Dieter F. Utchdorf, October 2015

     I don’t know if it was easy for Daniel to be a believer in such an environment. Some people are blessed with a believing heart—for them, faith seems to come as a gift from heaven. But I imagine that Daniel was like many of us who have to work for our testimonies. I’m confident that Daniel spent many hours on his knees praying, laying his questions and fears on the altar of faith, and waiting upon the Lord for understanding and wisdom.

And the Lord did bless Daniel. Though his faith was challenged and ridiculed, he stayed true to what he knew by his own experience to be right.

    Daniel believed. Daniel did not doubt.

And then one night, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that troubled his mind. He assembled his team of scholars and counselors and demanded that they describe the dream to him and also reveal the meaning of it.

Of course, they could not. “No one can do what you ask,” they pleaded. But this only made Nebuchadnezzar more furious, and he commanded that all the wise men, magicians, astrologers, and counselors be cut in pieces—including Daniel and the other young students from Israel.

You who are familiar with the book of Daniel know what happened next. Daniel asked Nebuchadnezzar for a little extra time, and he and his faithful companions went to the source of their faith and moral strength. They prayed to God and asked for divine help at this crucial moment in their lives. And “then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a … vision.”³

Daniel, the young boy from a conquered nation—who had been bullied and persecuted for believing in his strange religion—went before the king and revealed to him the dream and its interpretation.

 From that day on, as a direct result of his faithfulness to God, Daniel became a trusted counselor to the king, renowned for his wisdom in all of Babylon.

The boy who believed and lived his faith had become a man of God. A prophet. A prince of righteousness.⁴

     ... we have been given much. We have been taught the divine truths of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We have been entrusted with priesthood authority to help our fellowmen and build up God’s kingdom on earth. We live in a time of great outpouring of spiritual power. We have the fulness of truth. We have priesthood keys to seal on earth and in heaven. Sacred scriptures and teachings of living prophets and apostles are available as never before.

My dear friends, let us not take these things lightly. With these blessings and privileges come great responsibilities and obligations. Let us rise up to them.

The ancient city of Babylon is in ruins. Its splendor is long gone. But Babylon’s worldliness and wickedness live on. Now it falls to us to live as believers in a world of disbelief. The challenge is ours to daily practice the principles of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to live true to God’s commandments. We will have to stay calm under peer pressure, not be impressed by popular trends or false prophets, disregard the ridicule of the ungodly, resist the temptations of the evil one, and overcome our own laziness.

     Just think about it. How much easier would it have been for Daniel to simply go along with the ways of Babylon? He could have set aside the restrictive code of conduct God had given the children of Israel. He could have feasted on the rich foods provided by the king and indulged in the worldly pleasures of the natural man. He would have avoided ridicule.

 He would have been popular.

He would have fit in.

His path might have been much less complicated.

 That is, of course, until the day when the king demanded an interpretation of his dream. Then Daniel would have found that he, like the rest of Babylon’s “wise men,” had lost his connection to the true source of light and wisdom.

    Daniel passed his test. Ours still continues.