….but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. (Dan 11:32b)

People who know their God shall be strong and do exploits! Those who know their God shall be strong and do exploits, and if you are not strong, you don’t know your God enough. There is actually a real connection between the two, knowing God must unleash a bunch of energy!

There is a ‘but’ there before the exploits.  Daniel 11: 32 “And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits.” The ‘but’ is God’s people’s reaction towards the absolute profanity and anti-God abomination thrown at God’s people as in v31-32. “Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. 32 He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.”

You know many times in ancient spiritual fathers, giants of the land like Augustine, Calvin, wrote their best theology treatise, books in response to the heresy that swept the land that redefined God, redefined salvation or grace of God. That’s the time, the best shines out of God’s people. Under pressure, under persecution, God’s holy unction stirs in God’s servants and produced the best that they wouldn’t have otherwise produced. It is amazing this occurred again and again, the list goes on. For Augustine, he defended the Trinitarian God, he defended the City of God in which he debunked and rebutted the blame of Roman empire of the fall of Rome because of Christianity. In fact, to the contrary, City of God demonstrated that the real city that men needs is that from heaven, not the fleshly type full of greed, selfishness, of men like in Rome. Human civilization was best depicted in Augustine’s brilliant book. John Calvin’s brilliant Institute of Religion was produced to shift the focus on man’s ability to God’s glorious providence. Calvin shifted the entire human foci of operandum from human to God. In reality, humanism which is enthroning human on the throne, and dethroned God, has swept the western civilization for centuries, and the church has a hard time to recover that for God in the secular age. In fact, that’s idolatry. Humanism is idolatry.

JI Packer writes, Daniel set himself to seek God “in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes” (v3, and prayed for the restoration of Jerusalem with a vehemence and passion and agony of spirit to which most of us are complete strangers.[1] That’s an intensity that most of us have not experienced. Why? Where did Daniel get his energy passion from?

As beautifully put by Packer , “Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God’s cause—energy, indeed, which can. Only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer—and the more knowledge, the more energy!” That’s so true. The only way to relief that tension building up in us when we are hit with such profanity and anti-God messages and spirit and culture in this world, is to channel all we have into prayers. That’s why Psalm is so therapeutic, healing and being able to connect with God is what we are made for. That’s what Daniel did. We may not be able to make public gestures against ungodliness and apostasy, but we can all pray ! If there is little energy in us for such prayer, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God. [2]

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[1] JI Packer, Knowing God, p 28, InterVarsity Press 1973

[2] Ibid p29