Daniel 10:1-21 is quite a passage.
It comes near the end of one of the bible books which includes some of the great Sunday
school stories, of lions dens, fiery furnaces, and what to eat/not eat when you go to
university in a far off land. It is even the book from which we get the phrase ‘the writing on
the wall’, and if that were not enough it includes a chapter Jesus references more than
any other OT chapter to reveal himself as the divine Son of Man.
But here in Chapter 10 we are taken to a realm rarely spoken of in the biblical books, a
realm revealed to one man.

Daniel.

An extraordinary OT character who
survived dynasty after dynasty,
ascends to high prominence under successive emperors
and fearlessly speaks the word of God throughout his life.

It follows fast on the heels of chapter 9 which has similarities.

Chapter 9 moves from a revelation given to Daniel in Holy Scripture – that the exile in
Babylon his people are enduring should only last 70 years – to a revelation given him by
the Archangel Gabriel telling him of future truths. These truths from the lips of the
Archangel made famous to us by the nativity story and his prominent role announcing the
coming of Jesus, actually including the timings of the coming messiah Jesus and the
subsequent destruction of the temple.

So what had Daniel been reading? On two occasions (Jeremiah 25:10-14, 29:10-14)
Jeremiah predicted that the captivity and desolation of Jerusalem would last 70 years.
There is also a strong possibility that he also studied the book of Isaiah, where Isaiah
named Cyrus as the one who would permit the Jews to return (Isaiah 44:28-45:1), and
Daniel may have looked at some of messianic passages as well like (Leviticus 26:40-43; 1
Kings 8:46-53, Jeremiah 3:12-18, Hosea 5:15-6:3). All passages which emphasise that
Israel as a nation must repent and confess sin prior to the establishment of any kingdom
of the Messiah.

Daniel prays a glorious 5 paragraph prayer, a petition that comes in fasting, and in
sackcloth and ashes, and the answer is immediate and on the lips of an archangel.2

So we read in Chapter 9:
20 While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel
and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill— 21 while I was still in
prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about
the time of the evening sacrifice.
Gabriel instructed him:
“Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. 23 As soon as you
began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly
esteemed.

Chapter 10 is not like that. This time it starts not with searching the Scriptures, not with
Jeremiah’s famous prophesy, ‘I know the plans I have for you…’ but with a personal
revelation given to him that there would be a great war (v.1).

This revelation was obviously disturbing and his reaction once more, as in Chapter 9, was
fasting.
2 At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. 3 I ate no choice food; no meat or
wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over.
We read that he also ‘set his mind to gain understanding and to humble himself before his
God.’ [v12] and that this involved him offering words that were heard in heaven. So Daniel
prayed, with a capital P.

We note that this is the same pattern as in Chapter 9. Daniel fasts and prays.


Fasting:
We should pause there a moment. Notice how natural it is for him to turn to fasting when
he needs spiritual breakthrough. It’s a discipline of the church much neglected in the
West, but very much in evidence when I go around the world with SOMA.
It’s worth getting wise counsel on before embarking on a period of fasting, and it is vital
that you do it with God not just for God, allowing the Holy Spirit to sustain you as he
sustained Jesus in his wilderness fasting.

But it is so often in church history and in the world today an absolute key to spiritual
breakthrough that if you have not discovered is a key for your prayer life, then Scripture
suggests you ought to… when the bridegroom has been taken away from you then you
will fast says Jesus… as we await with longing his restoration of all things at the second
coming so we fast too.

If you know nothing of fasting there is a high chance you know little of prayer and it is a
straightforward shortcoming to rectify – start with missing just one meal and praying until
you build up your spiritual wings.

The answer
Daniel fasts, and we read that ‘since the first day that you set your mind to gain
understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard and an
incredible angel was sent in response to them.’

But note the ‘since the first day’ in verse, because you’ll see that this mighty angelic
being took a full three weeks to get to him, not because the Lord was using a delayed
railway service or had a faulty engine on the angelic mobile, no this delay was because of
the actions of a new character in our saga. A mighty adversary who is combated by a
victorious ally, but both of whom just appear without explanation in verse 13.

But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael,
one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king
of Persia.

So who are these princely beings? The Prince of Persia seems to refer by title to one of
the Princes and Principalities Paul tells Christians about in Ephesians 6 – the ones we
learn our battle as believers in Christ is against – the ones who are not flesh and blood.
The troops of our enemy, the devil, who the New Testament tells us ‘wants to devour us.’
This prince is called the Prince of Persia and seems to have had sufficient authority and
jurisdiction in Persia at least to prevent a lower level angel from getting to Daniel without
help.

Help is then dispatched in the form of a chief Prince, this time one who is on the side of
Daniel and his angelic messenger. This chief prince in none other than the Archangel
Michael, the second of two Archangels to feature in the whole of Scripture and in the
book of Daniel itself. We know from the book of Jude that this chief Prince Archangel
Michael once successfully combated the devil, with the words: “the Lord rebuke you’. The
devil was himself most likely a fallen Archangel Lucifer (which means Angel of Light), and
so against the more Prince of Persia Archangel Michael is once again ultimately
successful.

Meanwhile Daniel is blissfully unaware of all that is going on in response to his prayers,
and just has to keep fasting and praying for three weeks.

Prayer Answer Delays: Not ‘Red, Amber, Green‘
Again this is worth us pausing on. In Daniel 9 the answer is immediate. In Daniel 10 the
answer is delayed because of mighty angelic battles Daniel had no awareness were
happening.

You may have heard that God’s answers to prayer are always ‘yes, no, wait…’ but here
we learn that his answers to prayer are also sometimes delayed for reasons we are rarely
privileged to understand. Here it is like the traffic lights have no power at all.

When there is a delay in answer to our prayers we are invited to remain faithful and
P.U.S.H: Pray Until Something Happens. Daniel kept on fasting and praying. And despite
the 21 day delay in Daniel got a prayer answer.

The angel
And consider the angel talking to Daniel: It turns out even angels need partners when
faced with entrenched demonic opposition.

The angel we learn is also due to face the Prince of Greece, again with Archangel
Michael’s help (v.20-21), Persia and Greece being both the current and future regional
superpowers that threatened the existence of God’s people at the time. It seems demonic
superpowers accompanied, and perhaps personified and motivated their human cultural
hosts.

It turns out even angels need partners when faced with entrenched demonic opposition.
The angel is dispatched in response to Daniel’s prayer, which we will come back to
shortly, and aided by the mighty Archangel.

Cosmic Battles
Thinking about Angels and heavenly battles may be hard for us to get our head round.
They are certainly not to be supposed to be a distraction to us from the glory of Christ
Jesus (see Hebrews 1) nor a thing for us to seek after as an experience (note how Paul
shies away from telling the Corinthians about his own ‘surpassing revelations.’) But
Wallace in his BST commentary notes that angels seem to have a providential charge to care for God’s people and fortify and encourage Daniel. And Joyce Baldwin in her commentary emphasises that God is in control above all these forces and battles to the degree that he can accurately foretell the future after the angels and their human counterparts have weighed in with their battles. God may well work to mediate his purposes through angels all the time, as this glimpse into the heavenlies in Daniel seems to indicate, but the take home point is that it is:

God who is in control,
God who answers prayer,
God who sends the angels, and
God who sends the back up Archangels and
God whose purposes will not be thwarted.

We offer God our struggling to keep awake. Our octogenarian knees. Our fasting,
weak bodies and he partners with us mightily to achieve whatsoever he want to
achieve.

He deploys all sorts of angelic help, it seems most of us will never know existed although
we may have entertained angels unawares (or even turned them away). The battle is real
but our partners are mighty because they know the ultimate source of power and
the strength of the command ‘the Lord rebuke you’.

We get to partner with a great great God who knows no limits to his authority.
Daniel 9 and 10 gives us a glimpse of how that may work out in the heavenly places, but we just need to focus on the place we’ve been given the charge to rule in, earth and petition God daily with the prayer our Saviour taught us… your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven…