The old eunuch bolted up from his bed. Sweat glistened down his brow as he struggled to catch his breath. The dream had been so intense. So vivid. It wasn’t the first time Yahweh Rohi had induced such a vision to guide him. In fact, such dreams had led him to the very place he now found himself—third in command of the great Babylonian empire.
It wasn’t even the first time he’d seen the ‘stranger’ in his dreams. A man from another world. Another time. A fierce and skilled warrior with a heart of rare nobility and honor.
However, it was, he had to admit, the first time he’d felt such dread after one of these visions. Something was happening. Something the world had not seen since the rescue of Mosheh or even Noach’s great flood. And, as he’d predicted nearly six months before, it was all tied to the good prince and the blasphemer Sereb-Meloch.
The king’s greatest fears were coming to pass.
The old man climbed from his bed and moved hastily to the basin to wash his face. His mind’s eye was still ablaze with the nightmarish images. A fallen temple of iniquity had arisen from the sands. Bodies of man and animal alike had been strewn here and there, their blood building into a great river of crimson. Fires had canvassed the horizon for as far as the eye could see, and a tempest of sand and lightning cut through the air like a saber, as the sky turned to the blood red of death.
Prince Belshazzar had stood in the center of it all, as the eye of a fierce storm that would rip the world apart.
The only uncertainty in the entire dream was the part the stranger would play. The old man had seen the stranger battling warrior and demon alike, with a ferocity he’d not seen in his long life. But then the sands had seemed to swallow him whole, and the strange man had disappeared into obscurity.
“What is it you would have me do, Lord?” the old man whispered softly to the empty room.
But he knew the answer already. No need for his God to provide any more instructions. He’d trusted in Yahweh Yireh for the better part of his life and he’d never been disappointed. He’d not start doubting now that he was approaching the winter of his years.
He knew what he had to do. Of course, he’d have to do it without the king’s knowledge. Nebuchadnezzar would never sanction such a venture. After all, he’d already sent out his assassins to prevent this catastrophe from happening. He’d certainly balk at the idea of his most valued advisor interfering with his royal decree.
But the man known by his own people as Daniel had a decree issued from a king far higher than the royalty of Babylon. He would not fail in obeying the command of Yahweh, even if it meant his own death for treason against the king. After all, the destruction of the very world was at hand, and only he knew how to prevent it.