Have you ever wondered why Daniel and Revelation have always been so mysterious and hard to understand? I believe the answer can be found at the end of Daniel. At the end of the book of Daniel God’s angel told Daniel about the recorded visions in Daniel, “Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time.” (Daniel 12:9, NASB) The NIV and NKJV use the phrase “closed up.” The word behind “concealed” and “closed up” is catham (saw-tham’, Strong’s #5640). It is used in Ezekiel where he is prophesying about Satan, “Are you wiser than Daniel? Is no secret hidden from you?” (Ezekiel 28:3, NIV, author emphasis) Interesting that Daniel is chosen for comparison when it comes to hidden secrets. The bottom-line is that whole chapters in Daniel are to be kept concealed, that is, not plain and not understood properly, until the end time, just as Daniel 12:9 says.

That is why for centuries theologians have wrestled with Daniel chapters 7 and 8, coming up with the current standard explanation for these chapters. The popular explanation of the day for Daniel 7 and 8 are equivalent to placebos – they are a placeholder doing nothing to pull back the veil. They are assigned by theologians to be fulfilled by ancient events while verses like Daniel 7:12-13,17 and 8:17,19 are ignored. Do they really believe they can properly interpret that which God has said is concealed until the end time? And since the popular interpretation has not changed even though the end times began more than thirty years ago, one can see how powerful the keeping of tradition is. But from the viewpoint of the theology of the Four Signposts, Daniel chapters 7 and 8 have been completely misunderstood up until now. These chapters deal with the end times – the events leading to the emergence of Antichrist, the Tribulation, and finally the return of Christ. And they are concealed – not for plain reading – until the end time. It is time to break with tradition and see what is being unsealed before our eyes.

Not all prophecy in the Bible is hidden like in Daniel. There are other passages that are relatively easy to understand. Here is one example from the vision of the dry bones: “I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel.” (Ezekiel 37:21-22) This is relatively easy to understand. At some time before the return of Christ we should see the Jews coming back to the land of Israel. As it turns out this has occurred starting in the 1890s and continues to this day. It is something that has been going on for a century before the times we might call the end times.

But Daniel and Revelation are filled with statements like, “I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.” (Revelation 6:2, NIV) What is this supposed to mean? Who is the rider? When does this happen? Another difficult one is, “there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.” (Daniel 7:6, NIV) What does this leopard represent? When does this happen? Of course the message of the Four Signposts as I wrote in Hidden In Plain Sight presents compelling answers to these questions. Passages in Daniel are written like these with symbolism rather than with plain language because they are sealed and therefore hidden until the end times.

Upon further reflection on the Four Signposts, and the books of Daniel and Revelation, it appears to me that where Daniel is a book of prophecy that is sealed until the end time, Revelation is a narrative showing that very same Daniel prophecy being UNSEALED! Evidence shown in my book is that the events of Daniel 7 and 8 are linked to the four horsemen, and that with each of the first four seals of Revelation 6 being broken, each of the four signposts begins. That is why Revelation is just as difficult to understand. The two books really do go hand-in-hand. You cannot truly understand a narrative about the unsealing of something, until the something that is sealed is, indeed, truly unsealed.

In Revelation, prior to chapter 6, the apostle John is giving a narrative of what he saw prior to witnessing the breaking of the seals starting in Revelation 6:1. John is shown in Revelation 5:5 that the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ himself is the only one capable of breaking the seals of the scroll. That scroll is symbolic of God’s Word being made plain and manifest – it is the physical manifestation of the unsealing of all that was sealed up in Daniel. There are a total of seven seals that need to be broken for all of end time prophecy to be unsealed and made plain. The first four seals release each of the four horsemen, one at a time. These four horsemen are each part of the Four Signposts as described in my book, Hidden In Plain Sight. Following on the heels of the breaking of these four seals, the breaking of the fifth seal shows the time during the Tribulation. The breaking of the sixth seal reveals Christ’s return. The breaking of the seventh seal unleashes God’s final wrath. But prior to the time of the Tribulation we have the first four seals, the four horsemen, and thus the Four Signposts. One by one in John’s account starting in Revelation 6:1 the prophecies of the end-times are unsealed and unveiled so that the words of Daniel become plain and easily understood. They are each unsealed when each seal is literally broken in Revelation 6.

A question that may come to mind is if prophecies in Daniel are to be kept sealed until the end time, when does the end time begin? Indeed the end time begins with the start of the unsealing of prophecy (per Daniel 12:9), and the breaking of the first seal in Revelation 6:1. And from that first seal being broken until everything is unsealed, there will be one generation. Jesus tells us this. Jesus told us in Matthew 24 about the Four Signposts. He said that you will hear of wars and rumors of wars and nations rising against each other (in Matthew 24:6-7) and that these are the beginning of the pains. All of the things mentioned in Jesus’ discourse in Matthew 24 including the beginning wars, the Tribulation (vs. 15-28) and his own return (vs. 29-31) all occur in one generation because Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” (Matthew 24:34, NIV) Therefore the end times are commensurate with one generation, beginning with the wars and rumors of wars of the Four Signposts, and ending with Christ’s glorious and blessed Return. The Four Signposts are really nothing but wars, reports of wars, and nation rising against nation – all through them. The breaking of the first seal in Revelation 6 unleashes the first horseman who is also the start of the first signpost. And at that point we have the start of the wars, and the start of the unsealing in Revelation, which in Daniel 12:9 says won’t happen until the start of the end times. And so we can say that the end times begin with the start of the first signpost – which started in 1979.

One generation is the duration of the end-times – it is the one generation prior to Christ’s coming. It started with the beginning of the first signpost which began in 1979 which was also when the first seal of Revelation was broken. When the first seal of the seven-fold sealed scroll was broken, the rider of the white horse was released. As I wrote in Hidden In Plain Sight I argue in detail that this rider represents none other than Saddam Hussein himself. The rider of the first horse is not Christ, or the Antichrist, it is simply a leader bent on conquest to watch for, who will kick off the end times. He is associated with the modern country that is the central stage of the first signpost, i.e. Iraq.

In conclusion, Daniel has been difficult to understand up until now because it has been concealed by God until the end times. But now it is still being concealed, not by God, but by men – men who are allowing their traditional and “pre-unsealed” explanations to block their witnessing of the unsealing of Daniel. With a complete understanding of Middle East history, and with careful attention to each and every verse of Daniel 7 and 8, and with an eye to detail of what is happening during this generation in the Middle East, one can understand and see the unsealing of Daniel. At this point since the publication of Hidden In Plain Sight several months ago I have been amazed at the feedback I have received from readers, which has shown excitement, astonishment, strengthening of faith, or changing of end-time viewpoints. Looking back in retrospect of where we all were before the knowledge of the Signposts, we should have suspected that the unsealing of Daniel by God during the end times would evoke the very same emotions and responses.

Categories: Signpost Theology