Daniel 9:24

²⁴ “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.

The message of the gospel is always good news indeed for Christians.  Unfortunately, we can sometimes, through our hardness of heart, find the message of our perfect saviour, crucified and risen, as so familiar we don’t fully appreciate it.

Here in Daniel 9, we read of Daniel confessing the sins of God’s people and acknowledging their deepest failures.  Then the angelic being, Gabriel, brought a response to the prayer and the heart of that response is in the verse before us.  It is a different sort of expression of the gospel. He speaks of a time, “seventy sevens”, which is distant but specific to God.  It is the fulness of time when Jesus would perform his saving work.  Through the saving work there would be forgiveness, righteousness, and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.  It describes the saving work of Jesus and the blessings we enjoy now.

What we should take careful note of is that it comes here in the context of extraordinary visions and cosmic events.  It reminds us to expand our perception of Jesus Christ and his redeeming work for people like us.  It is not just our personal help-for-happiness but a matter to bring all creation to experience awe before our Lord.  Worth some fresh appreciation!

David Johnston