Learning From The Past, Seeing The Future

The prior covenant has a wealth of life lessons.

Those placing their faith and trust in God can learn much.

Always remember the prior covenant was fulfilled in Christ.

Although it holds faith-filled lessons, attempting to live according to the prior covenant's way conflicts with the new covenant's Way of peace, love and unity.

Look at Daniel and his four contemporaries who ascended to prominence.

Although becoming slaves of a foreign empire, what can be learned when seeing these testimonies through Today's perspective of Christ's Sovereignty?

Did Daniel and the fellow slaves rebel against the occupation of their lands and eventual captivity and transplant into foreign lands?

Did Daniel resist his role of a Babylonian slave?

Didn't Daniel submit to all rules and dictates of the new regime minus few edicts?

Very often Daniel's single disobedience is highlighted as a lesson to resist submitting to a state's dictates or a foreign invasion... but what else is revealed therein?

Daniel first made a humble request regarding his obedience to a particular diet (such dietary restrictions are loosened under the new covenant), and God provided a way to prove to his handlers that the vegetable diet was sufficient.

Daniel and his relatives expressed their trust in God regarding outer influences of a foreign state and foreign religion by staying obedient in their heart and conscience when giving up their body to whatever demands the tyranny would demand of them, minus them physically bowing down and worshiping an idol.

How was Daniel elevated to a prominent position if not by his humility, his obedience to physical demands and to absolute submission to secular matters?

Daniel provided an insight as to how the spiritual journey would be lived out in the new age, under the new covenant, among a wayward and depraved secular world.