Where was Daniel when the Hebrew guys were thrown into the furnace?

Question: Harrison from Nigeria asks:

Thank you Pastor for this opportunity. I have studied the story of the three Hebrew guys- Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the book of Daniel. My question is: where was Daniel when the Hebrew guys were thrown into the furnace? Was he not around or did he obey Nebuchadnezzar and bow?
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ANSWERInterestingly, there is good curiosity for this. He wasn’t among them but, the issue was not whether Daniel obeyed or did not obey, what happened was these three were reported directly. Those who reported them took aims at them directly. They were named as ‘disobedient’, even though it started out with telling about the Jews- that the Jewish people act like ‘this’. Then they singled them out, so, that was the problem. 

But here’s another thing- Daniel occupied a certain role- a certain office at the time. It is very possible (speculations exist in church history), that he might have been on an official assignment at the time. Nebuchadnezzar ruled the world and Daniel at this time, managing the province that had the headquarters. He had asked for these three to be allowed to work with him, so they were under him. He was higher than the three of them because of the interpretation of the dream that he gave to Nebuchadnezzar- he had been promoted because of that. There is a little mystery but he definitely didn’t bow. It’s just that it was pretty silent there, as to where he was. So, there are a lot of speculations, but not about him bowing- we can tell that from everything else that followed.