Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.
Daniel 6:10 KJV

Introduction

Daniel is one of my favorite books, especially when you read his prophecies and then you turn around and read history side by side. It's an amazing experience and that's what I want to do as we go through these episodes. But there's a lot of spiritual things and spiritual lessons that I find within the book of Daniel as well. So we're going to be stepping through that. It's going to be a lot of information, but before we jump into it, I think it's important to establish a foundation of who Daniel is, why the Israelites were in Babylon in the first place—start with the basics or the context of the book before we start getting into the prophecy.

So in this episode, we're going to focus mainly on Daniel 1 and Daniel 6. These are—I think—the only two passages in the entirety of the book (maybe Daniel 3, but we're going to do Daniel 3 separately), that are not actually prophecies, but just exposition telling us what has happened.

Introducing Daniel (Daniel 1)

In Daniel 1, we learn about Daniel and his friends arriving in Babylon. The reason they are in Babylon is because judgment had been pronounced upon the southern kingdom of Israel, which is often referred to as Judah, for their breach of the covenant. That's a broad way of saying it; if you go 2 Chronicles I'll link the exact verse in the show notes and in the description but there's a verse where they are being told that they're going to be punished for the Sabbath years that they did not keep so within the covenant.[1]—It talks about a "Sabbath year." So, you have the Sabbath which is the seventh day of the week, but they also had a seven year Sabbath, where you would have six years of work and then on the seventh year the land was meant to rest. Then they had the jubilee which was like the seven sevens, basically, it was after the 49th year. There were all of these different Ssabbaths that they were supposed to be upholding, and they didn't actually hold them. So they are sent into captivity. There's a verse in Jeremiah where it actually says that they would be in captivity, under Babylon for every sabbath that they didn't keep. One year for every Sabbath they didn't keep or something like that.[1] So, this is how they ended up in this situation.

Daniel and His Friends Fast

The king of Babylon decides that he's going to take the best of the best—the brightest that Israel has—and he's going to employ them in his services. This is how Daniel and Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael end up in the palace, or the castle, whatever you want to call it. They're in the king's abode and they're being given the choice food. They're being given from the king's kitchen, essentially. This food is not appropriate for those following the Most High.

The Most High gave specific instructions about what we are and are not to eat. In fact, before sin even entered the world, The first thing that God tells Adam and Eve is what they can and cannot eat. So that's a very important thing to remember. I have podcast episodes about what we eat, what I eat, and what the bible says about eating and taking care of our bodies—things like that. I don't want to derail the conversation to get into that, but I do think it's important to remember and to see how that comes into play with Daniel and his friends. Fasting is a part of his, basically his daily or his normal routine, his spiritual walk, and how that also, I don't want to say enables, but enables him to get these visions.

Daniel and his friends realized that this food sacrifice to idols, contained blood, maybe it was unclean... There's probably wine...[2] All of these things that maybe either they shouldn't be having at all or like in the case of the wine should be had in moderation and not in copious amounts. They don't want to partake in that so they convince the person who's over them to let them eat only the things that are acceptable to God, which in this case end up being vegetables and water. That sounds like a very rough time for those who are not vegetarian like myself, but this is what they asked for.

The person gives them 10 days and says that at the end of the 10 days they're basically going to be evaluated. If they are still performing as well as their peers, if they still look as healthy as their peers, then they would be allowed to continue on this vegetable and water only diet. If not, they would have to eat the food that the king had provided for them. Of course, when God tells you to do something, he's gonna make a way for you to do it. So God steps in and at the end of these 10 days, Daniel and his peers not only look better than those who were consuming the king's food, but they're performing better as well. So, they end up being permitted to eat like this for the duration of their training, which I think is actually about three years.[2]

That says a lot about their commitment to staying true to the Most High while they're in this foreign country. They've been stripped away from their home. They're not going back, they're going to have to serve this king that they don't know and for all intents and purposes really should have no allegiance to, but they are committed to maintaining their relationship with God and not repeating the mistakes that essentially got Israel sent into captivity in the first place. That's something to remember. They're like the the light or the salt in the midst of the darkness (or the unflavored, I guess in the case of salt).

Name Changes & Power

Another thing that we learn in Daniel 1, that I want to point out, is that as soon as they got there the Babylonians try to change their names—and I say try because we all know Daniel as Daniel, even though Babylon changed his name. That's not quite as true for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—that's what most people know them as and that's what I was taught growing up. I try to use their Hebrew names now that I am aware of how big of a deal it is that their names were changed and the significance of this change. Their original Hebrew names are Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

What you will notice if you were to study Hebrew, or you to look at their names in Hebrew,[3] is that the ends of their names are actually calling back to the Most High. So Azariah and Hananiah end in Yah, which goes back to the tetragram in YHWH, which is the name of the Most High. Whereas Daniel and Mishael in a El, which means God in Hebrew. So, if you were to go back and to study their names and see the translations of their names—which I'll put in the show notes—their names all say something about the Most High.[4][5][6][7] They're essentially marked as belonging to a culture that believes in the Most High by having that in their names.

The thing is, when you start reading other literature, when you start studying history, you start looking at how life operates in general, you will see that naming someone (in particular), but naming something too, is a sign of ownership and power. For instance, our parents name us when we're born and sure you can go rename yourself. You can pay to have your name changed later, but the fact is your parents name you because they are your guardians, that's what gives them the right to give you a name when you're born. They're also in charge of you until you're 18 (unless you have an emancipation situation, or they pass away, or something like that). For all intents and purposes, the people who name you, are over you. They control you. There is a level of respect that is due to your parents because they're your parents; even from a biblical standpoint. Yes, I am 36 years old and my parents are not sitting here telling me what to do all the time, but the bible still says "honor your mother and father" (Exodus 20:12), so i'm still required to honor my mother and father in some capacity even though I am an adult. That relationship doesn't change.

We also see that in the Bible with God changing people's names. So God changes Abram's name to Abraham, right? We see Jacob's name changed to Israel. These are also signifiers of God saying, I have you, or you are Mine, or you belong to Me, et cetera, et cetera. These are examples of him being in control. These are also indicators of a covenant that he is making with his people. There's a lot that's going into these names being changed.

Now to put this into context, before I go into what Babylon was changing their names to, there is a movie that I watched when I was younger—it is called Spirited Away. It's by Hayao Miyazaki. It's through Studio Ghibli and roughly the story—I'm not going to give away spoilers; I'm just going to stick to the bare bones that's really happening in the first, I guess, like 15 minutes or so of the movie. The main character ends up in this like spiritual realm, and because she's there she ends up having to work at this bathhouse for the spirits, which is ran by a witch.

So this girl is in this bathhouse and she's working for this witch. When she goes to work for the witch, she signs a contract and after she signs the contract, the witch does this thing with her hand over the contract and the letters fly up off the page. Then [the witch] tells [the girl] that she has a new name and [the witch] gives the girl the new name. The next morning, the person who's been helping the girl meets with her and hands her this card that was in her pocket when he found her. It has her real name on it, which she has almost forgotten already. When she sees it, she's like, "Oh, that's my name?" So, he tells her that she has to keep that card and keep it hidden because she has to remember her name. If she forgets it, she'll never be able to go home. Then he reiterates that the lady who controls the house—the witch who controls the bathhouse—that is how she controls the people who work for her by taking their name and giving them a new name.

I want you to remember this is not a Christian story. It's not an American story. It's not a Western story. It's written in Japan. This concept of people having some sort of authority or power over you by giving you a specific name or changing your name is very, very crucial to what we're going to be seeing here and what we're talking about is very much a spiritual thing.[8]

So when daniel and his friends arrive in Babylon, [the Babylonians] try to change Daniel and his friends names. The new names that they give them, instead of having Yah or El in the names, they replace that with Babylonian deities. Essentially, they're trying to literally pull out God, pull out the Israelite culture, and push them into the Babylonian culture and to assimilate them into this pagan culture. So I want you to remember that as you see how hard Daniel and his friends fight to maintain their connection to the Most High and to maintain light even though the Babylonians may have given them another name. They are still operating out of the authority of the Most High. They're still showing that the Most High is the one who has control over them, not these pagan deities. They're rejecting the names that the Babylonians have given them. So that's very important as we go through this, and that is also why you will hear me continually trying to refer to Daniel's friends by their Hebrew names and not by the pagan Babylonian names that were assigned to them.

Daniel Stays Prayed Up: Daniel 6

We'll get back to his friends when we go to Daniel 3. I want to give its own episode because I don't want to make this episode too very long, but I do want to touch on Daniel 6 before we stop setting up the context, seeing who Daniel is, and how they came to be in these situations. So in Daniel 6, the Babylonians have now been deposed and the Persians have taken over but daniel is still in great favor within the kingdom and he is promoted to a position of extreme authority. He is over other important people and they have to report back to him, but they don't like that. They're not fans of it and they want to get rid of Daniel.

They want to get him in trouble. They're trying to find him slipping so that they can be like "Look what Daniel did! Daniel's not doing his job." But they cannot find fault in him, and I think that is something that is a testimony to who Daniel was and to his character, but I also think that says something to us today. We also live in Babylon; we live in a fallen state, we live in a fallen world, but we also live in a country that, well, I live in a country (I live in the United States), that is very much participating in idolatry, decadentism, capitalism, like all of the things that I think God would not be for. But even in that situation, Daniel was still performing his job at a top tier service; you couldn't find a mistake with his work. They could not find any fault in what he was doing. And I think that says something about us as believers.

In whatever position we have in society, whatever it is that we're doing, it is also saying something about who we are and our character. We're supposed to be blameless. We're supposed to be doing the best that we can. We're supposed to be showing that God is with us through our work ethic.

So, this is what Daniel is doing. When they realize this, they concoct a different plan to try to get Daniel in trouble. They decide that in order to get him in trouble, they need to create a wedge between Daniel and the Most High. Essentially they need to make some sort of conflict where what his job is requiring him to do and what the Most High said to do are in conflict. So, they get the king to declare an edict in which only the king can be petitioned for things for like 30 days. So essentially no matter what religion you were from, you were not allowed to pray to the deity of that religion.

In our case, that would mean being not allowed to pray to the Most High. That's what they were saying. Daniel completely ignores this edict. He goes home, he opens the windows, faces Jerusalem, and starts praying. He does this three times a day—pays no mind to the edict.

Again, We gotta point out, this is not, like, I'm in my house right now. Nobody has any idea what I'm saying or doing. People would not know that I'm recording a podcast right now. Because my windows are closed. Not because I'm trying to hide, but because I don't want my air conditioning bill to be sky high. But I'm reminding you that there needed to be a huge public spectacle of Daniel praying. He didn't have to throw the windows open to say his prayers. He didn't have to pray out loud. He could have prayed to himself. He could have been praying in a closed room within the house, and not necessarily near a window where people would hear him. But he prayed the way he had been praying before.[9]

He did not stop his routine. So, the people come, they see—because they're looking to see—and they go back to tell the king that Daniel has violated the edict and that he has to be brought to justice. Hhe has to face the consequences, which happened to be spending the night in the lion's den. No one is expected to survive that. It is basically a death sentence. The king is very grieved at being told that it's Daniel. He does not want to punish Daniel and he tries to think of a way not to punish Daniel. However, the law of the Medes and the Persians are final. They cannot change their own laws. We'll see this again in Esther. Well, we're not going to go through Esther for prophecy purposes, but if you read the book of Esther, you'll see this concept come up again. This was a common practice within the the Medo Persia Empire, so he can't reverse what has been done.

Daniel is placed in the lion's den. The king is fasting and he can't sleep because he is hoping; he's like, "your God will deliver you." And of course, God does deliver Daniel, he protects him, he sends an angel. Daniel comes out of that unscathed. And I think that there's a lot there, clearly, about Daniel's character and setting up what kind of person is writing out these prophecies for us to read today. But I think it also reminds us that when we end up in the same position, because this is what we're going towards from an end time prophecy standpoint, right?

The end times told in Revelation reference Babylon. They're not talking about Daniel's Babylon. They're talking about spiritual Babylon. They're talking about the same concepts where you have this power that is in charge or ruling over God's people and they are persecuting them. They're keeping them from being able to worship the Most High. They don't want you worshiping the Most High, et cetera, et cetera. We will have to be able to stand the same way Daniel stands.

So the same way Daniel and his friends refused to eat the food that is not right for them. We have to be able to refuse the foods that are bad for us. We need to refuse them to keep our mental clarity And to make sure that we're in good physical health and condition. I mean imagine... In Exodus the Israelites were upset because they missed the food that they got in Egypt. Think about all of the addictive substances they put in the foods that we eat in America now. I, like, just for me personally, I used to consume so much soda, particularly caffeinated soda. I drank 3, 4, 5, 6 Cokes a day, and I'm talking about the 20 ounce Cokes. When you stop consuming caffeine, you go through withdrawals. It's not as bad as somebody who's on heroin or something But you get headaches you feel sluggish. You feel like you've been hit with a sledgehammer. It is a horrible feeling I have experienced caffeine withdrawals multiple times in my life because I've not drank caffeine multiple times for like months or a year and then I've gone back and drank it again and then detoxed again, and it's a horrible feeling.

I would hate to be in the wilderness and be addicted to caffeine, and not be able to get it. Even though it's something that you can detox from it doesn't ever really go away like I still have low energy like I don't feel like my energy levels Have ever gone back to the peak that they were at when I was drinking three and four Cokes a day. So it's something that does affect you longterm. And the same thing is true about sugar, which also can give us diabetes and other health problems, but it's also an addictive substance. There's the MSG that they put in our food...just a whole lot of things they're putting in our food that will make it more difficult when you have to choose to be in the wilderness, whether literally or figuratively.

When The Mark of the Beast is issued, when you can't do the things that you would normally do or you would have to betray the Most High, the same concept is what we'll talk about this when we get to Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael and them getting thrown into the fiery furnace. This is part of Daniel 3 They have to take a stand not to bow down to idols and we see the same thing with Daniel when when Daniel is told not to pray, not to petition the Most High.

He does not change his relationship with God. He doesn't change his routine and his spiritual walk. He continues the same way he has, and he is ready to deal with whatever consequences come because he is trusting in the Most High to have him. And even if the Most High had not saved him, he was not going to miss that relationship just because this King told him that.

Relating to Today

These are things that are important to remember. As we look at what's going to happen in the end times and as we live our day to day life, today. Because we're technically already in the end times—which you know that might be a little heavy to drop before we really get into it, but keep that in mind as well. We have to be prepared to stand the same way Daniel did.

It's because of his faith and because of his steadfastness that God granted him all of these prophecies and all of these visions that we get to benefit from to see what's going to happen. So it's even more important that we pay attention to him and what was going on at that time, then decipher what these prophecies are.

So I'm really excited to get into this. Our next episode will be on Daniel 2, where we talk about the statue and the vision that Daniel interprets for King Nebuchadnezzar. That's going to be fun. It's going to be a lot of history. I'm gonna try to get that out on time. Pray for me. In the meantime, keep studying and I'll see you soon.

References and Footnotes

1. See 2 Chronicles 36:20-21; Leviticus 25; Daniel 9:2; Jeremiah 29:10
2. Daniel and his friends were fed by the king for 3 years and this did include wine, see Daniel 1:5
3. What I probably should have said to convey what I actually meant is "if you studied Hebrew or if you looked at their name in the Hebrew script."
4. The meaning of “Daniel” was taken from Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon and is generally referenced as “Strong’s H1840”
5. The meaning of “Hananiah” was taken from Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon and is generally referenced as “Strong’s H2608”
6. The meaning of “Mishael” was taken from Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon and is generally referenced as “Strong’s H4332"
7. The meaning of “Azariah” was taken from Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon and is generally referenced as “Strong’s H5838"
8. This whole aside was to point out that this is a universal concept.
9. What I was trying to get to was that Daniel prayed without shame!