Daniel: Faith In A Hostile World
September 14, 2025Pastor Patrick presented today's message, "Daniel: Faith In A Hostile World." A video of today's message is here on YouTube. The discussion that follows assumes you are familiar with the message content.
The history of the world is constantly checkered with everything from disinterest in God/faith to outright evil. Today is no different.
Pastor Patrick's pointing out Daniel 2:28, "but there is a God in heaven..." reminded me of "Be Still and Know That I am God."
This week, I was preparing my "Moses and the Exodus" lesson for an upcoming PILLAR Institute class when the issue of knowing God and believing in God came up. Prager brings this up in his discussion of the Israelites' behavior in the Wilderness. The key is that there is a difference between believing in God's existence and trusting God. It's far more important to truly trust God than simply believe God exists. Prager goes on to discuss that to get to know God, you have to make the first move. It's like developing a relationship with Shakespeare requires that you first read and study Shakespeare. Not much different with God.
Patrick also shared some good news toward the end of his message. God's Kingdom already circles the globe. And the youth portion is growing significantly. That's good news. The Torah recognized the need to raise up children in the ways of the Lord from the get-go. Deuteronomy 11:19, "Teach them [God's instructions] to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." In other words, teaching them all the time along their path. Teaching them "The Way." This verse is one of the key verses that drives the continuation of our weekly Family Dinners.
At the outset of his message, Pastor Patrick made some general remarks about the rough week it's been. He didn't directly mention the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but I imagine everyone put two and two together. The most interesting comment I've read about the assassination was a comparison to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kirk's assassination was "the first political assassination of a non-officeholder or non-officeseeker since MLK, Jr in 1968." I'm not sure that's entirely true as there have been surprisingly many assassinations in the U.S. since 1968, but I recognized nearly none of the others listed in a Wikipedia article (except Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon). MLK and Kirk were both religious men who shared their faith openly. To me, the most impressive behavior by Kirk that's come out is that he observed Shabbat (Sabbath) every week, putting down the cell phone, as it were, to reflect and faith-exercise with his family; much in keeping with the aforementioned Deuteronomy 11:19, not to mention the Commandment to do so. This event makes the lessons in Daniel all the more relevant.
Bonus
Astrology: Careful What You Bet On
What follows is from Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, Adam Epstein, and Neal Freyman on "Morning Brew."
There you are. Your Zodiac sign is probably wrong. Created by the Babylonians 2,500 years ago, the 12 signs were originally based on the constellations behind the sun at the time. But what they saw then isn't necessarily what you'd see now. For instance, if your birthday is today (Sept. 10), you think you're a Virgo, because that was the constellation behind the sun on this day thousands of years ago. This year, however, it's Leo. That's for three reasons: 1. The Earth wobbles, shifting our view of the stars by about one degree every 72 years.There are those (astrologers, mostly) that disagree. They say things like, "It's geocentric, meaning it's anchored by our perspective on Earth, not the actual position of constellations. While there are 88 named constellations in the sky, only 12 zodiac signs exist. In other words, the zodiac signs share names with constellations but are not the constellations themselves."
2. Constellations aren't all the same size (e.g., the sun only spends a week in front of tiny Scorpio).
3. There is a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, which the Babylonians kinda just forgot about.
Your guess is as good mine...
Bonus2
Library of Time
If you're a time nut, you may get a kick out of this website: Library of Time.
Here's what the website says the Mission is:
After seeing the total solar eclipse of 8th April 2024 CE, I became interested in the fantastic ability of the math and astronomy used to calculate its time and location. I considered how such an event might have appeared to people in ancient times; they apparently found it as incredible as I did, because through my reading I was fascinated to hear that many ancient calendars were calibrated to modern calendars by the writings of eclipses by ancient peoples.The Hebrew calendar (in the blue circle) is included amongst the roughly 100 calendars/times presented - which has helped me on occasion.
The mission of this website is to create a collection of every calendar with a verifiable date at a specific point in time, as well as to display other methods of timekeeping. It is to be a celebration of time as counted by humans from all walks of life, displaying all of the unique ways different people chose to satisfy one of humanity's earliest and most universal curiosities.
Also included in this mission is the calculation of celestial phenomena, just as those who calculated the dates and times of the eclipse allowed me to know in advance of the event that would inspire me.