‘Daniel answered before the king and said, “The secret the king has demanded is one that neither wise men, enchanters, magicians nor soothsayers can show to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has made known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head are these.” '
Daniel loses no opportunity to exalt his God. He contrasts what He can do with what the wise men of Babylon can do. With all their boasted arts, and with all the help of their gods, they were unable to reveal to the king what he had dreamed. But the God of heaven can reveal such secrets, for all is known to Him. And not only so, but He does reveal those secrets. He does not hide from man, but reveals his ways to man. And indeed it is He Who has revealed to the king what is to happen at the end of the days. Thus was Nebuchadnezzar made to recognise that the God of heaven was supreme over all so-called gods.
‘In the latter days' or ‘at the end of the days'. He wished immediately to make Nebuchadnezzar realise that what he was talking about was not some near event. What had been revealed to him took him on to the end of time, to the destiny of the world. It was that on which focus must be made, the days when the great purposes of the God of heaven would come to fruition. But we must distinguish this from ‘the time of the end' which is rather the final end of the latter days.
The New Testament plainly reveals that this ‘end of the days' was brought in by the days of the Messiah at the first coming of Jesus. The fact that ‘the end times' began at the resurrection is clearly stated in Scripture. ‘He was revealed at the end of the times for your sake', says Peter (1 Peter 1:20), so that he can then warn his readers ‘ the end of all things is at hand' (1 Peter 4:7). So to Peter the first coming of Christ has begun the end times. John also could declare, ‘Little children, it is the last hour' and ‘thereby do we know that it is the last hour' (1 John 2:18).
Likewise Paul says to his contemporaries ‘for our admonition, on whom the end of the ages has come' (1 Corinthians 10:11. Compare also 1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 3:1). What could be clearer? Thus the first coming of Christ was the end of the ages, not the beginning of a new age. The writer to the Hebrews also tells us ‘He has in these last days spoken to us by His Son' (Hebrews 1:1-2), and adds ‘once in the end of the ages has He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself' (Hebrews 9:26-28). So all those early writers saw their days as ‘the last days'. The first coming of Christ had issued in the last days which lead up to the end.
‘Your dream and the visions of your head are these.' That is, his dreams and visions are God's way of revealing the secrets of the latter days that have been made known to Nebuchadnezzar.