Today....October 2, 2023....(our 47th anniversary by the way): Sight & Sound in Lancaster, Pa. is scheduled to start their new musical.....Daniel....should the Lord tarry in His return may He give wisdom to those putting on this extravagant stage production....to go beyond the lion's den and the furnace and the statue.....to Daniel's prayer where the people were to admit their culpability in the destruction happening to their land....for we even now are in the same situation!
Preface: The following post is from May 5, 2021....the day before the 70th Annual Day Of Prayer....the paragraph before it from later in that year. The pandemic did not do it....in fact we became less humble....and more political. I am praying....please join me....for mortification in our pulpits tomorrow. May God bring these pastors low....His Holy Spirit blowing away the lovely meringue pastry cloud forms....exposing us to the searing heat of the sun's rays....not for us to be scorched....but purified. May He....if it be His will....and all to His glory alone....then raise these men up to proclaim the righteousness of God....and our utter failures to see how far we have fallen....and then if He might show mercy....may we raise up to give Him the praise that is due....and His alone. May tomorrow be the Lord's Day that God's glory returns to many of our sanctuaries!
In March of 1863 when the Senate put a proclamation for a National Day of Prayer and Fasting on the desk of Abraham Lincoln....the words within it were of mortification at what America had become. There is no mortification today....not in the prayers that president's speech writers pen....nor proclamations put out....nor our national prayer days. Yes....genuine prayers seeking mercy will be said throughout the land tomorrow....and God will hear those prayers....but we do not schedule revival.....revivals schedule us. We cannot conjure up God's Holy Spirit.....for something else will appear instead....as did Donald Trump. God doesn't want our stages and our committees and our themes and agendas and press releases....MC'd by mega-church and mega-ministry leaders.....nor does He take pleasure in our contemporary praise music....with the CD that you can purchase through a secure payment system. He wants prayer for clemency...not piously constructed prayers....with a dash of humility....and a pinch of repentance....all seasoned to our own taste....but without even a smidgen of Mortification Salt....and all this prepared more for our taste buds than His anyway.
That Part Of The Book Of Daniel That We May Have Missed
What comes to mind first when you think about the Old Testament book of Daniel....the lion's den.....or Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego in the furnace.....or Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a great image with a head of gold and breast and arms of silver and thighs and middle of bronze and legs of iron with the feet part iron and part clay....or his dream of the great tree that was him and was cut down....or maybe the fingers writing on the wall? If you were making a list you might add Daniel's vision of the four great beasts....and the ten horns with the little horn coming up.....or the cryptic prophecies of the king of the south and the king of the north?
What a book this is! The Christian can and should read through this throughout his or her entire life....and that day will come....and we most likely are nearing it....when piece by piece those words become even more clear....but there is one part of Daniel that may be the most important to us today.....of which most of us may not even recall.....and if we do we certainly do not dwell upon.
In chapter nine Daniel was given knowledge of Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy weeks....this as he was nearing the end of his life....but he had first prayed and fasted in sackcloth and ashes....seeking mercy over the desolations that had come upon Jerusalem....and it is his prayer that we in America should contemplate greatly upon as our own country lies desolate. Here is that prayer
"I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession saying, 'O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. We have not listened to your servants the prophets who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you, To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the LORD our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity...."
