Daniel was in a dilemma. He was a captive in a strange land, yet now he was being offered training that would prepare him for a lucrative career. The only problem was that one of the benefits of this training program was that he would be given the same food to eat that the king ate. The food itself was not what troubled Daniel. It would be healthy, nutritious food; but it was food that had been offered in sacrifice to the king’s god. Daniel knew that he was in captivity because God’s people had compromised for years with the gods of the heathen peoples around them.

So Daniel purposed in his heart not to defile himself. What a momentous decision for a young man to make. He knew his decision might result in being barred from the great opportunity before him, it might even have fatal consequences. But that was his decision and he held to it.

God blessed Daniel’s decision. That gave Him a man in Babylon who was fully devoted to Him and He would use Daniel to move the king of Babylon to protect the people of God. We know how things went from there. The king had dreams, Daniel interpreted them. The king promoted Daniel and his three friends to the highest administrative positions in Babylon.

Daniel’s three friends were cast into a super-heated furnace and came out without even the smell of smoke on them. The king then decreed severe punishment for anyone who would say anything against the God of Daniel’s three friends.

The king lost his mind and was put out to pasture with the animals. I imagine that all the time that he was out with the beasts he kept telling himself “I am the great king Nebuchadnezzar, I can just get up and walk back into the palace any time I want and continue as before.” But he couldn’t. It wasn’t until he admitted that the God of heaven was greater than he was, that his reason returned to him. Now Nebuchadnezzar fully acknowledged and submitted to the God of heaven as supreme.

Nebuchadnezzar’s son learned nothing from his father’s experience. When he became king he threw a great party and called for the vessels from the temple of God to be brought out and used for drinking wine at his party. Then he saw the writing on the wall. No one knew what it meant, finally his mother came and told him to call for Daniel. Daniel told him the writing said that he had been weighed and found wanting and the kingdom would be taken from him.

Babylon was overthrown that very night by the Medes and Persians. Daniel continued as a trusted advisor to the king of Persia. They were others in the Persian kingdom who put their lives on the line to be faithful to God, such as Esther, Mordecai and Nehemiah. It appears from history that as long as there were people who refused to defile themselves with paganism, God intervened directly in the affairs of great heathen kingdoms to protect His people.

At what point in time are we in North America. Is God about to reveal the writing on the wall for Canada and the USA? Or will the writing on the wall be for us as Christians in these countries? Is God about to weigh us in the balance and declare that we have come up short?

God has intervened in the history of our two countries to provide for our religious freedom. Yet it seems to me that we have been to prone to honour men for what God has done, even to the point of calling our nations Christian nations. They are not, and never have been. Is labelling a nation of this world as Christian and regarding men and historical places and events almost as saints, sacred writings and shrines much different than defiling ourselves with food sacrificed to idols?

God has intervened directly to provide freedom of conscience in our two lands. Delegates at the Continental Congress in 1774 debated which church should be the official state church of the new nation, because almost all delegates agreed that such a thing was necessary. The New England states were Congregationalist and allowed no other church. The southern states allowed only the Church of England. Maryland was Roman Catholic. Only Rhode Island and Pennsylvania had no official state church. Because of these divisions the delegates were not able to come to agreement and finally abandoned the idea of having a state church for the new republic.

This was not the work of great men with a true vision of liberty of conscience. It looks to me more like a direct intervention of God to prepare the way for the establishment of His church in North America.

Likewise in Canada, as long as Upper Canada and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec) were separate colonies, The Church of England was the state church in one and the Roman Catholic church was in the other. But when they were united under a single government in 1841 it was no longer possible to have a state church for the whole country and as the country expanded eastward and westward it was not possible to make any one church official.

When Mennonites first settled in Upper Canada around 1800, they were tolerated, but could not conduct legal marriage services. The Orange Lodge was very powerful in Ontario and fiercely opposed to any groups who were not White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. The Roman Catholic church in Quebec was equally intolerant. I see it as divine intervention that Canada was brought together in such a way that neither camp could dominate the country, thus allowing freedom of conscience for God’s people.

New belief systems have emerged and become predominant in both countries, propagated by the cathedrals of learning (the universities), and the whole educational system. We are now coming to a point where freedom of conscience is seen as a dangerous thing, almost treasonous.

The freedom we have enjoyed was not granted to us by great and noble politicians, but by the direct work of God. The solution to our present situation will not come from political sources. We must seek God’s mercy and purpose in our hearts not to defile ourselves with ideas, beliefs and programs that come from other sources.