Faithful Under Fire — Daniel 7 The King and the Kingdom
I once made the terrible mistake of telling a friend the outcome of a Formula 1 race he’d taped to watch later. He was not pleased. “Don’t tell me the end” is an understandable sentiment when we want to enjoy the adventure of the journey, whether it’s a movie or a sporting event. “Spoiler Alert!” is written in the first line of reviews for that very reason. We want to feel the tension, live in the uncertainty, and experience the drama without knowing how it resolves….until it does.
But there is a different kind of situation in which knowing how things turn out is actually essential. It doesn’t involve a reader with a new novel or a sports fan watching their favorite team. Let’s consider the post-op patient wondering if the pain will ever diminish, hoping for a day when their limbs will work the way they used to, when a wheelchair won’t be the essential equipment of daily life. Or a believer watching “the beast” devour everything around them. In those situations, knowing the end is not a spoiler. It is medicine. “You’re going to make a full recovery. Long journey, but you’ll get there.” That sentence doesn’t ruin the experience of the illness. It makes the illness survivable.
Daniel 7 is that sentence, spoken to a people in pain, saints in danger, living under the weight of a god-hating, people-eating empire. Their cry, “How long, O Lord?” is recorded in the Bible over and over again. Perhaps you have prayed that question as well. In the apocalyptic visions of the Bible, God opens the curtain between heaven and earth and says. “Here is the end. The beasts do not win. The Son of Man receives the kingdom. Hold on.”
From Stories to Visions
We have crossed into a different territory in Daniel with chapter seven. The first six chapters told stories — furnaces, feasts, dens, decrees. Narrative, character, drama. And running through all of them, a pattern: the faithful are not merely delivered, they are vindicated. Daniel is not simply freed; he is promoted. The three friends are not simply unburned; Nebuchadnezzar advances them. The den does not merely fail to kill Daniel; Darius elevates him and throws his accusers in. The pressed are promoted. The persecutors are judged. Every time.
Now the same pattern expands to cosmic scale. Chapters 7 through 12 are visions — apocalyptic in the original sense of the word: not catastrophes, but unveilings. The liminal line between the visible and the invisible is crossed, and God’s suffering people are given a glimpse of reality from his angle, from the perspective of glory and ultimate ends. What looks from street level like the unchecked triumph of the beast looks, from the throne room of God, like a temporary bluster about to be silenced by the court of the Ancient of Days.
Daniel 7 opens with four great beasts rising from the sea. In the Old Testament, the sea was the habitation of chaos and primordial darkness — the abyss from which ordered creation was called out. Here in South Florida, we love the Atlantic, but a day at the beach was not what an ancient Israelite would savor. A little too close to the abyss. The beasts represent the same four world empires as Nebuchadnezzar’s statue in Daniel 2 — Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome — but seen now from below rather than above. From the palace roof, the empire looks like a brilliant colossus. From the exile’s perspective, from the furnace and the den, it looks like what it actually is: a beast, drawn from the deep, threatening to undo the order of creation. The change is not in the empires. It is in the vantage point of the exile.
The Coming of the Son of Man
The beasts are not quickly displaced; for a long period, they roar and rumble across history. Centuries. Violence, murder, tyranny, displacement, immense suffering, and loss follow in the wake of their trampling, iron step, and grinding teeth. But the vision moves from earth to heaven, from the sea to the throne room, and what Daniel sees there changes everything.
Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And 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 is one that shall not be destroyed. - Daniel 7:13–14
This is the theological center of the entire book — and, Jesus himself insists, of his own life and mission. He used the phrase “Son of Man” more than any other self-designation: eighty-odd times, always in the first person, always in Daniel 7’s register. When the high priest asked at his trial whether he was the Christ, Jesus answered: “You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). He is not inventing a title. He is claiming a vision — standing bound before the court of Israel and announcing that he is the one to whom the Ancient of Days has given the everlasting dominion. The high priest tears his robes not because the claim is incomprehensible. It is perfectly comprehensible. And if it is true, the court trying him has no authority left.
When a cloud took Jesus out of the disciples’ sight at the Ascension (Acts 1:1-11), it was not merely a dramatic exit. It was a royal procession — the Son of Man going to the Ancient of Days to receive the kingdom that Daniel 7 promises. “Lift up your heads O ye gates that the King of Glory may come in!” (Psalm 24) was fulfilled in heavenly song in that moment. Matthew 28’s announcement in then comprehensible: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me — therefore go and make disciples.” The ascension is Daniel 7’s enthronement made visible in history. The beasts are still on earth. But the one who holds the everlasting dominion is on the throne. And those two facts are not equally ultimate.
Suffering and Glory
Which brings us to the question every exile asks: what does the throne room mean for those of us still in the middle of the beast’s assault? The ascension does not promise exemption from suffering. The little horn wages war against the saints and prevails… for a time. This has been true in every generation. The reigning Christ does not guarantee a comfortable interval between his comings. He guarantees a victorious conclusion.
And in the interval, as we live in the now but not yet, in the ICU waiting rooms, the prison cells and dungeons of the persecuted, and in the dark rooms where the forsaken and lonely weep silent tears, the Son of Man gives four gifts to his people. His presence — I am with you always, to the end of the age. His power — through his Spirit, poured out at Pentecost as the sign and seal of the kingdom received. His prayers — he always lives to make intercession for those who draw near to God through him (Hebrews 7:25). And the promise of his return — this same Jesus will come in the same way (Acts 1:11). The cloud of the ascension and the cloud of the return are the same cloud.
The Beastie Boys don’t have the last word. The court will sit. The books will be opened. And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High — Daniel 7:27.
The sermon closed where the whole book of Daniel has been pointing: at the convergence of Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7 in the same person. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The all-powerful Son of Man who receives the everlasting dominion is the suffering Servant who is pierced for our transgressions. The one who comes on the clouds to receive all authority is the one who did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. These are not two different stories. They are one story — and the mindblowing combination of the two at the heart of the gospel.
Every beast-empire in Daniel has demanded service, tribute, and worship. This King served. Every beast-empire built its throne on the suffering of others. This King built his throne by suffering himself in the place of others. The everlasting dominion was not seized by iron teeth. It was received through a cross and an empty tomb. And it is offered to us. To you.
The kingdom is here. It is growing. The little stone of Daniel 2 is becoming a great mountain, filling the earth. And soon — the day is dawning — the court will sit in final session. The books will be opened. Where will you stand on that day? With the beasts in judgment or with the Lamb in glory?