Covert Sovereign Presence of God

Deeper Reflection
In Daniel, the people of God are “to live out their faith in an increasingly hostile Gentile world under circumstances that would make it more and more difficult to do so” and count on “the sovereignty of God to sustain them generation after generation, crisis after crisis”¹.There are significant theological contrasts in God’s people suffering for their faithfulness to God in Daniel 1-6 and 7-12. The sovereign presence of God is overt in Daniel 1-6, but covert in Daniel 7-12. The 24 occurrences of divine titles that underscore the supremacy and sovereignty of God are found 18 times in Daniel 1-6, but only six times in Daniel 7-12.² God is highly visible in Daniel 1-6, in both text and narrative, but very less so in Daniel 7-12.God’s faithful people experienced God’s miraculous deliverance in Daniel 1-6 (3:24-28; 6:19-23). But there is no divine deliverance for them in Daniel 7-12. Instead, “they will fall by sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder” (Dan 11:33). The confession of faith in God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the face of death points to these two pictures of God and deliverance. God is the God who is “able to…and will deliver” in Daniel 1-6, and He is the God who “does not” in Daniel 7-12 (Dan 3:17-18).When we go through difficult times, we prefer the God of Daniel 1-6 rather than the God of Daniel 7-12. But Daniel calls us to be “the people who know their God”, especially so in suffering tribulations (Dan 11:32). And such people know the God of both Daniel 1-6 and 7-12

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¹ Andrew E. Hill & John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament (Zondervan, 1991), 352 ² See 31 January entry of Devotional Journal 2023