THE TIME OF THE END QUESTIONS, Part 1
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Question: What is meant by two phrases in the twelfth chapter of Daniel: “the time of the end” and “the end of the days”?
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Answer: Some Christians, not familiar with prophetic interpretation or the Hebrew prophetically coded system, have thought that these coded phrases refer to the end of the world. Such is not the case.
“The time of the end” simply refers to the end of those prophecies using prophetic time, that is, time being 360 prophetic days or 360 solar years. In other words when “seven times” ends in 2520 years or when “a time, times, and an half” ends in 1260 years. That is, the calculated time has elapsed. This interpretation also holds true to John’s using the same phraseology in Revelation 11 and 12 and his use of “should be time no longer” concerning the “little book.”
This latter does not mean that humans will not experience time once the little book is revealed with the seven seals broken. The saints cannot experience a sense of eternity until they see and understand themselves as Paul wrote: living, moving, and having their being in God (see Acts 17:28). The Bible and the little book should show the world the pathway.
As it is with time in the expressions above, so it is with days in “at the end of the days.” Here in Daniel a prophetic day equals a solar year. So those prophecies that use days, mark off either the arrival of the First Advent or the Second. Again, where Revelation refers to Daniel’s coded days as in “a thousand two hundred and threescore days,” the prophecy concludes, not with the world and its people, but with 1260 years for the coming of the Second Advent of the Christ.