Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

This episode in our series on John’s use of the Old Testament in the book of Revelation looks at Rev 1:7-20.

In these verses John repurposes the divine council scene in Daniel 7, specifically the descriptions of the Ancient of Days and the Son of man.

He also takes readers to Isaiah 11 and 49 and Zechariah 4. John seeks to remind his readers that Jesus is the risen divine warrior, God in flesh, risen and victorious on their behalf.

Introduction

We are back in the book of Revelation.

No surprise there, because we’ve just begun the series, and it’s going to take us a while.

We’re still in Revelation 1, 7-20 this time.

And I think what I’m going to do to start off here is basically just read Revelation 1.

Because even the material we’ve had to this point, we’ve skipped around a little bit in the chapter.

And we are going to skip at least one thing in the chapter today because we can pick it up in a different chapter as we keep going.

And I’ll telegraph what that is in a moment.

But let’s just read Revelation 1 so we have this in our heads.

And we’re going to really kind of park in two parts of this passage.

That’s the end of chapter 1.

And obviously, if you’ve been following the series, even these first few episodes in you can pick up on some of the things we talked about before.

We will be tapping into a little bit of that as we settle on the passages within chapter 1 that we’re going to hit on today.

Our focus today is going to be John’s combination of the earthly servant son of David and the divine son of man.

So that discussion’s going to come from really two parts of chapter 1. There’s Revelation 1:7, and I’ll just read that again real quickly.

So Revelation 1:7, and that’s going to get married to or combined in our discussion with verses 12-15, which are:

Now there are several things in that description and a prior verse (verse 7).

In verse 7 you have the reference to coming with the clouds.

In verses 12-15 you’ve got the hair of his head was white like wool (like snow), eyes like a flame of fire.

feet like burnished bronze, even the voice being like the roar of many waters is going to orient us to some extent in the book of Daniel.

Now most of this stuff is going to be from Daniel 7. And John’s going to loop in a few other passages.

But you can already tell that we’re going to spend some time in Daniel today, because this is what John is angling for.

But that is by no means everything.

The second area of our episode that we’re going to focus on is verse 16.

So I just read verses 7 and then 12-15, but the next verse (verse 16)… I actually already read this, too.

That doesn’t come from Daniel (either chapter 7 or somewhere else); it comes from other passages.

So I want to focus today on, really, verse 7 and then 12-16.

But doing so, we’re going to… On one part we’re going to be talking a lot about Daniel 7, and another part we’re going to go off into some other passages.

I’m specifically going to skip for today’s episode… Even though we read the whole chapter and we’ve labeled the episode Revelation 1:7-20, I’m going to hold off on

verse 18 (“the keys of Death and Hades”) because that’s easy to pick up when we hit Revelation 3:7 and even Revelation 9, because those things are referenced there.

So for the sake of time, we’re not going to deal with that this time.

But we’ll hit it.

We’ll hit it because there’s some interesting Old Testament stuff going on there.

So let’s jump in to Revelation 1:7 and then 12-15 and, of course, Daniel 7. The connections there are obvious.

So Daniel 7…Daniel 7 is a divine council meeting.

If you’ve not read Unseen Realm and you pick that book up to read it, this is going to be pages 249 and 250.

I’m just going to read a little bit from those pages.

The scene begins (Dan 7:1–8) with an odd vision.

Daniel sees four beasts coming out of the sea.

The fourth beast is the most terrifying and imposing.

We learn that the four beasts represent four empires, as had been the case with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2.

What’s described next is significant (here’s the Divine Council meeting in Daniel 7, a meeting of God and his heavenly host].

Now this translation… This is from Unseen Realm, so I believe they use the LEB here.

It has “the judge.”

The word is actually the word for “court” or “council.”

So “the court sat” (ESV has “court”) or the “council.”

So everybody has a seat, the books were opened, and here we go.

So they’re meeting to actually judge the beasts of the first eight verses.

What’s going to be their destiny?

[Some] things jump out at us right away.

First, we know that the Ancient of Days is the God of Israel because the description of his throne as fiery and having wheels matches that of the vision of Ezekiel 1 [there’s really no ambiguity here].

Ezekiel’s vision also included a human figure on the throne of God (Ezek 1:26–27).

Scholars refer to the figure in Ezekiel 1 as the divine man.

You don’t see all of him, but you see him from the waist down (and so on and so forth) seated on a throne.

And the throne here is the same description that you get in Daniel 7. The only real difference is the cherubim part in Ezekiel 1.

So that much is clear.

We also know from the passage that there’s more than one throne in heaven.

It’s not a single throne.

Second, there are many thrones in heaven, not just one (“thrones [plural] were set up”).

These thrones mark the presence of the divine council.

It’s like a courtroom scene.

So they are going to sit and open the books.

heavenly books.

These are the basis for heavenly judgment and so on and so forth.

So this is another one of those passages.

We’re not going to go back into that material.

But there’s a meeting here to decide the fate of these beasts.

And then you read verses 9 and 10.

The meeting starts, then you eventually hit verses 13 and 14, where we’re introduced to a different character.

This character is not God (it’s not the Ancient of Days).

The Ancient of Days is seated, along with the council.

And here we get a new character.

Daniel says:

So as Daniel 7 continues, readers are introduced a little bit more to this son of man character, who is distinct from the Ancient of Days.

And of course, these two

characters are well-defined in Daniel 7.

the description here is a big deal because we have a deity epithet that is ubiquitous in the ancient world because it’s associated with Baal (the one who comes with the clouds, or on the clouds, or the cloud rider)—the one who rides the chariot through the clouds.

Something to do with riding through the clouds.

This is stock description of a deity.

And it’s used… Some variation of this theme—these words, these phrases—are used five times in the Hebrew Bible.

Four of them are used to describe the God of Israel.

And those references are Deuteronomy 33:26, Psalm 68:32-33, Psalm 104:1-4, and Isaiah 19:1.

The fifth one is this passage (Daniel 7).

And what’s interesting about it and noteworthy about it is this time the phrase is not used of the seated God of Israel, it’s used of the son of man.

Two Powers in Heaven

So this is part of the Two Yahweh figures that’s part of Old Testament theology.

The transcendent Yahweh, God the Father (so to speak)… I think that’s a good way to put it.

It’ll be more familiar to Christians listening.

And then we have a second person—a second Yahweh figure.

And in the Old Testament, for the most part, you have a transcendent Yahweh figure.

And when God interacts with people in a number of events (and some of them are really key events), he comes to a person (whether it’s Abraham or Moses or Samuel) as a man—God as man in the Old Testament.

And so a son of man that carries a deity description—deity epithet—with him is not unusual in the Hebrew Bible, and it’s especially noteworthy here because the two figures are clearly distinguished.

And anyone familiar with the titles about riding on the clouds or coming with the clouds knows that this is language you use of Yahweh, except for here.

So we’ve got this two-deity figure.

This Two Yahwehs idea was originally part of Jewish theology up until the second century A.D. It’s called the “Two Powers in Heaven.”

And Daniel 7 was a huge passage that Jewish Rabbinic thinking was oriented around.