Four Men Walking in the Fire

Some years after Daniel explained the dream of the giant statue, King Nebuchadnezzar built a giant statue of his own. In the dream, only the head had been gold. This statue was gold from top to toe, and it stood ninety feet high, about as tall as fifteen grown-ups standing on each other's heads.

The king gathered every officer in the land, and a man with a very big voice shouted, "When you hear the horn, the flute, the lyre, the harp, the pipes, and every kind of music, fall down and worship the golden statue! Anyone who does not will be thrown into a blazing furnace!"

(The Bible lists those instruments four times in one chapter. Nebuchadnezzar was very proud of his band.)

The music played, and thousands dropped flat on their faces. Three men stayed standing: Daniel's friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Some officials hurried to the king. "Those three Jews do not serve your gods," they said. "They will not worship your golden statue!"

Nebuchadnezzar shook with rage and had the three brought to him. "Bow down when the music plays, or into the furnace you go! And what god will rescue you from my hands then?"

The three friends did not even ask for time to think.

"O king," they said, "if we are thrown in, the God we serve is able to save us from the fire, and he will rescue us from your hand. But even if he does not, we will not serve your gods or bow to your golden statue."

The king's face twisted. "Heat the furnace seven times hotter!" he roared.

His strongest soldiers tied up the three friends, still in their robes and hats, and threw them in. The fire was so fierce that the flames killed the soldiers who threw them.

The king leaned forward to watch. Then he leaped to his feet.

"Didn't we throw three men into the fire, tied up?"

"Yes, O king," said his advisers.

"Look!" he shouted. "I see four men, untied, walking around in the fire, and not one of them is hurt! And the fourth looks like a son of the gods!"

Nobody knew who the fourth man was.

The king crept up to the furnace door. "Shadrach! Meshach! Abednego! Servants of the Most High God, come out!"

Out they walked, and the officers crowded around. Not a hair was singed. They did not even smell of smoke. (One evening beside a campfire is enough to make a sweater smell of smoke for days.)

"Praise the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!" said Nebuchadnezzar. "He sent his angel and rescued his servants, who trusted him. No other god can rescue like this!" Then he gave the three friends even higher jobs in Babylon.

Only three men came out of the furnace. The fourth man was seen in that one fire, and one day each friend would die. Death was a furnace no one had ever walked out of for good.

God's people held on to a promise he had given long before, through the prophet Isaiah: "When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. I will be with you."

Then someone came who was called Immanuel, which means "God with us." Like the three friends, he would bow to no one but God. Soldiers tied him up and led him away. He died, and went down into death itself so his people would never face it alone. On the third day the cloths that had wrapped him lay loose and empty, like ropes fallen away in a fire, and he walked out alive.

He is Jesus, and he still walks with his people in the fire.