In Daniel chapter 1 the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar’s strategy was to strip away these 15- to 16-year-old Jew’s identities and in so doing take away their sufficiency in the God they identified with.
He did this by three things:
•Gave him a new name: He changed Daniel’s name from “God is my judge” to that of a Babylonian deity, “Bel Protect My Life.” His Hebrew name acknowledged Daniel’s need for an ever-present eye upon his own character, as he would have to give account to God for how he conducted his life. Ah, but his new worldly name put no such accountability upon him and only saw the god of this world as subservient to Daniel.
•Changed his diet: Daniel had always only eaten that which was kosher, and now he was being required to eat from the portion of the worldly kings table. He ate that which was holy and good, and now what was paraded before him was what the world said was as the best and more than that necessary to feast upon if one is to develop healthily. Paul spoke of such a thing in 1 Cor. 6:12, where he said, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” Dear one, better is a day in the King of Kings courts than 1,000 years elsewhere. It is better for me to live off the so-called scraps from my master than what the prince of the world calls delicacies. And so it has been from the beginning that the prince of this world has always sought to change man’s diet, telling us over and over how inadequate God’s provisions are for us and how such “slim pickings” are to a restrictive God that is afraid that we will be equal to Him.
•Changed what he learned: The three-year education program was to reprogram Daniel from the things he had learned from God’s word to the so-called “higher education.” Lenin once said, “Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”This has long been the goal of the prince of this world to reeducate, to indoctrinate, and to change the way the world views truth. And soon enough, what Isaiah spoke of in 5:20 will be the norm, as they will “call evil good, and good evil.”
But Daniel and his three friends, would have none of that and were willing to put to test God’s provisions and found that they were better prepared to face the world with God than facing the world without God with the provision that the world offers.