Daniel 10 Warfare

Daniel is now an old man, in his 80's.  Cyrus has come to the throne of the Persian empire – and has allowed some of the exiles to go back to their own country.  Daniel isn’t among them: maybe too frail for the journey, maybe only younger people were sent, maybe he still had a job to do in the Persian court.  

The timing of this vision is around Passover.  And at Passover, Daniel is thinking about God's people, Israel. He thinks about the bitter herbs that were part of the traditional passover feast, and the bitter bondage in Egypt that they represented.  He may well be thinking about the bitter bondage for seventy years in Babylon.  He thinks about the passover lamb that was shared, and how God showed his power on the night of the first passover when the angel of death “passed over” every house that had the blood of a lamb painted on the door. He thinks about eating the passover with unleavened bread, dressed as though ready to go on a journey – because as soon as they had eaten, they left Egypt and God miraculously brought them through the Red Sea.  That was the defining story of his people, and now it was happening again, seventy years after the exile, just as Jeremiah had prophesied (see Daniel 9). 

But Daniel has this other number ringing in his ears: seventy weeks of years, 490 years, 483

Banvie Burn, Blair Atholl. Photo G Lilly

before the Anointed One would come, and then a final period of trial (chapter 9).    So this  old man sets himself on a three-week prayer retreat....  he wants to understand.  He wants to be right with his God. Whatever God is doing, Daniel wants to be walking humbly with his God.  So he goes to a location beside the Tigris, possibly with a few friends, and he fasts and prays, only eating the basics, no meat, no wine.

The whole process – fasting, praying, wrestling to understand, was in itself a battle.  NIV and other translations, quite wrongly, say in verse 1, “the message was true and concerned a great war.”  The Hebrew literally means “the word as true and the warfare great”; that refers to the whole process of receiving the message.  It was difficult to find.  It was contested both on earth and in heaven.  When it came it was difficult to grasp.  

And it is in his old age, as the climax of his ministry, that he sees this most powerful vision.... 

I want to encourage all of us – myself included now I have my bus pass – not to give up expecting great things from God, or attempting great things for God.   Jesus tells two parables about people who make an amazing find: one is the farmer whose story begins when he finds treasure hidden in the ground – and goes and sells all he has to buy that piece of land.  The other is the pearl dealer who keeps on searching until in the end he finds the pearl of great price, then he goes and sells all and buys it. Some of us stumble over God's goodness.  Some of use spend years searching.  (Matthew 13. 44-46)  Whoever we are, however we have waited for
God, he does want to speak to us.

What Daniel sees is a man, dressed like a priest in fine linen, but with a face bright as lightning, eyes like fire, arms like bronze and a voice like the roar of a whole army, loud, powerful; but maybe not always easy to understand..   A man, but a man clothed in amazing glory.  I believe he saw Jesus, the eternal Son of God, in the glory he had before he was conceived as a collection of cells in Mary’s womb.   And this man stands over the river Tigris, and over all the currents of human history.  People, we need to see this Man.  He is the Victor.  He stands above the ebb and flow of history.  He is Lord and King, and the triumph of his Kingdom is a more important matter than whether Daniel gets to return to Jerusalem, or whether Jerusalem is restored in 70 or 490 years, or what happens in your life or mine. He is the lynch-pin of history; he has triumphed and will triumph, and he demands our obedience.  We need to see him. 

But what do we make of the state of the world and the church in our day?What Daniel sees   Once again this vision was so overpowering: Daniel fell on his face, unconscious.  Someone – possibly an angel  –  shakes Daniel awake, and begins to explain that he was sent with the answer as soon as Daniel started his prayer retreat – but was hindered by the “Prince of Persia.”  It was a battle for Daniel on earth because there was  battle going on that Daniel could not see: the very desire of God to answer Daniel's prayers, was being contested by this Prince of Persia. That fight will continue: when the prince of Persia is beaten it will be the turn of the prince of Greece. 

The angel is describing an unseen dimension occupied by spiritual beings representing or corresponding to nations, peoples and movements in the world we can see. 

Image: "sannse" Creative Commons

Some of these spiritual beings are doing God's will, while others are opposed to God's will.  And these beings are engaged in a conflict – “a strange and dreadful fight” as Martin Luther put it.  Until the final triumph of Christ's Kingdom, the world is a battlefield. In order fully to understand the problem of suffering in our world, we need to factor in the realities not only of God's power (why should a good God allow this stuff to happen?) and of freewill (humankind has rebelled against God) but of spiritual conflict (at the present time God's purposes are challenged by another power). 

That has some implications for us:
1. The heavenly battle affects us in the earthly battle.  The battle on earth – the one  we feel when we struggle to pray, to understand, to humble ourselves before the Lord, to serve him is a crazy mixed up world – corresponds to the battle in that unseen, heavenly realm. Paul says we are “not fighting against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”  (Eph 6. 12)
2. And the earthly battle affects the heavenly one. We engage in the warfare by prayer, discipleship, submission to Jesus, and acts of service in our world.  Same way Daniel did.  We pray “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.”  And we live the life of the Kingdom – speaking truth, seeking justice and peace, caring for the last, the lost and the least, the broken and the dispossessed.  We don’t need to name or call out the spirits that are opposing God's Kingdom in the heavenlies. Leave that to those who can see them: the angels of God.  

Finally, Daniel needs to know certain truths, and we need the same truths:
1. He is “highly esteemed” (v. 18, NIV)  “God loves you very much” (Living Bible). He is beautiful.  In the midst of the warfare, we need to hear that: you are beautiful. God loves you very much.
2. The future history of God's people, is written in the “book of Truth”: it is aWhat Daniel seeslready in God's hand. God, despite the spiritual battles, will triumph in the end.  The idea that God and evil are kind of “equal and opposite” is called “Dualism.”  It would be neat and tidy and would cleverly solve the problem of evil.  But it is not how the Bible sees things.  We live in a universe where God has had to make some tough choices. There is warfare. But God will triumph. It's written in the book of truth. Jesus is the victor.
3. And Daniel is invited to continue to play his part. Verse 21b sounds a bit sad.  “No one supports me against the princes of Persia and Greece except Michael, your prince”.  But it is an invitation to Daniel, to stand with the angels of heaven, in the spiritual battle, by the way we pray and the way we live. Jesus is the victor.  And we are like Daniel invited to stand with the angels of heaven, by the way we pray and by the way we live.   

© Gilmour Lilly November 2016