Daniel 7:12-14

THE SIGN OF THE SON OF MAN

‘As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time. I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.’

Daniel 7:12

We find ourselves here in a part of the Bible which is to most of us unfamiliar and puzzling: the visions of the Book of Daniel. They are like transformation scenes—grand, cloudy, highly coloured: they are like allegories with a forgotten key. Here and there the Christian reader catches a glimpse of something familiar, words that suit our Lord, or some type of Him, a picture like the Day of Judgment. Why they are there he does not know, or what they have to do with the rest of the passage. The rest is all dim.

I confine myself to one or two quite simple points.

I. The first is that what we have here is ‘history in vision.’—Upon the stage of history a succession of visionary empires rise, rule, prevail by the might that is in them, and then fall and give place to others. We will not ask now precisely what empires, whether in the times of Daniel, or later; whether their order exactly corresponds to actual fact. We cannot tell how the visions came before the seer’s mind—the lion with eagle’s wings; the bear; the leopard with wings of a fowl; the beast terrible above the rest, and more terrible than any beasts of the earth, with iron teeth, and ten horns. Did he see them in trance before his eyes? or did he devise this language of figure to express what was given to him to understand about the world history before or after or around him? Profitless questions for us which we cannot answer, and the answering of which would give us no added truth.

But pass on from this first to the second point.

II. These great powers, of which the beasts are symbols, these colossal forces are in the hand of God.—At the end of their appointed time there is a judgment. There is no mistaking the picture. ‘I beheld till thrones were placed, and one that was an Ancient of Days did sit; His raiment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool: His throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him: thousand thousands ministered unto Him and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened’ (Daniel 7:9).

It is not the Day of Judgment, but it is a day of the kind. We have still before us history in vision, and this scene of the great assize, the awful tribunal, figures the force in history which men forget, or to which they are blind, the force of the sure, slow, certain, almighty justice and providence of God.

III. And then we come to the third point, and still we have history in vision. After the beasts, the man.—‘Behold there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a Son of Man, and He came even unto the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him’ (Daniel 7:13). The stage is cleared of them to make room for Him. The force of the future, stronger than all the forces figured by the beasts, is the force figured as a man: the force of manhood. It prevails, and it prevails finally: there is nothing visible, nothing possible beyond it: there is the finish, and sum, and goal, and climax of history.

This becomes yet more clear when we ask who is this figure of Man, a Son of Man. To whom does it refer? Now, of course, there flashes up to us at once the thought of One Who took as title, which He for ever bears, the name of the Son of Man, Jesus our Lord. No doubt this was the thought in the mind of King James’ translators when they wrote ‘One like unto the Son of Man.’ But this is not really right. The Son of Man was not yet known, so that the prophet should have been able to compare to Him the figure in his vision. It is going too fast. The Old Testament points in this, as in many passages, to Christ, and brings us towards Him. But it does not yet speak the language of the Gospels. The Christian translators have sometimes unconsciously read into its words plainer Gospel meaning than they had. We shall find that the Old Testament helps us more if we travel with it at its own pace.

So here the Revised Version, which is more accurate, gives us ‘ one like unto a son of man.’ It is not the name of an individual: it simply marks the figure as one who, unlike the other figures, is not a beast, but a man. That is the point, and that is the lesson.

The force of manhood is the world’s master force.

Bishop Talbot.

Illustrations

(1) ‘Each man has his own fight with the beast within him, in its own shape or shapes. What we have all to do is to keep before us the sign of a son of man; manhood in its best strength, simplicity, uprightness, self-restraint; manliness in the finest sense of the word; and womanhood, which is at once manhood’s other half and other side, in its purity, modesty, gentleness, its quick intuitions and warm feelings, its power to minister and to bear: all that makes true womanliness. Think of these, and then think of what men and women too often make of their own lives, and of each other. Is there not much to alter altogether, to purify, and change? Is there not much truly beast-like still to be put away; much of which it is not well even to speak?’

(2) ‘Of what sort should human life be? Evidently a life in which everything combines and is ordered to bring manhood to its best. There must be through and through respect for every grain and item of human life: in every man, woman, and child manhood must be sacred in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. There must be room for human life in all to grow freely, healthily, naturally; the standard of human development will be the standard by which everything is tried: “Does it make human life happier, better, fuller, larger, truer, stronger?” The common life of men must be governed by laws which require mutual duty and respect of all alike, of weak and strong, poor and rich. The great forces must be the forces of character, of reason, of conscience. And at the heart of all there must be at work that which teaches man how to grow more truly human through the higher things in him prevailing ever more over the lower.’