Daniel and the Last Days

As far as we know Daniel spent all of his life in exile after being carried away from Jerusalem.  He lived around 600 years before Christ and was for the most part surrounded by those who did not believe in Jehovah. He must have longed for the day when he could go back to Jerusalem to build up the Lord’s city.  He wrote, “I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God… I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain… 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” (Daniel 9:3, 16-17).  He yearned for the time when the holy city could be built up again, but as far as we know he didn’t see that.  What’s interesting to me is that the visions that he received of the Lord did not really deal much with the immediate return of the Jews to Jerusalem.  But he did receive many revelations regarding the last days and the end times. 

               Wilford Woodruff said this, “The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age; it is a theme upon which prophets, priests and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight; they have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live….  The eyes of God and all the holy prophets are watching us. This is the great dispensation that has been spoken of ever since the world began.”  Surely Daniel was one of those prophets who looked forward to our day as he saw the stone cut of the mountain without hands, the Ancient of Days (Adam) participating in Lord’s work in the last days, and the events leading up to the Second Coming of Christ.  Perhaps since the Lord knew Daniel himself wasn’t going to see the restoration of Israel in Jerusalem in his own time, he let him see the restoration and triumph of the Lord’s kingdom in our day.  It seems that Daniel had a lot of sorrow; for example, he wrote on one occasion: “In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.  I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled” (Daniel 10:2-3).  It may be that one of the ways the Lord sought to cheer up Daniel was to give him visions and understanding of future events that he could look forward to, even if he was mostly alone in his actual circumstances.  Perhaps Daniel gained hope from the future triumph of Israel.  Elder Holland put it this way after mentioning Daniel among other ancient prophets: “Apostasy and destruction of one kind or another was the ultimate fate of every general dispensation we have ever had down through time.  But here’s my theory.  My theory is that those great men and women, the leaders in those ages past, were able to keep going, to keep testifying, to keep trying to do their best, not because they knew that they would succeed but because they knew that you would.  I believe they took courage and hope not so much from their own circumstances as from yours.”  That Daniel and other prophets looked for with hope for our day should give us courage to face the challenges we have with the same courage with which they faced theirs.