Daniel
1 – 6
As we open in Daniel we see a bunch of famous stories that
will be difficult to comment on each one. You have the Daniel fast, many dream
interpretations, his three friends being tossed into a fire and the den of
lions. All these stories show to the glory of God over man’s ideas and of
lesser gods. Most of this story takes place in Babylon and if you remember a
study of that civilization from Nimrod on up, it’s a place of great evil. All
the cults and evil stems from Nimrod and Semiramis, so we now understand the
evil that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah faced.
Verse 1:12 has Daniel entering into the “fast” which only
included veggies and water:
Please, do us a favor. Put
us, your servants, to the test for the next 10 days. Give us a vegetarian diet
and water.
Daniel is doing without the food from the kings table which
is not part of the Hebraic Law as it was not prepared or violates foods
allowed. The four focus on eating veggies only and nothing more. Honestly that
diet would serve us all well and I call it that over a “fast” since I tend to
think of “fasts” as more doing without food altogether. The point here is after
the 10 days they were healthier, I think all of us will find that to be true
today with all the processed foods we eat.
Verse 2:28 says it all:
But there is a God in heaven who
can reveal such mysteries. The dream you dreamed and the visions you saw, King
Nebuchadnezzar, unveil the future and disclose what will
happen at the end of the age. Now I will tell you what you dreamed and the
visions you saw as you slept in your bed.
He was pointing out that no man could reveal mysteries, but
God could. I think one of the danger points in this world today is missing this
point. Mystics can see what happened through the demons, but they can only
observe the world. Only God knows what is going on in our heads. No man or
entity can do this. (Sorry about little explanation on the demon thing, but
research modern fortune tellers … they can tell your past from demons and make
you think they somehow know truth because of this).
Verse 3:25 is a critical verse in the Old Testament:
Then why do I see four men,
completely unbound, walking around in the middle of the fire? They don’t appear
to be hurt at all. And the fourth . . . he appears to be like a
son of the gods.
Many say the “son of the gods” was actually the son of God,
Jesus in the fires with these three men. This is exciting when you look at it
this way since it’s a record of the son of God on earth well before he was born
to Mary. How cool is that when you find little nuggets like this in scripture.