This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 10: All Found Written in the Book Will Escape: Daniel 12:1-3.

At that time Michael, the great prince who stands watch over your people, will rise up. There will be a time of distress such as never has occurred since nations came into being until that time. But at that time all your people who are found written in the book will escape. Many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, and some to disgrace and eternal contempt. Those who have insight will shine like the bright expanse of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (Dan. 12:1-3).

Many questions arise from these verses: What is the “time of distress” foretold in this passage? Who are “your people … written in the book”? What book is in view? From what do these people escape? Who are the “many” who sleep in the dust of the earth? Is their awakening the same resurrection and judgment to which Jesus refers in John 5:28-29? And in what ways do the righteous “shine like the stars forever and ever”? 

In seeking answers to these questions, we should examine this passage in the greater context of Daniel’s visions, in which God reveals his plans for the future (Dan. 7 – 12). Daniel 10 – 12 is a record of Daniel’s third and final vision, one that summarizes the previous visions of successive kingdoms that rise and fall: Babylon; Medo-Persia; Greece; and a beastly kingdom whose king invades Jerusalem, sets up idols in the temple, exalts himself above God, and then, astoundingly, comes to ruin.