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of My people Israel and Judah.’ The L ORD says, ‘I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers and they shall possess it’” (Jeremiah 25:12; 30:3).
    The prophet Daniel was one of the exiles living in the Babylonian Empire during this time. He had been taken captive at a young age and had grown up and been educated in the capital of Babylon. Yet while he had a powerful and intimate relationship with the God of Israel, he did not realize that the captivity was prophesied to last for a specific period of time. One day, however, as he was having his daily Bible study and poring over the prophecies of Jeremiah, he was startled by what he found. “I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the L ORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years,” Daniel would later write. “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes” (Daniel 9:2-3). Daniel confessed his sins and the sins of his people and asked the Lord to have mercy and to forgive the Jewish people for turning their backs on the Lord. What’s more, he asked the Lord to keep his promise and release the Jewish people from captivity at the end of seventy years. This, of course, is precisely what happened. The Babylonian Empire was conquered by the neighboring Medo-Persian Empire, and the Jewish people were eventually set free to return to Israel and Jerusalem by order of the Persian king, right on the prophetic schedule.
    The Prophecies about Four World Empires Came True
    Among the most fascinating examples of Bible prophecies coming to pass is the dramatic dream of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.
    One night, the king had an unusually vivid dream about future events. The dream was so troubling that he could not sleep, and he called together the wise men of his kingdom to seek their counsel. In chapter 2 of the book of Daniel, we learn that the king’s most senior advisors anxiously waited for the king to tell them the dream so they could interpret it, but the king refused. “If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb and your houses will be made a rubbish heap,” he said (v. 5). The magicians and conjurers and sorcerers again insisted that the king first share the dream and then they would explain it to him, but Nebuchadnezzar became enraged. “I know for certain that you are bargaining for time, inasmuch as you have seen that the command from me is firm, that if you do not make the dream known to me, there is only one decree for you. For you have agreed together to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the situation is changed; therefore tell me the dream, that I may know that you can declare to me its interpretation” (v. 8).
    The king’s advisors were incredulous—and terrified. They had just been threatened with death. Yet they were in an impossible situation. They were fully prepared to analyze future events for their monarch, using all the worldly knowledge and experience they possessed. But how could they possibly tell the king what his dream meant until they knew what his dream was? And how could they know what his private dream was unless he told them? “There is not a man on earth who could declare the matter for the king, inasmuch as no great king or ruler has ever asked anything like this of any magician, conjurer, or Chaldean,” they replied. “The thing which the king demands is difficult, and there is no one else who could declare it to the king except gods, whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh” (vv. 10-11).
    The furious Nebuchadnezzar then ordered that all the wise men of Babylon be put to death. Daniel, a young man at the time, was among this group. He had a reputation for having a relationship with a God who interpreted dreams and provided extraordinary wisdom. When