White Repentance: How Not to Miss a Daniel 9 Holy Moment

We are in a holy moment. It’s one of those times when heaven bends near to earth. If we don’t miss it, our actions now can affect great change on the earth.

A Daniel 9 Moment

Daniel 9 is one of the most mind-blowing chapters in the Bible. Because they abandoned the Lord, the people of Judah had been conquered and hauled off to Babylon. Daniel was a righteous man. He had nothing to do with the sin of his nation.

Daniel 9 is a beautiful prayer, where Daniel repents on behalf of his nation. Even though he personally had nothing to do with it, he owns his country’s sin, even from past generations, as his own. And he repents for them. There’s a spiritual Kingdom principle on display here—the righteous repenting for the unrighteous.

Repenting for Generational Sins

We talk about this all the time in inner healing. Often, the sins of our ancestors manifest bad fruit in our lives. We often see patterns in families, conditions or events happening generation after generation. For example, the first male infant dying. The onset of mental illness in adults in their 40s. A particular kind of abuse. Every adult male dying of a heart attack in their early 50s.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that every heart attack is a sign of generational sin. But if every adult male for the last five generations has died of a heart attack between ages 50-55, there’s something generational going on. Now these are extreme examples, but it’s very common in inner healing to go back through your family line and look for obvious patterns.

The good news is the blood of Jesus is stronger. We can repent for the sins of our ancestors and break judgements and curses off our family line. And it’s not just possible in families. Daniel 9 is an example of one righteous man repenting for the sin of his whole nation. We can do this for our family, our nation, and our race.

White Racism in America

Rebellion is usually a bad and ungodly thing. So in the 1770s when the 13 American Colonies decided to rebel against England and form their own country, Thomas Jefferson was charged with writing a document that intellectually defended why rebellion was actually the moral thing to do in this case.

While writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson couldn’t justify the Colonies’ right to be free, without also justifying their slaves’ right to be free. He couldn’t reconcile freeing the Colonies from tyranny and establishing a free people while enslaving a people within our own borders. So he wrote the abolition of slavery into the original draft.

That sparked a heated debate in the Continental Congress. It was a non-starter for the Southern states. The Northern states knew, if they were going to pull off this Revolution thing at all, that all 13 colonies had to be united. So they capitulated and dropped that clause out of Jefferson’s Declaration. (NOTE: I am not justifying their decision; just relaying what happened.)

With that fateful decision, by refusing to abolish slavery, the founding fathers baked racism into the country they founded, into the very fabric of this new nation. They tabled that decision, deferring to fight that battle another day.

Please don’t get me wrong. This is the best country on the planet and America has blessed the world. People are fighting to get here. But I think that decision had consequences, unintended by those who opposed slavery at the time, but none the less. Allowing that spiritual stronghold to remain at the founding of the nation did us no favors.

So fight that battle another day we did. Less than 100 years later, the Civil War became the bloodiest devastation this nation has ever seen, before or since. In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln correctly discerned the heavenly justice being wrought upon his country by that terrible war.

“….  all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…” – President Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

Lincoln correctly discerned Heaven’s judgement: Every dollar made through free and stolen slave labor was repaid by the economic devastation of war. Every drop of slave blood taken by the whip was repaid on the battlefield by the musket ball and the bayonet.

Yet after slavery officially ended, even after that terrible war, racism persists, even to this day. Spiritual strongholds die hard.

Our Chance

So now we find ourselves, I believe, in a holy moment. We have a unique opportunity.

To my white brothers and sisters: We have a unique opportunity to listen. It’s a rare gift. We have an opportunity to make our black brothers and sisters feel heard. They have felt unheard and invisible for far too long. Although we weren’t even alive during slavery, it’s our generation’s responsibility to hear the pain our brothers and sisters feel today because of the enduring effects of racism.

We have an opportunity, I believe a heavenly window, to repent for the generational sins of our white race. But Dave, I had nothing to do with it! I treat everyone the same! I abhor racism! Yeah, I know. So do I. I don’t practice racism either. And I know we are all just as shocked by the police brutality we’ve witnessed.

Daniel didn’t have anything to do with the sins of his people that led them into captivity in Babylon. Yet he repented for those sins, as if they were his own. And heaven heard. We can do the same thing.

In this holy moment, we have the opportunity to end racism in this country once and for all. I know change doesn’t happen overnight, but we can, in this moment, commit to see it through.

Call to Action

Will you, as a white Christian, join me in repenting for the sins of our race? Go into your prayer closet and cry out to the Living God in repentance, like Daniel did.

Will you take this pledge with me?

I will speak up and not be silent when I hear it from others.
I will film and post injustice when I witness it.
I will get involved, and willingly pay the price for doing so.
In as much as it depends on me, I will not tolerate the existence of racism.

To my black brothers and sisters: Please forgive us. Forgive my people for our shameful and sinful treatment of you. Forgive us for not hearing your pain, and so often blaming you for it. Forgive us for looking the other way. No more. Although there will be pockets of hatred in all races until Jesus returns, please know that the vast majority of whites are just as horrified by the death of George Floyd as you are. I pray in the wake of this that police reform sweeps the country. And I pray that you feel seen and heard. You deserve to be. #BlackLivesMatter.

Your Turn

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