The Harvest Is Ripe!

(From radio broadcast of Bro. Julius Adewumi)

Daniel chapter 9

In the book of Daniel chapter 1, we saw how Daniel separated himself from the ungodly things and set himself apart for God. The lifestyle that Daniel took was unique, he was not the only Jew. There were other Jews that came with him but he and the other three friends singled themselves out to be separate- to be different from the rest of the Jews of their rank. God respected their dedication and God rewarded them with wisdom- with promotion wherever they were working.

If you walk with God, with the Lord Jesus Christ the same way, dedicating your life to obey his word, dedicating your body to keep yourself pure following the scriptures, you will get similar result. Christ said, "if you abide in me and my word abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you". He also said, "verily, verily I say unto you if a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death".

For those that will single handedly follow and dedicate themselves to the Lord, God is still honoring those people individually. It’s the decision you've got to make. You cannot say the church does not tell us to do this. If you are waiting for the church to say it, you are wasting your time. You have to do it yourself, pursuing the Lord by yourself. God spoke about King David as a man after God's own heart. Who was telling David to do it? It was not the servants of David telling him to do that. He just purposed in himself to seek God, to be after God's own heart. He wrote that, "my soul pants after thee O, God". So it's an individual choice. We are all called to be Christians. Don't wait for the congregation. Don't wait for your parents or your pastor to lead the way. Once you've been born again lead your own way following the Lord whole-heartedly. And you will see the reward that will come to you.

God himself will minister to you in your room, in your corner, and you will see visitation of angels when you take all these exhortations upon yourself.

That is what Daniel was doing, without any one telling him to do it. Three times a day he said he would pray. Nobody told him, and as a young man he started doing it, pointing his face toward Jerusalem and praying. God noticed it, and God gave him wisdom. He was able to interpret dreams and he was able to see visions. Because of his dedication to the God of Israel, visitations of Angels, prophecies were coming to him. Everything that he wrote down, were things that would happen from the time of Daniel till the end of the world. When you walk with God as Daniel did, You will get a reward like that also.

" In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans. In the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolation of Jerusalem. "

Daniel the prophet didn't classify himself as a prophet though we call him Daniel the prophet. In his own day, he was just like us. Seeking after God and though all these visions were coming to him, he didn't call himself a prophet. But we can look back and say he was a prophet, because the word of God calls him a prophet. And when God begins to talk to somebody, God has made him a prophet.

Now let us go on to this story of Daniel to what Daniel said he saw. He said after he read the book of Jeremiah the prophet he found out that it would be 70 years for Jerusalem to be in desolation. Now Daniel wanted to intercede for Jerusalem. Let's see his prayer from verse three.

He wrote: "I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting and sack cloth, and ashes. And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession and said, Oh 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."

Daniel, after reading the book of Jeremiah and realizing that 70 years was determined for captivity, he began to pray for revival, revival of the Jews, that God would do something to bring the Jews back to Jerusalem. He was praying for revival right then, but how did he pray? This is to teach us how to pray. Daniel wanted to pray for revival, he wanted to pray for Jerusalem. He prayed by first confessing their sins. His own sins and the sins of the Jews that were all taken out of Jerusalem. God was punishing them he knew, so he first had to confess and repent. You say well, he should tell the other people to repent. Yes, maybe he had not done anything wrong but he puts himself as one of them and said, Lord we have all sinned. That is the first thing you have to note.

Then of course the other thing is, when you read literature from other ministers, it should rouse you up to move closer to God. If you read literature from prophets that does not rouse you up to want to move closer to God, then, you are either misreading those literature or they are not sent by God. That is exactly how you can tell. Some pastors would say there are false prophets around, and they terrify you not to touch any of those books of those ministers. How do we know whether they are false prophets or true prophets? God already said it in his word. If a prophet makes wonders and miracles, watch him. If he tells you that let's follow other gods, then he is a false prophet. But if he's rousing you to move closer to God, then God said that is my prophet. Is the message in the books or the literature urging you to seek God more, wanting you to move closer to God? That is the true prophet of God. This is why I am challenging you to do the exhortations like the prophets of old. How they walked with God. If you do the same thing, God will minister to you the same way he ministered to them. You will get the same reward. Look at the example here. This is what Daniel did. He said after he read this book he went into a prayer session. That is what you should also have. When you read gospel literature it should rouse you up to want to pray more, and to want to move closer to God, to want to repent. That is what it should make you want to do. That is the first step. Use that to test what you read. Those literatures are not just entertainment. Those sermons or cassettes that you get from those ministers shouldn't be to entertain you. They should make you rouse up to move closer to God, to want you to pray and get more power from God, to want to be like Jesus because that is our goal.

So here it is! Daniel decided to seek by supplication and prayer with fasting. So if you are praying, some time add fasting to your praying to get serious. He said with sackcloth and ashes and asking God for mercy. That should tell you to fast along with your prayer. God can answer you speedily. Daniel said "I pray unto the Lord and make my confession".

Now how did he pray? He first praised God and lifted God up higher. "Thou great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him". When you present your case, first elevate God. God is above all. After you have lifted him up, then you can begin to present your case. The Lord said "when you pray, pray our father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name." You have to lift him up first. He is bigger than you. Don't just come before him and begin to tell him what you want him to do for you as if He's your servant. No! Lift him up above all things. Praise him. Exalt him. Bring yourself and your people lower, that, "we are nothing before you O, God. We are dusts before you. You are the great one. You are the one who created all things". Now you have called his attention. Because "he that exalteth himself shall be abased. But he that humbleth himself shall be exalted". Daniel showed to us an example here, like the Lord Jesus Christ taught us how to pray. He first lifted up God. Before he started repenting for the sins of Israel. He told God that "God, you are righteous to judge Jerusalem just as it was done. But show mercy right now". That was the summary of his prayer and he prayed and prayed and prayed and an angel touched him and spoke to him. And that is where we are going in a moment.

When you walk with God the way these prophets walked with God, God will minister to you and visit you, and tell you things the way he told these men. In the book of Amos chapter three, God said, "the Lord our God will do nothing but he will show his secrets unto his servants, the prophets". So when you walk with God in the prophetic way, you become a prophet and God will show you things to come, just like he showed to Daniel and all his prophets. Here is what the angel told Daniel and the interpretation.

"70 weeks are determined upon thy people and upon the holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah, the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublous times."

He was giving Daniel the timetable of events that was determined from the time of Daniel until the end. Let's see the timetable in a short form. He said "from the time that the commandment will go forth to rebuild the city". Now Daniel was still praying that there would be a revival and the angel of God said the revival will come all right, the city will be rebuilt all right and God was going to send a commandment to rebuild the city. And how will that be done? God gave a commandment to a king who was not a king of Israel, but was the king of Persia. And the commandment came from God, and they commanded that the Jews could go home and build their city. God rules in the affairs of men!

You say how was that possible when they didn't even know God. These people were not worshipping God, yes, but God could still talk to them. God talks to men even unbelievers in dreams and in visions and they do what he commands them. And they have to do it because God is God. The angel said the commandment would go forth to rebuild the city and it happened. King Cyrus made the decree that the Jews are allowed to go rebuild that temple. He said the God of heaven spoke to him and told him in a vision to build a temple and told him to go build it in Jerusalem so he asked for the Jews to go build it. God rules in the affairs of men. Don't think that your problem is impossible. Well, you may say "my problem, I'm dealing with men: how will God help me?" Don't worry! Just put your trust in God and call upon God concerning those issues and God will send the right heart to those people and they will just begin to favor you. If you will believe it, so shall it be if you have some thing to do with men that are unbelievers. Call upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord knows how to touch the heart. They wouldn't know what touched their heart; they'll just favor you. That is why you should trust in the Lord and do his will.

The Jews in those days were away from God. It looked like how will God help them. But each time they were scattered, God knows how to bring them back through men that don't even know this God. God will make their heart turn and make them do whatever he wanted them to do. It happened in that generation and it will still happen today. This is what the angel was telling Daniel that the commandment will go forth and they will rebuild the temple. It would take 52 weeks and another 7 weeks. And the messiah will come to Jerusalem.

From the time he gave the commandment, till the Messiah comes to Jerusalem, it would be 62 weeks and another 7 weeks. Now we can look back at history and see that every week he was talking about was like years. 7 years is a week. One day represents a year. And we can say from the time of Daniel till the Lord Jesus Christ came to Jerusalem, born in Bethlehem and walking around in Israel, was almost 400 and something years. That is, if you multiply 69 times 7 years, you will get 483 years from the time of Daniel. And that was about the time the messiah came. From the time that Daniel was alive 'till the messiah came was almost 472 years.

Now in verse 26, he went further and said, "after three score and two weeks shall the messiah be cut off." And the angel prophesied and said the Messiah will also be taken out of the Earth. That was exactly how it happened. The Messiah came to them, they didn't accept the Messiah, and the Messiah was crucified. He rose again and went away back to heaven. About 470 years before it happened it was written. So Daniel's prophecy was for years through to the end of the world. I'm saying when you walk with God you will get the same type of revelation, but you have to walk in the prophets way. Go through the life of these prophets you will see how they walked, you can walk the same way with God, and the Lord will minister to you.

Now he said, "the Messiah would be cut off but not for himself. And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined."

Now that shows there will be a particular war. But what war was he talking about? Many have been interpreting this a different way. If you take another version of the bible, you'll see some interpretations that doesn't really look like how I'm interpreting it. Just keep it to King James Version and you will see that what he is saying is, there will be a prince that will come, but his people will destroy the temple first. And he said there would be desolation for many years before that happens; that is, before that false prince comes. How many years? It didn't say right here, but at another verse. It looks like 2000 years had passed before Jerusalem was restored to them again. Because after Christ came it was 70 AD, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman empire. And the Jews were scattered all over the world. Now they were not returned there a long time, and about 1948 they are now a nation again. And it took almost 2000 years. The angel was prophesying that it will take a long time. At the end of the second world war the Jews started going back en-mass and wanted to become a nation.

He went further and said "he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week."

Now I'm not going to complete this section, I'm just going to wrap it up right here. Because this is deeper. Many of us believe that this is talking about the last 7 years (one week) of the world empire. When God will come back and begin to deal with the Jews again. Right now since they were scattered God stopped dealing with them as a nation. At the end of it all, God will go back to the Jews as a nation, God will deal with them as a single country.

This message is to challenge you to seek God, and you will get the same reward as the prophets. How come all these were revealed to Daniel? God is looking for a vessel to use. You are also called to make your body available for the Lord's use. God reveals things to his prophets to make them wiser, warn other people, and also make them be careful. God wants you to walk with him so you can get the same reward.

This is the way, walk ye therein.

+++++++++++++++++++

Internet homepage: