secure it, then be content now. Rest until the resurrection of the just is the same hope as v. 2’s waking, said as comfort to a dying prophet. No map of parties. Suffering, hope, rest, a place at the end.

Calvin: the full time of perfect light had not arrived; God wished to hold His people’s minds in suspense until the manifestation of Christ. Be content with thy lot; complete manifestation is put off to a time God knows. “Thou shalt rest”—thou shalt die; “thou shalt stand”—death shall not be complete destruction. God shall cause thee to stand in thy lot with the rest of the elect, at the end of the days, after He has proved patience, humbled and purged the Church.

Rest is death in hope; standing is God’s causing. Wesley agrees: go your way, rest, a lot at the end of the days. The accent differs on whether the lot is named as our great concern to secure, or as God’s causing the elect to stand. That is their actual fork.