Eschatology — chronology, carefully, without the headlines
You have heard this verse used in a prophecy conference. Probably more than once. It usually arrives with a photograph of a freeway at night or a map of transatlantic flight paths.
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. (Daniel 12:4, KJV)
There it is, the argument goes. Men running to and fro — cars, jets, bullet trains. Knowledge increased — the library, the laboratory, the phone in your pocket that holds more information than Alexandria ever did. Daniel saw the modern world. We are the generation.
It is a moving thought. It is also, almost certainly, not what the verse says. And the reason that matters has nothing to do with being clever. It has to do with whether we are reading the book or using it.
What the Phrase Means Everywhere Else
The simplest test for any phrase in Scripture is to ask what it means in the other places it appears. “Run to and fro” is not rare. Follow it.
For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (2 Chronicles 16:9, KJV)
God’s eyes are not commuting. They are ranging — sweeping, searching, looking something over. The idiom describes a thorough search, not rapid transportation.
Jeremiah uses it the same way when the LORD tells him to run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man. That is a man combing a city for something, not a man enjoying improved infrastructure.
And then there is Amos, who puts the idiom and the object together in a way that should stop the conversation:
And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. (Amos 8:12, KJV)
Run to and fro — to seek the word of the LORD. Same phrase, and the thing being sought is revelation. That is almost exactly the subject matter Daniel 12 is discussing: a sealed book and the people who will one day be searching it.
The Context Answers the Question Four Verses Later
Here is the part that usually gets left out of the slide. Daniel did not understand what he had just been shown, so he asked. And the answer he received repeats the whole theme of verse 4 and then defines who the increasing knowledge reaches.
And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand. (Daniel 12:8-10, KJV)
Read verse 4 and verse 10 side by side and the structure is hard to miss. Verse 4: the book is sealed until the time of the end, many will search, and knowledge will increase. Verse 10: at that time the wicked will understand nothing and the wise will understand.
That is not a prophecy about the general information level of the human race. The twentieth century had more knowledge than any era in history and used a great deal of it to kill people more efficiently. The increase Daniel is promised is specific: as the time of the end approaches, those who search this sealed book will find that it opens to them, and the wicked will go right on not understanding a word of it.
Knowledge of the prophecy, among the purified. That is the promise.
Where the Other Reading Has a Point
Honesty requires saying that careful believers have read this differently, and not foolishly. Some take the increase as a genuine secondary observation: that the last days would see an unprecedented spread of knowledge, including the knowledge of Scripture itself — a book sealed for centuries, now in a thousand languages and on every device, searchable by anyone. That is not nothing, and no one should sneer at a brother for noticing it.
But notice the control the text supplies. Even on that reading, verse 10 governs the result. Access is not comprehension. A world with every translation available is still a world where none of the wicked shall understand. More Bibles have never automatically produced more faith, and the verse that is supposed to be celebrating the information age is the same verse that says most of the information will do its readers no good at all.
Why This Is Worth Being Careful About
Somebody is thinking: this is a small point, and the technology reading preaches well. Let it go.
No. Here is the cost.
Once a verse can be made to mean jet travel, the method that got you there can be used on anything. The same method turns a locust into an attack helicopter, a king of the north into whichever government is currently in the news, and a seal into last Tuesday’s headline. And a method that can prove anything has proven nothing. That is precisely the engine behind every date that has ever been set and missed, and every missed date hands the skeptic a free argument and hands a young believer a reason to stop reading prophecy altogether.
Prophecy does not need our help. It does not need to be made relevant by being wired to the morning news. It is already about the most relevant thing there is — that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back, on a schedule he set, to a world that will not see it coming.
The Sealing Is a Chronology Statement
Step back and look at what the verse actually establishes about timing, because it does establish something.
- There is a fixed point called “the time of the end.” It is not a mood or a trend. It is a period God has scheduled, and the sealing runs to it.
- Clarity is on God’s calendar, not ours. The book opens when he opens it. No amount of study advances that date, and no generation can declare itself the one by sheer enthusiasm.
- Understanding is moral before it is intellectual. Verse 10 sorts the readers by character — purified and tried on one side, wicked on the other — not by cleverness or access.
- Daniel was told to live anyway. The man handed the most detailed chronology in the Old Testament did not understand his own vision, and the answer he got was not more information. It was go thy way.
That last one is the sober center of this whole lane. If the prophet himself was not given full comprehension and was told to go on with his life, then our not knowing the schedule is not a failure of study. It is the condition God assigned. Our Lord said the same thing to men who asked the same question: It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
What Daniel Was Promised Instead
Daniel asked for the end of the matter and did not get it. But the chapter does not leave him empty-handed. The very last verse of the book is one of the kindest sentences in the Old Testament, and it is addressed to a man who had to die without his answer:
But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days. (Daniel 12:13, KJV)
Go your way. Rest. And then stand. Three verbs covering the rest of his life, his death, and his resurrection — and not one of them required him to figure out the timeline first.
That is the promise to you as well. You are not going to decode the calendar, and you were never asked to. You are asked to be among the purified, the made white, the tried — the ones to whom the book opens because their hearts were already open. And when the end comes, whether you watch it from this side or are raised to see it, you will stand in your lot.
Daniel 12:4 was never a prophecy about airplanes. It is a promise that the book you are holding is not finally sealed — and an instruction, to men who want the date, to go their way and live like he is coming.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist