What Gives You the Right to Pray?
JANUARY 23
Now while I was speaking, praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God…the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering. Daniel 9:20-21
What is the “evening offering” Daniel is referring to? Daniel is living in Babylon. There was no temple or altar in Babylon. No evening sacrifices were being offered. Those had ended almost seventy years ago.
In the God’s temple, the one back home in Jerusalem, evening sacrifice time was between 3 and 4 pm in the afternoon. That’s when the animals were slain. It was also called “the ninth hour.”
When Daniel says, “I was praying at the time of the evening sacrifice,” he’s basing his prayer on the sacrifices made long ago, linking his prayer to those sacrifices.
May I tell you, Jesus died exactly the same hour!
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46).
Daniel was praying long after the time of those animal sacrifices and hundreds of years before Jesus’ death.
Daniel’s prayer, like any prayer ever offered, will only get to heaven on the basis of a blood sacrifice. Whether that sacrifice was made seventy years ago, as in Daniel’s case, or two thousand years ago as in our case, whenever we pray, we must link our prayer with Calvary.
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