In Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote about the earth pointing to God’s “eternal power and divine nature.” The Koomans, two filmmaking brothers, certainly sensed that while making their newest movie, “Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.”
It unfolded when Mena Massoud, portraying Daniel, and Elijah Alexander, playing King Nebuchadnezzar, filmed a scene on-location in India from Daniel 2, when the king — furious over astrologers who couldn’t interpret his dream — ordered Daniel’s execution. Facing his would-be killers, Daniel visited Nebuchadnezzar, asking for more time to petition God for an answer to the king’s dream “so they would not be executed along with the other wise men of Babylon” (Daniel 2:18, NLT).
When Massoud began reciting his lines, telling Nebuchadnezzar the meaning of his dream, Daniel and Matthew Kooman told CBN’s “Faith in Culture” the atmosphere on set shifted powerfully.
The scene centered on the latter part of Daniel 2, when Daniel foreshadowed the coming of Christ and what many biblical scholars believe to be a reference to Jesus’ triumphant return in the end times:
During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever. That is the meaning of the rock cut from the mountain, though not by human hands, and crushed to pieces the statue of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God was showing the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true and its meaning is certain” (Daniel 2:44-45, NLT).
“[Massoud is] speaking these words from Scripture, and a wind blows across the set,” Daniel Kooman recalled. “Behind the camera, tents were hitting walls and blowing off set. A rainstorm, a crack of thunder — things that we hadn’t experienced in the natural realm on any day leading up to that for 25 days of prep and shooting. None of these sort of occurrences were happening until those words of Scripture about the everlasting kingdom that is coming [were spoken].”
“All of a sudden,” he said, “the natural realm responded to those words of prophetic Scripture.”
With an impressive $1.2 million raised in crowdfunding, the Koomans said they are confident audiences are eager for epic-style theatrical films like “Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.”
More importantly, Matthew Kooman told CBN News he is confident the project has divine backing.
“God was clearly behind it from the beginning,” he said. “And we were blown away by just the success of raising funds through people who wanted to be a part of telling the biblical story. That’s what the real synergy was.”
Trusting in the Lord — and standing by the courage of one’s convictions — is critical to success in Hollywood, the brothers said, particularly for filmmakers making content retelling biblical stories.
Calling the project “incredibly challenging,” Daniel Kooman said the one thing that kept him and his brother grounded was constant meditation on the source material, the Old Testament book of Daniel, and a genuine belief in the inerrancy of the totality of Scripture.
The movie pulls cross references from all throughout the Bible. In addition to Daniel, the film blends in scriptural accounts from the the books of Psalms, Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah.
“We found practically … we couldn’t take one step on any given day without a leading or a direction from the Lord,” said Daniel Kooman. “That can sound abstract, but, for us, it was like, ‘OK, what are we gonna do today and how is it going to have an impact?’ It’s only gonna be if it honors the Word.”
Pointing to Isaiah 55:11, which says Scripture “always produces fruit” (NLT), Daniel Kooman said he noticed a one-to-one correlation that, when they dedicated themselves to accurately retelling the story of Daniel as it’s depicted in the Bible, “there was an incredible blessing.”
“People on set — actors and people involved in the production — experienced that,” he said. “It was a daily occurrence of God’s help through the production.”
Watch the full episode of “Faith in Culture” with the Kooman brothers in the video above.
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