We will recount the narrative: Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? (Notice the two choices then laid out to the three captives by the King.) Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”
So, the King offers two alternatives – if they worship the King, they won’t be burned alive; if they don’t worship him, they’re cast into the furnace. Now the following verse suffers from a series of mis-translations (or actually the addition of words to the text by the translators to fit a preconceived meaning), so we need to be very careful when analyzing the passages.
The NASB, for example, is not reliable here, while the ESV is truer to the original text. Here’s how the three respond: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
The problem is that the NIV and NASB translators added words which totally changed the meaning of Dan. 3:18. In the Hebrew, the words to the opening clause are “But if not”. The NIV and the NASB added the words “he does” to make it say: “But if he does not”, which in the context can only refer to God. If they were going to add words, they should have said: But if you, King, do not”, which would refer to the King, not to God. The NASB and NIV are simply wrong, and the other translations were right to leave the Hebrew just as it was from the mouth of the Holy Spirit.
In Dan. 3:13-14, the King says (paraphrased): “Is it true that you have refused to worship the image? Now, hear this, if when you hear the call to worship, you do so, then everything will be fine, but if you don’t worship, you will be cast into the furnace.” So, The King has issued the threat to throw them in the furnace if they don’t worship him. He didn’t just throw them in immediately. He was clearly giving them the chance to change their minds and worship him . The three young Jews respond (paraphrased) – 3:17: “if it be so (that you will make good on your threat and throw us in the furnace for not worshipping you), our God WILL save us. Period!” 3″18 “But if not” (if you do not throw us in and are only threatening us here before the furnace to get us to worship you), “we will still not worship you even if let us go with this warning!”
It is perfectly ridiculous in 3:18 for the 3 Jews to reassure the King that they will not worship the King if God doesn’t rescue them, because then they would be burned to a crisp and thus they COULD NOT THEREFORE WORSHIP HIM ANYWAY. It is especially suspect as an interpretation given the absolutely unqualified statement of faith in God’s rescue in 3:17. That is the ONLY interpretation of 3:18 that makes any sense in the context.
And it is the only interpretation that makes any sense in view of all of the rest of the Bible promises about our faith, the necessity of being free of double-mindedness, and the Lord’s faithfulness. The critical and obfuscating words were added by the NIV and NASB translators who bought into the modern idea of faith being submitting to the fact (in their eyes) that God retains the right to act contrary to His promise. This is mistakenly referred to these days as “sovereignty” (which word actually simply means “supremacy”). But this view of God makes His Word totally unreliable and Him feckless and fickle, and it destroys our solemn responsibility to believe Him in the face of evidence of our eyes and experience to the contrary.
In our flesh we like this interpretation of faith because it destroys all personal accountability for believing (and the work necessary to do so) and implicitly puts the blame on God when His Word does not come true for us. But Romans 4 is clear – our faith model is to be Abraham – see Romans 4:11 and Galatians 3:7. Abraham believed what God had said and it was credited to him as righteousness. (Rom. 4:3)
He did not waver in unbelief (Rom. 4:19) just because things looked bad as far as having a child since he and Sarah were so old. He did not think like us moderns: “Well, God promised to give me a child but He might give me a child or He might not give me a child.” That would have been unbelief and in that case Abraham would not have ever had Isaac through Sarah. The Scripture makes that perfectly clear.
Abraham, instead, “grew strong in faith” and “was fully persuaded” of God’s reliability to do exactly what He said. The three Jews about to go to the furnace did not waver in unbelief either. They knew their Scriptures. They had no doubt studied, e.g., Ps. 50:15: “Call on me in the day of trouble and I will rescue you and you will honor me.” See also, eg, Ps. 34, 54, 91 and a host of other psalms of rescue and deliverance. These Promises were all penned by a boy (David) being pursued by a ruthless King to kill him. These Promises absolutely had to be true in the here and now for David, and they were. And the three Jews KNEW the Promises had to be equally good for them in their predicament. They bet their life on it. They had faith.
We rebel against this interpretation because we have examples out the wazoo of people who prayed but
did not receive the fulfillment of the prayer. BUT, we are to always base our theology on the Word of God and not the conclusions of our own finite mind based upon our very limited appreciation of the circumstances of other people or ourselves who prayed and were not rescued. Once we do that, we are like Eve in the garden drawing our own conclusions about reality and what to do, and in the process we exalt ourselves over God’s Word and thus make ourselves God of our lives.
A theology rooted in the Word of God also gives proper place to the powerful opposition of the Enemy, “the God of this World” as Jesus called him, who could even cause Daniel’s prayer to be delayed for twenty-one days as the angel sent to give the response was challenged by a fallen angel, as the Scriptures describe in Daniel 6. As in any war, there are casualties and battles lost given that there is opposition. But we should make no mistake: God’s Word is true and all the promises are inherited through faith and perseverance. (Hbr. 6:12)
We show neither when we take the position of the NASB/NIV translators in Dan. 3:18.
One additional point of clarity is important here: Many saints over the centuries have faced the prospect of death and welcomed it – they rejoiced at the prospect of martyrdom. Paul knew when it wasn’t his time to go home, and then when it was, and was confident in both situations. Whether the Lord tells you He wants you home now, or you are so delighted at the prospect of going home that you eschew any prayer of rescue, neither indicates a lack of faith – far from it. The end of Hebrews 11 makes it clear that those who are rescued and those who are slain for not renouncing their faith are both in the Hall Of Fame of Faith.
However, we do know that we are promised a long life in the Lord, as in Ps. 91, if we faithfully receive that Promise, but again, for any number of reasons when confronted with death, we may be called specially by the Lord and choose to go home early. The point is this: if I am confronted with the choice of death if I do not renounce my faith, and life if I do, I am a man of great faith if I choose to go to my death, for I am exhibiting great faith in the salvation promises and heaven eternal.
But, if knowing also the promises of rescue, and having the faith and the desire to receive them and not go home yet, I will be rescued. Period. Exhibiting great faith in the rescue promises will see my rescue. The three Jews clearly had great faith in the rescue Promises, that they would most definitely beyond a shadow of a doubt be rescued – hence, they were rescued.
A Mustard seed of Faith
The faith of God, the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, is the same faith as the faith described as a mustard seed. Getting back to the scene with the demonized boy of Matthew 17, note the follow-up when the disciples asked why they could not heal the boy: And Jesus said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you'”. (Mat. 17:20)
The mustard seed analogy is repeated elsewhere: And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you. (Lke. 17:6) If we combine Heb. 11:3 with the mustard seed analogy, we see that Christ favorably referred to the mustard seed, not to illustrate a quantity of faith, but to illustrate the invisibility of faith, being supernatural, and the visible result of its proper exercise in the natural. A mustard seed is as close to being invisible as anything you can hold in your hand, but it has the capacity to produce a bush of large proportion.
And He said, ‘How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR can NEST UNDER ITS SHADE.’ (Mar. 4:30-32) In other words, the invisible faith that is the faith of God always has visible results. From the incredibly small as to be invisible comes the very visible when the faith of God, mountain-moving faith, is exercised. 
Again, this is faith that is exercised without doubt on the basis of understanding authority. This is why Jesus could expect His disciples to produce bread out of thin air. From the invisible comes the visible. He could do it on the basis of His authority, and all things He could do on earth, they would do. (Jhn 14:12)
Authority and Faith
Finally, we all know the following story but have we ever really understood its magnificent import. To tie it all together, let’s recall that the man Jesus credited with the greatest faith in Israel at that time was the centurion with the infirm servant:
And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, ” Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus [!] said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.
Perhaps we are getting a glimmer now of what all this means – the faith of God, necessary to do the greater works, comes from believing the awesome scope of the authority given Jesus, and the delegation of that authority to us. It is not believing that Jesus can do it, for we all believe that; it is believing that God has empowered me and you through Jesus to do it for the purposes of the greater works. (Jhn. 14:12) And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. (Mat. 28:18).
Therefore, if we believe that Jesus is really who He said He was, the Son of God sent from God, then we will believe what He says about “all authority” being given Him, and if we believe that, we will believe the authority He has delegated to us over “all demons and diseases”, at a minimum, but apparently much more as established by Eph. 2:6.That has to fully settle within us at some point, but we need not wait for that day, for, like physical exercise, the exercise of faith will lead to its strength over our flesh.
Therefore, let us go boldly to the infirm and the tormented and do the works of God, the greater works, exactly as He intended for us.As He would tell His disciples later: “…but so the World may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded me.” (Jhn. 14:31)
May we do the same.
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