Hearing the Message of Daniel: Sustaining Faith in Today’s World
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Overview
In many corners of the world these days the climate of hostility hangs over any overt Christian faith commitment. Any kind of Christian commitment is now assumed to imply intolerance and often prompts reactions that range from a low-grade hostility and exclusion in the West to the vicious and murderous assaults on Christian believers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq and elsewhere.
Such issues are not new. Christians have faced them ever since Nero’s lions, and even before that. Jews also have faced the same questions all through their history, most tragically sometimes enduring horrendous persecution from states claiming to be Christian. So it is not surprising that the Bible gives a lot of attention to these questions.
The book of Daniel tackles the problem head on, both in the stories of Daniel and his friends, and in the visions he received. A major theme of the book is how people who worship the one, true, living God—the God of Israel—can live and work and survive in the midst of a nation, a culture, and a government that are hostile and sometimes life-threatening. What does it mean to live as believers in the midst of a non-Christian state and culture? How can we live “in the world” and yet not let the world own us and squeeze us into the shape of its own fallen values and assumptions?
The book was written to encourage believers to keep in mind that the future, no matter how terrifying it may eventually become, rests in the hands of the sovereign Lord God—and in that assurance to get on with the challenging task of living in God’s world for the sake of God’s mission.
- Speaks to ethical issues applicable to contemporary Christians
- Uses the message of Daniel to encourage believers in their faith
- Analyzes the hostile culture of the time and how it shaped the people in the book of Daniel
- Compromise or Confrontation
- Head of Gold or Feet of Clay
- Bow or Burn
- Heaven Rules . . . on Earth
- The Writing on the Wall
- Facing the Lions
- Beasts, Thrones, Saints and . . . a Man
- A Ram, a Goat, and an Ending
- Model Prayer, Mysterious Predictions
- Finale and Farewell
Top Highlights
“The state is a human institution which seems to have a built-in tendency towards idolatry, to claim ultimate authority and demand total allegiance. This tendency flows from our fallen human insecurity. Having rejected God as the source of authority and security, we long for anything that will give life order, stability, security, regularity, and social glue. When a powerful state promises these things, we are prepared to pay a high price to buy such apparent benefits, or at least the promise of them. Or perhaps, more accurately, when the crunch comes, we are not prepared to pay the higher price of not buying them.” (Page 69)
“The fate of the world will be decided not by the boastful claims and power of the beasts but by the will and purpose of God and his ultimate judgment on all that takes place in his world.” (Page 155)
“Nebuchadnezzar was not the first or the last to link patriotism, religion, and culture for the political benefit of the state itself.” (Page 69)
“We need to understand the culture we live in without sharing its belief system” (Page 29)
“The food would have symbolized ‘covenant loyalty’ to the king” (Page 37)
Many people are afraid of where the world is going, and Christians often seem as fearful as anyone. Daniel’s visions showed his hearers why they didn’t need to be afraid, and the stories about him and his friends modeled what it meant to be brave, forthright, and faithful. Chris Wright has often preached on Daniel, and he’s therefore just the person to help us hear the book’s message for the pressing context of our lives today.
—John Goldingay, professor, Fuller Theological Seminary
This is the kind of book I like to recommend to preachers. It is firmly rooted in sound biblical scholarship yet it is in the service of listening to God’s address through Daniel to his own contemporaries so we can hear that address today. The message of Daniel comes alive as we hear what the Spirit is saying to us in our own missionary setting. Chris Wright does not just tell us what the text says but shows us what the text is trying to do —shape a distinctive people in the midst of a hostile culture then and now. This delightful book helps us read and preach Daniel in a way that is both faithful to the original context and relevant to the present.
—Michael W. Goheen, theological director, Missional Training Center; scholar in residence, Surge Network, Phoenix, AZ
- Title: Hearing the Message of Daniel: Sustaining Faith in Today’s World
- Author: Christopher J. H. Wright
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Print Publication Date: 2017
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Pages: 256
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Bible. O.T. Daniel › Commentaries
- ISBNs: 9780310535126, 9780310284642, 9780310535096, 0310535123, 0310284643, 0310535093
- Resource ID: LLS:HRNGMSSGDNL
- Resource Type: Bible Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:36:35Z
