Then he offered them one more chance, for he had liked these young men from the first time he had seen them. The band would play again. If they would fall down before the image, everything would be all right. If not, they would be thrown into the blazing furnace. “Then,” asked the king, “what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”
It was an awful moment for the three young men. Nobody likes to be burned alive. They could see smoke rising from the furnace which the king would use to punish people like them, and they knew very well that Nebuchadnezzar would do exactly as he had said if they disobeyed him again.
They could have said to themselves, “Well, just bowing down once won’t matter very much. We wouldn’t really be worshiping the statue. We would just do it to please the king who has been so good to us.” But they did no such thing. They remembered the commandment of God, “You shall not make for yourself an idol. . . . You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” * And they decided that they must obey God rather than man.
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