revelation 2 niv) “But thou, Daniel, close up the words, and seal the book till the time of the end.”
“It is not the time of the end,” says the man, “it is the time of the judgment.”
“Then why did you reveal it to the world,” says Daniel, “if it was to be revealed at the time of judgment?”
“Because,” the man answers, “I had already been told by God, ‘the time of the end has come.’ And when I was asked, ‘What is the time of the end?’ I knew that it was the time of the judgement.”
It is not the time of the end, then, it is the time of the judgment.
Daniel the Prophet could also give many more proofs that the time of the end had not come, such as the fact that he had not yet gone into exile (Daniel 9:1-3), and also that he could still predict (“we shall know no more…”, Daniel 12:6), while the Christians of his day did not.
Furthermore, his prophecies had not yet been fulfilled, the desolation of Jerusalem had not yet occurred, and even Daniel, with all his gifts of prophecy, would not be able to predict what would be the exact time of the end.
In short, his day of judgement had not yet come, and God had said, “The time of the end has come”, to Daniel (Daniel 12:11) but not to his contemporaries.
2. The prophecy did not have to have been fulfilled before it could be applied to us.
You will find that the prophets were not called to give a prophecy for a certain thing to happen, but for what the Lord would do in the future. For instance, Daniel’s prophecy did not happen exactly as he said it would. He said that it would be fulfilled at the end of the millennium, but the Messiah Jesus did not return until the first century, and yet he has fulfilled it fully. He says that it would be fulfilled at the beginning of the day of the Lord (Joel 2:1, Matthew 24:29). But in the midst of the tribulation, Jesus said that he would be taken to heaven to sit at the right hand of God and that all the prophecies of the past would be fulfilled (Matthew 25:34-35). This is what is known as “the fulfilment of prophecy”. In other words, when Daniel prophesied, he was prophesying a future event, but Jesus said that his prophecies were being fulfilled.
Furthermore, you will also see that, in some cases, a prophecy that was already fulfilled by a previous event, has been fulfilled again. For example, the prophecy of Daniel 11:24, “…the people of the prince who is to come will come, and will possess the kingdom”, was fulfilled by the fall of the Herod dynasty, the first fulfilment of the prophecy, but now the Lord has raised up another prince, the anti-christ, who shall possess the kingdom and destroy Israel, so this too will be fulfilled.
For this reason, many of the prophecies of Daniel have been fulfilled and are still being fulfilled, either at the time of the Lord’s coming, or in the present time.
Another example of a prophecy that has already been fulfilled, but may be fulfilled again, is that of the prophecies of Jeremiah. The Lord said that He would send a destroyer after them, because the people would do evil in His name. He would scatter them among the nations, so that they would be no more a people. He would give them into the hands of their enemies, so that they would perish.
Some time later, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, destroyed Jerusalem and carried its people captive into Babylon. They took Jeremiah with them into exile, but he was allowed to return after a certain number of years, and he preached that the Lord had not deserted them, that He had not left them, that He was still with them. He told them of the coming of the son of man, who would come from the east, who would gather all Israel and bring them back to the promised land (Jeremiah 28:1-9).
Jeremiah told the people that when this son of man came, he would not be like the other princes, or the false prophets who had misled them before. The Lord said that His appearance would be different, that He would give a covenant of peace to them when the time of the end came, and that then they would know that the Lord was God, and no
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