Evil Trick

When Daniel’s enemies were not able to find anything wrong with him, they got an idea. Only one thing was more important to Daniel than obedience to the king. His God! (In Babylon they believed in many gods but none of them was important to them. Only Daniel and his friends prayed to the true God we read about in the Bible.)

So the men said to each other, “Let’s get King Darius to make a law that for 30 days everyone in the whole country has to pray only to the king, as if he was a god. Nobody can pray to a god. The king will like it.”

“And the punishment for breaking this law is to be thrown into a pit full of lions, to be killed and eaten by them.”

They presented the idea to the king. He was a proud man and he thought to himself, “This is a great idea. I will be like a god to the people.”

So the law was passed and announced all through the entire kingdom. Daniel learnt about it too.

What will Daniel do?

Now the enemies of Daniel watched him even more. Would he go on praying to the true God or to the king?

The Bible tells us what Daniel did. “He knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days” (Daniel chapter 6, verse 10). His enemies could see him through the open window.

In the Bible God tells us that we are only to pray to Him – the only true God. We are not to pray to any other person or god. It was so important to Daniel to obey God and to talk to Him often, that he just went on praying three times each day, even though he was facing a terrible death in a lions’ pit.

Caught

Daniel was caught praying to his God. His enemies rushed to King Darius and told him that Daniel is disobeying his law. He keeps praying to his God and not to the king.