Death is not worse pain than an empty life. -- Lun Tha

God's DayRunner, Franklin Planner, Yahoo! Calendar...  The Divine DatePlanner.  It must be something to see.  He began his work on the universe so very long ago, and he has had an ending planned since before he began.  He has your birthdays on his DatePlanner.  Election years he knows he'll be hearing from a lot of folks.  Coronations. Events major and minor were all known to him before he separated water from land. 

God is a Creator. He likes outlines and order, I'm guessing. He throws in the occasional surprise twist.  (The platypus springs immediately to mind. Also certain political happenings.)  He has an end, though. He knows how the story of all he has made will end.  There is a plan and we are a part of it.

Which is why I'd love to see his DayRunner.  Some folks have already been given tiny little glimpses, or general ideas of some of what is in it.  Daniel is one of those special people.

The Lord God Almighty had already given Daniel visions of the future.  Years later, we read in chapter nine of his book, during the reign of King Darius, he was given another.  Daniel had been praying, you see. Extensively.  Confessing his sins and the sins of his whole nation. He took a huge responsibility for himself.  He begged God to look with favor upon the "desolate sanctuary" of the Lord, as his people had been exiled. 

Daniel was a man who knew how to pray. He understood how to talk with his Creator.  He knew how to be humble, for he was a humble man. He knew, too, that he could ask for things that were huge in the scope of the world, if it was something that would bring honor to God.

He knew these things because he had spent huge amounts of time with the Lord.  This sort of relationship doesn't "just happen."  People who demand from God and then curse him in their disappointment do not often have this kind of intimate communication, this humble understanding of the Great I Am.

Daniel's prayer was answered, in a way.  Immediately. 


Getting a prayer answered while one is praying has got to be absolutely heart-stopping. Daniel not only received an answer, but a vision featuring one of the very few angels we know by name in the Bible: Gabriel.

Gabriel did not bring him a letter and say, "God says YES!"  He said, rather, that he came to bring Daniel understanding.  A glimpse into that Divine DatePlanner. 

The weeks decreed above are generally held by scholars to represent years.  So there would be seventy sevens, or four hundred and ninety years all told "to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place."  Sixty-nine of those weeks are held to be accounted for, with Israel's history and the birth and death of Jesus (the Anointed One shall be cut off).  That leaves one week.

One set of seven years.

Now, I have mentioned the concept of "seven" in God's book before. It really is not a random number.  Gabriel here tells Daniel that a prince of the world will come and people will follow him and they will destroy much. And there will be desolation and war.  People today seek peace...but we are going to have wars right until the end.

Then, this prince will confirm a covenant. A bond. A mockery, really, of God's bond with Abraham.  This prince will be a creature of Satan and so will find great humor in mocking anything originated by God's holy promises.  This covenant will be for a set of seven years. The last of the seventy sevens of Daniel.  Daniel is told that an abomination that causes desolation will be set up in God's temple.  This would be a high blasphemy, of course.

But Daniel is also reassured that the "decreed end" shall be poured on this "prince."  Yes, there will be wars and strife and desolation. Yes, there will be --- count on it! --- a horrific time that the world has not yet seen.  But yes, there will be justice.  God's own justice.  It doesn't get any better.

We are not told by Daniel how he reacted to this vision of God's Franklin Planner. He would have been grieved, I am sure, for his people.  He wanted to see them restored, he asked for God's mercy to be granted to them...and it was, eventually.  The people were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple and fortify the city.  But Daniel knew that it would not remain.

It is a great burden to know what's coming. People ask for it all the time, though.  We wish that we could just...know!  That if we did, somehow we'd be better. We'd do better things, live lives that counted, spend our minutes more wisely.  But knowing is not something we can handle, as a rule. 

I routinely read the ends of books before I have fairly finished with the beginning.  But that is just a work of fiction.  I like to know how things end. I am thankful that God has let me know how it ALL will end. He wrote about it and has shown us.  But he hasn't let me see all the pages of my life as he knows they'll be.  And, I think, that's a good thing.

I live by faith that the pages will keep turning. I try to make sure I am on God's pages as they go by.  And day by day, year by year, we will draw closer to the end of that Planner. 

It is surely going to be something to behold.