Whose life is it anyway?

Introduction and Background

King Nebuchadnezzar – strange name but a good score in Scrabble. He was one of the most powerful kings in history. He ruled the Babylonians, the dominant power in Mesopotamia and the whole of the west of Asia in the 6^th and 7^th centuries BC.

Smaller states in the region were conquered and had to dance to the Babylonian tune, and Judah was one such state. Nebuchadnezzar took a number of captives off to Babylon, probably as hostages to ensure the good behaviour of Judah.

Among these early exiles were Daniel and his three friends, who must have been only teenagers at the time. They found themselves a thousand miles from home, torn away from everything they knew and dumped in a pagan, gentile, enemy state. All around them were foreign people, a strange language, an alien culture and, worst of all, gods and idols galore.

God’s prophets had told the people this would happen. Now that it had, was there any hope for them? If God had poured out his judgement on Israel was there anything else to look forward to?

It seemed that an enormous chasm had opened up between the people of God’s faith on the one hand and world events on the other so that events seemed utterly to contradict their faith. When catastrophe strikes, is God still sovereign?

The book of Daniel opens up with just this sort of contradiction between faith and facts. It goes on to show us the response of a few young people who lived through it, yet who managed not only to survive but to adjust to the new facts and maintain the integrity of their faith. Their God, they were able to affirm, was still in control, even in a world that seemed out of control.