Daniel Lesson 32
The Ancient of Days; Final Judgment
– Daniel 7:9-14, 28
We are continuing at Daniel
7:9. We have covered the first part of the chapter and the second part of
the chapter because the first part contains the vision of the four beasts and the
second half, starting in verse 15 contains the interpretation of the
vision. But sandwiched between the vision and its interpretation we find
a scene at the throne of God, literally in the courtroom of the heavens.
And this passage is going to teach us a few things about the person and work of
our Lord Jesus Christ as well as the culmination of all the human empires and
God’s judgment of them.
In Daniel 7:9 we read, “I kept
looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat; His
vesture was like white snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool. His
throne was ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire.” Now I
want you to pay attention to the description here of “the Ancient of Days”
because we will come back to a similar description when we come to the end of
the hour. The Ancient of Days is clothed in white, His hair is like pure
wool and His throne is ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning
fire. It’s reminiscent of Ezekiel’s vision of the throne of God in Ezekiel
1.
It begins by saying Daniel “kept
looking.” We have to picture this as if Daniel is watching a DVD or VCR
and every now and then something happens and he has to stop and ask the angel
what this means, so he’ll hit the “pause” button, but there’s continual
movement here. This is expressed in the Aramaic, the participles
indicating the ongoing action. He says “I kept looking,” so more things
keep going, he moves from one scene to the next and after looking at the four
kingdoms he’s going to move to the final scene which shows the destruction of
the four kingdoms and the establishment of the fifth kingdom. Now the New
American Standard correctly translates this, “I kept looking until thrones were
set up.” If you’re using a King James Version it is probably translated,
“I kept looking until thrones were cast down” and that’s a bad translation; the
word means to set up or establish.
So what we see here is a glimpse of
the throne of God similar to Revelation 4 and 5, and here these thrones are being
set up. Now we don’t know who’s seated on the thrones, obviously the
Ancient of Days is taking His seat, and who sits on the others we don’t
know. Then we have a description of the Ancient of Days and He is
pictured as a judge. This is a picture of a courtroom, as you see if we
look down to verse 10, it says the court is seated before him, so this is a
picture of the heavenly court, like the Supreme Court of the United States or
the high court of any country, this is what is portrayed here. It is clearly
a courtroom scenario. Now long ago somebody that I was having a
discussion with wanted to challenge the idea of court in heaven, the Jews never
had any idea like this, and this passage is just one of many passages that
shows that that is some kind of false idea that this guy picked up out of
interaction with some Jews because they just don’t know the Old Testament as
they should.
The Ancient of Days here is the
judge, and the other thrones probably relate to who the jury is and that’s
described more in the book of Revelation. The term “Ancient of Days”
describes God Himself. Now at this point we need to be careful that we’re
not reading too much of the New Testament back into this. We’re going to
see when we get there the Ancient of Days is God the Father and the Son of Man
who comes up is the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, but remember
this is Daniel in the Old Testament and they do not have a clear revelation of
the Trinity. So he sees the Ancient of Days and this is God and He’s pictured
as the Ancient of Days as a metaphor for His eternity, “Ancient” indicating the
longevity of eternity and God is pictured this way as an elder statesman
because, of course, the view in the Old Testament is that the older generation
is wise because of the years that they have lived. And so it is
emphasizing the perfect wisdom that extends from the courtroom of God.
His appearance is like a man; now
this is something we ought to pay attention to because unlike all other pagan
religions and ancient cultures, when we see God pictured in the Old Testament
God is pictured like a man. If you go to ancient Egypt, for example, the
Egyptian God Horus has the head of a falcon and the body of a man; you go to
various other ancient religions and the gods are frequently depicted as
men. Now you have that later on in Greek and Roman mythology but in the
more ancient religions you always see the gods depicted in some form of
creation, some blend with the animal kingdom, but it is only in Israel… and even
in Greek and Roman mythology the gods take on the forms of the animals but only
in the Bible does God never appear as an animal. He always appears as a
man and that is because there is this anthropomorphic, or as some would say, a
Theomorphic…see anthropomorphic means in the form of a man, Theomorphic refers
to man who is created in the image of God.
So there’s this Theomorphic and
anthropomorphic interaction going on in the Scripture where man is created in
the image of God, that if we were to take… this is how God looks at it, God,
knowing that He is eventually going to become this creature, whatever that
creature is going to look like, let’s say hypothetically, He is going to design
that creature to have a body that will be the highest and best and most perfect
expression of what God could be, so there’s nothing happenstance about God
creating mankind to look the way he looks. God didn’t just come along and
say well, this is going to be a good idea, let’s try this. God is saying
I’m eventually going to incarnate Myself as this creature, so what are the
features that this creature has to have in order to be the highest and best
creaturely representation of who I am so that I can give the clearest
revelation of who I am through this creature. So there is always this
anthropomorphic and Theomorphic interaction in the Scripture and God always
appears a man because that is to whom He is revealing Himself.
So the Ancient of Days takes his
seat; he sits as the supreme authority in the universe. What Daniel is picturing
here for us is that ultimately it is Yahweh, the God of Israel, who is the most
supreme authority in the universe and He has the right and the privilege to
judge and evaluate all human societies, all human kingdoms, and all human
cultures. Furthermore, he’s writing this for the benefit of all the
generations of believers, not only Old Testament believers at the time that he
is writing, who are at that time outside the land in captivity, some as slaves
in Babylon and later in Persia, he is writing down through history to show that
no matter how horrible things get, no matter how chaotic things might appear,
no matter what tragedies you may go through in life as a believer, you can know
that God is still on His throne, God is still the sovereign God of the universe
and all kingdoms are ultimately going to be answerable to Him; that God has
complete control over every single situation we face in life and even though we
may think that life is out of control and circumstances are overwhelming, and
there doesn’t appear to be any hope or any future for us, God is still in
control. So this is a major theme throughout all of this prophecy because
you remember, Daniel is writing to the Jews who are outside the land, they have
been completely defeated by a foreign power and their lives have been turned
upside down in this chaos of divine judgment. So he is writing to
encourage those believers.
Then he goes on to say, “His vesture
was like white snow,” and His hear was like pure wool, we’re going to see this
again later in Revelation 19 as well as in Revelation 1. “His throne was
ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire.” This is not an
unusual description of God; fire is often associated with the presence of God
in the Old Testament because it indicates purity and it indicates
holiness. The idea also relates to the angels, Psalm 104:4 the psalmist
says, “He makes the winds His messengers,” and literally the Hebrew there is malak,
meaning His angels, and that again is a passage that “winds” back in 7:2 refers
to angels. “He makes the winds His messengers and flaming fire His
minister.” So there is this picture of flames surrounding the throne of
heaven but those flames, once you start looking more closely at them the flames
differentiate themselves into these magnificent creatures called angels.
Look at verse 10, there we read: “A
river of fire,” these flames surrounding the throne of heaven and there is like
this river of fire flowing out from the throne room of God, and coming out from
before Him, and then Daniel says, “thousands upon thousands were attending Him,
and myriads upon myriads were standing before Him,” so this river of fire
begins to differentiate itself into these tens of thousands of angels who
surround the throne. For example, it reminds us of Ezekiel 1:7 where,
speaking of the cherubim, Ezekiel writes: “And their legs were straight and
their feet were like a calf’s hoof, and they gleamed like burnished
bronze.” And then in verse 13, notice the similarity here with what we
read in Daniel 7:10, “In the midst of the living beings there was something
that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches darting back and forth
among the living beings. The fire was bright, and lightning was flashing
from the fire.” And this is a picture of the angelic hosts surrounding
the throne of God.
And the phrase, “thousands upon
thousands,” and “myriads upon myriads” is further reflected in Revelation 5:11
where we read, John saying, “And I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels
around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, and the number of
them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands,” so this is literally
billions of angels surrounding the heavenly throne.
We are told in verse 10 that as this
courtroom is in session the books are opened and these are the books of
judgment. This is not the Great White Throne judgment; this is a judgment
that takes place at the end of the Tribulation. As we will see when we
get into the details of the vision, that the kingdom has not yet been given to
Jesus Christ, so it is taking place prior to the millennial kingdom, but it is
at the end of the Tribulation because the little horn has taken its place of
power and overcome the other three, united the ten nation confederacy, so this
is a picture of the final judgment on the nations from a heavenly
perspective. This is a destruction of the antichrist and his armies at
Armageddon. So we are seeing the courtroom decision as it is played out
in heaven.
Then in Daniel 7:11 we read, “The I
kept looking,” see, he gets that video going again and he keeps looking,
“because of the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking,” so
while he is watching this one scene unfold where he sees the throne of God and
all of the angels before the throne and the books being opened for judgment
upon the nations, then he also hears in the background the sound of the little
horn, the voice of the little horn, making these boastful words. “I kept
looking because of the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking”
and here that’s the little horn, “I kept looking until the beast was slain, and
its body was destroyed and given to the burning fire.” Now the word
translated “boastful” is from the Hebrew root word rab which literally means great and we
great and we see this mentioned several times. I’m using a New King James
Version tonight and in verse 8 it translates it “pompous words,” boastful
words, same thing, so you have that in verse 8 and you have it again in verse
11 and you have it again later on in verse 18-20 it’s mentioned again. So
this little horn is constantly speaking against God, speaking blasphemous
words, as said also in Revelation 20. Incidentally, it’s this same scene
that is very similar to the Great White Throne judgment but it is the judgment
that is really covered earlier in Revelation 20:3-4.
So this little horn is speaking
blasphemous words, challenging God, and we studied that last time so we want to
move on past that, this is the little horn that’s identified with the beast in
Revelation, the first beast, also called the antichrist, the “prince who is to
come,” the “prince of the king of the west” who is going to unite the ten
nation western confederacy with its cultural roots in Rome, against Israel, but
is going to sign the peace treaty with Israel at the beginning of the
Tribulation and the signing of that peace treaty is what begins the
Tribulation. Now Daniel says he watches and he keeps “looking until the
beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and given to the burning
fire.” So the beast is the ultimate representation of Satan’s kingdom and
attempts to establish a kingdom on the earth.
In Daniel 7:12 he says, “As for the
rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away.” Now verse 12 goes
back in time, in action before verse 11; when the final manifestation of the
beast is destroyed that’s the end of the kingdom of man in human history.
So verse 12 takes us back before verse 11. Daniel says, “As for the rest of
the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but an extension of life was granted
to them [for an appointed period of time],” and what that’s talking about is
when you go back to the first beast, which was Babylon, the second beast which
was the Medo-Persian Empire, the third beast which was the Greek Empire, the
fourth beast which was the Roman Empire, even though Babylon passed from the
scene and Persia passed from the scene and Greece passed from the scene, their
cultural residue continued to pile up and fed into the next kingdom. But
once the last kingdom, the last beast, the fourth beast is destroyed, that
destroys all of the previous kingdoms and their entire residue. So they
have an extension of life only because there is no final or ultimate judgment
on those kingdoms, but once there is that final and ultimate judgment of verse
11, then all of the kingdoms are destroyed and the kingdom of man is ended.
In Daniel 7:13 we read, “I kept
looking in the night visions,” so he continues, the action keeps going forward
and he’s looking intensely to see what’s going to happen next, and this follows
verse 10 actually; verses 11 and 12 are sort of a parenthesis telling us what’s
happening on the earth, whereas verse 13 is back focusing on what’s happening
in the heavenly courtroom. “I kept looking in the night visions, and
behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming. And
he came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.” So this
is the presentation of Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity.
Now we don’t know that yet; Daniel doesn’t know that. I want you to think
a minute about reading this in the Old Testament, and you don’t know the
Trinity, there is no such word as the Trinity, you don’t know the name Jesus
Christ, you only know that a Messiah is coming. There was some hint,
based on pre-Christian, that means before Christ, some pre-Christian
commentaries written by the Jews, that they thought this Son of Man had some
qualities of deity but they couldn’t put it together. They didn’t have a
clear picture of a Trinity, even though you can go to various passages in the
Old Testament and demonstrate that the concept is clearly present in the Old
Testament; they don’t have it clear in their own minds. So Daniel is
looking in the night vision and what he sees are all these clouds, and out from
the clouds steps One who is the Son of Man.
Now let’s talk a minute about what
the clouds of heaven refer to. We know of one reference to the clouds in
Isaiah 14:14, which is the final two statements, the two “I will’s” of
Satan. Remember, Satan in Isaiah 14:13-14 utters five “I will’s” which
are the condensation of his sin against God, the sin of arrogance. And
the fourth of the five he says, “I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds,” now what do we know about the clouds? If we look back through
the Old Testament we see that there is often associated with the presence of
God in the Old Testament the presence of clouds.
For example, if you go back to
Exodus 19 when God appears to the nation Israel He appears in a cloud; He spoke
out of a cloud when He gave the Law in Exodus 19:9. Also when God appears
to Israel and is going to lead them across the desert out of Egypt He does so
in the form of a pillar, a cloud that goes before the nation. And again
in Exodus 40:3-4, when the Shekinah glory, which is the dwelling of the
preincarnate Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, in His preincarnate
state, dwelled in the midst of Israel, that’s the Shekinah glory in the Old
Testament, and a cloud came and settled down on the Tabernacle in Exodus
40:34. So the cloud is often associated with the glory of God and the
Shekinah and that means the dwelling of God in the tabernacle and temple in the
Old Testament. So when Daniel looks up and he sees the clouds of heaven,
this speaks of the presence of God and would be a reminder of the dwelling of
God.
He says, “One like a Son of Man was
coming, and he came up to the Ancient of Days.” Now before we jump too
quickly into just interpreting this, let’s wait and see how this develops over
the process of time. Remember, revelation was given progressively.
This is a foundational doctrine in understanding the Bible. God did not
dump everything in the first chapter or in the first five chapters of
Genesis. There are the seeds of every major doctrine in the Bible in the
first eleven chapters of the Bible but they are progressively revealed so that
Noah knew more than Adam did or knew more than Methuselah did, more was
revealed to him. Abraham knew more than Noah did; Moses knew more than
Abraham did; Elijah and Elisha knew more than David did; Daniel, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, understood more about God than their predecessors did. And none
of them understood the Old Testament as clearly and as precisely as we do
because we’re able to look back at the Old Testament through the lens of the
New Testament.
Now that doesn’t mean that there
weren’t things that they understood that aren’t written down; I think that’s
clear. I think that Daniel saw a lot more than what he wrote in
Scripture. I think Moses saw a lot more than he wrote in Scripture.
I think there are hints of that if you read through Hebrews 11 where we’re told
that Abraham lived as a tent-dweller, a sojourner, a pilgrim in the land but he
kept his focus on a city that was built without human hands. Well, if you
go back to Genesis and you try to find information about that city built
without human hands you can’t find it in Genesis, so obviously they knew things
that aren’t recorded in the Old Testament for future generations. But
nevertheless, they weren’t putting it altogether in quite the same way that we
can because hindsight is better than foresight and we have the completed
revelation in the New Testament so we can clearly understand all the different
themes and motifs and foreshadowings that were going on in the Old
Testament.
So we look at this and we see that
all he sees is a “Son of Man,” an individual. But remember; let’s take
this in context. We’ve seen the procession of the four beasts; we saw the
wind blowing on the sea, we saw four beasts. Now each one of these
elements is a symbol that represented something. The first beast
represented Babylon; it didn’t represent an individual, it did not represent
Nebuchadnezzar, although when you link it and connect it to the image in Daniel
1, God said through Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, you re the head of gold.
But see, here’s an individual, an individual also represented the
kingdom. So you have the individual or the kingdom itself represented by
an individual so both are at work here, not just an individual but also a
collection. So when we see here the “Son of man coming” with the clouds
of heaven, it’s not simply an individual but it is all that is included with
that individual, including all believers. So this is a picture of a
kingdom coming, because He’s going to be the fifth kingdom. He is the
picture of the fifth and final kingdom that will supplant the kingdoms of man.
Now Daniel uses the terminology,
“Son of Man,” but Daniel doesn’t make an issue out of it like we would, simply
because he doesn’t have all of the revelation from the New Testament at his
hand. So we need to ask the question, what does the “Son of Man” mean
when we get into the New Testament.
Let’s go on with Daniel 7:14 and
we’ll come back and answer our questions about the “Son of Man” and the
“Ancient of Days” when we finish this in verse 14. “To Him,” that is to
the Son of man, “was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples,
nations, and men of every language might serve Him.” See, this is the
kingdom that comes with the individual so it’s not simply an individual in view
here, it is “all the peoples, nations, and men of every language” that are
associated with the fifth kingdom. That they “might serve Him. His
dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom
is one which will not be destroyed.”
You say wait a minute, what about
Revelation 20 saying that it’s a thousand year kingdom. That is its
initial manifestation is a thousand year kingdom on the earth, but remember
Israel is promised the land, and a city, and an inheritance forever. What
happens is at the end of the millennium there is the Great White Throne
judgment, there is the temporary God and Magog revolution, then there’s the
Great White Throne judgment and then the present heavens and earth are
destroyed, a new heavens and earth are created, but the New Jerusalem is still
going to be in the new heavens and the new earth, and there will be an
inheritance in the land in the new earth for Israel, and that goes on into
eternity. So it doesn’t cease; the Messianic rule and the fifth kingdom
doesn’t cease with the destruction of Jerusalem and the present heavens and
present earth; it goes on and makes a transition into the eternal state and
goes on forever and ever.
Now there are two questions that we
need to ask in relationship to this passage. The first is: what is
Christ’s relationship to the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man. I’ve already
hinted at the answer but we want to develop out what the New Testament says
about this, so the question we’re asking is: is Jesus Christ the Ancient of
Days or is the Ancient of Days God the Father? Remember the picture of
the Ancient of Days is identical to the picture of Jesus Christ that we’ll see
in Revelation 1. And the second question that we need to answer is: when
exactly is the fifth kingdom given to Jesus Christ. When is this fifth
kingdom, the kingdom of God, given to Jesus Christ? Is it given at
Christ’s ascension, when He ascended in Acts 1 and said “all power in heaven is
given to Me,” or is it given at the Second Advent, or at the end of the
millennium?
See, what’s important to remember
here is that whenever you start working on a passage like Daniel 7 and you’ve
got all of these details from all of the beasts and all the kingdoms and you
get into this whole passage dealing with judgment, and then you start
interacting with all of the cross references, like we did last week in Revelation
9 and Revelation 13 and Revelation 12 and now in Revelation 20, you begin to
see that the Bible has to be the inerrant infallible Word of God because there
is no contradiction when you start comparing and putting all of these passage
together, and they’re written by different men in different civilizations in
different eras of history. Daniel is recording this in the 4th
century or 5th century BC, and he is recording this is
Babylon. Then you have John who’s writing in the 1st century
AD and John is writing on the isle of Patmos during the time of the Roman
Empire. And John sees all these things just as much in the future as
Daniel saw them in Daniel 7, and what they write about all of this is not
exactly identical because each has different elements that the other doesn’t
include but they blend together perfectly with no contradiction. Then you
add in other passages like Matthew 24, you add in things that are revealed to
Zechariah, passages in Ezekiel as well, and you discover that this just can’t
happen by chance, the Bible clearly has to be what it claims to be and that is
a supernatural revelation of God to man outlining His plan and purposes for
man. And that starts with salvation, which ultimately culminates in His
glory.
So let’s look at this title, the
“Son of Man,” answer the first question first, why did Jesus come up with this
title “Son of Man.” It comes from this passage in Daniel 7, so when we
look at New Testament passages where Jesus uses the term “Son of Man,” this
isn’t just some title He pulls out of thin air because it sounded good.
Neither is it simply a statement, although it is a statement expressing His
humanity, it’s not simply a statement of His humanity. Remember, we’ve
gone through a study where we have seen that the Hebrew idiom, “son of” doesn’t
necessarily indicate descent or family lineage but it indicates a quality or
characteristic. For example, a fool was called the son of a fool; a
murderer was called the son of a murderer; an evil person was called the son of
Belial. When Jesus Christ was called the Son of God that’s not saying
something about His descent; that is saying He is deity. When it says He
is the Son of Man that is not saying something about His descent; that is
saying that He expresses true, genuine humanity.
And notice, the Son of Man in Daniel
7 stands in complete contrast to what? The four beasts! See, man in
all of his beauty and all of his glory is viewed by God as nothing but bestial,
he has fallen far short of God’s original design for man in terms of what his
true humanity is because sin has so warped and distorted the nature of
mankind. We think of all of our great humanitarian efforts and all of the
wonderful self-less heroics that were accomplished on a day like September 11th
and many other instances in human history and yet those pale in insignificance
compared to what man could be if man were not tainted by sin. God looks
at all of man’s highest achievements in terms of culture and civilization and
says that at his best man is nothing more than a beast, but that is the purpose
of redemption and ultimately the kingdom of man will be destroyed and man will
realize what true civilization is all about, but only under the perfect reign
of Jesus Christ.
So when Jesus uses this term, “Son
of man,” it’s a signal to anyone who really knew the Old Testament, now not
everybody would pick up on it, some people would just think, as people today
do, that well, when Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man He’s just emphasizing
His humanity but it you knew Daniel you would know that when Jesus says He
is the Son of Man that he is making a profound theological statement about His
identity because it is the Son of Man who comes to establish this fifth and
final kingdom. So let’s look at some of these passages in the New
Testament where Jesus uses the phrase “Son of man.”
Matthew 24:30 he says, “and then the
sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the
earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the
sky with power and great glory.” What does that image remind you
of? What we just read in Daniel 7:13, he sees the Son of Man coming with
the clouds of heaven. So this is a picture of the Son of Man coming at
the Second Coming, not the rapture, He is coming on the clouds in the sky with
power and with great glory and this is not the rapture because He comes all the
way to the earth and Matthew 24:30 is not a rapture passage, though some people
have tried to make it that it is a Second Coming passage. But Jesus gets
the picture here from Daniel 7 and it’s almost an exact quote and so what Jesus
is saying, if anyone is listening, what He’s saying is that they would see Him
coming and this is a reference to Him establishing the fifth kingdom and
destroying the fourth kingdom.
Another time that Jesus this phrase
is in Matthew 26:63-64. Here we read, this is one of Jesus’ trials and
remember the six trials Jesus went through were all illegal, not one of the
trials before the Sanhedrin, Herod, or Caiaphas were legal. And He keeps
silent; this is in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which states that “He will be led
like a lamb to the slaughter and like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so
He opened not His mouth.” And in Matthew 26:63 we’re told, “But Jesus
kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, ‘I adjure you by the living
God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.’” So in
the midst of this interrogation by Caiaphas, Caiaphas asks Him, tell us straight
out, “are you the Messiah, the Son of God?” Now isn’t that interesting
that Caiaphas is recognizing that the Messiah is the Son of God. He’s
derived that much from the study of the Old Testament. So he’s seeing the
Messiah as the Son of God.
Verse 64, “Jesus said to him, ‘You
said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you shall see the Son of
Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of
heaven.” So Jesus looks at him and He basically is saying if you think
I’m making an audacious claim now, that I claim to be the Messiah, let me make
an even more audacious claim, I am the Son of Man who will be sitting at the
right hand of Power, and you will see Me there. So that really aggravates
Caiaphas and the rest of the Jews, and he rents, just rips his robe in two as a
sign that he can’t stand the blasphemy in front of him and then they have to
hustle Him off to Pilate in order to get some kind of death penalty imposed on
Him. But it tells us by their reaction that they clearly understood what
Jesus was claiming when He claimed to be the Son of Man. They knew He was
claiming to be God. They knew He was claiming to be deity and that is why
they took such an exception to His claim. He is not simply saying I am
one of the greatest men that ever lived, He’s not claiming to be a great
prophet, He’s not claiming to be the ideal of all humanity, He is claiming to
be full undiminished deity and they understood what He was claiming and they
rejected it and for His claim they wanted to have Him crucified.
There’s another verse where the term
“Son of Man” is used and that’s in Matthew 9:6 and here it’s in the context of
grace, grace and the relationship to forgiveness of sins. It’s in this
particular instance that Jesus is going to heal the paralytic but as a sign
that He has forgiven him; that his sins are forgiven. Now in Jewish Old
Testament theology the only one who can forgive sins is the judge, and here in
this passage Jesus has the audacity to say that He forgives sins. Notice
He doesn’t say your sins have been forgiven; see that could be anything, a
rabbi could say yeah, God forgave your sins. But he says, “the Son of man
has authority on earth to forgive sins.” He specifically forgave the sins of
this individual, taking upon Himself the privileges and prerogatives that
belong only to God. And He says, “in order that you may know that the Son
of man has authority on earth to forgive sins” He told the paralytic to stand
up and walk.
Then again in Luke 9:22 Jesus uses
the term Son of Man in reference to Himself as the suffering servant in
relationship to the prophecy of the suffering servant and Isaiah. Here we
read: “saying, ‘The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the
elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the
third day.” How many times did He announce what was going to happen to
Him and the disciples never seemed to get the picture? So Jesus is
identifying Himself with the people; that He is going to suffer just as they
suffered. Once again, this reminds us of the theme in Daniel, that many
people are going to suffer persecution but we realize that God is in control,
no matter what happens in this life we know that God is still in control and
that Jesus was persecuted by the greatest persecutor in all of the universe and
that is by Satan himself.
So we see that Jesus used this
title, the “Son of Man,” in the same way that it is portrayed in Daniel 7, He’s
going back into Daniel 7, picking up this title, applying it to Himself to show
that He is claiming to be the King, the One to whom the final kingdom is given,
and that He is going to come in glory but that first He must suffer. And
this is a problem that the Jews never understood from Old Testament prophecy
and that is that the cross had to come before the crown, that He had to go to
the cross and suffer before He could be glorified and rule and reign, and this
is always the principle, that suffering must come before glorification.
So Jesus had to first go to the cross and die on the cross bearing our penalty
in His body on the cross; because He paid the penalty in full there is nothing
we can do to add to it. We can’t add to it by being good, we can’t add to
it by going to church, we can’t add to it by participating in religious
rituals, there is nothing we can to do help. In fact, the Bible makes it
clear that if we try to help, faith plus anything destroys faith. It is
faith alone in Christ alone. Scripture says, “believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ and you will be saved.”
Now that is the answer to the first
question and that is: what is the meaning of the Son of Man and it ultimately
relates to the doctrine of the hypostatic union and that is that Jesus Christ
is undiminished deity united with true humanity for all eternity, without
mixture, without division, His deity doesn’t flow into His humanity and His
humanity doesn’t flow into His deity, but these two natures are united together
in one person and that one person remains in hypostatic union from now throughout
all eternity. So we have this remarkable picture of what God thinks of
His creature, man, and He thinks so much and He loves the creature so much that
He united Himself with humanity and that unity will stay for all eternity.
Now let’s look at the next image,
which is that of the “Ancient of Days.” We see the Ancient of Days is
surrounded in Daniel 7:13 by clouds, also by the fiery flame in verse 9 and the
wheels of burning fire; He’s pictured as having a garment that’s white as snow
and hair on His head that’s like pure wool. So let’s look at some other
passages that are similar to this.
Revelation 1:13-14 gives us a
picture but this time it’s Jesus Christ; it’s very close to the image that we
see in Daniel 7. Here we read, “And in the middle of the lampstands one
like a son of man,” notice the terminology again, “son of man,” clothed in a
robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His breasts with a golden
girdle. [14] And His head and His hair were white like white wool, like
snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.” So here we see the phrase
applying this same description to the Son of Man as was described to the
“Ancient of Days” in Daniel 7. So when Jesus appears to John in
Revelation, John is thinking in terms of the vision of Daniel 7 and Jesus
appears as both the Son of Man and the Ancient of Days. This indicates
the hypostatic union; He looks like a man but He is God also. So in
Revelation 1 we meet Jesus Christ who now judgment is being given to Him and so
He looks and takes on the role as Judge as the Ancient of Days because of the
hypostatic union.
Now when is the fifth kingdom?
That’s the next question. When exactly does the fifth kingdom
begin? Does it begin when Jesus said all authority had been given to Him,
which is after the resurrection, or does it begin sometime later? Let’s
look at two passages: first of all, in Matthew 28:18 we read, “And Jesus came
up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and
on earth.’” Well, has that already been given to Him? Has He
already established the kingdom, or is it yet future? Remember, He said
this in his post-resurrection appearance. So all authority had been given
to Him, but this is after the resurrection.
Then we look at another passage in
Matthew 26:64, “Jesus said to him, ‘You have said it yourself; nevertheless I
tell you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of
power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.’” So the statement in Matthew
26:64 pictures Jesus as the Son of Man coming to receive His kingdom at the
Second Advent.
So it seems like we have two
answers, but the solution to this comes by understanding what Paul says in 1
Corinthians 15:20 and following. There we read, “But now Christ has been
raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. [21] For
since by man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
[22] For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.
[23] But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who
are Christ’s at His coming, [24] then comes the end, when He delivers up
the kingdom to God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority
and power. [25] For He must reign until He has put all enemies under His
feet. [26] The last enemy that will be abolished is death.”
Now the first fruits is the first
part of the harvest, the initial harvest. You know what it’s like when
you go out there in May and plant your tomato plants and sometime about that first
tomato comes up, even though the other ones are still green, but that one made
it, that’s the first fruits, it’s the first part of the harvest and that is
Jesus Christ, it’s not the end of the harvest, it’s an ongoing continuing
action. And what the picture is in 1 Corinthians 15:20 is that Christ is
the first part of the creation to go through resurrection and
transformation. He’s the initial part of it, and we are reminded of the
purpose of this in verse 21, “For since by a man came death, by a man also came
the resurrection of the dead.”
Now I want you to notice here a
couple of things just as a sidelight. “For since by a man came death,”
this is death in principle, this is physical death; this isn’t talking about
spiritual death. How do we know it’s not talking about spiritual
death? Because he’s talking about physical resurrection in verse 21, he’s
talking about resurrection from the physically dead, not spiritually
dead. 1 Corinthians 15:21 says that “since by a man came death,” now for
the second half of that verse to have any meaning whatsoever, then that first
death has to be physical death and not spiritual death. That means that
it is a result of Adam’s decision at the fall; physical death is a result of
Adam’s decision at the fall. Spiritual death is the penalty but physical
death and the transformation of all of nature and the judgment on all of
nature, as in Romans 8 where you see the whole earth groans presently, waiting
for the future redemption of Jesus Christ, all of nature succumbed because of
that decision.
That means there had to be no
physical death of anything, animal or human. Now plant life, the verbiage
in Hebrews is a completely different kind of life so you don’t have to worry
about it if you actually kill a plant, that’s not life in the same order as
either human life or animal life. But the point is that you can have no
physical death of any kind. That means fossils, which represent the death of
animals; fossils cannot predate Adam’s sin. All the fossils had to come
from some event after Adam’s fall, not before Adam’s fall because if one thing
dies prior to Adam’s sin, then physical death is not a consequence of sin and
Jesus Christ didn’t have to die physically and He didn’t have to rise from the
dead. That’s why I have always said that evolution is a subtle but direct
assault on the cross. It is one of Satan’s greatest and most subtle
attacks on Jesus Christ, His deity and His redemptive work on the cross.
You cannot believe in any assimilationist theory.
Now of course you can, you can be
illogical, I’ve certainly had my arguments with lots of illogical people, you
can be irrational, you can make your experience or the experience of scientists
more real in your life than the Word of God, but if you’re going to make the
Word of God more real in your life than your thinking, than any experience,
then you cannot hold to some sort of theory that has a pre-Adamic race or
dinosaurs existing before man or progressive evolution or theistic evolution or
the day-age theory or any of the other attempts that are set forth to try to
assimilate with modern science. They don’t have the answers and they know
it; more and more books are coming out by scientists arguing against Darwinian
evolution because we have discovered so much now regarding DNA combinations and
protein change and enzymes that we realize… that objective scientists are
beginning to realize it’s impossible for chance to have worked out anything.
The complexities of simple DNA chain are so incredible that there is no
mathematical possibility that it could have happened by chance.
So we’re told here in verse 21 that
it is physical death that came as a result of a man, as a result of Adam’s
son. Verse 22, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be
made alive.” So Christ is the first fruits, and then there are going to
be successive stages of those who are resurrected. Verse 23, “But each in
his own order: Christ is the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at
His coming.” Now the word for “order” here is the Greek word tagma, which
means rank or order. And so the picture here is that you have a military
unit on parade, and the first company goes by and that’s Jesus Christ; the
second company goes by and that’s Church Age believers. The third company
goes by, and that is tribulational saints. The fourth company goes by and
that’s Old Testament believers. So there is this succession of ranks that
are going to be resurrected. And the kingdom is finally given when those
ranks have received their resurrection bodies.
Then we come to the final verse in
Daniel 7:28. “At this point the revelation ended. As for me,
Daniel, my thoughts were greatly alarming me and my face grew pale, but I kept
the matter to myself.” When he says “my thoughts were greatly alarming
me,” this means he doesn’t have enough information to be able to really
understand all the elements of this prophecy. He didn’t really understand
who the Son of Man was or who the Ancient of Days was because he didn’t know
about the revelation of the God-man Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He
knew that this vision promised an end to the persecution of the Jews, that they
would suffer under successive kingdoms but ultimately God would make all things
right and would judge all of these nations. So he says he kept everything
to himself, he didn’t discuss it, he didn’t try to figure it out, he kept what
he saw to himself.
So what are some conclusions that we
can derive in terms of application from Daniel 7? First of all, God’s
sovereignty over history is shown by the operation of the angelic winds, and
even though these are probably demonic powers here stirring up fallen
unregenerate mankind, raising up these various manifestations of the kingdom of
man, we see that God is ultimately in control of what the angels do.
The second thing we need to learn is
that we should not be naďve about the kingdom of man surrounding us. God
pictures the kingdom of man as a beast so let’s not fall in love with human
culture, let’s not fall in love with human civilization because God says that
at its very best it’s bestial; don’t fall in love with various empires.
Now some of us really enjoy history and the study of history and we have
our favorite empires and favorite countries that we like to study, some like
British history, some like French history, some like various ancient history
but don’t be carried away, the best of human culture is bestial.
The third application, when we understand
Daniel 7 and we put that together with New Testament revelation, we realize
that as believers understanding God’s role and God’s operation of human
history, we can relax and be calm and have stability, no matter how horrendous
things might be around us, no matter how many chaotic events may appear, no
matter how many times… and frankly when you look at the Tribulation, something
like September 11th is going to happen every day, sometimes ten
times that’s going to happen every day, and that’s happened at other times in
world history; we’re just maybe unaware of it.
I’ve been reading about the battle
of Stalingrad, and in the first day of the battle of Stalingrad the Luftwaffe,
there was a surprise attack, the Soviets did not warn the people the Germans
were even as close as they were and they were just about 40 miles away, and all
of a sudden the Luftwaffe hit Stalingrad and it was dropping thousands and
thousands of pounds of bombs and in a 24 hour period it just decimated, it
flattened downtown Stalingrad and 40,000 Russians were killed in one day.
That just makes events like September 11th… and this went on, the
battle of Stalingrad went on for another seven months, day in and day out.
We have to have a little historical perspective and then we realize that
things aren’t quite as bad as sometimes we think they are. But even when
they are much worse than we think they are, God is still in control and He
never loses control so we can relax in that.
Then finally, we know where history
is going, we know that ultimately there will be a culmination, there will be a
righteous and just judgment of all human kingdoms and that eventually will
culminate in the perfect kingdom under the rule and reign of Jesus Christ, not
just for a millennium, but following that for all eternity.
With our heads bowed….