Photo by Eric Symonds
“Heaven rules.” — Daniel 4:26
I shared this with a few family members earlier this week. I offer it here lightly edited, trusting that the Lord will use it as He chooses.
Good morning,
We love you all dearly. You are constantly on our hearts and minds.
I have been reading through Daniel for the past couple of weeks, asking the Lord to open His Word. It is such a hope-filled message for today. I hope to share more with you soon. Its vastness is overwhelming.
Oh, the love, majesty, and wonder of the living God! “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.” — Psalm 139:6 But “He has made known to us the mystery of His will.” Truly He has “hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.” — Matthew 11:25 “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” — 1 Corinthians 2:10
Recently I was reading John 5, and specifically the man who was ill for thirty-eight years, to my youngest daughters, ages four and six. “‘Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.’ Immediately the man became well and picked up his pallet and began to walk.” With this, my six-year-old exclaimed in wonder and amazement, “No! He was thirty-eight, sick, and he just got up?!” I hope to remember the sound of her voice and the look on her face forever. At the heart of her reaction is reverent awe of God and the beautiful simplicity of taking Him at His Word. In this regard, may we be forever like infants, completely unjaded by the circumstances ordained of God to bring us and keep us continually at His feet, that we may be conformed to the image of Christ, and live today as “more than conquerors through Him Who loves us.”
The book of Daniel is not foreign to us, nor is its message confined to a theologian’s interpretation of the statue, the beasts, the goats, or the seventy weeks. In careful reading and in asking our great heavenly Helper for enlightenment, we begin to see heavenly government, Divine order, the supremacy of Christ in every death sentence Daniel and his friends received, in their deliverances, in their being appointed as administrators over Babylon, and much more.
“But we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God Who raises the dead.” — 2 Corinthians 1:9
They were men in fellowship with God, He ruled in their hearts, and as a result they stood as His testimony to the wicked powers and principalities of their age, both on earth and in heaven.
“Heaven rules.” — Daniel 4:26
Nebuchadnezzar ruled, but heaven ruled.
Belshazzar ruled, but heaven ruled.
Darius ruled, but heaven ruled.
Cyrus ruled, but heaven ruled.
Today, the Body of Christ is His witness and testimony, His holy administration in the whole universal “province” of both earth and heaven:
“so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” — Ephesians 3:10
She is the open display of the preeminence of Christ to all, everywhere. How?
Before Daniel and his friends encountered their various life or death crossroads (spiritually and physically), they walked with God privately. Daniel’s windows were open in prayer toward Jerusalem three times a day, and we know this was his way of life because we read “as he had been doing previously.”
His heart was in the city of peace, Jerusalem, while his knees were on the ground of confusion, Babylon.
Likewise, our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior. We are of a heavenly royal priesthood, a holy nation, very precious in the sight of God, called to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light!
The precious Cornerstone cut out without hands, out of Whom we too have been hewn, will forever crush the statue and become “a great mountain and fill the whole earth.” — Daniel 2
There is so much more here, and I would love to continue, but I’m out of time for now.
May our hearts be always heavenward, made alive, raised, and seated with Christ regardless of where our knees are. We serve the God and King of the universe, before Whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord of all, to the glory of God the Father.
Love you and standing with you.
•••
“And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed…
Then the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole Heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.” — Daniel 7:14, 27