“I, Nebuchadnezzar, was living in my palace in comfort and prosperity. But one night I had a dream that frightened me; I saw visions that terrified me as I lay in my bed. So I issued an order calling in all the wise men of Babylon, so they could tell me what my dream meant. 7 When all the magicians, enchanters, astrologers, and fortune-tellers came in, I told them the dream, but they could not tell me what it meant. At last Daniel came in before me, and I told him the dream. (He was named Belteshazzar after my god, and the spirit of the holy gods is in him.)” Daniel 4:4-8
While Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in his private life and prosperous in his royal life, he discovered that security in his kingdom did not bring peace, and personal prosperity did not enable him to sleep. His dream troubled him deeply, and he responded by summoning the same wise men who had consistently failed him in the past. This time, instead of requiring that the counselors describe his dream, the king gave them the content of his dream and simply asked for their interpretation of it. But the wise men failed to give Nebuchadnezzar a message he was happy with. Even if they’d known the correct interpretation, they likely would have been unwilling to deliver it to the king. No one wants to deliver a message of doom.
Daniel was the only one of the king’s wise men who didn’t live in fear of him. Finally Nebuchadnezzar summoned Daniel. The King knew that Daniel was filled with the Spirit of the Living God. During the thirty-some years of their association, Nebuchadnezzar had come to see in Daniel the difference that is always apparent in someone who is filled with the Spirit. So he asked Daniel to “explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and its interpretation. The King did not call Daniel first, he called the charlatans first. You would think that the King would have learned his lesson when they could not interpret the first dream. This is just like us today. We try the world’s way first then when it fails, we call on God. We should call on God first. It has been said that no matter how often the wisdom of the world fails, we run right back to the same people who have never had the answers.