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Daniel heard about the death sentence, he went to the king and requested some time to respond to the king’s demands. Nebuchadnezzar agreed. “Then,” the Bible tells us, “Daniel went to his house and informed his friends . . . about the matter” and asked them to pray for “compassion from the God of heaven” (vv. 17-18) so that the Lord would reveal the dream and its interpretation, and so their lives would be saved. “Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision,” the Scriptures explain (v. 19). Daniel thanked the Lord profusely for being a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God, a wonder-working God. Then Daniel humbly went before the king.
    “Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen and its interpretation?” King Nebuchadnezzar asked (v. 26).
    “As for the mystery about which the king has inquired, neither wise men, conjurers, magicians, nor diviners are able to declare it to the king,” Daniel replied. “However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will take place in the latter days” (vv. 27-28).
    Daniel understood that only God “removes kings and establishes kings” and that “it is He who reveals the profound and hidden things” (vv. 21-22). Daniel, therefore, took no credit for what he did that day. Instead, he gave all the credit to the Lord as he explained that the king had dreamed about a great statue with a head of gold, a body and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet partly made of iron and partly made of clay. Daniel then described how all the different elements were crushed by a stone “cut out without hands” (v. 34). Nebuchadnezzar was stunned. Daniel had his full attention, for that was exactly what he had dreamed. Now, what did it mean?
    Daniel explained that the head of gold represented Nebuchadnezzar, overseeing the Babylonian Empire. “After you there will arise another kingdom [of silver] inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze . . . Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron.” But that, Daniel said, would be “a divided kingdom” (vv. 39-41).
    Remarkably, Daniel had not simply told the king the substance of his private dreams. He had also explained that this dream was given by God to describe future events, namely the coming destruction of the Babylonian Empire and the rise and fall of three other great world empires, one after another.
    The accuracy of Daniel’s analysis is startling. Just as he said, the Babylonians were overtaken by the Medo-Persian Empire, which was symbolized by silver, a metal precious to the Persians to this day. The Medo-Persian Empire was then overtaken by the Greek Empire, represented in the dream by bronze. The Greek Empire was overtaken by the Roman Empire, with its iron-strong military might, so powerful it overwhelmed all others before it. The Roman Empire was, as Daniel foretold, a divided kingdom. It was ruled for a time by four coemperors. Later, it was divided into eastern and western empires, with its western seat of power in Rome and its eastern portion becoming known as the Byzantine Empire, whose seat of power was centered in the city known in antiquity as Byzantium—the city that was later called Constantinople and is known today as Istanbul.
    The Prophecies about the First Coming of the Messiah Came True
    One of the most compelling reasons we can trust that Bible prophecies related to the second coming of the Messiah will come to pass is because the prophecies related to the Messiah’s first coming have already come to pass.
    The Hebrew prophet Micah, for example, told us the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem Ephrathah, a town located south of Jerusalem in the area of Judea. “‘But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days