Daily Archives: September 17, 2021

Daily Bible Study

September 18, 2021 Bible Study — God Does Not Answer Our Prayers Because We Deserve It

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 9-10.

I want to start by focusing on Daniel’s prayer.  In particular, this line, “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. ”  God does not answer our prayers because we deserve it, because we are such good people.  In fact, we deserve for God to reject our requests, even those we make for the benefit of others, because we are such sinful people.  Nevertheless, God is merciful and He will grant our requests (I am not going to discuss today those times when He seems to reject our requests).  I just said I was not going to discuss when God seems to reject our requests, however, Daniel gives us a hint as to what we should do before we make requests of God.  Daniel admits to his own sins, and to the sins of the people for whom he is about to make a request.  One final point about Daniel’s prayer: our sin brings shame on both ourselves and on God.

When I read chapter 10 here I am reminded of Ephesians 6:12. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Before I get to what I want to write about this I want to state that it is not clear to me if chapter 10 refers to a distinctly different occasion from chapter 9, or the same one.

The messenger who came to answer Daniel’s prayer tells him that he started on his way immediately when Daniel began praying, but the “prince of the Persian kingdom” resisted him for 21 days until Michael, “one of the chief princes”, came to help him.  When I compare this with what Paul said in Ephesians it strikes me as suggesting the the kingdom of Persia had a spiritual being which represented it in the spiritual realm, and that this being opposed God’s messengers.  This leads me to the understanding that all human organizations (nations, businesses, non-profits, etc) have spiritual beings associated with them.  Further, those spiritual beings will generally oppose God.  My conclusion from looking at organizations of which I have knowledge is that we need to work very hard to ensure that the spiritual being which represents organizations of which we are part do not oppose God.  It seems the longer an organization is around the more likely it begins to serve itself and not its members or whatever goal it was established to promote.  Some organizations take longer to reach such a state than others and that appears to me to be a result of key people actively and knowingly working to prevent that from happening.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Bible Study

September 17, 2021 Bible Study — Part 2

OK, my wife asked me when I was going to do the bit about the goat and the ram from  Daniel 7-8. I was not planning to write about this after I reached the end of what I wrote previously for this passage about the first of Daniel’s two visions in this passage, but since my wife wanted me to write this, I will take the time to do so.

This vision was given in order to give hope to those who faithfully worshiped God in the 2nd Century B.C. (and a little before that).  Actually, it is more than that.  To understand what to make of it, we need to understand the context of the time (some of which continued into the time of Christ).  Those who succeeded Alexander the Great attempted to Greek culture and religion into the areas over which they had control.  Over all, they did so with great success.  Part of their success came from incorporating pieces of the cultures and religions of the people over which they ruled into their own religion and culture.  There was another side to this, they also encouraged those who continued to follow other belief systems to incorporate pieces of their belief system into that other belief system.  Eventually, however, they lost patience with those who failed to enter into their belief system and chose to fully impose it.  This prophecy is a warning to those who incorporated practices from the Greek culture and religion into their worship of God.  Compromising with non-believers on your principals, beliefs, and practices will never be enough.  Eventually, they will demand that you make a complete break from worshiping God.  Then you will have to choose one or the other.