“Seventy ‘Sevens’”
While
I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel
and making my request to the LORD my God for his holy hill— while I was still
in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in
swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said
to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon
as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you
are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision:
“Seventy ‘sevens’are decreed for your people and your holy city to
finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring
in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the
Most Holy Place.
“Know and understand
this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until
the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two
‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of
trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’
the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the
ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come
like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been
decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of
the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he
will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is
decreed is poured out on him.”
Daniel
9:20-27
We are told that our
prayers will be answered if we pray to the Lord our God, truly believing. But,
many times, the answer does not come quickly. With Daniel, he got the answer,
not the one he had hoped for, but a most important answer. And that answer came
from an angel. For Daniel, the answer came in a miraculous fashion, and it came
immediately. God’s answer had to do with events thousands of years into the
future.
Focused as we are
with our immediate situation, we may be shocked by God’s answer. Yet we can
know that the answer will be for His glory.
God’s
answers to our prayers may exceed our expectations.
Our Daily Bread –