One night, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. It bothered him very much because he didn’t know what it meant. So, he called all his magicians and wise men and they said, Tell us your dream and we will tell you what it means. Nebuchadnezzar answered, You tell me what my dream was, and what it means, and I will give you great gifts, but if you can’t tell me, you will die. Nobody could tell the king his dream. Daniel and his friends prayed that God would show him what the kings dream was and what it meant so that they wouldn’t die. God showed Daniel, and Daniel thanked God for showing him, then Daniel said to the kings servant, Don’t kill the wise men. Take me to the king and I will show the king what his dream means.

Daniel began, No wise man can show you what your dream means, but there is a God in Heaven who knows mysteries and God has shown you what will happen someday. In your dream, you saw a big statue with a head made of gold. His chest and arms were made of silver. His belly and thighs were brass. His legs were iron and his feet were part iron and part clay. Then you saw a stone that hit the feet and broke them all to pieces, and after that, the rest of the statue crumbled all together and blew away in the wind. Then the stone turned into a great big mountain and filled the whole earth.

Nebuchadnezzar quickly forgot about the Lord being the true God and he made a huge gold statue in Babylon. Then he made a law that when the people in his kingdom heard the sound of music, they must bow down and pray to the statue or die in that same hour. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo would not pray to the statue, because it wasn’t God.

Nebuchadnezzar was vary mad and said, I will throw you into a burning fiery furnace! The strongest men in the kings army tied Daniel’s friends up and turned the fire up seven times hotter than it usually was. It was so hot, that the kings men were burned up when they threw Daniel’s friends into the fire. When the king looked into the fire, he was surprised to see four people walking in the middle of the fire, with no burns at all!

Who do you think the fourth person was? God had sent an angel to save Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo from being burned. When the king told them to come out of the fire, they didn’t even smell like smoke. Nebuchadnezzar made a law that if anyone said anything bad about God, that they would be cut into pieces and their house would be destroyed.

When Nebuchadnezzar died, his son, Belshazzar became the king and he had a great big party for his friends in his palace. He used the gold and silver cups and bowls from the Temple in Jerusalem, so that his friends could eat and drink out of them and pray to their fake gods. Of course, this made God very angry.

That very same hour, Belshazzar saw a hand writing on the wall in the palace. Belshazzar was scared, and called his smartest men in to tell him what the writing meant, but nobody could read it. So the king’s wife told him, I have heard of a man named Daniel who can tell you what the writing means. So the king had Daniel brought to him and asked him what the writing meant.

Daniel said, You brought bowls and cups from the Temple of God, and you ate and drank from them and prayed to fake gods. But you didn’t pray to God, who has given you life. The hand you saw was sent from God and this is what he wrote. Your kingdom will come to an end. You have not done good, and your kingdom will be given to the Medes and Persians (two other countries). That night, Belshazzar was killed and a Median named Darius took over the kingdom.

When Darius became king, he chose Daniel to be the most important of all of his princes. They all wanted to get rid of Daniel because he was the kings favorite. They knew that Daniel loved God, so they asked the king to make a new law saying that nobody could pray to anyone but the king for a month or else they should be thrown into the lion’s den. Then they spied on Daniel and went to tell the king that Daniel prays to God, three times a day.

The king had no choice, so he told the princes to take Daniel and throw him into the lion’s den. But because the king was fond of Daniel, he said to him, God will save you. The king worried all night about Daniel, and early the next morning he hurried to the lion’s den and called Daniel’s name. Daniel said, God has sent his angel to shut the lion’s mouths and I am not hurt. God knows I have done nothing wrong. The king was very glad and had Daniel taken out of the lion’s den. Then the king had all the princes that spied on Daniel, and their wives and children, thrown into the lion’s den, and the lions gobbled them all up. Darius made a law that everyone in his kingdom, should pray only to God, because He saved Daniel from the lions and He works miracles and He alone, is the true God, forever.