And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt. Sermons
I. THE CLEAR. Turn to the Hebrew, and it will soon be seen that the essential idea in the word translated "wise" is that of a clear eye with a clear outlook. Cleave to this idea, and let it determine our description of the character here set before us. In such a character: 1. The soul is clear. Not absolutely here on earth, but relatively in contrast with the former state. Transparent. Pure (Matthew 5:8). No moral taint of such a kind as to destroy the vision of spiritual and eternal things (John 8:12). 2. The eye is clear. 3. The atmosphere is clear. (Ephesians 5:8.) 4. The objects of choice are clear. In time; in eternity. 5. The choice of means is clear. All the present is subjected to the future. Herein lies ever true wisdom. II. THEIR SHINING. Perhaps the text refers mainly to the shining of immortality. We may bear in mind that the shining of the clear-seeing saint - of the saint who is indeed a seer - is not a question of time or place, of aeons or worlds, but one of character. The shining will then be here as well as there. How, then, does the saint shine? Of what sort is the radiance of the open day-sky? The light of the sky is: 1. Brilliant. No light in all the landscape can exceed the brilliance of the sky. No light in all the world of intelligence and morals can exceed that of saintliness. 2. Soft. No element of pain in it. 3. Diffused. 4. Victorious. Clouds may dim the face of the sky. So calumnies, misunderstandings, imperfections, failings, may obscure character. But the light shines through the cloud, and continues after the cloud has passed away. 5. Ministering. The sky is like an angel of God in the sweetness and beauty of its service. What relief to the sick and to the nursing, who out of their lattices watch for the morning! What cheer to the strong! What health! Sunlight is health. The sun arises with "healing in his wings." So the "Sun of Righteousness." So they that are like him. What power to work! The sky holds, as it were, the candle to every worker on earth. How we value dying daylight! So wistfully watch we the expiring radiance of the saints we love. 6. Borrowed. Not its own, but the sun's. So the light of the saints is not theirs, but God's. III. THE CONVERTING. In order to preach truly and intelligently from this passage, the following points should be observed: "They that turn to righteousness" is the translation of a single word in Hebrew - a verb, of the hiphil conjugation, participial form, plural number, construct case. The verb means "to be right or righteous;" in the hiphil conjugation, "to make one right or righteous." Here, then, we have the activity of the saint, going forth in this form of instrumentally making men righteous, implying a turning away from wickedness, and doing this in the case of "many." Turning the sinner to God, so as to be "justified by his grace," would not exhaust the meaning; it goes beyond that, to the securing at least the elements of personal righteousness in him. How can we instrumentally convert? 1. By luminosity of life. 2. By word from the lip. Not necessarily a pulpit-word or a class-word, but a friendly word, and that of the simplest kind. 3. By unconscious co-operation with others. Henry Martyn never knew that he was the means of converting a single soul; but he translated the Bible into Persian, and prepared the way for others. "They that sow, and they that reap, shall rejoice together." 4. By prayer. 5. By gifts of money sustaining the labours of others. (Some suggestions and illustrations of a useful character may, perhaps, be found in a characteristic sermon by Dr. Talmage on the text, in the first series, published by Nicholson and Sons, Wakefield.) IV. THEIR BRILLIANCE. "As the stars for ever and ever." Here we have some of the ideas we had before, but with variations, additions, and enlargements. Without becoming pedantic, we make use legitimately of the richer knowledge astronomical of our time. In the destiny of the active aggressive worker we have: 1. An intense brilliance. Strictly, daylight is more brilliant than the light of stars; for it obscures it by day, or rather outshines it. But this would not be the popular impression, and on that this Bible-text is based. 2. A diversity of splendour. "One star differeth," etc. Not only the most eminent workers are to shine, but others in their proportion and degree. 3. A distinguishing separateness. Think of the distinctive glory of each worker. Here it is not difference of degree, but of type and kind; e.g. Martin Luther, George Fox, Madame Guyon, Elizabeth Fry, etc. 4. Yet oft a clustered glory. In appearance the stars congregate in clusters; in actuality are marshalled into systems. The fellowships of earth, of heaven. A unity of power. 5. A growing radiance with nearness of view. "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view" has no application here. The stars are suns whose magnificence dawns with our approach. So with the glorified and consecrated in the Church. 6. A ministration of light and heat and life. 7. A subservient splendour. "For ever singing as they shine, 8. A brilliance unlike that of the stars. Their light does now oft go out. The light of all may fade and die. But these saintly workers shine on "for ever and ever." Many motives to Christian service may be urged; but here behold its supreme attractiveness! Contrast with this that other destiny (ver. 2), "Shame and everlasting contempt." - R.
Some to everlasting life, and some to shame. Death is not annihilation; the grave is not the end of man. Two facts are indisputable among those who receive the Scriptures.1. The fact of a general resurrection anterior to the Judgment Day. 2. The righteous will be raised to life eternal; the wicked to "damnation." The point in the lesson we would enforce — and it is a tremendous point in the matter of personal interest — is embraced in one word "which?" One or the other of these experiences lie before each and every child of Adam. Do what we will, and neglect what we will, we shall have a part in this resurrection; we shall "hear the voice of the Son of God" then, whether we hear it now or not; and we "shall live," and "come forth" either to be caught up into Heaven, or be banished to hell! In that hour of infinite power and display there will be no place of retreat, no possible concealment of evasion. In the dazzling light of the resurrection day it will be made clear as the noonday sun that there are but two characters, two ways, two destinies in God's universe, and that an eternal "gulf" divides them, and on whichsoever side of that abyss we find ourselves then and there, there we shall remain as long as the throne of the Almighty endures. "Which?" O my soul! "Which?" (J. M. Sherwood, D.D.) II. THE CERTAIN AND IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE GENERAL RESURRECTION. The final issue is, everlasting life to some; shame and everlasting contempt to others. 1. Some shall awake to everlasting life. What is that life? Does it merely mean that their bodies will revive, and never die again? That cannot be the exclusive meaning of the word Life. It is the life of which St. Paul speaks, "Your life is hid with Christ in God." Everlasting life is not first begun when the Christian wakes from the grave; it begins here upon earth. The Holy Ghost, who is "the Lord and Giver of life," implants it in the heart of every believer at his conversion. Heaven is but a completion of that state into which a Christian is first brought while here below. All mankind are by nature dead — "dead in trespasses and sins." When the heart is softened and humbled, the spirit becomes broken and contrite, and the will subdued and compliant, you are passing from death unto life. You become, by faith, united to Jesus Christ, as the branch is united to the vine, and in consequence of this blessed union you partake of the nature of the tree on which you are engrafted. Being a branch in Him, bring forth good fruit. 2. Some shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt. These words describe the end of the wicked and ungodly. But this description does not give, by any means, a full account of their future misery. The wicked man rises from the grave, and the first objects which be meets are shame and everlasting contempt. These are the consequences of the resurrection to him. Even in this life, sinners are extremely anxious to escape the shame which naturally attends upon transgression. In this, by the help of Satan, they partly succeed. But, how will they appear when, at the resurrection, they awake up from their long sleep? Then the secrets of all hearts will be revealed, and that by One who has seen your life from the beginning to the end. The shame of the wicked will be still further increased by a clear discovery of the mercies which they might have obtained by a penitent faith in Christ. Men pretend that true piety could have no effect but to make them miserable. But when that eternal day shall dawn, the truth will burst upon them at once, and they will learn that "godliness is great again; having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." And he will awake to "everlasting contempt." Nothing but an assurance of God's favour and love can fully reconcile a man to the contempt and sneers of the world. Is the contempt of an avenging Judge the whole of what sinners must look for in that day? No; the saints of God will also unite with Him in condemning His enemies. (J. Jowett, M.A.) 1. There is eternal life. There is no distinction between the two words, eternal and everlasting; the original word that each of them translates is exactly the same. The text in Daniel is the first in the Bible in which the words "everlasting life" occur. There are only three other passages in the Old Testament where the same meaning, if not quite the same words, is to be found. (Psalms 133:16; and Psalms 133:21) That is all, so far as I can find, that the Old Testament contains about everlasting life. In the New Testament, everlasting life is everywhere. It is the whole purport of the Gospel to make it possible for human beings to reach "life eternal." That was the good news for them. 2. What is eternal life? "To know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Christ is the life eternal, the spring and source of it to others, the essence and substance of it in Himself. How is it obtained? "He that believeth on the Son hath life eternal." The gift is spoken of in the present tense. As soon as the water that Christ gives reaches a human heart, in it the spring of living water bursts forth and flows. Eternal lifo begins here. It consists in the union of the soul through Christ with God. A life in union with God — the selfish will submitted to His will — loving the things that He loves — hating the things that He hates — this wrought by faith in Christ, and the spirit that He has sent — this is what I imagine to be eternal life according to the Scripture idea. (Canon Rawstorne, M.A.) Men will be sorted yonder. Gravitation will come into play undisturbed; and the pebbles will be ranged according to their weights on the great shore where the sea has cast them up, as they are upon Chesil beach down there in the English Channel, and many another coast besides; all the big ones together and sized off to the smaller ones, regularly and steadily laid out.(A. Maclaren, D.D.) There be two principles at work in the resurrection of the dead. The glorified body is not the physical outcome of the material body here; but is the issue and manifestation, in visible form, of the perfect and Christ-like spirit. Some shall rise to glory and immortality, some to shame and everlasting contempt. If we are to stand at the last, with the body of our humiliation changed into a body of glory, we must begin by being changed in the spirit of our mind. As the mind is, so will the body be one day.You and I write out our lives as if on one of those manifold writers which you use. A thin, filmy sheet here, a bit of black paper below it; but the writing goes through upon the next page. And when the blackness that divides the two worlds is swept away there the history of each life, written by ourselves, remains legible in eternity.(A. Maclaren.) People Daniel, MichaelPlaces Tigris RiverTopics Abhorrence, Age-during, Awake, Contempt, Disgrace, Dust, Eternal, Everlasting, Ground, Multitude, Reproaches, Shame, Sleep, SleepingOutline 1. Michael shall deliver Israel from their troubles.5. Daniel is informed of the times. Dictionary of Bible Themes Daniel 12:2 4018 life, spiritual 5006 human race, destiny 4010 creation, renewal Library April 5. "Many Shall be Purified and Made White and Tried" (Dan. xii. 10). "Many shall be purified and made white and tried" (Dan. xii. 10). This is the promise for the Lord's coming. It is more than purity. It is to be made white, lustrous, or bright. To be purified is to have the sin burned out; to be made white is to have the glory of the Lord burned in. The one is cleansing, the other is illumination and glorification. The Lord has both for us, but in order for us to have both, we must be put into the fire to be tried, and to be led into difficult and peculiar places … Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth A New Years Message The Glory of the Doctors and Confessors. The Recovery and Revival of the Blessed Hope Itself. The Dry Bones and the Spirit of Life How to Preach the Gospel. The Golden Calf Sanctions of Moral Law, Natural and Governmental. Of Certain Temptations of Satan. Instructions Relating Thereto. Watching the Horizon Appendix xix. On Eternal Punishment, According to the Rabbis and the New Testament Christ's Exaltation The Order of Thought which Surrounded the Development of Jesus. Death by Adam, Life by Christ A Clearing-Up Storm in the Realm The Third Day in Passion-Week - the Last Controversies and Discourses - the Sadducees and the Resurrection - the Scribe and the Great Commandment - Question Purity and Peace in the Present Lord Links Daniel 12:2 NIVDaniel 12:2 NLT Daniel 12:2 ESV Daniel 12:2 NASB Daniel 12:2 KJV Daniel 12:2 Bible Apps Daniel 12:2 Parallel Daniel 12:2 Biblia Paralela Daniel 12:2 Chinese Bible Daniel 12:2 French Bible Daniel 12:2 German Bible Daniel 12:2 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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