24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, "Weren't there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?"
They replied, "Certainly, O king."
25 He said, "Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods." Daniel3:24-25
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were in Exile in Babylon. The king, Nebuchadnezzar - the known world's most powerful man, had decreed that people should bow down to his statue when the band played... or else! ...And the else was the fiery furnace!
Pragmatic people said: "Well, this is the real world. We'll cross our fingers and bow down." But in the crowd were three men who refused.
Were they crazy? Didn't they realise that they could cause trouble for the rest of the Jewish exiles? Surely they were intelligent enough to realise that the ultimate reality was Nebuchadnezzar's oven-on-steroids?
Even Nebuchadnezzar was dumbfounded: "What were these guys thinking? Do they really think they can defy my oven?"
But there's a shock in store for old Neb...
The realization hits the biggest faker first...
As Nebuchadnezzar, thinking he has proven his power, looks expectantly into the furnace, he comes to a dramatic realization - he has to synchronise his expectations with what is really real -There are no three heaps of ash in the furnace, no screams, no triumph of the "real world" over childish religious zeal. There's a new person in the fire - and he looks like he's God incarnate - God-with-us!
This last weekend I sat on a hospital bed with a new mom of twins who'd been told she had developed an irreversible heart condition which would mean she would never be able to do normal things like carry her babies or climb a flight of stairs. We looked each other in the eyes and I said "We are now at the end of what medicine can do and in the realms of what God can do." And the church prayed...
On Sunday night they took a sonar of her heart and discovered that there had been a 90% improvement. On Monday she left ICU and on Thursday she went home. Hallelujah!
There is a REALITY that supercedes our "real" world. We need to realise and re-align to this!
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
