For younger children, the teacher may read all the parts, and the children can act out the parts as they are read.
Characters
5 narrators
Nebuchadnezzar
Shadrach
Meshach
Abednego
Narrator #1: Nebuchadnezzar was a king who set up a huge statue. When music played, all the citizens were supposed to bow down and worship the statue. Anyone who refused to bow would be thrown into a blazing hot furnace.
Sumeria, called Shinar in the Old Testament, was the lower part of Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The southern part of Mesopotamia was later called Babylonia. Daniel and his friends were taken to Babylon, the capital of Babylonia. (See Daniel 3.) Babylonia was in the region that is now called Iraq.
This week the U.S. Department of State released their 2011 International Religious Freedom Report. The report covers 199 countries and territories. Go to the report here and use the “Go to a Country Report” drop-down box to begin searching reports from specific countries. The reports tell what religions people in the country follow, what the laws of the country say about religious freedom, and whether or not there are abuses of religious freedom in that country.
See the “Countries” section on this site or the “Restricted Nations” section at Persecution.com for further information about selected countries.
As reported on The Voice of the Martyrs’ Facebook page, VOM is distributing a children’s Bible storybook in Iraq. The page in the photo shows the story of Jonah and the big fish. Ninevah, where God sent Jonah, is the modern-day Iraqi city of Mosul. VOM thanks friends at the United Bible Society for their partnership in this project.
A girl in Iraq reading a children’s Bible
Parents and Teachers: The July issue of The Voice of the Martyrs newsletter is VOM’s annual photo issue. The photo and brief stories accompanying them can encourage Christians to pray for persecuted Christians in the photos as well as other Christians around the world who suffer for their faith. To subscribe to the free monthly newsletter, visit our subscription sign-up page. As you read the newsletters, you may want to share stories from this site about the featured countries with your children. Then pray together for the people in the photos and stories.
The picture included with this post is from the July 2012 The Voice of the Martyrs newsletter. The photo shows a girl from Iraq reading a children’s Bible. VOM friends delivered 4,000 Bibles to people in the Kurdistan region of Iraq earlier this year.
To learn more about Iraq and Kurdistan, download Bold Believers in Iraq from the Downloads section.
