15: World News & Prophecy - Daniel 9:1-18

[Darris McNeely] In this class, we're ready to go into Chapter 9 of Daniel. And again, we are still with the Persian period at this time, and Darius. Before we get into that, I want to show you a slide of something I meant to at the end of the last class, but we ran out of time. And it's a slide of something that is an archeological artifact. It's called the Cyrus Cylinder. You have a picture up there, hopefully you can see that through the back. This is probably blocking the view for some of you, is that correct? Well, let's just pull it over here, then it's going to block for everybody else. And we've got this all over the floor, and those online are wondering what's going on. Can you see it now? Everybody see it? The Cyrus Cylinder.

This has a home in the British Museum in London today. It was found in what is modern-day Iraq, part of the Babylonian Empire of the past. It's a clay tablet or a clay cylinder. It's about the size of a football for...get some idea there. And it was found in the foundation of a building. And it dates back to the time of the Cyrus the Great that we've been studying about, the leader of the Persian Empire, the ram, and all of that. But what is on this is rather interesting. I've never seen this. One day I hope to get to the British Museum and see this and a lot of other artifacts related to the Bible. But this one is unique because it records the very fact of what we find in the Bible Cyrus did.

In Ezra 1:1, as you were going through that book, you recall that Ezra issued a...I mean, Cyrus issued a decree to allow the Jews to return from Babylon and to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. That was the custom of Cyrus. And that's essentially what he says on the Cylinder, that he did for the Jews and many other captive peoples who had been taken captive by the Babylonian empire primarily, you know, during the time of Nebuchadnezzar's expansion.

The Babylonians had a habit, as they did with the Jews and with Daniel, you know, as we've studied that. When the Babylonians conquered the people, they uprooted the population, took them captive, and set them down in Babylon or some other land, in the case of the Jews, ultimately by the time of the third attack and destruction of the city of Jerusalem in 586. I think I have that right. You know, the majority of the Jews were gone, and they were taken to Babylon. That's where you find Ezekiel when he's among the captives in Babylon at that time.

When Babylon fell, and the Persian Empire came in, the Persian policy was to repatriate people back to the lands, their homelands. And that's where we then have the Jews going back. This Cylinder tells that story, and it's a one piece of tangible proof from the period of Cyrus and of what he did that correlates with what the Bible tells us. Now, what's...I've mentioned this before about the Persian Empire, and Cyrus in particular. In the Bible, Persian, Cyrus get a lot of good press. The story of Esther that you know about is part of that. The fact they let the Jews go back, that's good. That was a very important block of activity or event for the plan of God. There had to be a people, a remnant of Israel in the land, in Jerusalem, and in that land for other Bible prophecies of Christ's birth to be fulfilled.

How would you have Mary and Joseph hundreds of years later having Christ born in Bethlehem if the Jews had not gone back and rebuilt the society there? That prophecy, and even to the very city of Bethlehem, foretold had to, of necessity, have the Jews there, the one tribe still intact. And so what Cyrus did was big, and it was prophesied to have happened in Isaiah 44. About 100 to 150 years before Cyrus was even born, Isaiah the prophet, mentions Cyrus as God's shepherd. And you can go back and read that if you haven't gone through Isaiah yet, but it'll be pointed out to you.

But Cyrus was actually foretold in the Prophet Isaiah over 100 years before Cyrus came on to be the one who would be a shepherd and that would accomplish God's purpose. And he did. So again, that's a hard one to negate or to argue with, but people do. But it shows, again, God's ability to direct history and to direct these events.

And so even on this Cylinder, there's similar language. Cyrus refers to himself kind of like a shepherd serving his god, Marduk, but one of Cyrus's proclamations or press releases that he would put out. And look at this as kind of a...you know, it's a record. It's like a newspaper, a book, a press release. This is who I am, Cyrus. This is what I did. Kings did that. They put inscriptions into the foundation of a building. They carved them on monuments that they put up. In Persia, to this day, there's a rock face, a cliff face in modern-day Iran that has writing from this period of the Persian Empire detailing the records of various kings. And that's how they wanted to be remembered and immortalized. And Cyrus was no exception in this.

It is an interesting Cylinder, the story of Cyrus and Persia, is fascinating for the biblical record, but also for the historical record. Cyrus essentially was more of, let everybody get along. If you want to worship the God of Abraham, that's fine. I'll let you go back to your land and do it. And he did that with other peoples and their gods. He was an equal deity pleaser, in that sense. But what is that? But freedom of religion. It's a pretty...it's not a bad legacy among nations. And had that continued, and if we had that today in the Middle East, we would have a whole lot less problems. But unfortunately, Iran occupying the homeland of the ancient Persian Empire is controlled by Muslim Shiite clerics, and their vowed goal is to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, which is why last week there were rockets flying over Israel on Monday or Tuesday of last week in retaliation for Israel strikes against Hezbollah terrorist group up in Lebanon.

Persia or Iran wants a nuclear weapon. They're pushing toward that. Some think they're just very, very close to it, that if they had and could deliver it, they would use it against the state of Israel. And if they could, they would use it against the United States of America or Great Britain and other nations. Because out of Iran, this militant Shiite version of Islam, they want to conquer the world. They want to usher in the conditions for the return of what they call, I think it's the seventh Imam, a legendary lost religious figure that by their prophecies when he appears, you know, the kingdom of Allah will be upon the earth. That's their goal. That's why they export terrorism. That's why they hate the Jews. That's why they hate Americans.

They are not equal deity people practicing freedom of religion. So that's why the Cyrus Cylinder is something to note. At least be aware of it if you ever get to London and ever get to the British Museum. It's something to see. It's made tours of America, but it's been a few years since that's happened, and not quite sure when that might take place.

So with that, let's turn over to Daniel 9. And we're still now toward the end of...we're at the end of Daniel's...near the end of Daniel's life where he is an old man in his 80s at this point. The year is probably 538 BC. This is about 67 years after Jerusalem had first been captured. And Daniel carted off in the year 605. And so it's about 67 years from 605 when this happens. So that's 67 years. So note that because we're going to talk about something here and why Daniel goes into this prayer and the background to what happens here. So let's see. Look at verse 2.

Daniel 9:2 "In the first year of his reign," of Darius, "I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the Word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish 70 years in the desolation of Jerusalem," all right? 

So that's why I said 67 years. Now, he refers to a period of 70 years prophesied by Jeremiah. And as Daniel looks at it from one perspective being the year he comes to Babylon in the year 605, he leaves Jerusalem to where he is at 538, that's 67 years. Now he's reading the Book of Jeremiah, and it says, "I understood by the books," well, it's not books, so much as it is a scroll, and probably multiple scrolls of what we call the Book of Jeremiah. And read and study that today.

So what are we told? Daniel's got a copy of the Book of Jeremiah. Now, Jeremiah was the prophet, the last big prophet of Judah. He stays in Jerusalem until the final collapse of Jerusalem. And then at least in the story, we have him carted. He's taken off down to Egypt, and that's where the biblical account of his story ends, in Egypt. But he stays there, prophesying, writing his prophecies.

How did Daniel get a copy of the Book of Jeremiah? Daniel's over in Babylon. Jeremiah never went to Babylon. Now you read Jeremiah closely, you see that there's communication back and forth through the years. And so what you need to realize is this, even though Daniel left Jerusalem, and we have no record of him ever going back, and further exiles come in into Babylon, what we get in pieces of Jeremiah is that there must have been correspondence, communication.

And I think it's logical to infer that Daniel being as high up as he was in the government and administrating things, look, there were couriers, there were Pony Express or Camel Express people going back and forth carrying letters, communication from all the different regions of the empire back into Babylon, and then going back out. Communication. They didn't have telegraph. They didn't have telephones, certainly not the internet. They had people walking and riding camels, donkeys, carts, horses. And it took days, but it would have been set up to where it could have been continuous and as fast as they could have done it humanly animal possible in that period of time.

It's logical to infer that a copy of Jeremiah's work got to Daniel. Now we could infer a lot of other things, but at least he's got a copy of the book. I wonder, did Jeremiah and Daniel communicate? I don't know. That would be complete speculation.

But verse 2 tells us that he's got a copy of the prophecies of Jeremiah, and he's looking, and he's noting that in Jeremiah, it says that God would accomplish 70 years in the desolation of Jerusalem. So there are different ways to interpret that, that it's possible that it could be from the time of 605 to 539. And if we're looking at 538, here is the time of Daniel getting this. He's figuring out that this 70-year marker is coming up, the 70-year marker is coming up. And so this is where it is. 

Jeremiah 25:11-12 "This whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years. 'And it will come to pass when 70 years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon. And that nation, the land of the Chaldeans for their iniquity,' says the Lord, and I will make it a perpetual desolation." 

Desolation in regard to the Babylonian period, the land and the city continue under the Persians. And so that's where we have the reference upon this. Jeremiah later writes to the gentiles. That's what Jeremiah to the exiles. 

Jeremiah 29:10-14 come in where God says, "I will gather you from all the nations and places that I've driven you and I will bring you back to the place which I sent you into exile.”

So the Jews had the promise of 70 years desolation. And that's what Daniel is reading here in front of him. And he's realizing that this has got to be coming to a close now. Cyrus has probably already issued his decree, and some people have already started to go back. Daniel doesn't go back to Jerusalem. He stays. He's too old probably. And he stays.

And so he's reading this and he's thinking, and he's wondering about the future of his people that's weighing very heavy upon him. And he wants to know what it means. Jeremiah or Daniel is taking Jeremiah's prophecy very literally, all right? In other words, 70 years is 70 years. It's nothing less, nothing more. Now, that's literal. He's not looking at it as symbolic. Daniel has already had a lot of introduction and exposure to symbolism and prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar's image, the beast of his own dream in Chapter 7. Those are all symbols stretching out over millennia.

And so he understands symbolic ideas about prophecy, but as he reads this about the 70 years, he understands that it's literal, and it's one prophet reading another prophet and short, you know, let's just call it the inspiration of God leading him to understand that it means 70 literal years, and he's doing the math, and he knows that it's coming up and it's about to happen. And so that's impacting him. Emotionally, it's his homeland.

Daniel 9:3 "I set my face before the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplication, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.” 

A remarkable decision. Daniel, he reads the Bible. He knows that big events are taking place. As I told you at the beginning of our study of Daniel, he lives at a time of big events in history with Nebuchadnezzar's rise, Babylon. There's a big page turning in the history book of the world with Babylon. Daniel's right in the middle of it. And he's getting these visions. He's interpreting dreams. And all that we are reading are part of this upheaval that is taking place among the nations with Babylon coming on be this head of gold.

And now, 70 years later, it seems Daniel sees that another page is turning with this promise of return of the Jews back to the land to rebuild. And so he's taking that very seriously. And as we all should do at times when we might be reading the Bible, we're going through a time of stress, and not always trial so much, but we realize that our life might be turning its own page to go to God in prayer and to set time aside beyond five minutes on our knees through a time of fasting. And he says here, "with sackcloth and ashes." Daniel basically clears the deck in his life. I'm not even going to eat. No hamburgers on the grill tonight. No steak, no jerk chicken, whatever you...no pizza, whatever it might be for a period of time.

And I'm even going to put on uncomfortable clothing. I've never worn sackcloth, but I felt sackcloth. And I don't want to wear sackcloth. I'd rather wear silk or linen or cotton or, you know, something comfortable, right? Sackcloth is kind of a bare-bones approach to it. And the ashes are traditionally a symbol of humility. You throw the ashes upon you. And that's what he's doing. He's setting aside time, and he's going to God in prayer about his people and the situation here.

Now, you know, we're coming up to the Day of Atonement on Sabbath here in a few days. For those watching this later, we're in the fall period here. Atonement is just three days away. We'll fast, and we will pray, and we will go through the meaning of the Day of Atonement, which we should. But fasting is a matter of humility, and it should orient us toward God in many different ways if we do it right. On atonement, we reflect on a singular event through the sacrifice of Christ that makes mankind, ultimately, one with God and have that true atonement. And it defines us.

For Daniel, his life was defined by what had happened to him with the captivity, the events in Babylon, his identity as a member of the people of Israel, specifically of the tribe of Judah. And now they hoped for a return. That was Daniel's life and his identity. It's who he was. He kind of enters into that with this fasting and prayer.

When you and I might come to a point where we feel we got to pray for more than five minutes, with a little bit harder and intense fervency and even fast about something and just, "Hey, you know, I'm just going to take the time to read my Bible for a day and pray some more," yeah, I'll fast with that. And maybe we'll do it again in a few days, or maybe you'll do it for two days. We don't like to fast, and yet it is a spiritual discipline, a part of the biblical teaching about coming before God, drawing close to God, humbling ourselves, entering into this relationship with God that defines our life, showing God we're serious. Multiple benefits from that and parts of it.

Daniel is taking his people's plight to God in this prayer. And he says, "I set my face toward the Lord." Now he knows what his people had done and why they were in captivity. He knows it was because of sin. And they had refused to obey the prophets or listen to any of the prophets that were sent, Jeremiah being essentially the last one. And they would not change. They continued in idolatry. They continued with sins and forgetting God. They trusted in the temple, they trusted in the covenant with the promise. They could essentially do what they wanted to do and God wasn't going to punish them for it, that somehow he'd pull them out of the fire. That was part of their thinking as well. They didn't repent.

Daniel knew that part of the story, but that didn't deter him from going to God on behalf of his people. And that's what this prayer is all about, going to God on behalf of his people and praying to them, beseeching God to be merciful. Look at verse 4. 

Daniel 9:4 He said, "I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession." 

This is a prayer of confession. You know what a confession is? We're not Catholics. We don't go into a confessional and confess to a priest, but when we sin, we do confess to God. And our confessional is wherever we pray, our bedroom, our basement, quiet place, a barn or a deep woods, you know, you may have a spot that you do that in, whatever, and we confess our sins to God. I made confession, "Oh, Lord," he said, "great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments." Mercy and love.

You know, underline some of these words or write them out on your notes here as we kind of go through because Daniel's picking out the character of God here. In spite of all that has happened, the destruction of Jerusalem, death, Babylonians coming in, first the Assyrians a couple of hundred years earlier with the other tribes of Israel, now his own people, sin, debauchery, child sacrifice, pagan, etc., he still says to God, "You keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love Him and those who keep His commandments."

Daniel 9:5 "We have sinned," verse 5, "we've committed iniquity. We have done wickedly and rebelled by departing from Your precepts and judgments," all the precepts and judgments that are part of the Bible. We've departed from those. We ripped them up and tore them apart and paid no attention to them. 

Daniel 9:6 "Neither have we heeded Your servants, the prophets who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, and all the people of the land." 

That would have been Jeremiah. That would have been Isaiah. That would have been Habakkuk, and Hosea, and Amos, and most of the minor prophets. Three were post-exile prophets. They were ignored.

Daniel 9:7 "O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face, as it is this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and far in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against You." 

All right. So notice in verse 7 here, underline right down to the side the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel. This is speaking about the land, all right? Earlier, we have the word covenant. We just used that to take in all the precepts and judgments and everything else that come under that and God's promise. But there's a land that's involved here. This is the land that God promised first to Abraham.

Daniel 9:8 "O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You." 

To the Lord, our God, belong mercy and forgiveness though we have rebelled against Him. Again, he continues to just pour out a confession. We have done this. And notice he uses the collective pronoun we. He doesn't say they, those wicked people. We, he includes himself. He knows that he is an Israelite of the tribe of Judah and he owns it. He owns the problem. We have sinned.

Daniel 9:9 "To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him." 

There's that mercy, love, and forgiveness that He brings in. There's been judgment, but Daniel doesn't forget the mercy and love.

Daniel 9:10 "We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in His laws, which He set before us by His servants and prophets. Yes, all Israel has transgressed Your law and has departed so as not to obey Your voice. Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out on us because we have sinned against Him." 

Now, this is the...he mentions the law of Moses, the curse, and the oath. He's referring to two places, Deuteronomy, yeah, Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, often called the blessings and cursings chapters. They're parallel chapters in these two Books. Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26, where God, through Moses lays out, "If you obey me, I will bless you, but if you disobey me, you will have this curse, you will have this problem, and ultimately, I will scatter you." So all of this was prophesied through Moses in these two chapters. And when in verse 11, Daniel mentions the Law of Moses. That's specifically... Those two areas is where you would refer that.

Daniel 9:12 "He's confirmed His words, which He spoke against us and against our judges who judged us, by bringing upon us a great disaster, for under the whole heaven such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem."

So Daniel knows that it is a unique catastrophe. Jerusalem, Israel is a nation created by God out of a group of slaves that He brought out of Egypt. That is the singular event of the story of Israel of the Old Testament, the Exodus, which you're going through in your Pentateuch class right now, and I hope we all know the story of the Exodus. But that was the founding important event to which every prophet, it seems, references back. Remember, God brought you out of Egypt, gave you this land.

And Daniel's saying that we as a people disobeyed and turned from that hasn't been done in the annals of human history, where a people's God delivered them from slavery, gave them a land and a way to live, and then they thumbed their nose right at it and disobey it. Daniel's saying, "This has not happened. It's not been done, but we did it. We did it. And boy did we blow it."

Daniel 9:13 “As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand Your truth. Therefore the Lord has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which He does, though we've not obeyed His voice."

Now, verse 14 is kind of a key verse in this prayer. We want to spend a minute on this here. 

Daniel 9:14 "God kept the disaster in mind and brought it upon us."

In other words, the disaster were His promise to bring...you know, their actions would bring their own curses. But if that they would not repent, heed the admonition of a prophet, God said, "I will scatter you." And that's what He's saying. God kept the disaster in mind. He brought judgment for their sin.

Then he says, "For the Lord our God is righteous in all the works He does." So he's already mentioned mercy, love, and forgiveness. Now he says, you know, "Even for all this, God, you are righteous." What was it Abraham said to God when he was going to go down and destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18? Yet will the judge of all the earth do wrong." God is the judge of all the earth. And Abraham starts to reason with God. Well, if there's this many righteous in the city, will you spare for that? Okay, I will. But Abraham knew there weren't, was it 40 or 50? What if there's 10? Yeah, I'll spare for 10. They couldn't even find 10. Even that episode speaks to the righteousness of God. And Daniel brings us back in that God is even righteous even when He has fulfilled His Word of judgment. Both blessing and even the cursing is a sign of God's righteousness.

Now, that doesn't compute to our mind, but we need to understand it because scripture here in other places does speak to the integrity of God and His righteous judgments, and that we as humans, in a sense, the clay, we can't argue with that. Well, we can get mad about it, and we can reject God and say, "I don't even believe in God because of evil, suffering," but that doesn't take away truth. Even though people don't obey, God is watchful because of His Word.

Now, hold your place here and go back to Jeremiah 31, because Jeremiah seems to understand this principle in a very beautiful passage out of the Book of Jeremiah 31, where Jeremiah foretells the future return of Judah, even while it's breaking down. Part of Jeremiah's mission was to tear down, to build and to plant, to tear down, and then to build and plant. If you tear something down, when do you get into the building and planting phase? And if you're going to build and plant, why tear down?

Well, God shows why it had to be torn down, but He always promises building and planting. And Jeremiah comes to that again here in Chapter 31

Jeremiah 31:23 "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 'They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back their captivity.'" Again, Daniel's whole prayer is looking at the 70 weeks prophecy, trying to figure out, are we there? Is it about to happen? Will there be a return? Jeremiah said God will bring back their captivity.

Jeremiah 31:23-30 "The Lord bless you, O home of justice, and mountain of holiness! And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all its cities together, farmers and those going out with flocks," business as usual, productivity, all right, "For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. After this I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me," Jeremiah says. And then he kind of makes a transition. "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass, that as I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to throw down, to destroy, and to afflict, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall say no more, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' But every one shall die for his own iniquity, every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be on edge."

There's a little bit of a reversal there. In other words, the soul that sins shall die. God will not visit the sins upon the success of generations. Everyone will suffer as a result or have the blessing. And it is a time of building and planting as verse 28 says.

And so this is the language of Chapter 1 of Jeremiah to his mission. And it comes back to this watching of Daniel now as he's reading the prophecy of Jeremiah taking it literally as I said, and realizing we got to be coming close. God, what are you doing? How's this all going to work out? Because no doubt Daniel has read this part of Jeremiah that we just read in Chapter 31 where Jeremiah understands that God is faithful even when He is tearing down. That's the faithfulness of God.

Now, that's not...boy, it's hard to wrap our minds around as human beings. You mean God's faithful, even when bad things are happening to me? When bad things are happening to a people, God is faithful? Yeah, that's what the Bible says. That's exactly what the Bible says. Even when people don't obey the people of God, God is watchful for His Word. God's watchful for His purpose. God's design is going to come to pass. And there are even aspects of God's Word that are still in effect and happen even when a people don't obey. He's upholding His Word of blessing.

Let me try to break this down into a modern setting and a situation so we understand and connect this to what's happening right now in the state of Israel and the events there. On Monday this week, it was October 7th, it was a year from the October 7th massacre of the...an attack by Hamas upon the state of Israel. Over 1,200 people were killed, 300-plus were taken hostage. Some are still there. Over 100 are still hostages. And Israel has tried to go after them. They're destroying Gaza and Hamas with it. They're also fighting Hezbollah in the nation of Lebanon, and they're under attack from Iran.

I watched a documentary about that this week. It was streaming on one of the subscription channels. Some of you may know that there was a big concert, music concert going on right next to Gaza there in Southern Israel on the night of October 6th into the 7th. And 300 or 400 people were killed and taken captive, young people in their 20s out of that music scene. And that's what the documentary was all about. And it was pretty graphic, showing the Hamas terrorists coming in and attacking, shooting, and everything else. It's just one part of the story. There were kibbutzes that were attacked as well. And a horrible tragedy, and it's resulted in this year-long war that's still has not taken...you know, it's not come to an end. And Israel continues to fight a multi-front war right now.

And when you look at this and seek to understand it and look at the nation of Israel, and I've thought a lot about this over the last year, done some writing about it, but there are some interesting things to take place. Israel is largely a secular nation. You must understand that. Now, there is a religious conservative minority of conservative Jews, you know, the ones with the black hats and the curlicues and the conservative ones. But they're a minority. Largely, Israel is a secular society. That means they don't keep the Sabbath, they give lip service to the holy days, but most of them don't. They're Jews by ethnicity, not by religion, and yet they are there in the land, a remnant of the nation of Israel, the only known remnant on the face of the earth today. And they're there for a reason. Just as I said earlier, the Jews went back from Babylon to Jerusalem to fulfill prophecies of the first coming of Christ.

The Jewish state in the land of Israel today is there to fulfill prophecies of the second coming of Christ. That's why it's important that they are there regardless of how people feel about them politically and the antisemitism that is rampant today. And yet they are not largely a righteous people, all right? The largest LGBTQ pride parade in the world is held in Tel Aviv every year.

Now, last week or two weeks ago, the current prime minister of Israel came to the United Nations to give a speech. Benjamin Netanyahu. He's a very controversial prime minister. He is the longest-serving Israeli prime minister, and he's given multiple speeches to the UN assembly. This one he gave this year had an interesting part to it. He held up two charts that you see on the picture here. One in his right hand, on your left as you're looking at it, he called the curse. And you see the black space there. He labeled the curse those countries under the influence of Iran seeking to destroy Israel. All they can do is to be consumed with a hatred of the Jewish state and not their own people. And it's a tragedy.

The chart in his left-hand says the blessing. And it is showing some states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan that are in green, and a red line going through there, coming out of the Persian Gulf area. And he calls that the blessing because that green represents countries that have made peace treaties with Israel, and therefore they have prospered. And he's showing, look, you can fight us and be under a curse, or you can work with us for peace and be under a blessing. And these countries that have worked with us, they have better economies. And I thought when I saw that Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26, blessing and cursing. Now Benjamin Netanyahu knows his Bible. So there was a motive biblically behind that, even though he didn't come right out and say it.

In Genesis 12, God said to Abraham, "I will bless those that bless you and curse those who curse you." And that's still being played out today in the political situation in the Middle East. Here's another picture showing a closeup of the curse. All those black states from Lebanon, all the way back through Syria, Iraq, to Iran are all under the umbrella. And even Yemen down in the southern part there on the Gulf, they're aligned with Iran, seeking to destroy the state of Israel.

Now, why is that important? We've just read here in Jeremiah 31:28, where, "It shall come to pass," Jeremiah says that, "As I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to throw down, and to destroy and to afflict, so I will watch over them to build, plant, says the Lord." God's still watching over Israel today. You go back, that brings to mind what Elijah said in his prayer. God who watches over Israel made a great aria in the Elijah oratorial, written by Mendelssohn.

God watches over Israel even in spite of their sins. And as I said, it's a secular nation, but they have a historic biblical purpose for being where they are. And they're going to survive in the short term because there are certain prophecies that have to be fulfilled and can only be fulfilled with a Jewish state in the land, the land because there are promises and there are prophecies. And so we need to appreciate that. We need to understand that as we look at what God is doing.

To go back to the prayer of Daniel and to finish this up here. In verse 15 of Daniel 9.

Daniel 9:15-18 Daniel says, "O Lord our God, who brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and made Yourself a name, as it is this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly! O Lord, according to all Your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain, because for our sins, and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to those around us. Now therefore, our God, hear the prayer of Your servant, his supplications, and for the Lord's sake cause Your face to shine on Your sanctuary, which is desolate. Incline Your ear, hear, open Your eyes and see our desolations, and the city which is called by Your name, for we do not present our supplications before You because of our righteous deeds, but because of Your great mercies."

That's the overarching nature of God, His great mercies in spite of a people's sins. And we still see those being played out today. Look, Israel is one of the most sophisticated technological nations in the world. When they have the time to put all their energies to technology, they're brilliant, and their advances, even for military technology, keep them alive today with their Iron Dome technology, but in other areas of technology, they lead the world. And there are reasons behind all of that. God does still watch over Israel for the fulfillment ultimately of His great purpose.

Daniel finishes this prayer, and as we will see when we pick this thread up in our next class, actually maybe two classes from this point, we're going to see how the 70 years then folds into one of the more significant prophecies of the entire Bible, the 70 weeks prophecy, which picks up with verse 20 and what the Angel Gabriel brings to him. And we'll get into that later. But the setup is this prayer and God's mercies and love and what God is doing. So that's another fire hose for the day.