The Omniscient God Attributes Of God – (7 Of 10)

Verse 1 tells us he dreamed these dreams "...in the second year..." of his reign. Someone may be saying, "SO WHAT?" We all have had dreams! Yes, but you had better pray to God that you never have a dream like Nebuchadnezzar had.

Of course we know that during Nebuchadnezzar's day there were no Bibles as we have Bibles today. At that time God often spoke to people. He used two methods.

(1) GOD SPOKE TO THEM THROUGH THE PROPHETS. Prophets would fearlessly stand before the people and personally point their sins out to them. For example,

Illus: Nathan stood before king David when he had committed MURDER and ADULTERY and told him, "Thou art the man!"

(2) GOD ALSO SPOKE TO THEM THROUGH DREAMS. We are told that every night we have dreams. Our dreams generally fall into one of three categories.

-SOME OF OUR DREAMS ARE FUNNY. When we awake from our sleep we tell others about what we dreamed and they laugh along with us.

-SOME OF OUR DREAMS ARE SCARY. We wake up and are glad we were just dreaming.

-SOME OF OUR DREAMS ARE RIDICULOUS. That is, they are so "far out" that we are embarrassed to tell anyone what we dreamed.

Often dreams we have come as the result of some event that greatly disturbs us, or from eating too much before we went to bed. The dreams that king Nebuchadnezzar had would not fall into any of these categories.

The dreams that Nebuchadnezzar had came from God. He had no doubt but what some serious message was in the dreams. Verse 1 tells us that after the dreams, "...his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him." Nebuchadnezzar wanted to find out what the dreams meant. This was going to be hard because not only did he not know what the dreams meant, but he could not even remember what he had dreamed.

In verse 2 we see that he called, "...the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans..." He thought they could tell him what his dream was and explain what it meant. Of course the first thing they wanted to know was what he dreamed about. He told them he could not tell them, they were going to have to tell him. They told him they would be glad to, but they were not able to do this. Verse 12 tells us that the king became very angry. He was so angry he commanded that all those men be put to death. Among the wise men was a man by the name of Daniel. Before the order could be carried out to have all the wise men killed, Daniel pleaded with Arioch to give him time to seek his God and ask Him what the dreams and the interpretation was.

Arioch allowed him time and Daniel sought his God. God then revealed to Daniel what had been dreamed, and the interpretation of the dreams. Then Daniel was brought before the king who had been deeply troubled by his dreams. In verse 26 he said, "...Art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof."

Listen to the answer Daniel gave the king. Daniel was careful to let the king know that:

-He did not claim to know all things.

-That the astrologers, magicians and soothsayers did not know all things, then verse 28, "But THERE IS A GOD IN HEAVEN THAT REVEALETH SECRETS, AND MAKETH KNOWN to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days..."

In other words, there is a God in heaven Who KNOWS ALL THINGS. Daniel sought the Omniscient God and God revealed to him the dream and what it meant.

Daniel went on to reveal that God showed Him empires that would come into existence thousands of years in the future, and that those same empires would disappear years after that. Everything that God told Daniel would happen has happened just like God told him it would.

DO YOU KNOW WHY? Because the God of the Bible is OMNISCIENT - that simply means that God knows everything.

Illus: Mortal man is like a man standing by a river. He can only see that part of the river that passes by him; but he who is aloof in the air may see the whole course of the river - how it rises and how it runs. That is the way it is with God.

God knows everything, past, present and future. The omniscient God is not like man who has limited knowledge. For example:

Illus: We have METEOROLOGISTS who look every day at weather conditions and based on those conditions and what happened when they were like that in the past, they make their weather forecasts. Most of the times, based on those conditions, they are right.