Shall We Dance?

Shall We Dance? See Daniel 3:25 The 3 friends of Daniel :Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael were thrown into the firey furnace by Nebchadnezzar because they refused to worship the golden statue. Our English translations of Daniel 3:25 say that the 3 men and a 4th man, The Son Of GOD, The LORD Jesus Christ Himself were walking in the midst of the fire. The English translation "walking in" gives us a vague picture of them just milling around but the original text means something completely different. Daniel chapter 3 was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The words translated as "walk around" are the Hebrew words "mahlekin" meaning to "walk with purpose" - a purposeful movement. It means to walk a righteous walk aligned with GOD's Word. Here in this passage the text reveals to us that far from just walking about, these men were walking in unity together with purpose, in a sort of rhythm, as in a dance. This is like the ceremony of "Simchat Torah" meaning "Rejoicing of the Torah" - Rejoicing of GOD's Word. The people walk rejoicing around the synagogue following the one carrying the Torah scrolls which occurs at the end of Sukkot ( Feast of Tabernacles) The atmosphere is vibrant and festive, with music and clapping as they move with purpose together. They dance with the Torah, The Word of GOD, Who is Jesus Christ Himself. See John 1:1 These 3 men were dancing with The Word of GOD Himself in the midst of the fire,rejoicing in Him. This is very much backed up in several translations which have kept the additional verses, removed by many Protestant Bibles which view these verses az apocryphal or non-cannonical text. It is however accepted as canonical scripture by Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians and these verses are in their bibles such as the New American Bible (Revised Edition) and The Jerusalem Bible. Here are some of these verses from Daniel 3 in the New American Bible Revised Edition : NB the verse numbers are slightly different from versions which have removed these verses Daniel 4:24-26 Prayer of Azariah.[f] 24 They walked about in the flames, singing to God and blessing the Lord. 25 Azariah[g] stood up in the midst of the fire and prayed aloud: 26 “Blessed are you, and praiseworthy, O Lord, the God of our ancestors, and glorious forever is your name" and verse 88 "Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever. For he has delivered us from Sheol, and saved us from the power of death; He has freed us from the raging flame and delivered us from the fire." In 1944 towards the end of World War II there were fifty young Jewish men between the ages of 16 and 18 who were in a German concentration camp during the Holocaust. The war was closing and the efforts to exterminate the Jews in the concentration camps were being accelerated. Young men were being targeted by German camp commandants for fear that their youth and vitality would be used against them if the war should end. The order was given to send these fifty teenage Jewish men to the gas chambers. As the fifty young men were waiting to be herded like cattle into the gas chamber one young man declared to all the others: “Look, today is Simchat Torah, it is a time to rejoice.” One young man replied: “But we have nothing, especially Torah Scrolls to sing and dance with.” The other young man announced to all: “Yes, we may not have the Torah Scrolls but all our young lives we have read and loved the Torah and learned to love the GOD of the Torah. Therefore, GOD is with us. We don’t need to dance with the physical Torah Scrolls, we will dance with GOD.” All the men agreed and they all began to dance and rejoice as they were led into the gas chambers. This made the guards angry and they began to beat the young men but they kept dancing and singing rejoicing in God. The Nazi commandant of the camp was made aware of the disturbance and personally appeared and saw this strange sight of these young men rejoicing and praising GOD inside the gas chamber moments before the lethal gas was to be released. The commandant was so angry that he ordered the doors of the gas chamber opened and with anger and hatred he declared to all the young men that they would not get an easy death. This reminds us of Nebuchadnezzar's rage and fury and how he heated the furnace seven times hotter ( Daniel 3:19) He would personally see to it that each prisoner would have be skinned alive and they would all die in torment and agony. He ordered the prisoners taken to a special barracks and placed under careful guard and the next morning the commandant would personally oversee each young man tortured and treated to a slow, painful, agonizing death. The next morning however, a high ranking German official arrived at the camp and said he needed a hundred young, healthy men for a special project. When he saw these fifty young teenage boys, he declared they were exactly the ones he needed and ordered the young men transferred to his special camp where they would work on his project, much to the dismay of the commandant who was so looking forward to torturing these young men. According to witnesses of the concentration camp all fifty young men survived the war and at the end of the war the commandant himself, just a few months after this event was himself executed. ( Nazi commandant Gottfried von Ermandnsdorff executed for war crimes including skinning Jewish men alive and worked in Aushwitz-Birkenau) In our own trials of life, The Word of GOD Himself is with us and He holds out His hand to us saying "Shall we dance?" Let us dance in step with Him throughout this life and into the next. Shalom shalom