Daniel 7, An Astonishing Prediction of Judgment Day

The Resurrected Human Jewish Messiah, the Son of Man, Comes in the Clouds to Receive His Throne.

This will be a shorter post than I’m accustomed to, but it’s vitally important. I’ve been meaning to blog about the Messianic prophecy in Dan. 7 for some time because it is so extraordinary. However, I’ve been reading The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, by Dr. Michael Heiser, 2015.

Of course, I’ve known about this passage since 1970 or earlier, but Heiser’s approach was so thorough and clear I couldn’t improve on it. His book was based on his Ph.D. dissertation, so it’s quite a tome to wade through—383 pages of the body of the book, then gobs more containing the footnotes and indexes. It’s a lot for even me to wade through, in spite of my own Ph.D. studies in Old Testament. It’s rare to get me excited about someone else’s scriptural exegesis (critical explanation), but Heiser has done that. What I’ll discuss here is in chapter 29. Heiser focuses on Dan. 7:13-14. I’m going to expand on that a bit.

Here's the passage:  Daniel 7:9-14, from biblegateway.com, NKJV:

“I watched till thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire; a fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; ten thousand times then thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and books were opened.”

Verses 11 and 12 describe the final defeat of the Beast (the anti-christ and a godless national system). Daniel continues:

“I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed.” 

Early in the book, Heiser has gone to great lengths to establish a compelling visual image of Yahweh’s divine council, a theme which is fairly consistent throughout the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). He solidly establishes that mention of this council is not metaphorical or just for temporary literary prose. The council could account for the “Let us…” (plural) in several passages where Yahweh is speaking. It’s composed of angels, elohim (spirits) of various sorts, seraphim, cherubim, an occasional prophet, and thousands of worshiping spirits.

Another important theme in the earlier part of the book is that there are two Yahweh’s in the Hebrew Bible. Now hold the tomatoes and cabbages until I explain. He takes us to passages where the “Angel of the LORD” (when you see lord in all caps, the actual Hebrew word is Yahweh) “appears” to this character or that. The angel speaks as if it’s Yahweh, but when it goes away, Yahweh often speaks with an invisible voice. Heiser proposes an invisible Yahweh and a form of that same deity in human form. I thought for a few chapters that he was pushing it a little, but he nailed it down for me and I had to say, “hmmm, never looked at it that way.”

In chapter 29, Heiser correctly points out that before there was a body of Hebrew literature, the Canaanites worshiped the weather god Baal, and called him the Rider of the Clouds. Personally, my own thoughts in this day of UAP appearances, I think they saw the same mysterious lights that we are seeing today, but that’s a different blog topic. The Hebrew prophets and psalmists attributed the same Rider of the Clouds description to Yahweh. Heiser brings us to several passages where Yahweh rides the clouds of heaven: Deut. 33:26; Ps. 68:32-33; Ps. 104:1-4; Isa. 19:1. (I am NOT implying that our LORD is an alien.)

Back to Dan 7. Let’s look at verses 13 and  14.

“I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven!”

First of all, thrones, plural, are set up and the Ancient of Days is seated. What we have is a court scene with all of the divine council in attendance as well as an unquantifiable number of faithful worshipers. The Ancient of Days is none other than Yahweh. There are two important players in this scene. One is an arrogant political Beast speaking pompous but dangerous lies. The Beast is defeated, judged, and destroyed. His allies are all suppressed as well, but not destroyed. Here is where Heiser brought up a point that I had always passed over. The Messiah comes “with the clouds of heaven.” He is a cloud rider like Yahweh—a deity, yet he is clearly human. He is called the Son of Man.

“He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed.”

His kingdom, His “dominion and glory,” will cause all nations, not just Israel, to serve Him, and this kingdom, unlike northern Israel and Judah, is not destroyable.

This Messianic Person is none other than the resurrected Jesus Christ, seen here on Judgment Day. But Heiser isn’t done with the cloud theme. He goes on to point out that in Luke 24:26, Jesus told his disciples that He must suffer rejection, beatings, and death to “enter into his glory.” In Matt. 26:57-66, Jesus was led to Caiaphas the high priest for judgment where an earthly council, the scribes and elders, had gathered. He claimed that in three days He would raise up the ruined Jewish temple, which had been restored and expanded over four decades, by King Herod himself. This can mean nothing else but that Jesus is the new Temple, and that His resurrection after three days in the tomb would initiate a new era with a new kind of relationship to God.

If that did stir the coals of Caiaphas’s anger, the next thing Jesus said sealed his fate. He quotes Daniel 7:13, declaring that He was indeed the Son of Man. “Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”

                                                           

One of the last things Jesus promised His disciples as He was taken into heaven was that He would one day return in the same way He left…in the clouds. (Acts 1:9-11)

I can understand how Jewish readers would feel offended, perhaps outraged, by Christians claiming that Jesus is the Son of Man in Daniel 7. But think about it again. In the HB, the Son of Man is a human who receives divine status. Hebrew scriptures promise that someone like that would come somewhere in the future. Jeremiah wrote of a new covenant that would not be like the covenant given in the wilderness. Is change and renewal so terrible? Do you still want to be sacrificing goats and sheep? How is it OK to accept the premise of a divine human in the Bible but utterly offensive when it comes perfectly to pass?

The Daniel 7 vision is one of the most amazing predictions in the history of mankind. There are a lot of dots to connect there with the Christian Messianic claims, but Michael Heiser knits them together beautifully. That judgment scene may be near or far in the offing, but every person, especially every leader who stands behind a podium, whether Christian or no, had better take care that someday they will stand before those thrones. The Ancient of Days and the Son of Man will be there with a full record of every word and deed and will remand all deception and greed into a lake of fire.

This essay can also be seen at https://medium.com/p/b923e993ab53/edit