As noted by not a few conservative Christian commentators, one of the buzz phrases of the secular culture today is “the right side of history.” When secularists or even professed Christians say this in tragic support of pressing their social agendas that transgress God’s Word in the Bible, they are most certainly failing to grasp the stark testimony of history. For the physical ruins of every ancient kingdom and empire of men are with us to this very hour as a reminder mortals cannot finally prevail in having their way against the living God!1 Consequently, those who oppose God are on the wrong side of history as His fulfilled prophetic Word to date through Daniel among others certifies.
Having reached the end of his prayer of confession, repentance and intercession seeking God’s mercy for Israel through forgiveness and restoration, Daniel receives a prophetic reply from God by way of an angel that is staggeringly far beyond the immediate historical situation. Praying as he was near the end of Israel’s seventy years of dispersion from the land and captivity to Babylon, God gives Daniel a prophetic timeline with key events in it that not only affect his people, but originating from them, the whole world and reaching into eternity! Daniel was instructed by God’s messenger, Gabriel, to ‘“consider the matter, and understand the vision,’” (Daniel 9:23, NKJV).
First, God set ‘“seventy weeks’” as the time length for all of His purposes and the events of His prophetic timeline to be fulfilled (Daniel 9:24-27, NKJV). While Israel was in the midst of finishing seventy literal years of captivity, the seventy weeks are not intended to be understood as literal seven day weeks which would yield four hundred and ninety days. No, here is where the author of the study notes in my New King James Bible and other reputable contemporary translations agree that “weeks” in the Hebrew should literally be understood “sevens” as in seven year spans. Consequently, it is seventy sevens or seven year spans totaling four hundred and ninety years. There is a plan and end!
Second, Daniel was told this period of time was ‘“determined’” by God ‘“for your people and for your holy city’” that had so concerned him in his prayer ‘“to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy,’” (Daniel 9:24, NKJV). God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer for Israel is in complete concert with His purposes of salvation for them and us Gentiles! During the time allotted, Israel is to finish their specific transgression against God bound up in their unique historical covenant relationship with Him as descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exodus 3:15, 19:1-6).2
Too, in God’s prophetic timeline an end of sins that hopelessly separated all men from and reconciliation back to Him would occur. Truly, God is telling Daniel of things only He could accomplish! How, is powerfully signaled by the specific mention of Israel’s long before Daniel foretold ‘“Messiah the Prince’” and His intercessory agency (Genesis 22:15-18, 49:10; Isaiah 49:5-6, 61:1-3) in Daniel 9:25-26, NKJV. Messiah would also cause eternally enduring righteousness to come to redeemed mankind and under His up close royal administration, end the prophetic ministry as well as gloriously restore the Temple of God in Jerusalem (Isaiah 9:6-7, 11:1-10, 60:13; Jeremiah 23:5-8).3
Last, God’s vision to Daniel is very specific about the events and their timing in His timeline which history recorded in and out of the Bible proves to be perfectly accurate. Indeed, they follow in order after the official end of the Babylonian captivity with the decree of Persian King Cyrus who was himself divinely foretold (2 Chronicles 36:15-23; Isaiah 44:24-45:5). Interestingly, while it is not stated in Daniel 9:25, as Ezra and the post-exilic prophets Haggai and Zechariah record, building the second Jewish Temple is a priority of God when the people returned from captivity. Almost one hundred years pass before ‘“the command to restore and build Jerusalem’” in 445 B.C. and the attending troubles Nehemiah writes about launch God’s seventy sevens timeline (Daniel 9:25, NKJV).
Clearly, God’s timeline vision uniquely given to Daniel foretells when Israel could expect to see their Messiah since after the command concerning Jerusalem, seven sevens (49 years) and then sixty-two sevens (434 years) for a total of sixty-nine sevens (483 years) are set for as it turns out, His first coming.4 Nothing could or did stop His coming as Jesus of Nazareth who was conceived (Matthew 1:18-25), born where (Matthew 2:1-12), lived and ‘“cutoff, but not for Himself (declaring at His death, ‘“It is finished!’”)’” as foretold (Isaiah 53; Daniel 9:26a; John 19:14-42, NKJV). While not included in this vision to Daniel is the triumphant resurrection of Messiah after three days He foretold (Luke 18:31-34) or His ascension (Acts 1:9-11), in one earlier he saw His coronation (Daniel 7:13-14)!
Meanwhile, as the Lord Jesus Christ also foretold in complete agreement with the vision given to Daniel and history, nearly forty years later the Roman Empire--‘“the people of the prince who is to come’”--destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple yet again leaving them desolate in 70 A.D. (Daniel 9:26b; Matthew 23:37-24:2; Luke 19:41-44, 21:20-24, NKJV). An attempt by the Jews still living in the land to retake it and Jerusalem in 135 A.D. was also crushed by the Romans. From that point on as warned and foretold, they were scattered to the nations (Leviticus 26:27-35; Deuteronomy 28:64-66; Matthew 21:33-46). In under four hundred years after this, the Roman Empire joined its named predecessor Babylonian, Medo-Persian and Greek Empires among the ruins of history or did it?
1 This is the reason I hardly blink when critics among professed Christians insinuate this Ministry’s faithful instruction on the strong man and great woman of God is not in step with current popular Christian themes. God’s Word will never fail to stand right and true whatever the times or popular acceptance of people. If you want a life changing, enduring biblical word from the Lord on what you are supposed to be about as a Christian man or woman, get my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics along with its companion works The Strong Man Of God Men’s Group Study and Great Woman Of God Women’s Group Study available at your favorite internet book seller and in the Strong Man Store.
2 Read the two-part post that begins January 16, 2022, Arriving At These Times, under the categories Bible Prophecy and Call To Repent.
3 Daniel 9:24 is another place in Scripture that asserts God’s intent to end the prophetic ministry during the Kingdom reign of Christ on earth at His return and not before as the erroneous, contrary presupposition held by many especially conservative religious educated elites maintains. See the two-part post that begins August 2, 2020, Flavor- less Salt Is Worthless, under the category, Call To Repent taking special note of the fourth footnote in part one.
4 See the August 22, 2021 post, The King Of Israel, under the category, Bible Prophecy.
Daniel holds nothing back of the truth in confessing the transgression, sin and iniquity of his people, Israel, he righteously characterized as rebellion in their departure from God’s written Word. Twice in his confession he also points up the people’s disobedience to God’s direct instruction and warnings to them through His prophets (Daniel 9:6, 10). Besides Moses and Isaiah of the greatest of these prophets (Deuteronomy 28; Isaiah 1), Jeremiah and Ezekiel Daniel’s contemporaries were used mightily of God to graphically present and cry out against their sin, call for their repentance and pronounce His judgment upon their stubborn refusal to do so (Jeremiah 2, 11:11-17; Ezekiel 8, 12).
No, the shame of Babylonian captivity Daniel also asserts twice in his confession to God did not come without prior warning over many years in His longsuffering, forbearance and readiness to mercifully forgive as Israel ‘“rebelled against Him,’” (Daniel 9:7-9, NKJV). Thus, it was that after long sounding his trumpet of warning, Daniel’s fellow prophet in exile, Ezekiel, as God’s watchman to the rebellious captives (whose ministry my own is patterned) learned Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the Babylonians and directed by Him, announced its complete desolation (Ezekiel 33:1-9, 21-29). Praying with painful hindsight and agreement with God’s written Word, Daniel confesses to Him why.
He prays: ‘“Yes, all Israel has transgressed Your law and has departed so as not to obey Your voice.’” As a foretold consequence, he acknowledges they now, had a desolate homeland, holy city, Jerusalem, and Temple as righteous judgment from God (Daniel 9:11-12, NKJV). I remind us in America again that Israel is the only chosen people and nation of God in history.4 Yet, He brought upon them His righteous judgment stemming from their departure from His Word in disobedience as well as stubborn refusal to repent. Now, if He did this to Israel, where do the many guilty in our nation get off asserting an exceptional standing that exempts us from the same (Jeremiah 25:15-29)?
This is a great falsehood in the land that is working tangible desolations commensurate with the nation’s moral ruin (Micah 3:8-12). For in the arrogance of this self-deceit, the guilty are refusing to humble themselves and repent before God Almighty while He intensifies the desolations upon our nation in our plain view through calamities such as devastating storms, out of season tornadoes, wildfires and His unrelenting Coronavirus pestilence (Isaiah 45:6-7).5 Like Israel, will you foolishly continue not to see ‘“all this disaster has come upon us’” because of transgression, sin and iniquity refusing to repent and ‘“understand’” God’s ‘“truth,’” (Deuteronomy 31:14-32:47; Daniel 9:13, NKJV)?
The foregoing is especially heartbreaking in a land filled with so many professed Christians, their churches and religious educated elites that ostensibly know God and His truth fully written, but who willfully refuse to acknowledge the obvious for all manner of motives. Is not this scenario of spiritual dullness through preoccupation with Christianity as manmade religion how it is that the biblical instruction of salvation by grace through faith alone had to be uncovered again by Martin Luther, a broken and miserable German priest searching for the living God using his Latin Vulgate and Greek Bible translations after over a millennium of corrupt Catholicism usurped and buried it?
Because God is holy, righteous and just, sin not confessed and repented of always has consequences no matter who it is that is guilty! The plain fact is Israel in sin not confessed or repented of was guilty before God. Consequently, as Daniel declares soberly to God in his prayer about Israel’s obstinacy (and ours too), ‘“Therefore the LORD has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the LORD our God is righteous in all the works which He does, though we have not obeyed His voice.’”6 He adds in simple humility, ‘“we have sinned, we have done wickedly;’” including himself in again with his people despite that he was godly (Daniel 9:14-15, NKJV).7 Daniel confessed and repented even though, Israel in the disaster as many today, still refused to do so!
In spite of his people’s failure to do right, Daniel closes his prayer appealing to God in all of His ‘“righteousness’” to ‘“let Your anger and fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem…,’” (Daniel 9:16, NKJV). God’s righteousness here was to honor His Word; the prophecy He gave Jeremiah to limit Jerusalem’s desolation at the time to “seventy years,” (Jeremiah 25:1-11; NKJV). Daniel then, appeals to God to hear him and take pity on the ‘“desolate’” state of His ‘“sanctuary’” as well as the ‘“desolations’” of the people as He looks out on the situation not in accord with their ‘“righteous deeds’” since they had none, but His ‘“great mercies,’” (Daniel 9:17-18, NKJV). Finally, he exhorts God to ‘“forgive…listen and act,’” (Daniel 9:19, NKJV). Should professed Christians pray otherwise?
4 See the two-part post that begins August 2, 2020, Flavorless Salt Is Worthless, under the category, Call To Repent.
5 Read the July 5, 2020 post, Decision At The Crossroads, under the category, Call To Repent. For all including professed Christians in unbelief that want to redefine God Almighty out of existence or in one’s personally determined image of Him, He is who He is and does what He pleases as it is written (Exodus 3:13-14; Psalm 135:-6; Isaiah 40:12-26)! As a result, mortals should fear in the face of His power rather than dismiss Him through hearts proudly hardened. Or don’t you realize that He who with a word instantly stilled storms (Mark 4:35-41) is also able to permit them with other calamities as works of Satan (Job 1:6-19; Lamentations 3:37-38; Amos 3:6b) and summon them at whatever intensity He wills as He shall do in His wrath before the end of these “latter days,” (Psalm 135:7; Jeremiah 25:30-38,30:23-24, NKJV)?
6 As the harlot daughters of Catholicism in the over 500 years since Luther launched the Protestant Reformation with his biblical rediscovery of God’s salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, the guilty have shared fully in their mother’s harlotries of disobedience, feat of choking off sound doctrine and being stubbornly unwilling to repent. This is to their terminal judgment with their mother (2 Timothy 3:1-12; Revelation 16:19b, 17-19:4)!
7 While in my book,The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics, the Lord leads me to hold up faithfulness as the character trait Daniel exemplifies, obviously humility is also among the many character traits of Christ and the aspiring strong man of God in His image he displays. Get my book along with its companion works The Strong Man Of God Men’s Group Study and Great Woman Of God Women’s Group Study at your favorite internet book seller and in the Strong Man Store.
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