Page 202 - Daniel

purging judgment and come under His dominion are saints, it would be
a confusion to make the Son of Man the personification of the saints.
Keil states on this point,

With all other interpreters, we must accordingly firmly maintain that
he who appears with the clouds of heaven comes from heaven to earth
and is a personal existence, and is brought before God, who judges the

world, that he may receive dominion, majesty, and a kingdom. But in
the words “as a man” it is not meant that he was only a man. He that
comes with the clouds of heaven may, as Kranichfeld rightly observes,
“be regarded, according to the current representations, as the God of
Israel coming on the clouds, while yet he who appears takes the
outward form of a man.” 57

Young observes that some expositors regard the Son of Man as

representing the people of Israel. But as he points out, the earliest
interpretation regarded this as messianic and referring to the Christ, and
this interpretation is confirmed by the fact that Jesus Christ took the title
Himself in the New Testament. 58

From verse 14 it is apparent that Daniel was given revelation in
addition to what he saw in the vision. While the vision could portray the
Son of Man receiving authority, the purpose of this act would have to be
revealed to Daniel. At every point the kingdom from heaven is
contrasted with the preceding kingdoms of the four great world empires

and shown to be superior.
If Daniel’s prophecy beginning with the phrase “it had ten horns” in
verse 7 and continuing through verse 14 is yet to be fulfilled, a question
naturally arises: Why did Daniel not include the events of the age

between the first and second advents of Christ?
In the main, commentators have offered three options. First, like the

liberal scholars, they could deny literal fulfillment and even claim that
Daniel was in error. Second, they could find these prophecies were
symbolically fulfilled in church history. This has been the viewpoint in
part of postmillennialism and amillennialism. Or third, they could find
these prophecies to be distinctly future and not at all fulfilled by the first
coming of Christ, the decline of the Roman Empire, or anything else in