Daniel 7 and the Saints

Daniel 7 is one of the great chapters of the Bible. Four beasts rise from the sea, thrones are set up, and the Ancient of Days takes His seat. Among the horns of the fourth beast another horn comes up, “a little one,” with “eyes like the eyes of a man (adam אָדָם aw-dawm'), and a mouth speaking great things” (Daniel 7:8).

The chapter is often summed up like this:

“The little horn of Daniel 7 makes war with the saints and prevails, but when the appointed time comes it is overturned. The saints need only keep the promise in their hearts and wait for the second coming.”

Every part of the first sentence is in the text, and the promise the claim points to is real. Before turning to what is missing, we should read what is there.

The Promise Stands

Daniel 7:18 But the saints of the Most High (Elyon) shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.'

Daniel hears the same promise again a few verses later:

Daniel 7:21-22 I was looking, and that horn made war with the saints and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment (din) was given to the saints of the Most High (Elyon); and the time (zeman, Aramaic) came, and the saints possessed the kingdom.

The horn “made war with the saints and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came.” Then judgment is given to the saints, the time comes, “and the saints possessed the kingdom.” At the end of the vision the promise comes a third time: the kingdom “shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High (Elyon)” (Daniel 7:27).

Three times in one chapter, the promise stands exactly as the claim says. The horn will not win, and the saints will receive the kingdom.

The Verse Between

Between the war in verse 21 and the kingdom in verse 27, however, stands a verse, often left out, that tells us what the war is about:

Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak words against the Most High (Elyon), and he shall wear out the saints of the Most High (Elyon); and he shall think to change times (zimnin זִמְנִין zem-awn', Aramaic) and decree (dat). And they shall be given into his hand until an appointed time (iddan, Aramaic) and appointed times (iddanin, Aramaic) and half a time.

He speaks against the Most High and wears out the saints, and then comes his plan: “he shall think to change times (zimnin, Aramaic) and decree (dat).”

Two Aramaic words carry the whole verse. Zimnin (זִמְנִין) are set times, appointed seasons, the Aramaic counterpart of the Hebrew moedim, God’s appointed times. Dat (דָּת) is law or decree. The work of the little horn, then, is not only to persecute. It is to change God’s appointed times and God’s law, and the Hebrew word for that law is Torah.

The word dat has already appeared in Daniel. Most often it is a king’s decree, as in “the decree (dat) of the Medes and Persians” (YLV Daniel 6:9, Masoretic verse order). Once, though, it is something else, in a place that should make us stop. When Daniel’s enemies looked for a way to bring him down, they said, “We shall not find against this Daniel any occasion, except we find it against him in the decree (dat) of his God” (YLV Daniel 6:6, Masoretic verse order). What they attacked in Daniel was his faithfulness to the dat of his God, and that is the very thing the little horn sets out to change.

Holding the Fort

Picture a besieged town in an old war. A message has come through that the relief army is on its way: hold on, we are coming. The townspeople believe it, and they wait.

But what does waiting mean? Suppose the enemy at the gate makes an offer: “Change your calendar to ours and live by our laws, and you may wait in peace.” If the town agrees, it is still waiting in a sense, but when the relief army arrives, it finds a town flying the enemy’s flag. In a siege, waiting means holding the fort, which is to say keeping the very things the enemy is trying to take.

That is what Daniel 7:25 does to the claim we began with. If the little horn’s war is fought over God’s appointed times and law, then to stand with the saints in that war is to keep those times and that law. Waiting for the kingdom is not only holding a promise in the heart. It is holding on to what the horn wants to change.

How Revelation Names the Saints

Revelation describes the same war, and it identifies the saints by what they hold:

Revelation 12:17; 14:12 And the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring — those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Yeshua. … Here is the steadfast endurance of the holy ones — those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.

Twice they are “those who keep the commandments of God.” When the dragon goes to war with the saints of the last days, they are named by two things together, the commandments of God and the testimony, the faith, of Yeshua. The word for their endurance in 14:12 is hypomone ὑπομονή hoop-om-on-ay', steadfast endurance, and the verse says at once whose endurance it is: “those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.”

The Man of Sin and the Mystery of Anomia

Paul speaks of the adversary of the last days in 2 Thessalonians:

2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasia ἀποστασία ap-os-tas-ee'-ah(falling-away) comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat as God in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.

In the Robinson–Pierpont 2018 Greek text, the one revealed in verse 3 is “the man of sin,” and John tells us what sin is: “sin is anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness)” (1 John 3:4). A few verses later Paul names the force behind him outright:

2 Thessalonians 2:7 For the mystery of anomia(Torah-lessness) is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.

Anomia is the same word we met in Matthew 7:23 at the start of Part Two. The little horn who thinks to change God’s law, the man of sin, and the mystery of anomia are joined by one thread. The work of the little horn is to change God’s appointed times and law, and to stand with the saints is to keep them.

One Like a Son of Man

One more verse in Daniel 7 deserves attention:

Daniel 7:13 I was seeing in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of the heavens one like a son of man (adam) was coming; and he came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him.

This is a scene with two persons, for one is brought near before the other. The Ancient of Days is the Father, and the one like a son of man is the Messiah. Yeshua Himself claimed this verse at His trial:

Matthew 26:64 Yeshua said to him: "You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Dynamis(Power) and coming on the clouds of heaven."

The One who comes on the clouds is the One the saints are waiting for. And while they wait, they keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.

The End of Part Two

Look back over the lines Part Two has walked through: the workers of Torah-lessness and the doers of the Father’s will, the people of the flesh and the people of the Spirit, the exam and the classroom, the old servants and the new sons, the hidden mystery and the open Torah, the judge and the brother who restores, the veil and the Moses it covers, and now the little horn and the saints.

Each time a line was drawn, the commandments were placed on the far side of it. And each time we read the text, Scripture put them on the near side: with the Spirit, because the Torah is spiritual; with the sons, who were called sons in the chapter of the food laws; with the new creation, which has no partnership with anomia; and with the saints, who keep the commandments of God.

There Part Two ends. One place remains where many believers who would never say that the Ten Commandments were abolished are most sure that something did change: food, and the clean and the unclean. Mark 7, Peter’s vision, and Romans 14 need a part of their own, and Part Three begins with the simplest question in it, one that almost nobody asks: when Yeshua and His apostles said “food,” what did they mean by the word?