Introduction
Daniel
The story of Daniel doesn’t start in the book of Daniel. There is a long drawn out history of Israel that needs to be fully understood. The thing that is most often misconceived is that Israel never followed God. This isn’t true. Before Israel was Abraham. It was to Abraham that the promise was given.
God promised Abraham that he would be a nation, and that his offspring would be as countless as the stars. This wasn’t odd. In these times, cities and nations were named after real people. Real people had children, who then had children, who then had children. Five generations later, the family is now about 50 or 60 people. That’s enough to start a small town or city. The town or city continues to grow, and is named after the patriarch. God promises Abraham something that he has heard of, and has seen happen. Indeed, father Abraham had many sons; and many sons had father Abraham…
It was all because of a simple belief. Abraham took God at His word. This started the continuation of a people who would take God at His word. When God speaks, the servant listens. Abraham’s son Isaac followed in Abrahams trust. And his son, Israel, also lived like Abraham. And then we get to the tribes of Israel. There were twelve sons. Everyone had their flaws, including Abraham. It wasn’t about that, though.
There is a story in Genesis about how God makes a covenant with Abraham. God visits in the form of three people. They all travel to Abraham, and talk and discuss. Abraham has such hospitality that he doesn’t find it enough to open his door. He runs to the travelers (whom he doesn’t know is God), and begs them to stay with him. This speaks of the heart of Abraham, by the way.
After this discourse, God makes a covenant with Abraham. The way that you would typically make a covenant is that each party gives offerings, and they lay out the offerings in a line. Each party then walks the line toward the middle to finalize the covenant. It’s like a handshake, but more symbolism.
This isn’t what happens though. Abraham prepares all of the offerings. After preparing all of the sacrifices, he doesn’t get the opportunity to walk through. God walks through the whole thing to Abraham. The symbolism is that Abraham has nothing that he has to do. There isn’t an “Abraham’s side of the bargain.” It is all upon God and upon His faithfulness. God’s promises and covenants aren’t based on us.
So when we get to the book of Exodus, and we see Israel the nation and the way they act and treat God, we have to understand that there is something bigger behind the story. The story is in itself a piece of a story. The exodus brings the people out of Egypt, which is out of bondage. The whole of the relationship between Israel and God is that God is the deliverer. It is a statement of that first covenant. God brings them out because of His faithfulness, not because Israel upholds their side of the bargain.
Then the commandments are given. This isn’t what we think. In our Gentile minds, we see the giving of the Ten Commandments as being something that any god would do. I am God, you are not, so here is a do’s and don’ts list. That is not the heart of God. God longs to be with His people.
The Ten Commandments were given in a wedding language. Ancient Jewish culture reveals that it is a groom who would give their requirements of their bride before they wed. The bride also gives her requirements, so each know what the other party expects. After the document has been made, they sign it, and they uphold their end of the deal. God is giving Israel His requirements. Interesting fact: there is what’s called a chuppa in traditional Jewish weddings which is a symbol of God being a “cloud” over the two being married (I wonder where they get the idea of God being a cloud over them…) This is why the prophets always refer to Israel in marriage language. This is why Israel “plays the harlot” instead of a prostitute. It isn’t that Israel is selling herself short by embracing other gods; Israel is cheating on her God.
The story of Israel has its ups and downs. There are the good times and there are the bad times. You find the same thing with study of church history.
The story takes us to a time in Israel’s history that I don’t believe anyone enjoys learning about. There was a shift between the tribes of Israel that caused for some to believe they were better than others, and others to actually believe that they were less. Because of this shift, the Kingdom split into two kingdoms: northern Israel and southern Judah. Judah was not only the tribe of Judah. They had the tribe of Benjamin, Manasseh, and a handful from all the tribes. The Levitical priesthood also remained in Judah.
This split in the Kingdom only furthered the prejudice and hatred between tribes. Israel never had a good king. They were only always evil. Judah had some good kings, and wicked kings as well. There was a last good king of Judah. His name was Josiah. Josiah was very young (possibly in his early teens) when he became king. The priests found a copy of the Torah (possibly Tanakh), and read it in the hearing of the king.
Josiah was so broken over how far Judah had fallen away from the original intent of God that he rent his clothes and wept. He took all of the altars that were built to foreign gods and tore them down. As if that wasn’t enough, he then took bones and scattered them over the used-to-be-altars to defile them and ensure no one could ever use them again. There was a major reformation of Judah in the time of Josiah.
Then he passed away… The next generation was the generation of Jeremiah. There is a story in the book of Jeremiah of how these priests and prophets bound Jeremiah up with intentions to kill him. In all of the commotion, some of the nobles and royalty came down from the palace and intervened. Of these youth who came down, some of them could have been Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. You probably recognize the first name (there is a book of the Bible named after him). The other three you also know. Their Babylonian names are Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.
Now here is where it gets interesting. It isn’t for certain, but it is very plausible that these four young men were some of them who went down from the palace to save Jeremiah. The reason this is so interesting is that it seems like the same men who would have defended the prophet before exile are the same men whom God promotes and protects while in exile.
Do you see the question rising? How do we, in the world we live in now, live as a Daniel generation? We are in the generation after Josiah. If you don’t think so, then you’re severely mistaken. You’ll see what I mean.
This is a decent question. The book of Daniel helps us to understand better as to what this looks like. In the very first chapter, you see the renowned men of Judah being brought before the king’s table to be taught with the Chaldeans. They learn in the school of Babylon, they learn how to divine, they learn how to be magicians, and they learn how to be good counselors for the king. The whole thing reeks of sin.
But what do we read? “Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and asked the chief official permission not to defile himself in this way,” Daniel 1:8. There was something of a prophetic stature in Daniel to be able to see that this food and drink was not of God. When everyone else seemed to indulge and, I have to assume, count it as God’s provision, Daniel and his three friends stand up and say, “I would rather die than eat that.”
There is more going on here. This kind of seeing doesn’t come into existence simply because we read our bibles and know that it says in Leviticus that we shouldn’t eat these meats… Every Jew was taught in the local synagogue to have the Torah (first five books of the Bible) memorized through and through by the time they would graduate elementary school. This takes sensitivity to the Spirit of God that is only formed by extreme devotion to the Lord. It is only built by our relationship with God.
Daniel proves that age doesn’t matter. There are teenagers who understand deeper spiritual truths than 50-year-old pastors who have walked with the Lord for 35 years. It isn’t about how long; it is about how much. Your spirituality is measured by your devotion. Your devotion is measured by willingness.
It says of Jesus that the Spirit was given to Him without measure (John 3:34). I don’t believe that this can happen to you and I unless we are devoted and willing without measure. Every stop sign that we decide to come up to, slow down, look both ways, then drive through is a negation of truth. It is in the details. There are thousands of examples from both everyday life and from the general path of life.
Every time we cut someone off because we aren’t sure if we’ll ever have opportunity to pull out of the parking lot is detriment to our spirit. Did you pull out because you don’t trust the Lord to provide instance? What if you were supposed to stay longer for some reason the Lord had ordained? Yet we pull out and cut people off in hopes of getting to the next destination out of selfishness and pride.
My wife and I don’t drive the highway. It promotes in people a mentality of “I have to get there now.” It diminishes patience. It takes away from our ability to wait on the Lord. It builds in us the kind of character that would cut people off. It builds in us the kind of character that would want instant gratification. It is of the flesh, and ultimately of the devil. The highway, fast food restaurants, processed foods, and anything promoting “instant” are traps and snares that develop mindsets that we don’t even realize they are developing until they have already entered in.
Every time we bow the knee to Baal and we take a loan is cutting away from that which God has placed in us. Who is your provider? God? The bank? Your job? All of the above? You cannot serve two masters. If you can’t buy it outright, then you don’t need it. God will provide for your every need. If He uses your employment, then praise Him. If he uses your community, then praise Him. Do not go and get a loan when you don’t have money to afford that car, or that house, or that matching furniture. Everything in society is designed to be bought out of debt. Debt is spoken against through the entire Bible. I believe the deeper spiritual aspect is that debt is directly related to Baal.
It is in these little things that we forfeit the Spirit of God. There are thousands of them a day. When we are willing to ignore the little details, we are willing to ignore the God of those details. We will not have the ability to discern the difference between the clean and the unclean, the precious and the vile. There will be gray area that the king’s meat will fall into where we’re unsure. There will be others who won’t even have the gray area of uncertainty. They will joyfully eat of it without remorse.
Our spiritual testimony to the world hinges upon this. If we eat the food and drink the wine, we’re just like everyone else and our words have no power. To abstain from it, we will find fierce opposition (like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah). They were thrown into a fiery furnace. Daniel was put into a lion’s den. The gods of this world hate it when we oppose the system that they have placed in effect.
It is our opposition to them that will cause for persecution. We won’t need to go searching. It isn’t about our prayer being neglected and our churches are full of lazy people. The real issue is that without the proper attention to these details, the kingdom of darkness is able to say to us, “Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are you?”
Lets keep going through the book of Daniel, because it does show some profound things. In chapter 3, we see these three men of Daniel’s companions stand in opposition to an entire faulted system. The system is that the king orders, and the king gets what he orders. He has the power, and he will exercise this power without humility. There is no need or reason to be humble. You listen to him because you are the peon in the pew, and he is the pastor. You are the peasant in the plain; he is the president in the palace. You are the plodder; he is the professional. Got the picture?
This stems directly to how we’re taught to think about ourselves. We’re worth more than what we have. We’re taught that we deserve the best in life. We’re taught that we deserve the Hollywood lifestyle, even if we’re making a few percent (or in my case, not even that) of what Hollywood makes. We’re taught that it’s ours for the taking. This mindset of the king’s isn’t some peculiarity or an anomaly. It is what the principalities and powers preach. It is what every person feels, even if only slightly.
The King has spoken, and you must listen. He has said that you shall worship this statue when the trumpets and horns and music start playing. And Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego continue to stand and neglect the worship of this statue. It is a stance against an entire governmental system that describes the last days and even these days here and now. These men defy something deeper than a government official. They defy the very spiritual powers behind that governmental figure.
This is how you must read the Scriptures. When they are cast into the fiery furnace, it is because they have gone against the ways of the world. They have stood in opposition to something that everyone held to be “the way it is.” They stood against those dark powers that bind men to death and keep them bound, and offered the world resurrection by saying in their disobedience, “You don’t have to live like this.” They stand in the gap and tell the world all about the lie that society so preaches, and we in the Church have so believed. These three men came against a system that says, “If you’re ever going to have a house, you’ll need a loan.” Then I don’t need a house. I don’t need a car. I don’t need the supermarket. I’ll buy and sell in my own way. I find my own employment without having to support a system built by Satan. I’ll plant my own garden, and from it shall I eat.
I believe that this is the answer to a question that I’ve heard quite a bit. If at the end of the times we cannot buy, sell, or trade, then how will we live? We will live by growing our own crop and taking care of each other. As it was at the first, where they sold everything and shared with one another, so it shall be at the end.
That is why they were tossed into the furnace. The false humility of the king is also presented in that he offers them their lives if they will bow down to the statue of gold. Doesn’t this story just sound like all of the kid’s movies we’ve watched? The hero stands against all that is evil, and just when it looks like it might be the end, the evil doer gives one last chance to surrender to the dark side…
They don’t. In fact, they insult the king. “Even if our God doesn’t deliver us, we’re still not bowing down to your stupid statue that doesn’t even talk, and that you built with your own hands. It is not a god, and it doesn’t deserve humanity to even acknowledge it.” It is no wonder why the king turned the heat up to the maximum.
What does it say? How does the story end? These three men, our heroes, those who are within our cloud of witnesses walk in the furnace with a fourth man. And the fourth man looks like a son of the gods… There are obvious theological implications we can take from this. I’m sure you’ve either heard or thought about how Jesus walks with us through our fiery furnaces. What I want to glean is not the fourth person with them, but that they don’t smell like smoke, and they aren’t even singed. There is simply no evidence that they were even tossed into the flame.
Where, oh grave, is your victory? And where, oh death, is your sting?
Martyrdom isn’t something that is optional. It is a necessity. And because it is a necessity, it isn’t something that happens at the end of your life. Martyrdom is the style of living in opposition to these principalities and powers. You know persecution will come. You know death is an option. You live in opposition anyway. You bump against the grain anyway. Even when they threaten you with death, you say, “Our God will deliver us. But even if He doesn’t, we still won’t bow the knee.”
That is martyrdom. When we count it as blessing to walk through the fire of the furnace, whether it means life or death. Suffering isn’t something we fear. The displeasure of men (or our parents) isn’t something that we fear. We wrestle not with flesh and blood…
All of this brings me to the story of Stephen. I have recently been convicted of having anger in my heart towards a fellow brother. I know it is true that God is offended at his behavior. Yet, I was not able to let it go and say, “Father, forgive him. He doesn’t know what he is doing.” What is it about Jesus’ character and Stephen’s character that caused them to say such things while they were at the verge of death?
I believe, now, that it is an understanding of the powers behind such systems. When the religious system came against them, they were able to see that it wasn’t the people doing it. It was the powers that were ruling them. I had it wrong. This man is a brother. He is supposed to know better. He is supposed to know that this kind of action and unwillingness toward God is unacceptable. Yet, though he has no excuse, it wasn’t my place to judge him. I am to judge the angels.
It is my place to stand in the gap for him, and to condemn the powers behind him that blind him. There was something in me of authenticity that stood against whatever was in him. Though it is true that it is evil in him, it doesn’t mean that he is evil. The opposition between the two of us was not noticed.
He didn’t realize what was happening. And those people I gave that message to didn’t realize that when truth went forth, they didn’t have the capacity of truth in their own lives to receive it. So they rejected it by rejecting the messenger. It wasn’t that they are evil, it was that they are bound my Satan. And they need someone to be able to pray, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”
There has to be a generation who is able to stand against the powers, and at the same time offer to even the rulers and the kings and priests and prophets and all of those who oppose us freedom. We are to in one sense stretch out a hand in opposition, and with the other hand stretch out relief and freedom. With one hand we hold back the powers of darkness and with the other we offer hope. We wrestle not with flesh and blood, and this is how we can be a Daniel generation.
This kind of thing doesn’t come with prayer and fasting. These things help, but they must come with wrestling. We have to wrestle with the Scriptures and with theology and with our community and with God Himself. We must be willing to truly pray. This kind of prayer that wrestles until the blessing comes is the only thing that will suffice. That is why this is only the introduction. We need to examine the character of God in order to understand better what details we need to pay attention to.
At the heart of everything we do and say and believe is our perception of who God is. God’s one strike against Israel in the Psalms is “You thought I was one like yourself.” It was in the wrong understanding of God that the people Israel did wickedness. The same is true for us. It is in our wrong understanding of the character of God that we wrestle with flesh and blood instead of the principalities and powers.
This book is my hope to try and express something of an authentic view of God. A lot of the polytheistic and ancient and medieval views of God are very much alive today. The Christ we preach is not Jewish anymore, let alone different than other gods. Please consider what the following pages have to say with openness and humility.