---
title: Daniel 12:4
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/daniel-12-4/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/daniel-12-4.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Daniel 12:4
testament: OT
section: Prophets
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Daniel 12:4

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> But you, Daniel, shut up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam to and fro, and knowledge will increase.”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "As for you, Daniel, keep the words secret, and seal up the book until the time of the end. Many will rove about, and the true knowledge will become abundant."

## JW Usage

A pillar text for the Watchtower's self-understanding. The sealed book is understood to have been unsealed in the last days, and the abundance of true knowledge is identified with the flow of accurate Bible understanding through Jehovah's organisation from 1919 onward. "Many will rove about" is applied to the worldwide preaching work. Read this way, the verse is a prophecy that a channel of true knowledge would appear — and the organisation is that channel.

## Protestant Usage

Ask what the verse would have to say for that reading to work, and then read what it says. It does not name a channel, an organisation, or a date. It tells Daniel to seal the book until the time of the end, and says that many will move about and knowledge will increase. Nothing in it identifies who does the increasing or through whom. The wider point is worth making gently. A prophecy that can only be recognised as fulfilled once someone tells you it has been fulfilled is not doing the work of a prophecy. Russell wrote plainly in Studies in the Scriptures that his readers "must not expect to have passages of Scripture pointed out in which these matters and dates are plainly written" — that the meanings were hidden until the due time and unveiled to the faithful. That is a claim which automatically validates whoever happens to be making it. Compare it with the credentials Scripture actually names for an authorised messenger — signs and wonders at Hebrews 2:4 and Acts 2:22, and prophecy that comes true at Deuteronomy 18:22. Both are things anyone can check. Compare Hebrews 2:4, Acts 2:22, Deuteronomy 13:3.

## NWT Issue

The NWT reads "the true knowledge will become abundant." The Hebrew word is da'at — simply "knowledge." There is no adjective in the text, and standard translations render it "knowledge shall increase" (KJV), "knowledge shall increase" (ESV), "knowledge will increase" (NIV). The added qualifier matters here more than it would elsewhere, because "the true knowledge" is a fixed phrase in Watchtower vocabulary for the body of teaching the organisation supplies. The rendering turns a general statement about knowledge into something that reads as a prophecy about a particular kind of knowledge — the kind the reader is being offered.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [What Credential Did Russell Carry?](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/founder-miracle-credentials.md) — Apostolic attestation by signs and wonders — the missing piece of the Watchtower's authority claim [Authority]