Day 173

” ⁶ and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things in it, and the earth and the things in it, and the sea and the things in it, that there will no longer be a delay, ⁷ but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as He announced to His servants the prophets.” REV 10:6-7. (NASB)

When Revelation 10 was written, John had Daniel 12 in mind. Daniel 12 talks about sealing up the words of the prophecy until the “time of the end” (Dan 12:4). Then in Daniel 12:7 someone lifts up his hands and swears by the One who lives forever and ever (see Rev 10:5-6) that there will be “time, times, and half a time.” This sounds almost exactly like Revelation 10, except that in Revelation the cryptic time period is replaced by the phrase “time will be no more.”

The point of Revelation 10 seems to be that the time prophecies of Daniel have run their course. Revelation 10 brings us to the time when the book of Daniel would be unsealed and God’s final message (the “mystery of God”) would go to the world. In both texts, there is a strong sense of an appointed time. So the sixth trumpet brings us to a period in earth’s history where the final events are about to take place.

In the 19th century, students of the Bible ransacked the books of Daniel and Revelation, trying to understand where they stood in the course of human history. Spearheaded by the Baptist preacher William Miller and after careful study, they drew the conclusion that the time prophecies of Daniel would end around the year 1844. They naturally assumed that “time would be no more” was the end of the world, the second coming of Jesus. They missed one tiny word in Rev 10:7, however, “but.”

In the Greek language this particular word for “but” portrays a strong contrast, even stronger than the English “but.” It tells us that the time prophecies of Daniel did not bring the world to the very end, but only to the “time of the end.” Since the close of Daniel’s time prophecies, we have been living in the final period of earth’s history. We do not know when the end will come, but we do know that we are living in the “time of the end.”