Page 107 - Satan in the Sanctuary

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He entreats for Jerusalem and the Temple:
O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech
thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned way 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, O 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 (w. 16-17).

Daniel concludes with a supplication. "O Lord, hear; O
Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for
thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are
called by thy name" (v. 19).
In answer to this magnificent prayer, God gave Daniel
the seventy-weeks-of-years prophecy. Daniel reports that
the angel Gabriel came to him as he was finishing his
prayers: "And he informed me, and talked with me, and
said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and
understanding" (v.22).
And that he did. As we have seen, the seventy-weeks
prophecy with its scope of millennia is unassailable.
In view of his humble appreciation of Jeremiah, Daniel
must have been staggered by his own vision of world his-
tory complete through Christ to the millennium.
Soon after the prophecy everything changed. In a war
between Persia and Babylon, the Babylonians succumbed,
and to King Cyrus of the victors went all the property of
Babylon. This included the cream of the Jewish nation and
the prophet Daniel.
This was good for the exiled Jews. Cyrus was sympa-
thetic—a model conqueror who always respected the re-