Who were the Wise Men from the East who brought gifts to Jesus?

These wise men from the East came to seek the newly born King. How did they know that a king should be born? Where did they find it out? Where did they come from?

(Did they travel) From the East? New York is east of us; we are east of San Francisco, and San Francisco is east of the islands of the Pacific; there is no place on earth that is not the East; There is no place on earth that is not the West, and yet, when we remember that the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, and these heathen came from the East, we do know that they came from somewhere in the far East, – possibly Persia, and possibly further yet. How did they know that a king should be born? Where did they find it out? These wise men were not simply a new organization. We read away back in Daniel 2:48 that when Israel was taken captive down to Babylon, that Daniel himself was the chief governor of the wise men, and you will remember that Daniel told the people of Babylon how many weeks it would be until Jesus would be born. If the people heard that, surely he would not keep back from his organization, of which he was the chairman and the ruler, the great fact that a Star of Jacob should appear; he would not keep back the great fact that the Jews were looking for a king who should be the Messiah, and that truth went on from generation to generation, so that over half a thousand years afterwards the wise men had not forgotten what Daniel had told them. The very first thing, then, that God did to bring these wise men to the Lord Jesus Christ, was to send them a Daniel, even though he had to be a prisoner to go there.

My friends, the same Lord God has been sending missionaries out into the world ever since; the same Lord God left His command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” That command stands today. Are we going to obey, or are we going to sit down in worldliness and idleness and not obey?

– Long, S.P. The great gospel; an address to theological graduates, lectures on the gospels for the church year, and “that remarkable lodge sermon." Lutheran Book Concern, Columbus, OH, 1904. Lutheran Library edition to be released in 2018.