Bible CharactersTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
Bible Characters
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Bible -- Biography
In the palace, the king can not sleep. He orders his chariot, and early
in the morning rattles over the pavement and jumps down at the lions’
den. I see the king alight from his chariot in eager haste, and hear him
cry down through the mouth of the den: “O Daniel, servant of the living
God! Is thy God, whom thou reverest continually, able to deliver thee
from the lions?”
Hark! Why, it is a resurrection voice! It is Daniel, saying: “My God is
able. He hath sent one of His angels, and hath shut the lions’ mouths.”
I can see them now just embrace each other, and together they jump into
the chariot and away they go back to the palace to breakfast.
I want to say something further about Daniel. I want to refer to how an
angel came to him, and, as we read in the twelfth chapter of Daniel, told
him he was a man greatly beloved. Another angel had come to him with the
same message. It is generally thought this last angel was the same one
spoken of in Revelations--first chapter and thirteenth verse--as coming
to John when banished to the Isle of Patmos. People thought he was sent
off there alone, but he was not; the angel of God was with him.
And so with Daniel. Here, in the tenth chapter and fifth verse, he says:
“Then I lifted up mine eyes, and behold, a certain man clothed with fine
linen, and otherwise arrayed as God’s messenger, who cried: ‘O Daniel, a
man greatly beloved, understand the words which I speak unto thee, and
stand upright, for unto thee am I now sent.’”
It was Daniel’s need that brought him from the glory land. It was the
Son of God right by his side in that strange land. And that was the
second time when the word came to him, saying he was greatly beloved.
Yes, three times a messenger came from the throne of God to tell him
this. I love to speak of that precious verse in the eleventh chapter--the
thirty-second verse: “The people that do know their God shall be strong
and do exploits.” I also love to speak of the twelfth chapter and second
and third verses: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting
contempt; and they that be wise shall shine as the stars of the
firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever
and ever.”
This was the angel’s comfort to Daniel, and a great comfort it was.
The fact with all of us is that we like to shine. There is no doubt
about that. Every mother likes her child to shine. If her boy shines at
school by reaching the head of his class, the proud mother tells all
the neighbors, and she has a right to do so. But it is not the great of
this world that will shine the brightest. For a few years they may shed
bright light, but they go out in darkness, without an inner brightness.
Supplying the brightness, they go out in black darkness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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