One Like a Son of Man

Daniel's night vision opens on a courtroom already in session. Thrones are set, and "the Ancient of Days" takes his seat, his clothing white as snow, his throne "fiery flames" (Daniel 7:9); thousands upon thousands attend him, "the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened" (Daniel 7:10). Everything in the scene says settled authority — the One who was before the empires, outlasting every crown that ever glittered and then cracked. Then, into that throne room, someone arrives.

"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" (Daniel 7:13). The phrase is deliberately plain: in Aramaic, bar enash means simply a human being. Daniel has just watched a parade of beasts rise from the churning sea — a lion, a bear, a leopard, a thing with iron teeth — the brute kingdoms of the world, all appetite and violence. Now, against all that snarling power, comes not a fifth beast but a man. And to this human figure "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" (Daniel 7:14).

Here is where the vision becomes almost too good to say out loud. Dominion over the earth was the first gift given to humanity — "let them have dominion," God said over Adam (Genesis 1:26) — and it was the first thing we lost, surrendered to the beasts on the day we bowed to the serpent instead of reigning under God. Daniel sees it given back, in full and forever, to a Man. The writer of Hebrews stands right here and names the tension we still feel: "At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus" (Hebrews 2:8-9).

We see Jesus — because he is the one who claimed this vision as his own. Standing before the high priest, on trial for his life, he was asked whether he was the Christ, and he answered by taking Daniel's very words onto his own lips: "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 was not speaking in riddles. He was telling his judges plainly that the figure Daniel saw approaching the Ancient of Days was himself — that the condemned prisoner standing before that earthly court was the very one the court of heaven was, at that hour, enthroning.

So the ascension is not Jesus leaving; it is Jesus being crowned. When "a cloud took him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9), the disciples were not chiefly watching a departure — they were watching, from the near side, the scene Daniel had watched from the far side of history: the Son of Man coming with the clouds to the Ancient of Days to receive the kingdom. What Paul says of the risen Christ, that God has highly exalted him (Philippians 2:9), Daniel saw as a coronation seven centuries early, and John saw again as the slain Lamb to whom heaven sings, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain" (Revelation 5:12).

The comfort is nearer than a distant throne. The Man enthroned is bone of our bone; our humanity was not left behind on this side of the grave but seated at the center of all authority — and it arrived there through a cross before it rose in a cloud. The King who holds "an everlasting dominion" (Daniel 7:14) is the same one who was lifted up on nails, and the hands that now govern every nation still carry the marks of ours.