Sally came trudging out of her bedroom and plopped herself down at the breakfast table. Mom asked how her sleep was, only to be informed, "Not very good." "Why?" "I had a bad dream."
    Dreams can be terrifying. You've experienced them: waking up with the pulse racing and nerves jangling. After a cup of warm milk and a few laps around the living room its back to bed and hopefully back to sleep.

    Sometimes, however, dreams don't go away. They remain because you live them. You can pinch yourself all you want but you won't wake up and leave the horror behind.... because you ARE awake. The horror is real.
    And then any nightmare experiences you encounter in your sleep are but reflections of the flesh-and-blood drama that dominates your waking moments.
    Daniel’s life was a little like that.

He believed in God, a strong unshakable faith that the Lord made all things, watches all things, controls all things. And yet.......
    For over 50 years now God’s people had been in captivity, swallowed up by the great world power, Babylon. There was often struggle. Encounters with lions. Some tossed into a furnace. Even the threat of national extermination.
    Daniel and other faithful believers struggled to be pure and true to the Lord. But always with the roar in their ears of forces that scoffed at God as irrelevant, proclaiming their own greatness.

Does God care?
Who IS in charge anyway?

It all peaks in this dream. Not that his mind is whirling with psychotic images from the depths of a troubled soul. Rather, God guides Daniel's thoughts and the images formed there, using them to speak a divine message of encouragement. And through Daniel, the Lord speaks to us tonight.

True enough, we DON’T live in a time of captivity. No lion dens at city hall. Imprisonment or torture is not a likely threat.

    And yet

Don’t you ever find yourself with a question or two about which direction life is going; who is at the wheel?

Perhaps as we consider the world stage, with terrorists on the loose, ongoing state Balkanization destabilizing the world political scene, wars leaving many dead, freezing or starving, huge economic disparities.
    Is there any sense to be made of it?
    Who will come out on top?

Perhaps it comes in our personal life - Decisions to be made and you’re not sure whether you’ll be able to follow through. Circumstances at home are less than ideal, and you feel terribly alone. Abandoned. Work is tough, and sometimes it seems like there is a corporate claw around your soul.

The Lord, via Daniel 7, lays His holy hand on our shoulder.

    Could you follow the vision?
    Let's try, real quickly to recap it in our own words:
    Picture Lake Superior on a stormy November night, with waves many meters high, foamy white caps breaking across the bows of even the largest freighters, tossing them around like small toys.
    The wind whips it to a frenzy, under a dark sky, with sleet and rain chilling everything to the core.

    Out of one side, arises a beast. From another place a second beast. And a third. Finally a fourth - each different, each ugly, and each immensely powerful in their own way.
    And then.... terror of terrors.... we find ourselves standing on the beach, already soaked and chilled to the bone, wanting to go home, but somehow -
    you know how it can be in a dream; somehow, we can't move. We remain riveted to our spot.

And as they approach we see each beast quite clearly:
The first: with the power of the Lion, and the speed of an Eagle
The second: the weight and huge bulk of the great 500lb Syrian Bear as it trampels through the forests, killing for food
The third: Lightning-fast as a Leopard, the most dangerous of all hunting creatures
And then a fourth: an Undescribable Beast, most terrible, leaving nothing but death and destruction in its wake.

    Now we'll have to understand here, for a moment, that strange monster-beasts were often used in Ancient Near Eastern murals to represent nations and empires. Daniel probably guessed that, and the angel in v.17 says as much.
    So we are watching political powers, empires, dominating forces rise up out of the storm and chaos of life, devouring and subduing large chunks of the human race.
    One after the other, each more terrible than the last, horror upon horror. The more time passes, and the longer the situation unfolds, the more frightening it becomes.
 
 

    One thing, though, about those beasts, at least the first three. They don’t seem to be in full control of the situation. Somehow we get signals that even they, with all their horrible fury, are answerable to a higher power.

1. Has wings ripped off
2. Told to go and eat its fill
3. Given authority to rule
4. And the fourth.....
        Well, that fourth beast doesn't seem accountable.

And then, suddenly the camera pans across.
        Now, instead of chaos, a scene of powerful order; instead of uncertainty, control and certainty.
            Thrones.
                THE throne.

Here is none other than God. Fire, strength and power, thousands and ten thousands ready to do his every command.
        And over there the beasts......

Can you sense the contrast?
    The beasts, the world rulers, social forces pushing different ideas, demanding the alleigance of people -- strong, evil, arrogant.
            AND
God. Firm, confident, power, eternal - Ancient of Days - control

The time has come. No more nonsense. No more fooling around.
    The first three beasts capitulate.
    But that fourth beast..... how arrogant! He continues boasting and prattling on with his nonsense and claims to final authority and power...

..... right in God's face!
            Cocky, confident, demanding still!

So... give up? Standing frozen on that lakeshore, it sure would be easy to do! Far simpler to go along with the crowd, to give in to the pressures that face us every step of the way!

EXCEPT.....
    except....
        except for the Ancient of Days.

For finally we, and those we love, and every pretender to a world throne of power, be it political power or social power or spiritual power or cultural power,
    EVERYBODY
        will stand before the Ancient of Days and have to give an account.

They will be judged.
And then what?
    It seems almost as if Daniel and we with him, are caught between a rock and a hard place!
        We either get slaughtered today by the beasts, the powers, coming out of the sea, out of the storm of life

    OR

    No sooner do we see that fourth beast ranting and raving before the throne than we see another figure.
    This is a man, an ideal person, the best of humanity, the "Son of Man." As with the beasts, he too represents a group of people, a force, here on earth.
    And this one is different. He is being escorted in a heavenly motorcade, so to speak: on the clouds of heaven. He is brought up from the stormy earth, a VIP, and ushered into the presence of God. And he is rewarded. He is empowered. He is given control over all those kingdoms and places that these four beasts claimed as their own.

Who is he?
If you read v.18, 21-22, and v.27 carefully it becomes clear that this "Son of Man" represents God's faithful people. He is the picture of those that have not caved in to beastly world power.
    This son of man is, by the way, for those of you who want to explore this a little further later on, a parallel to the stone cut out of the mountain in the vision of Daniel 2.34,45, a stone that crushed the image and filled the whole earth.

Finally, says the Angel, even though at times it may seem a close call or even impossible, even though the odds may seem overwhelming, and even though for whatever inexplicable reason the Ancient of Days allows those beastly forces to rant and rave for a determined period of time and make it seem as though everything in this world has gone crazy and out of control
    even though all that
    the final outcome is certain.

    God's faithful followers, including Daniel and you, will be enthroned and empowered in very real ways.

    Now you would think that Daniel would be satisfied by this; that it would give him some peace. But listen to v.28:

This is the end of the matter. I, Daniel, was deeply troubled by my thoughts, and my face turned pale, but I kept the matter to myself.

    It’s the sort of thing that people sometimes wonder as they sit in church and look around. "Oh, those people - it’s OK for them. But me? I’ve blown it. I’ve behaved like one of those beasts. I came up out of the storm of life ranting and raving at God - maybe big, maybe little, but I did it. I’ve had a beast in my life, and allowed it to get the better of me. I capitulated. I turned my back on the Ancient of Days. I became like one of them."

    Where does that all leave me?
    I remember speaking with an individual, not that long ago, about something similar to this. This person said, "I feel like I need to be close to God, to connect to him. But I don't dare. I choke up every time I try to start. When I read about prayer or talking to God, I begin to panic and close the book. It can’t be for me. How do I fix that? How do I get good enough? What must I do?"

It’s a big question. Ever found yourself asking it?
Big issue. And you know something? Daniel is NEVER given the final million dollar answer.

But we are!

A few hundred years later, when the beastly power of the Roman Empire had risen up and loudly proclaimed its power, a man stood up in a crowd of people who wanted nothing more than to kill him.

And the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" "I am," said Jesus, "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Jesus – saying that HE is the Son of man. HE will be the one who will take that VIP escort up to heaven. HE will be, in heaven, that ideal representative of all believers. And God will grant to him all authority and power.
    But more than this: that same Jesus would also be the one who would bear the punishment for those who believe in him. Daniel 7 tells us that the beasts were killed. Jesus too was killed. That's the whole setting of Mark 14: the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
    He was killed as the punishment for all that beastly behaviour and those beastly claims and beastly rebellions in our lives - all the moments and days and hours and years, even - that we followed other powers and inclinations and desires rather than the Great Ancient of Days, the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

    Is there certainty? Yes there is! Through faith, even tiny, faltering, hesitant faith in the one who said, "It's OK. If you let me, I'll represent you too when I appear as the Son of Man before the Throne of the Ancient of Days. I'll say that you're on my side. And he'll accept that, because He's my father. He'll accept my payment for your rebellion and sin.
    Trust me. It's OK. You're safe.

Trust me.
It’s OK.
You’re safe.

That’s the whole point of communion.
A safe space to meet the great and holy Ancient of Days.
To be touched by the power of God.
All under the safe umbrella of Jesus, the Son of Man.
    Who holds us in His powerful hand.
    The hand which will ultimately make the final move.
    The hand that will bring us to eternal safety.

That is the hand that now beckons you to come.
A hand with nail scars.
A hand of power.
A hand of peace.