‘Now when they shall fall they will be helped with a little help. But many will join themselves to them with flatteries. And some of those who are wise will fall, to refine them, and to purify them, and to make them white, even to the time of the end, because it is yet for the time appointed.'
In the light of the previous verse those who fall are surely those who die under the persecution. In the period of their testing they will receive ‘a little help' from God. They will not be delivered like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego or Daniel were, but they will be helped none-the-less. Meanwhile they will be joined by others who will flatter them and seek to talk them round, seeking to win them from their seeming folly, but they will not listen, and so many will fall. But the purpose behind their fall is that they might be purified, and made white, and this will be true for all who fall until the end. This is a call for endurance. Their hope is in God. They await the resurrection (Daniel 12:2).
And this will go on ‘even to the time of the end'. Thus what now follows applies to ‘the time of the end' (see Daniel 11:40; Daniel 12:4; Daniel 12:9).
(Many interpret the reference to the little help as referring to Judas Maccabaeus, but that was the beginning of a new era in the purposes of God, while this is seeking to produce fortitude in the face of coming events, even to the time of the end. We cannot therefore accept that interpretation while recognising gladly that God did turn events round).