Some who are presently refusing to take the COVID vaccine in the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic are professing to follow the Biblical example of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to partake of the king’s meat and wine during their training in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (Dan. 1:8-16). Many claim to be eschewing the COVID vaccine for the same reason Daniel and his companions wouldn’t eat the king’s meat or drink his wine—because their consciences won’t permit it.

But is this a valid comparison? Is conscience always a reliable guide? What are the ideas and presuppositions informing our consciences? Is the written counsel of God serving as our supreme authority (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11)? Or have we permitted cultural trends and secular ideologies to exert a comparable impact on our moral reasoning?

Daniel, His Companions, and the King’s Meat

The story is a familiar one to Seventh-day Adventist Christians. Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—renamed by their captors Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan. 1:6,7)—were taken hostage by King Nebuchadnezzar and removed to Babylon for re-educating in the Babylonian royal court (verses 3-4). Part of their daily life as students in the royal academy was to include food and wine from the king’s table (verse 5).

But Daniel and his companions determined that they would refuse what others likely considered a most beneficent gesture from the monarch who now held them prisoner. Ellen White explains their reasons for doing this:

Among the viands placed before the king were swine’s flesh and other meats which were declared unclean by the law of Moses, and which the Hebrews had been expressly forbidden to eat. Here Daniel was brought to a severe test. Should he adhere to the teachings of his fathers concerning meats and drinks, and offend the king, probably losing not only his position but his life, or should he disregard the commandment of the Lord and retain the favor of the king, thus securing great intellectual advantages and the most flattering worldly prospects?

Daniel did not long hesitate. He decided to stand firmly for his integrity, let the result be what it might. He “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank” [1].

Nor dared they (Daniel and his friends) risk the enervating effect of luxury and dissipation on physical, mental, and spiritual development. They were acquainted with the history of Nadab and Abihu, the record of whose intemperance and its results had been preserved in the parchments of the Pentateuch, and they knew that their own physical and mental power would be injuriously affected by the use of wine [2].

And we know the outcome of this exercise in integrity by these four young men. The book of Daniel tells us:

And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king.

And in all matters of wisdom, and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm (Dan. 1:19-20).

Comparing the Two Dilemmas

Is there any justifiable comparison between the refusal of Daniel and his companions to ingest the food and wine from Nebuchadnezzar’s table, and the refusal today of certain ones to take the COVID vaccine? Are these in fact analogous cases of refusing to defile one’s body temple (I Cor. 6:19)?

Following are three major reasons, among others that might be listed, as to why this comparison is unsound:

First, as the above inspired evidence makes plain, the refusal of Daniel and his friends to eat the king’s meat and drink his wine was based on explicit Biblical commands. God had forbidden His people to consume swine’s flesh and other unclean meats (Lev. 11), and in addition to recording the tragic fate of Nadab and Abihu in the Sacred Narrative (Lev. 10:1-10), He had expressly forbidden His people to use alcoholic beverages (Prov. 20:1; 23:31). No such inspired command, in either Scripture or the writings of Ellen White, can be found forbidding the use of vaccines of any kind.

Second, the claim that taking the COVID vaccine for the sake of the common good is comparable to one or another rationale that Daniel and his friends might have used to justify their partaking of the king’s food and wine, is another line of logic that breaks down under scrutiny. Disobeying a Biblical command never contributes to the common good, and the outcome of the ten-day trial proposed by the four young men clearly demonstrated the superior wisdom of the diet they had chosen (Dan. 1:12-20).

Third, the objective, positive outcome of the ten-day experiment was witnessed and verified by the heathen masters of these faithful young Hebrews. No appeal to obscure sources or observers biased in their favor was needed, nor was it necessary to voice theories as to the allegedly nefarious motives of Nebuchadnezzar and his advisers in giving them and their fellow students food from the king’s table. Rather, the favorable outcome of adhering to God’s dietary regimen was confirmed by the very pagan king whose likely negative reaction to the young men’s choice of food had inspired fear in those responsible for their training (Dan. 1:10).

No such objective evidence vindicating the choices of COVID vaccine resisters has been produced in the present situation. If indeed this was the risky medical experiment alleged by vaccine critics, hundreds of millions would be suffering adverse consequences from having taken the vaccine, and no conspiracy of imposed silence could possibly be so vast or efficient as to successfully conceal such information. What is significant about the wisdom of Daniel’s dietary choices is that it was affirmed by witnesses who had every reason to be hostile to the faith and lifestyle of Daniel and his fellow worthies. The fact that Daniel and his friends were found—by their captors, no less—to be ten times wiser than all the wise men of Babylon, was a reality no conspiracy could possibly have kept hidden.

The Danger of a Bad Conscience

Those who claim their conscience won’t let them get vaccinated must remember that one’s conscience is not always reliable. Ellen White tells us, under divine inspiration: “There is a conscientiousness that will carry everything to extremes, and make Christian duties as burdensome as the Jews made the observance of the Sabbath” [3]. The written counsel of God must ever be the lodestar of the Christian conscience (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11). To go beyond that counsel and make an uninspired rule an issue of religious liberty and godly integrity is to effectively claim God’s power for something His Word doesn’t require. This invariably brings reproach on the cause of our Lord, as no inspired promise assures us of God’s blessing when we make man-made rules an issue of conflict with fellow believers or with the world. The inspired pen declares, “All His biddings are enablings” [4]. This does not include the biddings of a hypersensitive, humanly-informed conscience.

God declared to the ancient Israelites, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it” (Deut. 12:32). Jesus offered a similar warning when He declared of the Jewish leaders in His time: “In vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:9). Some may say that their refusal to be vaccinated is their own decision, one they aren’t imposing on others. But whenever Christians contrive rules of their own, commandments not found in the inspired writings, and make these rules divisive issues either within the church or with the larger world, they have moved beyond the realm of private conviction and have staked the public credibility of their faith on something God never commanded. Neither the unity of the body of Christ nor the public witness of that body should be risked in such ventures.

Other False Analogies to Biblical Diet Standards

I was a graduate theology student at Loma Linda University when the famous Baby Fae operation occurred, which involved transplanting the heart of a baboon into a newborn baby girl within a few days of her birth [5]. Though the girl died within a month of the procedure, she lived longer than any previous human recipient of a non-human heart [6], and her operation paved the way for her doctor to perform the first successful infant allograph heart transplant one year later [7].

What perhaps saddened me most about this event was the foolish, unsubstantiated claims of certain fellow Adventists that the operation violated Biblical counsel against humans eating animals classified as unclean. Similar claims were made regarding the use of pig valves in human heart surgery. (One local pastor in the Loma Linda area actually underwent such an operation during that same time frame, after which one of his colleagues remarked facetiously to me that the pastor in question had now become “unclean.”)

But no Bible or Spirit of Prophecy admonitions exist which forbid the use of unclean animal organs in human surgical operations. This makes no more sense than the belief of Jehovah’s Witnesses that blood transfusions in human beings contradict the Biblical command against the use of blood in the human diet (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 3:17; Acts 15:20,29) [8]. No inspired counsel exists making an unqualified equation between food and medical remedies. The Seventh-day Adventist health message, with its basis in Scripture and extensive elaboration in the writings of Ellen White, offers no support for such extreme theories or practices.

Conclusion

The courage and timeless example of Daniel and his companions in refusing the king’s meat and wine in the court of Babylon, was in direct obedience to explicit divine commands spelled out in the Scriptures (Lev. 10:10; 11; Prov. 20:1; 23:31). By contrast, those refusing to take the COVID vaccine in the context of the present global pandemic have no such command to cite as justification for their resistance to what objective evidence indicates is a simple issue of public safety.

REFERENCES

1. Ellen G. White, Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 30.

2. ----Prophets and Kings, p. 482.

3. ----Selected Messages, vol. 2, p. 319.

4. ----Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 333 (italics supplied).

5. “Baby Fae” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Fae

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. “Jehovah’s Witnesses and blood transfusions” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_and_blood_transfusions#Coercion

Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan