Daniel 2:27–28

27Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, 28but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come.

What a temptation this must have been for Daniel to claim some credit for himself, perhaps to boast a bit! But Daniel did nothing of the kind. In the first place, he humbly admitted that what the astrologers and wise men had told the king was correct: there wasn’t a man on earth who could tell the king what he wanted to know. Daniel made a definite point of telling the king that the information he was about to give the king was not the result of his own wisdom.

But we see more in Daniel than just his humility. God, who alone is to be worshiped, had brought Daniel to Babylon for a much higher purpose. In that heathen country Daniel was to give credit to the only true God. Now Daniel had a golden opportunity to do that as he stood before the king, and he was not bashful. He made the most of the opportunity.

“No wise man . . . can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.” What a bold testimony! The king’s wise men, who worshiped the gods of Babylon, had been unable to tell the king what he wanted to know. But a Jewish teenager who worshiped the true God could give the king his answer. And why? Because there is a God in heaven, a God about whom Nebuchadnezzar knew nothing, but who can reveal secrets that the wise men of Babylon could never find out from their gods. If Nebuchadnezzar wanted his problem solved, the answer lay with the true God, not with the useless gods of Babylon. This was pretty forthright testimony to declare to a pagan, but Daniel did not hesitate to do this. Daniel was about to tell the king what he had dreamed, and he wanted the king to know without mistake how this was possible.

“He [God] has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come.” Here is the key to Daniel’s answer. Through the king’s dream, the God of heaven was showing Daniel the king what was going to happen “in days to come,” (literally, “in the latter days”). The expression refers to the future in general and, in particular, to the days of the Messiah in the final period of human history. Actually, the period of history covered by Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is vast, reaching from Nebuchadnezzar’s own day down to the end of time.