These three young men were not afraid of the king.  They said: 

“O King Nebuchadnezzar, we are ready to answer you at once.  The God whom we serve is able to save us from the fiery furnace, and we know that he will save us.  But if it is God’s will that we should die, even then you may understand, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image.”

This answer made the king more furious than before.  He said to his servants: 

“Make a fire in the furnace hotter than ever it has been before, as hot as fire can be made; and throw these three men into it.”

Then the soldiers of the king’s army seized the three young Jews, as they stood in their loose robes, with their turbans on their heads.  They tied them with ropes, and dragged them to the mouth of the furnace, and threw them into the fire.  The flames rushed from the opened door with such fury that they burned even to death the soldiers who were holding these men; and the men themselves fell down bound into the middle of the fiery furnace.

But an angel befriended them and they were unhurt.

[Illustration:  An angel befriended them]

King Nebuchadnezzar stood in front of the furnace, and looked into the open door.  As he looked, he was filled with wonder at what he saw; and he said to the nobles around him: 

“Did we not throw three men bound into the fire?  How is it then that I see four men loose walking in the furnace; and the fourth man looks as though he were a son of the gods?”

And the nobles who stood by could scarcely speak, so great was their surprise.

“It is true, O king,” at last they said to Nebuchadnezzar, “that we cast these men into the flames, expecting them to be burned up; and we cannot understand how it happens that they have not been destroyed.”

The king came near to the door of the furnace, as the fire became lower; and he called out to the three men within it: 

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, ye who serve the Most High God, come out of the fire, and come to me.”

They came out and stood before the king, in the sight of all the princes, and nobles, and rulers; and every one could see that they were alive.

Their garments had not been scorched, nor their hair singed, nor was there even the smell of fire upon them.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar said before all his rulers: 

“Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who has sent his angel, and has saved the lives of these men who trusted in him. I make a law that no man in all my kingdoms shall say a word against their God, for there is no other god who can save in this manner those who worship him.  And if any man speaks a word against their God, the Most High God, that man shall be cut in pieces, and his house shall be torn down.”

After King Nebuchadnezzar died, his kingdom became weak, and the city of Babylon was taken by the Medes and Persians, under Cyrus, a great warrior.