NOTES for Dan 11:21-45

The closer the narrative comes to the time when the Book of Daniel was written, the more detailed the visionary's account becomes, and the more details flash by, as happens when an airplane, preparing to land, descends from a great height and approaches the ground. Now the image of the wicked king appears in all its fullness, along with a heap of events connected with his reign: wars, the defilement of the Temple, grandiose projects, persecutions against the Synagogue... The flow of time seems to accelerate, heaven seems to draw near to earth, and God's servants look more intently at what is happening below.

This is not surprising: in those times heaven was indeed drawing near to earth. More precisely, the Kingdom drew near in order to enter the world. For the Son of Man, of whom the Book of Daniel speaks, also begins His preaching with a call to conversion because the Kingdom has drawn near. The meeting point was already close; the Maccabean wars, the rule of the Hasmoneans, the Roman conquest, and finally the catastrophe of the year 70 outline that historical circle of events whose center it became.

And within this circle events develop with extraordinary intensity. Not only in the sense of their outward course, but also in the sense of their spiritual density. It is no accident that the author of the book sees both the persecutions of Antiochus and the Maccabean wars as an era of what was then called the "messianic woes": trials that befall the faithful immediately before the coming of the Messiah. The era of the "messianic woes" belongs not only to the history of the fallen world, but also to the history of the Kingdom, for the Kingdom too has its own history, though it unfolds differently from the history of the fallen world.

This era stands on the boundary between the fallen world and the Kingdom. More precisely, it itself is the boundary: everything before it belongs wholly to the fallen world, and everything after it belongs to the messianic Kingdom. And at the boundary between two different environments, processes always proceed in unusual ways and often accelerate. This is true both for the physical world and for the spiritual one. Such is the flow of history, accelerated and unusual, as it appears to the visionary who finds himself at the boundary of the Kingdom.