Shine

An Epilogue for our Series on Daniel

“Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” - Daniel 12:3

We began this book in a moment of loss. A city fallen. A temple plundered. A teenager standing in the court of the world's most powerful empire, being given a new name by an official who assumed the old one no longer mattered.

We end it with stars.

The journey from the renaming to the rising has taken us through eighty years of Daniel’s life and twelve chapters of one of the most extraordinary books in the Bible. We have been in the furnace, the lions’ den, the throne room, and the field where the king ate grass. We have watched the Son of Man come up to the Ancient of Days. We have heard the appointed time for the desolation and the promise of the sanctuary’s restoration. We have prayed with the grain of grace, stood in the unseen war, and watched the wise stumble, shine, and make many understand. And now, at the very end of the book, in its final verse, we are given a destination.

Not merely survival. Not merely endurance. Not merely the negative achievement of having refused to bow when the music played. Something luminous, active, radiant. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above. Those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

What It Means to Shine

The shining of Daniel 12:3 is not the pale glow of people who have managed to stay alive and keep their faith intact through a difficult season. It is the shining of stars—the brightness of the sky, the firmament that stretches above the whole earth, visible to everyone below it and requiring no explanation. Stars do not illuminate themselves. They burn. And the burning is not a performance or an achievement; it is what they are.

The wise who shine are those who have been formed by everything the book of Daniel has described: the small, daily faithfulness of chapter 1; the prayer before the performance of chapter 2; the “but if not” of chapter 3; the humility that looks up in chapter 4; the principled truth-telling of chapter 5; the windows open toward Jerusalem of chapter 6; the long view of the throne room in chapters 7 and 8; the praying with the grain of grace in chapter 9; the perseverance through the unseen war of chapter 10; the wisdom that makes many understand in chapter 11. The shining is not separate from the formation. It is its culmination. The life lived faithfully in Babylon produces, in the end, a light that the darkness cannot account for and cannot extinguish.

Jesus, standing on a hillside in Galilee, says to his disciples—who are themselves, in Peter’s later language, elect exiles scattered across the world: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:14–16). He is not telling his disciples to behave differently. He is telling them what they already are—light—and commanding them not to hide it. Daniel 12:3 is the eternal counterpart to Matthew 5:14: the light that shines in present-day Babylon is the same light that will shine like the stars forever and ever.

Those Who Turn Many to Righteousness

The second half of the verse deserves the most careful attention because it specifies what the shining accomplishes: those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

The wise shine. But they do not shine alone or for themselves. Their shining turns many to righteousness. The light is not decorative. It is directional—it points people toward something, orients them toward someone. The wise who shine in the darkness of exile do so not to display their own faithfulness but to lead others toward the God whose character their faithfulness reflects.

This is Daniel’s whole life in a single phrase. Nebuchadnezzar prostrating himself before Daniel in chapter 2. Nebuchadnezzar praising the God who delivered the three from the furnace in chapter 3. Nebuchadnezzar’s public testimony to the sovereignty of the Most High in chapter 4. Belshazzar hearing the truth about his kingdom before its end in chapter 5. Darius declaring to all his kingdom that the God of Daniel is the living God in chapter 6. Every king who encounters Daniel encounters, through him, the God whom Daniel serves—and some of them, at least, are turned. The wise who shine in Babylon do not merely preserve their own faith in the exile. They become, in the exile, the means by which others find the God of the exile.

Paul, looking toward the end of his own exile in a Roman prison, expresses the same conviction: “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6–8). The crown Paul awaits is not his alone. It belongs to all who have loved the appearing—all who have faced their Babylon with their windows open toward home, all who have prayed with the grain of grace, all who have stood in the unseen war and been refined and purified and made white, all who have turned many to righteousness by the quality of their shining.

The Exile’s Final Vocation

We are living, as we said at the beginning of this book, in Beautiful Downtown Babylon. The city is real. Its attractions are genuine, its demands total, and its renaming project tireless and sophisticated. It has new names for all of us, and it is very good at making us answer to them.

But we know our real name. We have read this book. We have seen the throne room and we know who sits on it. We have heard the anthem—if God is for us, who can be against us?—and we have learned, from a man who prayed with his windows open for eighty years, what it sounds like when it is lived rather than merely quoted. We have been told that the exile is temporary and the rising is eternal and the dust of the earth does not have the last word about the people who lie in it.

So the question with which this book closes is not whether we will shine—the resurrection will see to that—but whether we will shine now. Whether the light that will eventually be displayed in the brightness of the sky above will be present and visible in the particular Babylon we inhabit, on the particular Tuesday morning of our particular life. Whether the windows are open. Whether the knees are bent. Whether the resolve is made, quietly and without drama, not to defile ourselves with the king’s food. Whether we are among the wise who make many understand.

Daniel did not have the New Testament. He did not have the empty tomb or Pentecost or the letters of Paul. He had the word of God, a community of three friends, a prayer rhythm that nothing could interrupt, and the long view of a God who rules the kingdoms of men and gives them to whom he will. He went his way. He rested. He will stand at the end of the days.

We have everything Daniel had, and much more beside. We have what he was shown from a distance. We have the firstfruits of the resurrection already raised and seated at the right hand of the Ancient of Days. We have the Spirit who prays in us with groanings too deep for words. We have the Scriptures. We have the community of the saints across every age who have prayed and stumbled and been refined and shone. And we have the promise, sealed in the book that the Lamb opens, that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The exile is not the end of the story. 

“And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” - Revelation 22:2

Shine.

God of Daniel—God of the furnace, the den, the throne room, and the rising—send us out into our Babylons with the confidence that nothing in all creation can separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hearts fixed. Bibles and Windows open. Knees bent. Eyes on the Throne.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Amen.