In Job 33:14-17
we are told, “For God speaks once, yea twice, yet man perceives it not. In a
dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings
upon the bed. Then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction, that
He may withdraw man from his purpose [or work], and hide pride from man.” This
is how God often speaks to men where they have not open Bibles to give them the
clear revelation of His will. He has many ways of reaching those who seem bent
upon their own destruction. The fourth chapter of Daniel is a remarkable
example of God’s matchless grace, and illustrates most preciously the words
just quoted.

God had spoken the
first time to Nebuchadnezzar in giving him the dream of the great image of
the times of the Gentiles (Dan. 2). But the heart of the king was willful, and
he continued to go on with his own purpose, in his pride and folly. God spoke
to Nebuchadnezzar the second time by the marvelous vision of the Son of
God in the midst of the fiery furnace, keeping His faithful witnesses from all
danger and harm (Dan. 3). But again the proud king kept on his way, with
insubmissive heart and unsubdued will. Now God speaks the third time,
and this in a most humiliating manner, to the confusion of this great
world-ruler before his princes.

In the passage
in Job, Elihu goes on to show that when dreams and visions do not avail, God
sometimes allows disease to grip the body till the poor sinner is broken in
spirit and crushed in heart, ready at last to cry, “I have sinned, and
perverted that which was right, and it profited me not!” (Job 33:27). Then “He
will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the
light” (verse 28).

So in Daniel 4,
written by Nebuchadnezzar himself, and preserved and incorporated into the
volume of inspiration by Daniel, we have the interesting account of the means
God used to bring this haughty king to the end of himself, and lead him to
abase himself before the Majesty in the heavens. In other words, this is
Nebuchadnezzar’s conversion, and seems clearly to show that a work of grace
took place in his soul before he laid down the scepter entrusted to his hand by
Jehovah.

There is a
typical meaning too, no doubt. In Nebuchadnezzar we see a picture of all
Gentile power and its departure from God, its degradation and bestial
character, and its final subjugation to God in the time of the end, when Christ
shall return in glory and all nations shall bow before Him, owning His
righteous rule.

Nebuchadnezzar
was the embodiment of authority given from heaven:“The powers that be are
ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1). But the king’s madness depicts the turning away
of the nations from God and the corruption of governments to serve human ends.
Has not this been characteristic of the great ones of this world? Instead of
kings standing for God and acting as His representatives to maintain justice
and judgment in the earth, do we not find pride, self-will, covetousness, and
self-seeking generally controlling them? All this is pictured by the debasement
of Nebuchadnezzar when his heart was changed to the heart of a beast, and he
was driven forth to eat grass like the oxen of the fields.

But the day
draws near when God will assert Himself, and all Gentile dominion shall come to
an end. Then the long-promised King will shine forth in His glorious majesty,
and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor unto the new
Jerusalem, the heavenly throne-city of the coming kingdom. Then will the
nations look up as redeemed men, and not down as the beasts that perish.

Even in this
present age history teaches us the value of a national recognition of God’s
moral government. We have heard of the heathen chieftain who came from his
distant domain to visit Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. One day he asked
her if she would tell him the secret of England’s progress and greatness. For
answer, it is said, the queen presented him with a Bible, saying, “This book
will tell you.” Who can doubt that according to the measure in which that Book
of books has been believed and loved by any people, God has honored them; and
you will find that every nation that has welcomed and protected the gospel has
been cared for and blessed in a special way. On the other hand, let there be a
national rejection of His Word, as in the case of the French nation, who were
among the first favored by Him in Reformation times, but drove out the truth He
gave them, and you will find disaster following disaster.

But let us now
turn directly to our chapter for a concrete example of all this. It begins
with:“Nebuchadnezzar the king, unto all people, nations, and languages, that
dwell in all the earth” (Dan. 4:1). This comes home to my heart in a most
marked way. I realize that I am reading the personal testimony of one who was
in some respects the greatest monarch this world has ever known; I am
privileged to have his own account of how he—a proud, self-willed man—was
brought to repentance and to the saving knowledge of the God of all grace!

What a miracle
this is! In fact, every conversion is a miracle—every soul that is saved knows
that it is to be dealt with in supernatural power. It is God alone who changes
men about like this. He picks up a vile, wretched sinner and makes him a holy,
happy saint. He works in the drunkard’s soul and changes him to a sober, useful
member of society. He breaks down the proud and stubborn, and they become meek
and lowly, easy to be entreated. Are not these things miracles? Indeed they
are, and they are being enacted all around us; yet men sneer and say that the
miraculous never happens in this law-controlled, workaday world of ours! Oh
that men might have their eyes opened to see and their ears to hear
what God in His grace is doing on the basis of the one offering for sin of His
blessed Son upon the cross!

“I thought it
good,” Nebuchadnezzar goes on, “to show the signs and wonders that the high God
has wrought toward me. How great are His signs! and how mighty are His wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to
generation” (Dan. 4:2,3). What a splendid confession this is, and how different
from his previous acknowledgments in chapters 2 and 3! Ah, his conscience has
been reached now, and he knows God for himself, and delights to tell of His
signs and wonders wrought toward him! He owns Him now not as a
god, but as the one true and living God whose kingdom rules over all, and shall
continue forevermore. This is not the millennial kingdom of Christ of which he
speaks, but God’s moral government of the universe, which nothing ever alters
for a moment.

And now I would
like to be very personal, and press some questions home upon each listener.
Have you ever been brought into direct contact with Him, so that you can speak
confidently of what He has done for your soul? Have you been humbled by getting
a sight of yourself as a lost, undone sinner before Him? Have you owned
yourself unclean and undone, in dire need of sovereign mercy? And do you know
what it is to have fled for refuge to the very God against whom you have sinned
so grievously, and to have found in His Son our Lord Jesus Christ a hiding
place from the judgment your sins deserved?

Before God
awakened Nebuchadnezzar, he had been “at rest in [his] house, and flourishing
in [his] palace” (verse 4). There is a deceitful rest and peace that lulls many
a soul into a false security. To be untroubled is no evidence of safety. Be
sure that your peace is founded on the blood of Christ shed upon the cross.

Nebuchadnezzar
tells us how he was aroused from that false security in which he had dwelt so
long. “I saw a dream,” he says, “that made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my
bed and the visions of my head troubled me” (verse 5). God saw that he needed
to be troubled—he needed to be awakened from his sleep of death. It was grace
that thus exercised him. And in some way every soul that is saved has to pass
through this period of soul-anxiety and concern. Nebuchadnezzar turned, as
before, to the wrong source for help in his time of difficulty. He called in
his magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers, to whom he narrated his
dream, but to no avail. At last Daniel came in, and to him the king turned
expectantly and related his dream (verses 6-18).

The meaning was
evidently clear to Daniel from the first, but we are told that he was
astonished for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him. Nebuchadnezzar must
have discerned the anxiety and sorrow in the face of his minister, for he spoke
in a way to give him confidence to proceed with the interpretation. It is a
blessed thing for any soul to get to the place where he can say, “Give me God’s
word, and let me know it is His word, and I will receive it, no matter
how it cuts and interferes with my most cherished thoughts.”

“My lord,
Daniel answered, “the dream be to those who hate you, and the interpretation
thereof to your enemies. He then proceeded to explain the dream. Nebuchadnezzar
had been set by God in a special place of prominence in the earth as the head
of all peoples and dominions. But he was to be humbled to the very lowest
depths (verses 19-27).

All happened
exactly as Daniel had said, for Nebuchadnezzar, still not humbled, though he
had listened so respectfully to the words of the prophet, walked one day, a
year later, in the palace of his kingdom overlooking the city. As he walked he
said to himself, “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of
the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?” (verses
28-30). Thus did Nebuchadnezzar forget how he was indebted to the most high God
for the position he occupied and the riches and the glory of it, and took all
the credit to himself. While the word was in his mouth the decree was spoken,
and he was informed by a voice from heaven that the time had come when the
dream should be fulfilled. The same hour he lost his reason and became a
pitiable spectacle, unfit to associate with his fellows. He was driven from men
into the open fields where he became like the beasts that perish (verses
31-33).

After seven
years Nebuchadnezzar lifted up his eyes; his reason returned to him; he saw
that God had been dealing with him; his lesson was learned; he blessed the most
high God; he turned to Him in repentance; he owned Him as his God; and then he
wrote out this account of his conversion, that others might, with him, be
humbled before the only true God and bless Him for His mercy.

Thus will it be
with the spared nations after the judgments that are to take place in the time
of the end. Nebuchadnezzar aptly typifies all Gentile power, as we have already
noticed. It has been haughty, insolent, and heaven-defying. Forgetting God, the
true source of authority and power, it has become like the beasts of the earth.
You know something of its course since it crucified the Lord of glory. The
nations have been mad—as utterly bereft of all true reason as was the demented
king of Babylon. But the day is nearing when God, in His grace, is going to end
all this and deliver a groaning world from the evils of selfish despotism and
national jealousies. Christ’s personal return from heaven will conclude the
long period of Gentile misrule. Creation groans for the hour when the one true
King will be manifested, when our Lord Jesus Christ “in His times will show who
is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1
Tim. 6:15).

“The blessed
Potentate” means a truly happy ruler! The world has never seen a happy
potentate in the past. Shakespeare’s line has passed into a proverb:“Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown.” But in the days of our Lord Jesus Christ,
when He takes the rod of power and reigns in righteousness, the world, for the
first time, will see a happy Potentate. Who can measure the happiness of
the Son of God when He descends to take the kingdom for which He has waited so
long; when He has His own beloved bride with Himself to share His glory! Then
“He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11).

“That happy
Potentate” excludes all sorrow and disappointment. “That only Potentate”
excludes every other rule. Upon His head will be many crowns. Every other crown
will be cast at His feet, and He will reign as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Happy for those, in that day, who have humbled themselves in this, and who,
like Nebuchadnezzar, have owned the righteousness of His dealings with them;
who have confessed their sins before Him; and who will be able to exclaim with
joy, when He descends in majesty, “This is our God:we have waited for Him”
(Isa. 25:9).

Have you bowed
in contrition at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, and trusted Him as your own
Saviour, and owned Him as your rightful Lord? If you have, you can look up and
say with happy confidence, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

(From Lectures
on Daniel the Prophet, Loizeaux, Neptune, NJ; used by permission.)