PRAYER AND FASTING
Daniel’s End-Times Spiritual Warfare
Prayer and fasting has always been a prime subject for Christian teaching, and rightly so. Dating back to the earliest days of the Church, volumes upon volumes have been penned on prayer by devout men and women in Christ. Just listing the good ones would be a chore. Anecdotes and stories about prayer abound in Christian lore. For instance it was said of James, (the Lord's half-brother and author of the epistle of his name), that he had the nick-name “The Camel” because his knees were hardened and calloused by all the time he spent on them before the Lord in prayer.
Most Christians can speak of personal revelations. For instance, the Lord recently spoke to me in a prophecy and said, "Get on your knees and be strong, stand and be humble." I take that advice literally, and try to do my share of praying, trusting in prayer more than my own wit and strength, while standing humble before Him. Everything under the sun (lower than the Son) is vanity, just as it says in Ecclesiastes; but we can believe that everything done through and with the Son is fruitful. On any given Sunday morning, across our land, sermons on prayer descend from pulpits by the score. Or, at least, they once did. There is a present danger that the roaring avalanche of verbiage can make us deaf to hearing about prayer. Like our children, we hear the noise but tune out the message. It all can become one giant cliché. "Praying, oh yea, I should be praying."
Being heard through the thunderous roar with a message of prayer is the challenge of this next part of our study of Daniel. The power of prayer is one of the most important messages of the book of Daniel and we should not turn a deaf ear to it. That God saw fit to devote two of the twelve chapters out of His secret end-times weapon (remember, this study revolves on the fundamental premise that Daniel is God's secret end-times weapon) to prayer and fasting should speak to us about their tremendous importance for the end-times warrior of faith. To illustrate the magnitude of this message God has provided our study with a word of confirmation by way of a gift of knowledge.
SEE: The Gift of the Spirit: KNOWLEDGE this page sidebar
God wants us to be fully equipped soldiers
The Father wants His Son's soldiers to be armed, protected and smart. In these last evil days it is good to let Daniel and his faith become a sort of drill sergeant for us. The book can be a kind of spiritual "boot camp" for Christians to learn about spiritual guerrilla warfare. The first half of Daniel is about faith, the type of faith that the wise end-times saint will acquire. As God's word says, "Without faith it is impossible to please Him." The examples of faith in Daniel will help us live more pleasing lives for our Savior. The second half of Daniel is devoted to revealing the truth and dangers of the Antichrist. Like any good military strategist, God wants His soldiers to know the enemy. He wants His soldiers to understand why they are fighting and what they are fighting for. It is not enough to be knowledgeable and fully equipped for battle. A soldier must also know how to fight. For this, God uses Daniel once again to draw our attention to two main forms of spiritual warfare. In chapters nine and ten, the Spirit of God takes us aside, turning for a moment from drilling us, to show us two of the most effective ways of defeating our foe: Prayer and Fasting.
Our greatest source of teaching comes from the Holy Scriptures, of course. Jesus taught us about prayer and fasting. The Epistles are replete with inspiration and enlightenment about prayer. The Old Testament presents example after example of men of prayer. Most notable is Elijah, the man of whom James said, "was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit...” The book of Daniel lags behind none when it comes to teaching and inspiring us about prayer. It teaches us the attitude we must bring with us into our prayer closet. It also shows us, the end-times believers, many of the elements of prayer which we should have in our prayer life in these last evil days. Throughout Daniel we are brought into contact with the spirit of prayer and its glorious power. Daniel was saved from defilement in chapter one because he sought God and knew his will. He was saved from death in chapter two by prayer. He was delivered from the mouth of the lions in chapter six by prayer. And finally, in chapter nine and ten we are pulled aside from our end-times study of faith and about the Antichrist to learn how to fight the good fight of faith.
A scan of Daniel's prayer in chapter nine
Daniel had studied the words of Jeremiah and discovered that the prophet had told Israel that their captivity would last exactly 70 years. Take note that Daniel knew God's Word. He had studied it. He had even had it revealed to him (chapters 7&8) by revelation from heaven. In order to understand it, however, he had to go to God in prayer, with fastings and supplication and repentance. (Much of our prayer to God should be in question form, and then waiting for the answer.) He writes that he went before God in sackcloth and ashes the Old Testament symbols of repentance and humility. Daniel set himself on his knees to plead the case of his people before the Lord. And as we shall see in later studies God answered his humble prayer by trusting to his pen the entire scope of His plan of the nations and salvation for His people: the Commonwealth of Israel. Daniel began his prayer by both admitting his personal sin and acknowledging God's righteousness while praising Him for His wisdom, mercy and forgiveness.
"And I prayed unto the LORD my God, and made my confession, and said, 0 Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments. Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spoke in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongs unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel; that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee. O Lord, to us belongs confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee. To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him …”
In some ways the end-times saint can see this prayer as appropriate also for the body of Christ. The end-times saint, though living righteously, as Daniel, should not distance himself from association with the sin of the people. Daniel admitted his uncleanness (as a natural man) and was willing to intercede, to "take the heat" for the chosen elect people's sake. The Diaspora had happened and captivity had been imposed. The body of Christ would seem to be in a similar state today. Daniel was asking in his heart that salvation and freedom would once again come to the people of God and their captivity would be returned forever. We can ask the same for the body. Daniel admits they had gone astray. They had not listened to the Law and The Prophets, in other words, neither to God's servants whom he sent to them, nor followed the commandments and instructions laid down in Mosaic Law. Worse still, Israel had not listened to the voice of God and so the curses of God had fallen upon them.
Daniel then prays, "yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth. Therefore hath the LORD watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us: for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice." Judgment must begin at the house of God declares the book of 1 Peter. Daniel, as our example of an end-times intercessor tells us we must acknowledge God's righteous judgment in our lives and in the body of Christ at large. God will not honor anything but the truth. For God says of Himself, He cannot lie. God is love; and love, we are told in 1 Cor. 13, ‘rejoices in the truth’. After acknowledging the disobedience to truth and love, Daniel then beseeches God to turn His anger and fury away from Jerusalem so that for His name's sake His people will no more be a reproach. This intercessory prayer we can pray for the body.
"0 Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us. Now therefore, 0 our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake. 0 my God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies."
After this, Daniel offers this simple plea.
"0 Lord, hear; 0 Lord, forgive; 0 Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, 0 my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name."
Hear - forgive - hearken and do. We can pray this prayer that God will glorify his name in us and the church, every day that we have breath. Now we come to the part of Daniel's prayer for which God used the above timely letter to emphasis his message. Daniel describes the spiritual sequence as the word came to him by an angel.
"And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God for the holy mountain of my God; Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation. And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, 0 Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision." Vs. 20-23
The natural presumption about prayer is, it is God's tool for making known our needs, requests and desires. Though prayer is all of that, it is much more. Daniel's prayers in chapters nine and ten help us understand just how much more. Prayer is also supposed to sharpen our discernment, increase our understanding and enlighten us on God's will. In short, prayer should enhance our communication with the Father and the Son. Take note that Daniel is not merely talking at God in His prayer, issuing demands or requests. He starts these prayers because he wants help from God. Daniel expects help to come in the form of answers. Prayer must open communication with God. It must draw us into His presence. We cannot here go into the difference between answered prayer before and after the advent of Christ. In Daniel's case God sent angels to answer His prayers (one of them most likely was Christ Himself in chapter 10). In the case of the end-times believer, that angel is the perpetual messenger God Himself in the person of the Holy Ghost. But the intensity and reality of the battles and the role of angels in assisting us in spiritual warfare remain the same. In the age of grace we can go boldly before the throne of God in His heavenly throne room. The coming of the Messiah changed our access and made things easier and more instantaneous because of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, but the spiritual warfare has in many ways only increased. We know that the Devil is furious because he knows his time is short. Daniel serves us as a clear portrait of the intensity and reality of the battle taking place around us at all times. Chapter ten of Daniel is a miniature play acted out before us in order to open our eyes to the reality of this battle. Read it and you will see. Also read 2 Kings 6 and the story of Elisha and his servant and how God opened their eyes to see the host of angels that surround and defend the saints in time of need.
Conclusion
In Chapter seven we saw that God had forecasted the rise of the Antichrist kingdom and detailed its metamorphosis from Babylon, to Persia, to Greece, to Rome. For the first time in His relationship with man God revealed in chapter seven of Daniel that the Antichrist is a kingdom. He showed that the Antichrist kingdom would come about by a process of evolution and that its spirit would control and dominate not only the governments and commerce of the
earth but also the souls and minds of all the earth's inhabitants. In short, Daniel chapter seven shows that God knew and ordained that Western Civilization would be the dominating force of the earth. That the spirit prince over this kingdom would be the ruler of all other wicked spirit princes and their earthly governments.
In chapter eight God establishes the second important precedent concerning the Antichrist when He reveals for the first time ever in Scripture that the Antichrist is not only a kingdom, but it is a person also. To the student of prophecy this may seem obvious, but this is the revelation from which our knowledge that the Antichrist is a man stems. The vision given Daniel in chapter eight skips from the third kingdom (Greece), over the most significant kingdom (the fourth one), right to the end-times Antichrist kingdom of ten horns headed up by a singularly evil man. The reason for this leap is to draw attention to this great essential fact that the Antichrist is a man, a leader who will take the reins of the Antichrist kingdom at the end and cause the most brutal, tyrannical rule mankind has, or ever will, know. Chapter eight goes directly from the kingdom of Alexander the Great to the final Antichrist leader because Alexander is both Scripture and history's finest and most perfect archetype of the "evil one".
There are many more details and edifying revelations that God would have the students of prophecy glean from chapters seven and eight, but these are the two great purposes of chapters seven and eight, and the major points of emphasis for our study. God has established for us, the end-times saints, that the Antichrist is both man and kingdom. His word has established that they are inseparable. The kingdom needs a man to lead it and the man needs a kingdom to lead. The kingdom has been walked into all parts of the earth by the iron and unremitting legs of "Rome" and its influence has permeated every stratum of society and life on every continent. History bears this out. Its influence is felt in every government, culture, and ideology. All this dreadful and terrible kingdom needs is an object of its worship, the man whom the world will receive as its savior, the Antichrist. These awesome visions were shown by God to Daniel, and understandably they greatly troubled him. "As for me, Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but kept the matter in my heart.” Vs. 7:28 And eight ends with these words. "I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king's business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it." Vs 8:27
So what is the next recorded response we, the end-times saints see from Daniel our prototype end-times saint? Not surprisingly, we see him with a contrite heart seeking God's face and engaged in spiritual exercise and warfare. In reading chapter nine we don't know it but God has already decided to tell Daniel what his plan of salvation is for the Jewish nation and that Daniel should not lose hope. God has everything under control. He will tell him about his plan to save all of Israel and He will reveal to Him in detail what must happen in the end and how the fullness of the transgressors must be allowed to prosper in order for the truth to come out, for the faith of the saints to be tried, and so the lies of the Antichrist and Satan can be exposed for all time and forever. God will do this in perhaps the greatest single prophecy of all Scripture (at the end of chapter nine) and in chapter eleven when he tracks the career of the Antichrist in detail. But first Daniel goes into prayer; and then fasting and warfare so he can get a true handle on what this all means to his faith and the destiny of his people. Daniel, like every first time hearer of prophecy, is uncertain how to understand these things or how they are supposed to edify him. So Daniel, in his wisdom, resorts to the only thing he has, the only thing the end-times believer has, he resorts to seeking God's face by prayer and supplication and to asking God for His mercy and kindness to intercede in his and his people's behalf. If Daniel is a picture a the prototype end-times saint and all of his Biblically recorded experiences and actions can be applied to the faith of believers at the end, then the Christian should take note of these two chapters. Two chapters out of 12, in God's secret end-times weapon, are devoted to prayer and fasting. That alone says a lot about where we should be pouring our time and efforts.