Our God Reigns — Part One

We’re working our way through the book of Daniel at the moment, and we’ve come to chapter 6. And we’re going to read chapter 6 now. I invite you, if you have a Bible, to turn and follow along as I read. I’m going to read from the first verse:

“It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, ‘We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.’

“Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, ‘O King Darius, live forever! All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.’ Therefore King Darius signed the document and injunction.

“When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, ‘O king! Did you not sign an injunction, that anyone who makes petition to any god or man within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions?’ The king answered and said, ‘The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.’ Then they answered and said before the king, ‘Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.’

“Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed and set his mind to deliver Daniel. And he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, ‘Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.’

“Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, ‘May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!’ And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.

“Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, ‘O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?’ Then Daniel said to the king, ‘O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.’ Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God. And the king commanded, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. And before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.

“Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: ‘Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever; his kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end. He delivers and rescues; he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, he who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.’

“So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

And we’ll pray before we look at the Bible:

Make the Book live to me, O Lord,
Show me yourself within your Word,
Show me myself and show me my Savior,
And make the Book live to me.[1]

For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Well, in reaching chapter 6, we’ve come to what is undoubtedly the most familiar story in the book of Daniel. Even people who know very little about the Bible will probably know something concerning Daniel and his lions’ den, in the same way that they will know that Noah had an ark. And we have, many of us, enjoyed the privilege of taking this story, along with other stories from Daniel, and sharing them with our children and with our grandchildren. (That’s one of them just acknowledging the fact as I mention it now.) But if we are tempted to dismiss or to sideline these recorded incidents in Daniel as being little more than good moralistic stories for children, then it is imperative that we reconsider.

It is possible to go through these first six chapters of Daniel simply in a moralistic way, saying, “These people were very good, and you should be very good as well. Daniel was a very strong fellow. Why don’t you become a strong fellow?” And, of course, there’s value in that. But that’s not the reason we have the book of Daniel, and that’s not the message of these chapters.

We’ve reminded ourselves consistently that this book was initially written to the exiled Jews in Babylon and then under the Medo-Persian Empire. They had been taken away from their home. They were living in a strange world. They no longer had their temple. They no longer had their liturgy. They had very little at all. They were tempted to say, “It’s a waste of time even singing the praise of God. How can we do this? Why don’t we just hang our harps up on the trees and give up on the whole deal?”[2] And Daniel writes to them, and as he records these incidents, and as they receive them, it becomes apparent to them that Daniel doesn’t have any of this stuff either. But Daniel prays. And Daniel knows that even when the external fabric of religion is dismantled and in some cases destroyed, as it is for many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world this morning, God remains God, and access to him remains the same.

And so it is that this book comes initially to readers who by this point were tempted to give up on the law of God, and Daniel says, “I didn’t do it, and you shouldn’t.” And they were tempted also to give up on the idea that there would ever be any deliverance for them at all. And as Daniel has recorded these incidents, they have been galvanized into understanding that although the kingdoms of the world are in opposition to the work of God, still God remains God, and he is, and he will accomplish his purposes.

And you will remember that the genesis for this—it was largely in our thinking as a result of the reaction of many of us to the Supreme Court decision of a month and a half or two months ago now. Because so many people began to say, “Oh dear, oh dear! What has happened now? Everything has collapsed on us.” And so I said, “Now, let’s study the book of Daniel together and understand that we serve the living and the true God and that nothing has taken him by surprise, nothing is actually out of control, and nothing is about to get out of control.” And this incident is a classic reminder of the sovereign purpose and power of God.

Now, again, if we are tempted to say, “Well, it’s a sort of nice story for children,” it absolutely is not! It is the story of an innocent man, pushing eighty years of age, who is condemned to death because he chose loyalty to God over obedience to the state. Let me say that to you again: it is the story of an old man, pushing eighty, an innocent man, who is condemned to death because of his loyalty to God, which he chose over obedience to an arbitrary edict that came from the Medo-Persian government. That’s the story. That’s what we have recorded here. That immediately takes it far beyond the realm of “Daniel was a purposeful fellow, and it really would be good if you were purposeful as well.” All right?

Even when the external fabric of religion is dismantled and in some cases destroyed, as it is for many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world, God remains God, and access to him remains the same.

There’s a lot of water has gone under the bridge since Daniel and his friends had been snatched up and carried away into Babylon, recorded for us in Daniel chapter 1. And you’ll remember on that occasion that they drew a line in the sand when it came to the matter of defiling themselves with the king’s food.[3] And at that point, we tried to make sure that we understood just exactly what was involved in that. Here were a group of young men. They were very intelligent. They were the best of the characters that could be snatched away in the initial invasion. They were trained in the things of God. They had been raised within the framework of their Jewish homes. But now they were taken into an alien world, they were reeducated, repatriated, they were given a new name, and they were confronted by every kind of temptation that any young man or group of young men would be confronted with.

Sometimes when we read the Bible, we tend to think that they are somehow or another just transposed out of the routine of life. But there would have been all of those Babylonian girls. There was all of that Babylonian education. There was the fact that they were given a new name. And it was a huge temptation to them to simply be swept in with the rest. Any dead fish flows with the current; it takes a live fish to swim against the stream. Were they going to swim against the stream? Was there a point at which they said, “From this point, we go no further”? And the answer was yes, and they chose the issue of the dietary laws. It wasn’t that there was something sacrosanct about that, but it was simply that they determined, “There is a point beyond which we will not go in being absorbed into the culture.”

And if they had not made that decision in chapter 1, then there would be no story for us to read in chapter 6—the simple observation that what we are in our early years, God being God, will be what we are in our later years. If you think you’re going to be something at eighty that you’re not now, then you better start playing catch up. Just think about it in terms of investments that we get every weekend with the golf tournaments, as I’ve told you before. They’re trying to tell you, “You’ve only got three years left, you know. You’ll be broke if you don’t hurry up and save every penny you’ve ever had.” And some of us are in that situation, because we’re not really reading our Bibles, we’re not really engaged in the community of God’s people, and we’re banking on the fact that somehow or another, when we get into the final decade, that we’re going to really make a big push then, and then we’ll finish strong. Can I say to you today: don’t wait till then. You’re a teenager here today. You’re a boy or a girl here today. Resolve in your youthfulness. Resolve when your life is opening before you, so that you may then prove, in the chapter 6 reality, the benefits of the decisions that have been made in the chapter 1.

You see, because by this point, Daniel would have been—his accent would have been the same as everybody else around him. It would have been indistinguishable. His family wouldn’t have been picked out in the crowd. They were part of it all. And his loyalty to the state surely wasn’t in question. He had been a strategic member of successive governments. And in passing, for any of the Jewish exiles who are asking the question, “What do we do about government? Should we be involved in government? Should we serve these pagans?” or whatever else it might be, Daniel was answering the question, “Yes! Yes!” There’s a point at which he says no, as we’re going to see. But in terms of the daily involvement, he wasn’t suggesting to them by his lifestyle that the way you impact the culture is by a total withdrawal from it—that you circle the wagons and you hide off by yourselves. We could never argue that from the Prophets, or from Daniel here specifically. Okay?

Now, we need to keep in mind these things. And also, we should note that the greatest test for Daniel comes toward the end of his life and not at the beginning of his life. There’s another one for us to notice. Most of us, I think, have got the idea that all the temptation comes at the front end, and if you can just live long enough, there’s nothing left to tempt you. So far, that isn’t working for me. I don’t know if it’s working for you. And he faces the greatest temptation, the potential for collapse, as he pushes eighty. Therefore, the challenge that is before him is a real challenge.

And it’s worth acknowledging the fact that when we observe his distinct commitment here—which is a kind of Margaret Thatcher commitment, if you’ll forgive me. People have been asking me, in recent days, “And so, who are you going for, for president?” And I told them, “Margaret Thatcher.” And they said, “But she’s dead.” And I said, “I know.” But you’ll remember, she was the Iron Lady, and her classic statement in the House of Commons: “You may turn if you wish, but this lady is not for turning.”

The people in Daniel’s day may equivocate and capitulate if they wish, but Daniel says, “And I am not for turning. I’ve not lived all these decades of my life to capitulate and do a U-turn right now as I face my own demise.” It’s a wonderful word. And it’s a word to those of you who are a little older than some of the rest of us. We’re watching for you, to see you run all the way to the end of the race, all the way through the tape. Breast the tape! No silly stuff towards the end! Daniel, he helps us in that.

Incidentally, if our view of what it means to love and serve God is a sort of superficial, contemporary, Western Christian view, then we’re going to have a really hard time with this chapter. If my perspective on what it means to live for Jesus involves self-fulfillment, freedom from pain, the pursuit of prosperity, the enjoyment of comfort, then we’re going to find it precious difficult to identify with the decision made by Daniel, which says, “I am going to do this, even if I die for it.” Is there anything that I would die for? Anything you would die for? That’s the challenge that is here.

Now, I’ve taken a long time on that, and so I need to acknowledge what I acknowledged in the first service, and that is that I’m breaking my rule today, and I’m going to do this chapter both in the morning and in the evening. I can’t get through it all now, I know, just looking at the clock.

Daniel Was Distinguished

But notice, first of all, that Daniel was distinguished. He was distinguished. That’s what we’re told. Verse 3: “This Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and [the] satraps.”

Now, the context is this vast empire. The Medo-Persian Empire was the biggest empire that the world had ever seen to that point in history. And the king is responsible for ensuring that the empire works. Incidentally, you could argue the legitimacy of the idea—that is, the challenge confronting Daniel here—simply on the basis of the fact that it provided an opportunity for the entire empire to be on the one page together, as it were. And as he has established his governmental structure, he’s made sure that these satraps are placed strategically throughout the empire, you will notice it says, “so that”—the end of verse 2—“the king might suffer no loss.” In other words, he wants to make sure, presumably, that he doesn’t lose territory and that he doesn’t lose taxation. And in order to do that, he has put these key people in place. Watching how this has unfolded, he then determines that this Daniel character has such “an excellent spirit … in him”—you read that phrase there towards the end of verse 3—that he says to himself, “I’m going to put Daniel in charge of the whole operation. I’m going to make him the prime minister. I’m going to establish him above the rest of these individuals.”

Says Joyce Baldwin in her little commentary on Daniel, “A senior person known to be impervious to corruption … would be an obvious candidate for [the top job].”[4] That’s good! “A senior person known to be impervious to corruption would be an obvious candidate for [the top job].” And that is exactly how Daniel was revealed. Daniel understood what you read in Micah chapter 6:

He has [shown] you, O man, what is good;
 and what does the Lord require of you
but to do [justly], … to love [mercy],
 and to walk humbly with your God?[5]

And so we’re told in verse 4 that these colleagues of Daniel, who, when they realized what was going on, knew immediately that there would be no way that they could fault him on the basis of his review as a significant member of the government. Because verse 4 tells us that he was not only of “an excellent spirit,” in verse 3, but there was “no [basis] for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him.” He was faithful. He was trustworthy. He was reliable.

That’s jolly good, isn’t it? That’s what we’re supposed to be as those who are the servants of the living God. You don’t have to walk around with a Thompson Chain-Reference Bible to let the people in your office know that you are seeking to follow God or Jesus. In fact, it’s probably not a good idea. You don’t need the back of your car filled with a bunch of inane bumper stickers declaring your allegiance to political parties and to Jesus as well. Do as you choose. It’s your car. But the fact of the matter is, what is far more compelling is to be faithful, to be trustworthy, and to be reliable—to show up when you say you’ll show up, to do a full day’s job, to finish at the right time, don’t steal the pencils, answer the telephone, write thank you notes, be courteous.

It’s a significant thing to be a man of purity in a dirty world, to be a girl of integrity in a shady world, to be marked by stability in a world that shakes and moves underneath us.

Daniel was all of that, you see. He would never have been regarded for the top job because he was an eminent servant of the living God—just. It was because he was good at his job! And it’s good to be good at your job. Let’s just notice that in passing. It’s a significant thing to be a man of purity in a dirty world, to be a girl of integrity in a shady world, to be marked by stability in a world that shakes and moves underneath us.

Daniel Was Despised

Now, when you take that as a profile, you have to say to yourself, “Surely such an individual would be highly regarded by his peers.” But that’s not the case. He is distinguished, but secondly, and what will be finally, he was also despised. He was despised. The fact that he was in line for promotion meant that they were in line, essentially, for demotion, because they were not going to get the top floor and the corner office, and they didn’t like that. And they despised him.

In fact, down in verse 13, when they are speaking to the king, they refer to Daniel in this way: “Then they answered and said before the king, ‘Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you.’” That’s interesting. What are they doing, informing the king that Daniel was an exile from Judah? Like the king: “Oh, he’s an exile from Judah! I never knew that!” No! What are they doing? Well, they’re demeaning him. They’re not saying, “Daniel, your favorite,” or “Daniel, who is such an exemplary, trustworthy, phenomenal character.” No, they’re saying, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah. He is a second-class citizen! We conquered Judah! Remember, king, we brought these characters in.” And from the perspective of the Persians, Daniel was part of an inferior race. And bad enough that someone was going to get the top job over them, but for a foreigner to get the top job over them! It’s like some of you here in these American companies, and you find out that some soul from Yorkshire is about to become the CEO: “It’s bad enough I’m not getting the job, but why’d you bring somebody from Yorkshire of all places? Where is that?” Well, it’s that kind of flavor, isn’t it?

Now, because they’re unable to fault him in his work, they have to come up with a plan that will force Daniel to choose between the law of his God and the law of the land. And that, of course, is exactly what they do. And they maneuver the situation in such a way—and you see that in the text that is before you—to get the king to “establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction”—this is verse 7 now—so “that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.”

Now, let me pause and just ask you a question: What possible right did these characters have to make such a law? What possible right does government have to make arbitrary laws? You see, this was an arbitrary decision, and in opposing it, Daniel wasn’t simply protesting his right to pray to his own God, but he was protesting against a view of the state that refuses to recognize that there is a law higher than itself from which inalienable human rights derive.

Now, I don’t want to delay on this, and those of you who are thoughtful can think it through. But you understand the contemporary aspect of this. When governments make arbitrary laws, refusing to recognize that they are actually underneath the jurisdiction of he who is the Lawgiver—for those of you who did jurisprudence, the difference between positive law and natural law, and that natural law is that which is there, built into the very fabric of humanity, as a result of the fact that the God who created us is the Lawgiver—whenever governments begin arbitrarily to take to themselves the making of laws that refuse to recognize that they are under the jurisdiction of the great Lawgiver, then every culture is inevitably in danger. And, indeed, democracy itself! Because if you think about the British parliamentary structure or American constitutional law, the very structure of democracy demands the existence, presupposes the existence, that there is a higher throne, that there is a Lawgiver. And in these Ten Commandments, there is a summation of that which God, who created the universe, decided and is convinced of the fact that these need to be part and parcel of our existence if we are able to secure the very inalienable human rights that we rely on.

Well, all of that is there for your consideration as you read this at home.

They maneuver the king into passing this edict. They are agreed on this. They “came [in] agreement,” it says in verse 6. Two or three times, I tried to point it out as I was reading it—the phrase “[and they] came by agreement.” What a wonderful thing it is when you get politicians actually agreeing with one another. Fascinating, isn’t it? They agreed. They came in agreement. I don’t care whether it’s the Republican or the Democratic Party—you put them end to end, they couldn’t reach a conclusion, every single one of them. How are they going to agree? “I disagree.” “I agree.” “I disagree.” “I disagree.” “I disagree.” Where can you get all these clowns agreeing? Where do they agree in this case? They agree in their opposition to the living God. They are prepared to forsake all other aspects of their convictions in order that they might come in agreement and say, “We don’t want this living God stuff here. We don’t want this Daniel in position here. We’re not going to have this. This is our world.”

And so, in verse 7, they lie to the king. They tell him, “All…” That’s the beginning of verse 7: all the officials, all the satraps, the counselors, the governors, and so on. That’s not true. If the king had been awake, he would have said, “Wait a minute! Daniel’s not here, is he?” But he wasn’t awake. I guess that’s part of being a king. They stroked his ego, and they moved him along: “We’re only making sure that if anybody wants to do any praying at all, he can only pray to you, O king”—verse 7. You can see the king sitting up on his throne, saying, “Well, that’s not a bad plan. I kind of like that. Everybody… Yes. After all, I am the king.”

What do you have here? You have Psalm 2 here. Psalm 2. Look at these characters as they “take counsel together, against the Lord[’s] [Servant] and … his Anointed.”[6] That’s what’s happening here. They’re cool, they’re calculated, and they’re cowardly. And what they’re seeking to do is to enact this in such a way that at the end of the day, they will be able to lay the responsibility for Daniel’s death at the door of the king and not themselves. Masterful!

But loved ones, what is the real conflict here? The real conflict here is the conflict which runs from the very beginning of the Bible all the way throughout human history. And we’ve been trying to point this out as we’ve gone through: that it is the conflict between light and darkness. By the time Peter is writing, he describes the Evil One as “a roaring lion, [looking for] someone to devour.”[7] And here, the lion is going to do the business of the destruction of this person who’s so focused on the living God.

You see, it wasn’t that Daniel had trampled on his colleagues in order to get the top job. They probably would’ve been able to understand that and probably forgive it. But what they couldn’t handle was that he had an unswerving commitment to Yahweh, and they knew that—so that when he went in to pray, as it’s described for us in the chapter, and he turned his face towards Jerusalem, it wasn’t that he was simply having his quiet time, it wasn’t simply that he was having his own personal devotional exercises, but he was actually declaring his conviction that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was truth and final truth, and in such a way that it left no space for believing that all of the other religions were equally valid.

You see, pluralism can only tolerate pluralists. You see, in this context, people could believe in any god they wanted: “You got a god? You’ve got an idea? You’ve got a spirituality? You’ve got a construct? You’ve got a concept? That’s fine! We can absorb it all, except one. Don’t start saying that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the true and living God and there is no other god despite this one.” That’s what they couldn’t stand.

Do you get the contemporary relevance of it today? It’s increasingly unacceptable in the social climate of our day—again, one of pluralism; a place and a climate that makes space for just about every notion and idea. And you see it on the back of cars. I take photographs of the back of cars. I took one the other day again. I am amazed at the confluence of philosophical mumbo jumbo that is contained on the back of a car. But there is a unifying principle in all of these when I take them, and that is: having given up on the God who made the universe, as Chesterton said, it’s not that we believe in nothing; it is that we now believe in everything. So there’s just about everything on there. You can believe in this and that and the next thing. They all work! The one thing we cannot believe is what?

Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I give my life for the sheep.”[8] “I am the door. Anybody that came before me was a thief and a robber. I’m the only way.”[9] How politically correct is that? Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. [And] no one comes to the Father except through me.”[10] That doesn’t work in pluralism either. Paul says, “There is [only] one mediator between God and [man],” and that is “the man Christ Jesus.”[11] Well, what happened to Krishna? What happened to Buddha? What happened to Muhammad? What happened to Joseph Smith? They have no place. No place!

Now, you see how this worked out. When the power of the Holy Spirit is unleashed upon the apostles, they go out onto the streets of Jerusalem, and what do they say? “[We got to tell you that] there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which [you] must be saved.”[12] And they said, “Well, we’re not going to put up with that stuff!”

For the first time—really, for the first time in my life—I find myself coming to terms with many of the statements of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, where he gathers his disciples, and there’s a crowd with him, and, remember, he says to them, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad.”[13] Now, I say “for the first time” because most of my life, I have listened to people come from other countries in the world and explain the pressure and the tyranny of whatever it is. I think of one of my good friends, who’s an ophthalmologist from Glasgow, who established an eye clinic in Afghanistan, and telling me years ago, when it was the muja—those guys, the first time around, when we were on the other side from which we were on the last time we were on a side. But he told me that the only way that they could identify with another believer was if they were in a crowd. They were able to give each other a handshake, and they would know that someone had come alongside them in a crowd and just held their hand in a particular way. I said, “Wow, what a strange thing! Well, what if you just stood outside and told them that you loved Jesus?” He said, “Oh no, we couldn’t do that. You’d die for that.”

Well, we’re not there yet, are we? But maybe a little closer. And I think our studies in Daniel are helping us—if not for our generation, for the generation to come. I don’t think that’s alarmist. I don’t think it’s a rhetorical flourish. I think it’s just a safe reading of history. We’re no longer—we’re no longer—the moral majority. We actually never were. We are now the rabble minority. And if your view of Christianity does not allow for you to face that notion, then I don’t know that either you or I, if I hold the same perspective, will be able to stand before what Paul refers to in [2] Thessalonians 2 as “the mystery of lawlessness.”[14]

Well, our time is gone. We’ll come back this evening.

Father, thank you. Thank you that we have a Bible to read. Thank you that you’ve given us the faculty of thought. Thank you that we can examine the Scriptures to see if these things are so.[15] We thank you that you are the God who protected your people throughout these times, and we look to you in the same fashion this morning. And we thank you that while the grass withers, and the flower falls, that your Word remains forever.[16] And so we pray that you will give us an increased confidence in the authority and sufficiency of the Bible, so that we might live to the praise of your glory. For we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.” Language modernized.

[2] See Psalm 137.

[3] See Daniel 1:8.

[4] Joyce G. Baldwin, Daniel: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1978), 128.

[5] Micah 6:8 (ESV).

[6] Psalm 2:2 (ESV).

[7] 1 Peter 5:8 (ESV).

[8] John 10:11 (paraphrased).

[9] John 10:7–8 (paraphrased).

[10] John 14:6 (ESV).

[11] 1 Timothy 2:5 (ESV).

[12] Acts 4:12 (ESV).

[13] Matthew 5:11–12 (NIV).

[14] 2 Thessalonians 2:7 (ESV).

[15] See Acts 17:11.

[16] See Isaiah 40:8.