Daniel: Choosing to Stand Alone
By J. Vernon McGee
We know more of the personal history and the private life of Daniel than we do of any of the other prophets. He is introduced to us as a teenage boy, probably 15 to 17 years of age, when he was carried away as a captive and transplanted from his home in Israel to a foreign country, a heathen land. For over sixty years he lived in that dissolute court and pagan environment into which he'd been taken with all of its spiritually deadening influences.
He walked with royalty, and he did so with dignity and with purpose amidst a licentious and rakish court and society of that day. He became prime minister of two world governments, that of Babylon and that of Media-Persia. He was lifted to the very highest position that any king could offer any man.
Daniel was more famous and more respected in his day than the Prime Minister of England or the Secretary of State of the United States. He was much more famous than any of the men who have served in those offices. He won the friendship of kings, but he also had bitter and cruel enemies who sought his life.
He was loyal and true to the pagan prince whom he served. This is one of the things that characterized this man. He maintained an unblemished testimony. He kept himself unspotted from the world. He walked so that no one, not even his enemies, could find any fault with him - that is, anything they could prove. They brought many charges, but they never were able to make anything stick against this man.
In the sixth chapter of the Book of Daniel we read:
Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. (Daniel 6:4)
May I say that this is a marvelous testimony for a man like Daniel to have in a foreign and very wicked court of that day. He was faithful to God. He was an old man when a testimony came from heaven by the mouth of an angel, "O Daniel, a man greatly beloved." What a testimony when you have reached a ripe old age, not to have men down here praise you, but to have a testimony come from heaven, "A man greatly beloved!" That was God's testimony. And the writer to the Hebrews put him in the Westminster Hall of Fame and Faith, but not by name. It wasn't necessary to name Daniel, because it's well known who the writer is speaking about when he says in the Epistle to the Hebrews:
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. (Hebrews 11:33)
What a testimony for Daniel to have!
Then when we come to the end of this man's life, we find in the very last verse of the Book of Daniel this statement concerning him, "...Thou shalt rest" (Daniel 12:13). Having served God and man so faithfully, now God says in effect, "You will now go to your rest." And not only that, He adds, "You'll stand in your lot at the end of the days. When the time comes for the resurrection of your people, you will be raised with them. And then you'll receive the just reward for the life that you have lived for God." I cannot conceive of any man whose life stands out like the life of Daniel.
Somebody asks the question, "What is the secret of this man's life?" In our day when success is the mark of greatness, it doesn't make any difference what enterprise you are in - you may be a gambler, you may be in the race-horse business - but if you make a success of it, the world will give you a passing grade and say that you are all right. Today we have gone overboard on this matter of success. May I say to you that Daniel was a success, not only by God's standards, but by the world's standards.
We can turn back a few pages in our Bibles to the Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a howling failure according to the world's standards. God called him to stand in a dark and hard place. But this man Daniel didn't stand in that kind of a place. Rather, he served in the glow and publicity of a great court, and he stood yonder at the very top. May I say to you, our leading periodicals would have sent their editors to get an article on Daniel and his success, because that's the way the world measures things today.
Now what was the secret of his success? What was the key to his life? If you should ask me, I think that I would express it in one word, only one word: separation. Here is a man separated to God. And I believe that separation is still the door to the understanding of prophecy.
One of the reasons that prophecy has fallen on evil days, and the reason it has lent itself to fanaticism, and the reason that a great many people have turned from it is because of the lifestyle of those who proclaim it. If there is anything in the Word of God that is made clear, it is that prophecy, in order to be a blessing to our own hearts and lives, must lead to a separated life.
I want to give you a statement of G. H. Lang, a great expositor of the Word of God in years gone by:
The qualification for being a prophet is the qualification for understanding prophecy. The reader must be one with the prophet in this at least, the resolute purpose to be holy. For the immediate end of all prophecy is practical, moral: "Every one that hath this hope set on Christ purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3). Merely mental study of Scripture is idle, being idle, is mischievous, "if any man intendeth to do God's will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God" (John 7:17). Therefore, as we proceed to consider the visions and messages of Daniel, let each ask himself, Am I a man of Daniel's moral purpose and resolve? If so, the Spirit of truth will open the meaning of what He showed and said to Daniel; if not, Daniel's book will remain to me a sealed book, even when "the time of the end" may have come (Daniel 12:9).
May I say to you, that is the one great requirement today for the study of prophecy. And the reason today it has dropped into so much fanaticism is because teachers and preachers of prophecy have ignored the fact that the one prerequisite is a life that is dedicated to Almighty God. Now that's the thing that characterized Daniel: separation.
Now I know that the word separation is in disrepute. And it has been harmed today more in the house of its friends than from the outside. Right now we have two extreme groups in our midst. In one group are extreme separationists. They're legalists, actually. They have adopted a narrow and limited code of conduct. They have reduced the Christian life to their little straitjacket, and if you don't get in it, it's going to be bad for you. They say that we've been delivered from the Ten Commandments and from the Mosaic Law in order that we can get under their law. And they haven't settled for ten commandments - some of them have made a hundred! And if you don't follow them, you are not going to make it. They are our present-day Pharisees, and they have adopted the policy of "touch not, taste not, handle not." Many of these are unkind and cruel in their conduct and in their judgment on others. And they happen to be the greatest gossips you can meet in these days. As the young people say, they'll chop you to pieces if you're not very careful. May I say to you, that's legalism. It certainly does not manifest the spirit of our Lord, and it certainly is not New Testament separation.
Then, my beloved, there is another group that goes to the opposite extreme. These folk are anti-legalists. They follow, actually, one of the early heresies of the church called "Antinomianism." That is, they believe that since we're saved by grace, we do as we please. They like the principle of grace, but they do not like the precepts of grace. There's no discipline of grace, according to them, and one's conduct does not count. You may live however you please. Paul, in Romans 6: 12, answered them, "Shall we continue in sin...? God forbid." Those who have been saved and yet continue to sin are spiritual rebels today. They don't follow any man or anything. They do as they please.
May I say that both of these views have hurt the concept of Bible separation.
Let's look now at the separation in Daniel's life. I believe that in the Book of Daniel we have true separation, certainly Bible separation. And if you can sing casually, "Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone," then it might be well for you to understand what is implied, what it means to dare to be a Daniel, what it means to stand alone for God in our day.
Notice now this man's separation. Daniel was young when he was carried away as a captive to Babylon. When Nebuchadnezzar first captured Jerusalem in 606 B.C., he had no notion of actually destroying the city. He could have, but it was not until eighteen years later that he destroyed Jerusalem. In the meantime there had been two rebellions against him that led him to this extreme action. At his first invasion, Nebuchadnezzar deposed the king and set his brother upon the throne of Jerusalem. Also he took into captivity at that time the choicest young men, those who had the highest IQs. The devil has always gone after the best. And I'm personally jealous, wanting the Lord to have the best. I don't see why we can't have more Christian workers with high IQs. What's wrong with dedicating brains to God occasionally? May I say to you, my beloved, we need them these days. And this man Nebuchadnezzar was wise enough to take the choicest, those with the highest mentality, those with the best personalities, those who were the most physically attractive; and among those were Daniel and his three companions. These four Hebrew children were the ones who went with the others into captivity at that time.
Now these four young men had been brought up under the Mosaic system. They had available to them a large part of the Old Testament Scripture, in fact, through the Book of Jeremiah. They found themselves in a foreign land with strange customs, pagan ways. They were homesick. If you want to know how they felt, the captives recorded their experience in Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. (Psalm 137:1-6)
