When Will Old Testament Saints Rise? Daniel 12 Explained:

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, good to see everybody back, and let's just pick right up where we left off at the end of our last program, where we had covered the first aspect of the first resurrection, which was Christ, who was the firstfruits, and then those that came out of the graves in Matthew 27, who would comprise the fulfilling of the type back in Leviticus, you remember, when they had to make a sheath. Now let's go into the second part of the first resurrection, and again come back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and let's just start all the way back to verse 20. So we pick up the flow here, because this is all dealing with this first resurrection. But now, is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept or died physically? For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Now you want to remember that Paul is always teaching that as Adam was the head, the federal head of the human race, the first Adam, so Christ is the last Adam, and He is the one then that makes it possible for mankind to come out of that death. And so here he ties the two together once again, for as by Adam came death, so also by the Christ, the God-man, came also the resurrection of the dead. Verse 22, for as in Adam all die, and I can't imagine how anybody can reject that teaching, that our whole sin nature was precipitated by Adam's sin, and you know there are those who reject that, but how can I when this makes it so plain, for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Now we have to be careful here. Going back again to John's Gospel, chapter 5, the believer will be resurrected to life by the work of Christ, the work of the cross, but the unbeliever is also going to be resurrected one day according to the same power of God, but to a total different end. All right, go on now then to verse 23, but, now whenever you see that three -lettered word, what do I always tell you? The flip side, you've got to look at something different here, that even though all are going to be resurrected, but every man in his own order. Now if you'll look up the Greek, that word order, it's a Greek word that implies a military organization. Now those of you who have been in service, you know that our military terms start with the platoon or the squad, the platoon, and then the company, and then the battalion, and the regiment, and the division. Now those are all orders of command. In other words, the resurrection is not going to be general, it won't be everybody at once, but Paul says every person in his own company, and that's the word I prefer to use, everyone's going to be resurrected according to their organizational company. Now we've already had the firstfruits, remember, indicated by Christ, but now, verse 23 again, every man in his own order, Christ, the firstfruits, that's one company, they that are Christ's at his coming, now who are we talking about? Oh, we're talking about the church age believer. Those who are in Christ, who are part of the bride, who are part of the body of Christ, they will be the next ones to experience resurrection. Christ and the firstfruits, now comes this great group of believers of the church age. Now let's go back and again pick up the Old Testament description of harvesting that field of grain. Go back to Leviticus once again, only this time instead of chapter 23, go back to Leviticus 19, Leviticus 19, and drop down to verse 9, Leviticus 19, verse 9, I'm glad to see you take notes, and again for you on television, always remember that all these programs are available on VCR tape at a very nominal cost. If you're interested, give us a call on our 800 number or write to us, because again last night someone was telling me how much he learns by using these tapes. You can back them up, you can roll them over, and you can look at them over and over, and my, you know, I could tell by the way he was talking, he has learned a bunch in the last twelve months. And after all it does, it takes a long time for all these things to get settled in our mind and to be able to chase down these Scripture references. All right, going on now in Leviticus 19, verse 9, "...when you reap the harvest of your land," now remember this is God's instructions to the Jew when they come into the land to occupy it, "...that when you reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly or completely reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest." Now, let's put that in a little old square, 40 acres of barley, and they were to harvest the whole field, the very center of it, but they were to leave the corners, and they were to leave a certain amount of gleanings, that was according to the law. Now why? Read on. Verse 10, "...and thou shalt not glean thy vineyard," in other words they weren't to pick every last grape in their vineyard, "...neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard, thou shalt leave them," you know, a gleaning, "...thou shalt leave them," for whom? The poor, see? That was mandated by God. Now as they would go into their, we'll just picture this as a 40-acre field of barley, they went in first and they took out those ripening heads of grain, and they took the first roots. Then they came in and they harvested the main field, but they had to leave the corners, and they had to leave the gleanings. But the main harvest was taken all at one time. So that is what I would call then the rapture or the resurrection of the church -age believer. He is that main harvest. Because, just stop and think, now for 1 ,900 and some years God has been calling out people by His grace. He has offered salvation to everyone, again as I've said so often, rich or poor, black or white, Jew or Gentile, although it is predominantly for the Gentiles. Yet always remember that this has been God's primary harvest. All right, now let's go back to 1 Corinthians 15 and look at the verse again, and then we're going to pick up who are the gleanings. Who are the ones indicated by the corners that are left and the gleanings? 1 Corinthians 15 again, verse 23. Read it over. But every man in his own order or in his own organizational company, going back to Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's who are members of the body, in other words the main harvest, verse 24, then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. Now verse 25, for he, Christ, must reign as a king, now remember, until he has put all enemies under his feet. Now if you'll turn back with me to Daniel chapter 12, and here I think is the third group that are indicated by the corners and the gleanings. Not near as great in number as the main harvest, and they also are going to be resurrected at a time slightly different from the rapture of the church. And in Daniel it lays it out, I think, so specifically as to when these Old Testament believers, and I'm going to also include the tribulation saints, are going to be resurrected. Now when I say the tribulation saints, we have to remember that now after the church is gone and we feel like we're getting awfully close to it, and the tribulation comes in, we know that there are going to be a multitude of people saved by virtue of the preaching of the 140,000, 144 ,000 Jews, 12,000 from each one of the 12 tribes, who will go around the world and will be missionaries and evangelists. So there will be people saved during the seven years, but they'll be killed almost as fast as they're saved until we get to those that survive at the end. So now the resurrection of the tribulation saints has to be included in the gleanings and the corners, because they certainly are not in the body of Christ. And yet Daniel now is speaking of the resurrection of the Old Testament saints at a point shortly after the end of the tribulation, or after the second coming of Christ, and into the kingdom. Now here it is in Daniel chapter 12. Now, go back to verse 1. Now remember that Daniel's previous 11 chapters have been an outlaying of prophecy. In fact, Daniel and Revelation just fit together hand in glove. You can't study Revelation without studying Daniel and vice versa. So now as you come into the last chapter of this great book of prophecy, Daniel writes at that time, verse 1, shall Michael stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of thy people, Israel, and 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, Israel, the Jews, shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. Now this is what Paul refers to, I think, in Romans as that remnant. Then verse 2, and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth, in other words they've died and they've reverted back to the dust, many of them shall awake, and here we have a parallel with John's Gospel chapter 5, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Again, you've got the believer and the unbeliever listed here. Now then if you'll come on over to verse 9, or verse 8 even, where Daniel writes, And I heard, but I understood not. Now I've always maintained as I've taught the Old Testament that all Scripture, remember, is inspired of God. Peter says so clearly that prophecy came not in the old time by will of man, and you remember I ridiculed the concept several months ago of these things having originated around a campfire and then just handed down as legend. That's not what our Bible is at all. Our Bible is the very inspiration of the Spirit of God, and as Peter says that these holy men of God wrote as they were moved along by the Spirit. Now under those circumstances, do you think they understood everything they wrote? Why no way. There was no way. And here it's so plain. Look what Daniel says after writing this great book of end time prophecy, and he's writing it 2,400, 500 years before it happens. And look what he says in verse 8, And I heard. In other words, he realized what he had been writing. I heard, but I, what's the next word, understood not. He didn't understand what he was writing. And I said, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? Now that much he could comprehend, that there were some terrible times coming upon this planet, but he couldn't understand it. And so he said, O what shall be the end of these things? And he, that is the Lord, said, Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Now I always like to look back and read men in years gone by, and you will find that it wasn't until the late 1800s, in the turn of the century, that men began to get a comprehension of prophecy. Before that, there was not a real clear -cut teaching of how these things were going to unfold. And that's exactly what God told Daniel. It wasn't for men to understand until we'd get close to the end time. And now every week I think it is so much easier to understand. I know 20 years ago when I teach the book of Revelation, it was hard to get people to understand what it was saying. Now I can teach the book of Revelation and people are almost running ahead of me with current events, with news, and the book of Revelation is as simple as ABC anymore. A lot of people won't agree with me, but I think any of you who have heard me teach the book of Revelation will admit that it's not that difficult because we are now so close to the end. For example, for example, I can remember when I was a kid, I heard a fellow preaching prophecy out of the book of Revelation. And when he came to those two witnesses in Revelation chapter 10 who would be killed and their bodies would be left to bloat in the streets of Jerusalem, and the Scripture says so plain that all the world will see their dead bodies, they're actually going to celebrate by the exchange of a gift. And what did we say? How can that be? How can the whole world see two bodies laying in Jerusalem? That's not a question anymore. It happens every day, you know, with our communications and satellite television. We see everything that's taking place on the other side of the world at the very moment it's happening. So the book of Revelation is now very believable. And when we read some of the other things in the book of Revelation, all you have to do is just attach it to our modern technology and it all makes sense, see? It's plain as day. But Daniel says, Lord, I don't know. And God says, don't worry about it, it's not for you to know until we come to the time of the end. All right, read on. Verse 10. And God says to Daniel, many shall be purified and made white and tried, but the wicked shall do wickedly. Now, you remember a few weeks ago I said the times of the Gentiles is actually a filling up of their cup of iniquity, and it's going to reach the full mark when we come to the end of the tribulation and the battle of Armageddon and men have become so wicked. Hey, we haven't seen anything yet. It's getting bad. But the worst is still to come, all right? Daniel saw it. The wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand. You know, just last night a gentleman that we led to the Lord, just a few years ago, and he has just grown so fast, he said, you know, Les, he said five years ago, he said, I could watch all this stuff happening in the world, and he said it didn't mean a thing to me. He said it was just news. But now, he said, and I've had so many people tell me this, but now every news item I read or see on television fits with the Word of God. And it just makes it so exciting to realize that we're living in the last moments of this age of grace. But the wise shall understand, because the book is so plain. Now, let's move on quickly. Verse 11, God says to Daniel, from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and we'll be looking at this probably in our next program, which will be in the middle of the seven-year period, at the middle, the Antichrist will cause the temple to be shut down, and he will usurp it and force the Jew to worship himself. Now, that's the abomination that is spoken of here in verse 11. And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh death shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Now, those of you who are good Bible students, you know that three-and-a-half years are twelve hundred and sixty days. But now Daniel is going into twelve hundred and ninety, or an extra thirty, but it doesn't stop there. We're on to the next verse. God says to Daniel, "...blessed is he that..." What's the next word? "...waiteth." See? "...blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days," or seventy-five days into the kingdom. That's why I put the arrow here. Seventy-five days after the kingdom has been set up, Daniel can expect what? To join all those others who have been resurrected before. Look at it again. "...blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days," or seventy-five days after the twelve hundred and sixty have been completed. And then verse 13, "...go thy way till the end be, for thou shalt rest." As a believer who is now in the presence of God, remember, they are in bliss. I do not believe in soul sleep. They are there, but they are not there bodily. They are there in soul and spirit, in the presence of the Lord, somehow or other, waiting for the resurrection day. Now, let's reconstruct. The church-age believers who have been dying now for the last nineteen hundred and some years, as soon as they died, Paul teaches, they went into the presence of the Lord in heaven. But they're only there in soul and spirit. Their body is in the grave. And, as I like to point out, nowhere in Scripture is there any kind of an entity, a valid operation of the soul and spirit separated from the body. Do you realize that? Now, you just study your Bible, and there is nothing valid about a human being while he is separated, soul and spirit, from the body. And that's why Paul is always teaching, what are we to be looking forward to? Oh, the resurrection of our body. See? Ephesians chapter 3, he makes it so plain that even though we have been redeemed, we've been bought back by the blood of Christ, yet our redemption will not be complete until when we've got that new resurrected body. Always remember that. So, the bodies of these departed saints will suddenly be reunited with their soul and spirit that has been in the presence of the Lord, and now we're complete, and we're ready to come back with Him at the end of the seven years. But you see, the Old Testament saints are going to have to wait until the kingdom is set up, because remember, Israel is not going to enjoy the elevated role that the body of Christ will enjoy. And again, it boils down to terminology. The church is referred to as the virgin, pure bride of Christ. Israel is referred to as the adulterous, restored wife of Jehovah. Now be careful, that does not mean that we're talking about bigamy, because we're not talking about sexuality. We're merely talking about a position. The church is the bride of Christ, united to Him. Israel is that adulterous. Now I always tell my classes, if you don't quite understand what I'm talking about when I call Israel the adulterous wife of Jehovah, you go back and study the little book of Hosea. In the book of Hosea, what is Hosea instructed to do? Go out and marry a woman of the street, a prostitute. And he's going to live this thing out, literally. And he brings this prostitute home as his wife, and boy, she's not there very long, and what does she do? She leaves him to go back to her lovers out on the street. But as you get to the end of Hosea, she finally has a real conversion of heart, and she comes back and then becomes the obedient wife of Hosea and the mother of his children. Now what is that all a picture of? The nation of Israel. Oh, listen, Israel chased after the pagan gods of the Canaanites? I wonder if I've got time. Turn to Jeremiah. You're back here in Daniel anyway, and this is why I have such a hard time agreeing to put out an outline or a syllabus. My, that would kill me. I may someday put one together after the fact, but to lay out an outline for you people and then say this is the way we're going to teach it, I just couldn't do it. But Jeremiah 44, just to show you how adulterous spiritually, not physically, but spiritually, Israel was always chasing after those pagan gods, a spiritual adultery. But the time is coming. As God says in Jeremiah 31, 31, a new covenant I will make with my people, and they won't have to be instructed, they won't have to be taught. Why? God says, I will put a new heart within them and they will be my people and I will be their God. See? But that hasn't the way it's always been. Jeremiah 44, verse 17. Now, we're kind of jumping in the middle of it for sake of time, but it says, we will certainly do. Now, this is the Jews speaking to Jeremiah. We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn incense unto who? The queen of heaven. Now listen. When it gets to pagan, idolatrous worship, nothing is ever as grossly immoral as the worship of the female goddesses. I don't care whether it was in Egypt, whether it was in Babylon or Greece or Rome, whenever they went into the worship of a female goddess, it was gross immorality. And this is Israel. Oh, they were burning incense to the queen of heaven. Let's read on for just a little bit further. We'll pour out our drink offerings unto her as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes. See? And then they said in verse 18, but since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things. They had the incredulous idea that this worship of a female goddess was blessing them more than Jehovah would. Now, that's spiritual adultery, and that's why Israel is not going to enjoy that elevated role in the kingdom and in eternity that the body of Christ. All right, now come back quickly to Daniel chapter 12, and then our half hour is gone. Verse 13, once again, where he says to Daniel now, but go thy way until the end be, thou shalt rest and stand in thy... What's the word? Lot. Now, in the Hebrew it's also a military term of organization, so you can compare it with the word company in 1 Corinthians 15. The Old Testament saints are going to be resurrected in their own lot, and they are going to be represented now by the gleanings and the corners that had to be left. They are smaller in number than the church age believers, and they're going to come in after the kingdom has been set up. And again, we have to take an analogy from the ancients. Whenever they had a wedding feast back in the ancient history, like if you read the book of Odysseus and Homer, how long did that wedding feast last? Weeks, weeks. And so this wedding feast will come into the kingdom, and the Jew Israel will be guests at the wedding feast that was prompted by the gods. Thank you for watching To The Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. To The Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for To The Bible with Les Feldick.