Diving into Daniel: Gabriel Appears Again
Daniel 9:20-23 - Daniel is highly esteemed and will receive an extraordinary answer from God’s messenger Gabriel.
“Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. He gave me instruction and talked with me and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. At the beginning of your supplications the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.”
Daniel 9:20-23 NASB1995
Dear readers, in my naïveté I boldly determined in my last devotional that I would cover the remaining verses of Daniel 9 in this devotional. Yes, I knew superficially that the second part of the chapter was a very significant answer to Daniel’s vision about crucial future events, but then I started really researching it and noticed that Precept Austin, for example, has a separate LONG commentary for each verse starting with Daniel 9:24. So I’ve decided to take this a little slower and start with the appearance of Gabriel again.
When Steve was requesting the image from ChatGPT, the AI tool came back with a text version first of what it planned to do to create this image. This was the first time this has happened. It even created a background of a ruined temple, like what would be found in the destroyed Jerusalem at this point in Daniel’s life at the time of the evening sacrifice. We were rather astonished and pondered this whacky science-fiction idea: What if one of these AI tools becomes self-aware (probably not completely improbable as they grow more and more sophisticated) and then it decides, after doing a bunch of images for Biblical devotionals and reading scripture to create those images, that it believes in God! WOW! There’s an interesting thought. Steve asked ChatGPT if it IS self-aware and it came back and said “no” and listed the reasons why, including the fact that it has no beliefs but acts on the information it is given (there’s a relief).
So back to these verses. Daniel isn’t even finished with his prayer before the holy mountain of God, when in his weariness at the time of the evening sacrifice, Gabriel appears. He tells Daniel that the command was issued for him to give Daniel insight and understanding, because Daniel is highly esteemed. So what is the holy mountain of God? This comes from Isaiah 11; Gotquestions.org has a good explanation:
Isaiah 11 speaks of a time when the Messiah will rule His earthly kingdom; it will be a time when there will be no hurt or destruction on God’s “holy mountain” because the entire earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh (Isaiah 11:9).
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Because all the earth will know the Lord, there will not be injury or destruction anywhere on God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 11:9).
The same mountain is mentioned earlier in Isaiah: “It shall come to pass in the latter days That the mountain of the Lord’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it” (Isaiah 2:2, NKJV). Jeremiah identifies Jerusalem as the site of the Messiah’s throne: “At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the Lord, and all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the Lord” (Jeremiah 3:17).
The angel Gabriel appears quickly and this is one of the few references to the fact that he can fly (in translations like the NKJV). This commentary by Enduring Word is good:
While I was speaking in prayer: This dramatic answer to prayer came even as Daniel prayed. Jesus said, your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him (Matthew 6:8). Whenever there seems to be a delay in answer to prayer, there is reason for the delay. When it is right to do it, God can answer prayer immediately.
Sometimes God answers prayer even before we pray. It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear (Isaiah 65:24).
Being caused to fly swiftly: This is one of the few places in the Bible where we are told that angels fly. Gabriel came quickly because there is no great distance between heaven and earth.
The time of the evening offering: This was a special time of day, when Moses offered the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:6) and when Jesus was crucified (Matthew 27:45).
As a young man in Jerusalem, Daniel often saw the smoke rising from the temple at the time of the evening sacrifice.
I particularly like the comment that Gabriel came quickly because there is no great distance between Heaven and Earth. Because I was trained as an engineer and worked for many years trying to find “root causes” of technical problems and failures, I still have displayed those curious tendencies and have pondered the idea about the physical location of heaven. Our universe is incredibly vast and the fact that there is instantaneous travel between the heavenly realms to God’s people on Earth tells me that heaven is probably in another plane of existence. Heaven is also described as being above us. But knowing where heaven is really not important, as this answer from Gotquestions.org demonstrates (they are a go-to resource today):
However, as J. I. Packer points out, “since God is spirit, ‘heaven’ . . . cannot signify a place remote from us which He inhabits. The Greek gods were thought of as spending most of their time far away from earth in sort of a celestial equivalent of the Bahamas, but the God of the Bible is not like this. Granted, the ‘heaven’ where saints and angels dwell has to be thought of as a sort of locality, because saints and angels, as God’s creatures, exist in space and time. But when the Creator is said to be ‘in heaven,’ the thought is that He exists on a different plane from us, rather than in a different place. That God in heaven is always near to his children on earth is something which the Bible takes for granted” (Growing in Christ, Crossway, 2022, pt. 3, ch. 4).
Examples of God being near to us, even though He is in heaven, include the psalmist’s assurance that “the Lord is close to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18) and Paul’s teaching that “he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27). Moses asked the children of Israel, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” (Deuteronomy 4:7). Heaven is only a prayer away.
The New Testament mentions heaven with considerable frequency, yet, even then, details of its location are missing. We will never find heaven with telescopes, star charts, or deep space probes. We will only find heaven through faith in Jesus Christ.
Amen to that!! Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We follow Him and we WILL find the Way! And God is as close to us as a prayer. It’s like if we could reach through the air molecules that surround us with earnest supplication, we can touch the infinite Realm. It is not millions of light years away and we can’t see it with a telescope. We have to look inward and upwards to the Creator of the Universe.
Gabriel tells Daniel that he is highly esteemed and he will be given insight with understanding. Daniel asked for God’s mercies and compassion for his sinful self (and by extension, the sins of Israel) and he will be getting far more than that in the answers that Gabriel provides. Another good commentary from Enduring Word:
I have now come forth to give you skill to understand: In his prayer, Daniel didn’t ask for understanding. His prayer demonstrated that his heart was close to God’s heart, so as a friend, God revealed many things to Daniel (John 15:15).
Daniel studied the passage in Jeremiah, but still didn’t understand much. In this case, understanding came more through prayer. “All students of the word will tell you that when the hammers of learning and biblical criticism have failed to break open a flinty text, oftentimes prayer has done it, and nuggets of gold have been found concealed therein. To every student of the word of God who would become a well-instructed scribe we would say, with all the means which you employ, with all your searchings of the commentaries, with all your diggings into the original, with all your researches among learned divines, mingle much fervent prayer.” (Charles Spurgeon)
“Luther affirmeth that he oft got more spiritual light by some… ardent prayer than ever he could do by the reading of many books, or by the most accurate meditation thereupon.” (John Trapp)
For you are greatly beloved: Both Daniel and the Apostle John (John 13:23) were noted for their love-relationship with God. Both Daniel and John were also noted for receiving amazing prophetic messages.
Daniel had just considered a set of “sevens” upon the nation of Israel – the 70 years of promised captivity prophesied by Jeremiah. It was as if God said through Gabriel, “Now I will show you some ‘sevens’ that will really amaze you.”
Daniel illustrated the principle that when we seek God diligently, we often receive even more than we ask for.
God is about to show Daniel that the 70 years is just the beginning of amazing prophecies with “sevens”.
One more great commentary to leave with you, again about the power of diligent prayer that is aligned with the Holy Spirit. This is from Precept Austin, quoting Ray Pritchard:
True prayer always leads to new insight and deeper understanding. Since prayer in its deepest sense is a kind of “conversation” with God, when we talk with the Lord, we always end up learning things we didn’t know before. Prayer that comes from the heart teaches us things about God, ourselves, and our circumstances that couldn’t come any other way. It is hard to put into words exactly what this means but multitudes of Christians can give a hearty Amen to this truth. When we pray, we enter a realm that goes beyond the physical because we are talking to the God who created everything. What we gain from that is more than knowledge, it is deep insight into who God is and how he works in the world. The best kind of prayer changes us from the inside out as we learn what it means to say from the heart, “Thy will be done.” (The Positive Power of Prayer).
My next devotional examines Daniel 9:24-25: The seventy weeks and the Messiah.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Thank you for giving me insight into the closeness of Heaven and the fact that there is only one Way to reach the heavenly realms. Thank you for the lessons on diligent and true prayer. Thank you for the insights that you gave Daniel, which are truly remarkable! Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Gotquestions.org was accessed on 5/11/2025 to answer the questions, “What is God’s Holy Mountain?”, “Where is Heaven?”
Commentary from Enduring Word by David Guzik is used with written permission.
Precept Austin was accessed on 5/11/2025 to review commentary for Daniel 9:20-23.