Cracking the Prophetic Code: Unveiling the Symbolism, Meaning, and Identity of the Ten Horns on Daniel’s Fourth Beast

I have already mentioned that this book began to be written in 2022. Deep and significant changes were beginning to happen in my life at that time, as I was writing the first drafts of the book, and these changes found a way to shape not only the content but also the form in which the reader received the writings prepared for the first volume.

The first volume had two versions. Some digital copies of the first version were distributed, but it no longer represents my thinking on the subject. Although it is not wrong in every detail, as a whole, its meaning deviates from the truth by presenting secondary facts or events as if they were the primary events and facts that primally fulfill the prophecy.

The second version of those early writings, much reduced and leaner, stripped of misconceptions, became the first edition of this volume, which now receives this second edition. It brings some expository polish, some reflective expansion, and some further excisions of inaccuracies that, while making the author blush, also show his genuine commitment to the subject and to his readers.

First and foremost, I would like to say that I am not a priest, nor a pastor, nor a theologian, nor a historian, nor do I have any academic background related to the subject of this book. I am, as they say, merely an interested citizen in the matter and in its development for the greater glory of the Most High.

This book began to be written in 2022, but its content had already been occupying my head since the early 1990s, when I was just a young boy taking my first Bible lessons and hearing with great enthusiasm that God had made many predictions, since the earliest biblical times, about future events then still distant, but which had, in fact, happened and could be verified by the people of our time.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge before I thought of writing a book on this subject, and much more flowed before I reached clarity and certainty about a minuscule domain of everything I had been reading, studying, meditating on, and contemplating within the vast, confusing, and uncertain, yet still stimulating and promising field of biblical prophecies.

Initially, the first encounters with the various prophecies naturally brought satisfaction and wonder, due to the enjoyment of a new, sacred knowledge that was further proof of the existence, the foreknowledge, and the power of God to bring about events exactly as the prophets had foretold.

After some time studying biblical prophecy, I reached a certain degree of clarity regarding various details, implications, nuances, etc. I also became aware of the vast number of studies, analyses, apologetics, critiques, and how impossible it would be to cover everything else that has ever been thought, said, and written or discovered concerning biblical prophecies in the most varied fields of knowledge and over a time as long as that marked by the writing of the first book of the Bible, all of which are important for the understanding of the subject.

It is a very pleasant fact that I began writing after the advent of modern human speech artificial intelligences. These technologies can become true personal assistants in the most diverse subjects. What, long ago, might have been accessible only to very wealthy people, able to afford expert assistants and aides, qualified to give qualified advice in their fields and to perform bureaucratic tasks, is today available to any person willing to access one of these marvels of the imitation of human reasoning and speech.

Thus, much of the bibliographical research, the references to past events, the gathering, clarification, or description of remote historical facts is within reach of a prompt with the right question. These facilities leveraged the research phase of the book, which, in truth, developed hand-in-hand with its writing.

Even so, due to time and resource constraints, the final preparation of this first edition had to be accelerated and shortened. For this reason, some points may lack bibliographical citation or other references, although, on the other hand, in many other points, indications of primary sources have been given, for example, with their online addresses provided in footnotes for easy reference, in Portuguese, Spanish, or English. We hope that future editions will resolve or, where necessary, correct any present shortcomings or inadequacies. Supporting video material for this book is being prepared and will be gradually available on my YouTube channel, @aprodriguesOficial. On this channel, we will discuss not only the prophecy of Daniel 7, but many others.

Beyond and above these mere technological supports, and without ever having had any out-of-the-ordinary spiritual gift, I can say that in some moments of meditative doubt, I felt as if the answer appeared to me, without even the subtlest effort of intuiting, recalling, or reasoning. Saint Paul said that prophecy edifies the Church. I can say that it uplifts the spirit of those who study it, for the foreknowledge of the future is content from the Divine Mind. It brings spiritual joy and grace that strengthens the human intelligence. Without these gracious pillars, true gifts of the Spirit, this book would not have been completed.

To conclude, I would like to say that this book was written in an affirmative manner. In it, I do not compare, expound upon, or challenge divergent views regarding its subject, although in the final Conclusion of this book, I do dedicate a few lines to exposing the gross and exaggerated error committed by an important critique of Daniel’s prophecy. In this book, I present to the reader my personal view on the subject and I try to support it, to the best of my ability, by presenting arguments and facts. I am not the first to speak of these things, nor do I intend to have the last word on the matter. Thus, this is a speculative work. This work can be described as the result of a self-taught effort or, surreptitiously, disqualified as the result of a merely self-taught or dilettantish effort with no resonance with the academic or denominational mainstream. There are many interpretive proposals at war on this battlefield, and it is a shame that there are pontificating scholars who no longer show the slightest interest in inquiring, in detail and thoroughly, about those that reach them, even when asked for help and clarification, thus excusing themselves, from a distance, from fulfilling their lofty spiritual obligation to speak in the name and with the authority of the Mother and Teacher, and yet still striking academic poses of an intellectual superiority that, however, exists only in their presumption.

All that is left for us is to seek the Truth as if groping in the dark, a little here, a little there, climbing steps in the direction of greater clarity until it is perfect day. I am sure that the reader will feel, in many moments, their heart burning within them, like that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The truth felt in the soul does not require erudite or any other kind of argumentative support, but the latter can be given like the setting for apples of gold or like their polishing. And, as unnecessary as it may be, this author was able to present a formidable salver of silver, in the form of a mathematical proof for the premise of this book. Reading or understanding the content of this proof is by no means necessary for a full understanding of this book’s subject.

The proof ended up being very long, and for this reason, it was given its own space in a separate book. This way, the various mathematical details could be well developed. It is an interesting read that takes one’s consciousness to an unusual crossroads, yet one full of biblical truth and mathematical beauty. The reader can find it under the title "The Proof That the 10 Horns of Daniel’s Prophecy Are the First 10 Roman Emperors" on my personal website.

The small argument that will be presented in the The Book’s Premise, Its Origin, and Validity Section of the Introduction is, always has been, and always will be the simple, accessible, and convincing explanation of the identity between the 10 horns and the first 10 emperors. A mathematical proof is just the second hand of the clock pointing up in the perfect vertical direction. Such a feat is also proof of this author’s commitment to the subject; one who, without being a theologian or a historian, has used and will continue to use all resources at his disposal for the development of the subject, the improvement of its written exposition, and its dissemination.

Between the rise of Nebuchadnezzar to power and Constantine the Great becoming a Christian, nearly 10 centuries passed, filled with anonymous events, most of which occurred in parts of the globe entirely foreign to the Sacred History that was unfolding among the people, in the institutions, and in the lives of the individuals of the small, but not despicable, nation of Israel.

The bustling prophetic movement of that nation must have eluded all the expectations of its enemies and invaders. It is likely that no one at that time, not even the Israelites or Jews themselves, ever imagined that nearly three thousand years after their captivity in Babylon, the prophecies of that era would still be the object of appreciation and serious study.

Of course, much of what was prophesied at that time has already come to pass. The importance for us today of knowing the symbols, their meanings, and their referents is immense and can help safeguard our trust in God, or recover it. The symbology, as is known, is simple, but it is shrouded, on one hand, in controversies, critiques, and disputes, and on the other, it is the object of apologetics and attempts at interpretation that have dragged on for millennia, ultimately producing in our consciences a residue of confusion, suspicion, or disinterest that contend with the malnourished faith of our times and frequently overcome it.

The Jewish Revolt erupted with force in the year 66 A.D. For a long time, the rebels had been victorious over the Roman forces sent to contain them. The Jews were not just fighting for their lives and their freedom, but they were fighting for the fulfillment of a prophecy of great antiquity, according to which they, the Jews, would possess the kingdom.

Those religious rebels, in fact, had not only the hope of seeing themselves free from the Roman yoke, but principally, the prophetic hope of taking possession of the empire.^[17]. It is quite probable that the Romans were aware of the Danielic prophecies. And, as much as their military superiority might have given them the certainty that the brave but still subjugated Jews would never invade the seat of the empire, it is quite likely that such a prediction seemed arrogant to their prickly belligerence.

Arrogance, on the other hand, is what one might expect to see in the spirit of a general whose father is the emperor himself, and whose mission is to destroy the Temple of the God of an enemy vassal nation. Of course, every plan conceived, every order given to his subordinates, every strategy or tactic studied and realized in the campaign to invade Jerusalem, which culminated in the complete destruction of Herod’s Temple—I repeat, of course this was an insult to the Most High and a heartache and a trial in the hearts of the Jewish people.

Up to verse 8, the prophecy of chapter 7 had been symbolically describing events that can be recognized in human history. But suddenly, it leaps to another plane and briefly describes certain events that would occur on this other plane and that would be linked in a special way to events in earthly history.

From a modern human point of view, it might seem superfluous to try to describe events that supposedly took place more or less two thousand years ago and did not occur on Earth. But Providence wished to give knowledge to the prophet, and to us, about the occurrence of a judgment session presided over by the Ancient of Days, during which a Son of Man was brought into His Presence. We know for certain that this symbolic narrative refers to events that happened on that plane after the Ascension of Our Lord to Heaven, following His Resurrection.

We know this because the same event was narrated again by Saint John in chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, once again clarifying the meaning of the prophecy of Daniel 7 and adding other valuable information to that already contained in Daniel. According to Saint John, between the death of Christ and some unknown moment after His ascension to heaven, there was no one who could take possession of and know the book of the world’s destiny. John recounts that he wept bitterly in this vision because of this. But suddenly, he sees the figure of a Lamb that had been slain, and yet was more alive than ever and, as the Person represented by this Lamb Himself put it, is "alive for ever and ever."^[21] This Lamb takes the book that was in the right hand of Him who was seated on the Divine Throne and, after this, receives universal adoration.

In both passages, God is seated on His throne and a Son of Man approaches Him. Both speak of the superiority of this Son of Man. Both refer to the merit of His Highest Distinction, which makes Him worthy of honor and praise. Both refer, in one way or another, to the universal, eternal, and indestructible dominion of His empire. Both narrate this majestic event as taking place in Heaven.

Let us also notice their timelines. Both agree that such an event would happen after the Ascension of Our Lord to Heaven. In Daniel, the judgment session takes place after the little horn wages war and prevails against the saints—that is, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, which, as is known, happened after the ascension of Jesus to Heaven. In Revelation, clearly, the appearance in heaven of the slain Lamb is the appearance of the Offering for sin, which could only have happened after the Ascension, which in turn happened after the death and resurrection of Our Lord.

The temple was destroyed in the year 70 A.D.; therefore, this session that judges this destruction must have happened after this moment in time. But it must have happened before 313 A.D., because the conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity signified the conversion of the empire to Christ and marks the moment when the saints begin to possess the kingdom. We have already seen that this was the sentence in favor of the saints that resulted from that judgment. Thus, the vision seen by Saint John refers to this event that occurred between the years 70 and 313 A.D. Furthermore, the final writing and composition of Revelation has been dated from around the year 70 to about 95 A.D.^[22]. This fact alone would place this judgment within the period we have just mentioned.

The saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever! The more attentive reader might ask: how could it be forever if we are in the year 2024, the nations of the world are largely given over to nominally democratic republics, whose hidden or discreet leaders spend fabulous sums of money for their political agents to perform publicity stunts in the media circus ring, trying to display a mere public appearance of honesty and decency that, deep down, everyone feels and knows to be the most refined stage performance in the grandest, most dangerous, and deadly circus show. None of those leaders or their agents are even remotely interested in so much as appearing to be saints.

Daniel speaks of the saints in the prophecy of chapter 7, without giving any hint that he knew the people to whom he was referring would be a mix of Jews and Gentiles, whose destiny was to completely detach from the religious tradition to which he, Daniel, belonged and for which he was willing to defy the will of kings, be burned alive, be devoured by lions, and, in truth, be willing to face any other fate, no matter how dire, as long as he was not disloyal to God and his religion. The Church that Our Lord said He would build, and which we indeed see today, two thousand years later, in all corners of the globe, had very difficult, even fatal, beginnings—deadly for anyone who joined and professed it during the nearly 300 years from the scourging and death of Our Lord at the hands of the imperial authorities in Jerusalem, through the destruction of Jerusalem and the sanctuary, until the conversion of the emperor and the Christianization of the empire.

We do not know if the pious prophet Daniel knew this or not, but Saint John gives us a clarifying comparison of magnitudes when, in chapter 7 of Revelation, he reveals to us that the group of people who are, since that time and forever, before the throne of God, and who came out of the Great Tribulation—whose end can be dated to the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 313 A.D.—was composed of 144,000 Jews, 12,000 from each tribe, which is a large number of people, no doubt, but still incomparable to the innumerable multitude of people from other nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues—the Gentiles who had converted to Christianity and who gave their lives for the truth they had come to know, namely, that a Son of Man had resurrected and was on his throne, at the right hand of God, to Whom that countless multitude preferred to go rather than follow that monstrous animal that Saint John characterized as the Dragon, which had not only killed the Son of Man who went to meet the Ancient of Days, but which now also sent to eternity all those who, in the words of Saint John, refused to follow the Beast.

The prophecy of Daniel predicted that these saints would be attacked and overcome for a time, and the nearly 300 years must have seemed like an eternity for the Christians who lived through those bloody times. Saint John agrees with Daniel when he presents the already deceased saints from that time—by virtue of having proclaimed the Word of God, that is, for having borne witness—asking with vehemence how much longer they would have to wait before the peoples were judged for their deaths. They were told to wait, was the reply, because the time of that Terrible Persecution was not yet complete and other Christians would still pass through the same martyrdom.

At the end of that terrible period, Daniel informs us that the monstrous animal—the Roman Empire—would be judged, stripped of its dominion, and completely destroyed.^[23] About this, Saint John foresaw, in his time, very interesting events related to the loss of that animal’s dominion, exposing many other details that had not been given by Daniel almost 500 years earlier.

Christians were largely persecuted by the Empire, but before that, they were persecuted by the richest and most powerful Jewish leaders of Judea, the native elite of the Jewish people: the priestly caste and the Herodians, the political caste. The story of the conversion of Saint Paul is, perhaps, the most notable emblem of this period. At the sixth seal, the great and powerful are terrified and affirm that the great day has come. This text might give people of our time the impression that it is speaking of the day of the Second Coming of Christ, when, in truth, the event that instills fear in them is another, much earlier than the day of the Second Coming. Christians had been persecuted, imprisoned, and killed by the Jewish authorities, arch-enemies of the proclaimed Messiah, whom they should have been awaiting and have received with royal honors, but whom, on the contrary, they had crucified. When the Roman legions invade the Holy Land, destroy Jerusalem, and turn the temple into ruins in approximately three and a half years, the entire physical power base of that elite is dismantled. Saint John will refer to this as "the hidden plan of God." The Jewish elite believed, for a time, that they had executed the most audacious plan in all of History: to usurp the throne of their own God-King. They paid more dearly than they could have ever imagined! And they still pay! It is for this reason that at the sixth seal, the great, the rich, the powerful, say that the great day of Him who sits on the throne has come and ask that dreadful question: "who can stand?" Thus, this seal brings detailed explanations not only about the judgment of the monstrous animal of the prophecy of Daniel 7, but about a sea of factual minutiae that had to do with the high treason that the authorities of Daniel’s people would carry out against the Son of Man whom the prophet had so gratefully foreseen in his prophecy. The next volumes in this series have much more to say about this.

Indeed, Daniel and Saint John agree on the eternal destiny of the saints, taking part in the eternal government of Our Lord, the Son of Man, for Daniel tells us that the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever after being persecuted and overcome; and, Saint John sees them standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes. Day and night they serve him in his temple. These saints had been the object of the song of those 28 enigmatic and marvelous individuals who, in chorus, said to the Lamb: you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.

The Christians who lived in those first decades not only could see the growing animosity and violence directed at them, but they had also been warned about the need to stand firm against the attacks they would have to suffer, from all sides, with increasing intensity. We have a sample of this warning in the messages that Saint John sent to the seven messianic communities, which were recorded in the book of Revelation. In the letters, Saint John mentions or alludes to sufferings, persecutions, insults, imprisonments, death, hardships, deceptions, and trials that would occur during that period, which the same apostle and prophet later referred to as the Great Tribulation. Each of the letters directly mentions the happy destiny of those who overcame the adversities of that persecution, carried out first by the Jews and then by the official organs of the Empire, which definitively ended in 313 A.D. In chapter 7, Saint John portrays the saints from the seven Asian communities, gathered with those from all the other Christian communities in the world at the time, who had overcome those long years of tribulation, already in heaven, attributing their costly and rewarding victory to their God and to the Lamb.^[24]

I will not extend myself much further, as I do not wish to delve deep into Revelation at this moment. That will have to be done in the upcoming volumes. I just want to emphasize that the people presented by John as living, suffering, and dying, only to then reign eternally with Christ, are only half of the solution to the problem contained in the prophecy of Daniel 7. There have always been, there certainly are, and there will always be living saints on Earth, most of whom, as we have already said, live discreet or anonymous lives, but who willingly open the interior of their beings to the sanctifying, gracious influence of the Heavens and thus quietly instill the Spirit of Christ into a gesture, an action, a word, a symbol, or a miracle. This is the other half! This other half, like the first, would never despise the communion and the intrinsic bond with the Church that Our Lord Himself said He would build. The lives of those Christians of the Great Tribulation were lost on Earth and gained in Heaven because of this communion and this bond.

No one is ignorant of the scale of power that exists in the human sphere. This scale of power can be very unequal and, for that very reason, be compared to the height of the Earth to Heaven. Human power can be almost null, in the most humble slave, and it can be almost immeasurable in a president, dictator, king, or in people occupying other, much more discreet positions or offices. Until 313 A.D., the peak of this scale in the vast Roman domains was the emperor who, from the heaven of his power, imposed the cult of pagan deities and the cult of himself, and in this way, spread throughout the empire that spiritual filth that Saint John revealed to us as being the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and satan. At some point during that year, that filth was expelled from heaven in a powerful celestial counter-attack, about which we will have much more to say in the next volume. For now, I only wish to point out that the living Christians on Earth truly took possession of the most powerful kingdom in the world at the time, by means of that imperial conversion which, in this indirect way, also conferred this possession upon the saints.

The life of the saints, this same biological life that we all experience, ends. But by no means do they cease to exist; in fact, they continue to exist in conditions whose revelatory description is that of eternal beatitude. This is Saint John’s point of view in clarifying the meaning of the eternal possession of the kingdom by the saints, which we find in Daniel’s prophecy. The possession is, indeed, perennial, but the condition of existence changes. But it changes in a way that, when known, further enhances the truth of Daniel’s statement that the saints would possess the kingdom forever, since, on one hand, the holiness that has a precarious beginning and development and may come to a premature end while contingent upon time, ends up being confirmed, made perennial, and rewarded at the end of biological life and only after this end—this is the crucial point. On the other hand, perennial possession can only happen where eternal existence awaits the arrival of those who have acquired perennial life and to where Our Lord was pointing when He said that His Kingdom was not of this world but that it ruled over this one. This was exactly what the prophet Saint John affirmed in the opening^[25] of his most famous book, curiously, at a time when to be a Christian was to magnetize persecution and a high risk of death, and when he himself was detained on the Island of Patmos.

Verse 25 of chapter 7 tells us that Titus, the little horn, would have the saints in his hands for "a time, two times, and half a time." Counting each "time" as a year, we would have 3 and a half years or 42 months or, yet, 1260 days. This way of counting the "times" was not just suggested, but revealed by Saint John in Revelation 11 and 12.

It is nothing less than impressive that this period of three and a half years, in which the little horn would act against the saints or have them delivered into his hands, lends itself to a surprising historical confirmation.

Nero gives the order to crush the Jewish Revolt in 66 A.D. to Vespasian, and the latter, on this same occasion, orders his son, Titus, to depart from Achaea in Greece for Alexandria in Egypt, and from there to take the Tenth and Fifth Legions with him to Judea.^[26] It was with this charge that Nero passed into the hands of Vespasian and, principally, of his son, Titus, the little horn, the entire region of Judea, where the saints mentioned in the prophecy of Daniel 7 were located, and which they were to pacify through military maneuvers.

Vespasian arrives in Israel, in the port city of Ptolemais, in April of 67, and Titus, his son, arrives shortly after in the same year, both accompanied by the powerful battle legions that would finally defeat the rebels who, until then, had overcome all forces sent to crush them.^[27] In mid-69, Vespasian is proclaimed emperor, after which he proceeds to Rome to take over the empire, leaving Titus with the charge of victoriously concluding the war against the Jews^[28], which meant besieging Jerusalem, ending the revolt, and reassuming control of the city, as if they themselves had read the prophecy of the little horn and were trying to fulfill it.

In September of 70 A.D., the major military conflicts were over, the city was taken, and the temple was burned and razed. In the months that followed the capture of the city, many measures supposedly had to be taken. The positioning of troops or forces to ensure order, the appointment of new local leaders favorable to the Romans, the judgment of prisoners, the maintenance of a military presence, but, principally, the complete demolition of the walls of the once-glorious temple of Jerusalem. In fact, Titus departs, without his troops, for Rome in the summer of the year 71^[28], thus giving sufficient, though tight, time for the accommodation of the three and a half times.

From the point where we stand in History, the events indicated by the prophecy of the ten horns are far back in the past. It has been approximately two thousand years since the tenth horn and approximately 1700 years since the saints began to take possession of the kingdom. From 313 to 380 A.D., the empire was Christianized, from the poorest Christian subject to its highest official representative, the emperor in person.

In 476 A.D., the Western Roman Empire falls, after the seat of the empire was invaded and dominated by Germanic barbarians. It is obvious that this event is referred to in the prediction that the body of the fourth animal would be destroyed and given to the burning flame, verse 11.

From our advanced point in time, we know what happened in that period through countless historical documents, some of which have been indicated in this book. Although the prophecy of chapter 7 does not mention the word "temple," today we know how Titus insulted the Most High and what his arrogance signified; we know when the war he waged against the saints began and ended, how he tried to alter the times and the law of the Jews. We know that the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was the greatest sorrow a Jewish heart could suffer.

All these clarifications derive from the simple, direct, and luminous understanding that the ten horns are the first ten Roman emperors. It is this initial assumption that generates the entire scintillating treasure of point-to-point connections between the elements of the prophecy and known historical facts. It is all the more scintillating when one realizes that these historical events, far from being isolated points, are an exceedingly long sequence of facts, chronologically ordered according to the chronology indicated in the prophecy, which began in 27 B.C. and only end with the burning of the body of the animal in 476 A.D., making a total of more than 500 years.

The reader may already know that this author was able to provide a mathematical proof for this book’s premise, namely, that the 10 horns of Daniel’s prophecy are the 10 Roman emperors. The proof ended up being very long, and for this reason, it was given its own space in a separate book under the title "The Proof That the 10 Horns of Daniel’s Prophecy Are the First 10 Roman Emperors". In this way, the various properly mathematical details could be well developed.

The expression "son of man" refers to a person born of a woman, the son of a man and a woman.

In the Bible, it is used to distinguish common men from celestial beings, except in the book of Daniel, where it was used in a context inundated with the distinction and dignity of a Most High Being, who would be born of a woman—a most singular fact that, apparently, Daniel himself was unaware of—and who, for this reason, was represented in the vision given to the prophet as a Son of Man.

We know who this Son of Man is because Our Lord identified Himself as such.

Apparently, the subject related to this Son of Man, his role in Jewish society, and his destiny was in vogue at that time. In the Gospels and Acts alone, the expression occurs 83 times, used either by Christ Himself, by the apostles, or by other people.

Although Daniel saw him approaching the Ancient of Days, there may have been doubts as to where he came from before this approach—from Earth, from another place in Heaven?—or his form of existence—in a physical body, like humans?—and where he would go and what he would do after the encounter with the Ancient One. This last part could have been better known, as the prophecy in which Daniel presents him continues with the grandiose scene of the monstrous animal and its judgment. However, Saint John relates that, at a certain moment, people from a crowd to whom Jesus was speaking about the destiny of the Son of Man questioned him with the following: "We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?"

Nowadays, there have been 20 centuries of conviction and clarity that Our Lord was the Son of Man. This helps us to date the time of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Daniel 7 and to discover who the ten horns of that prophecy are. Daniel sees the Son of Man approaching the Ancient of Days, and today we know that this happened after He was killed. Of course, before being born of Mary, He was not yet a son of man, although He has always been the Divinity whose fullness dwelt bodily in Jesus of Nazareth, as Saint Paul explains.

Only after having become a son of man and having died as a son of man did he ascend to Heaven and appear before that Ancient One, and He continued there with the tasks of the judgment that followed, where He remains until He comes here again.

Below is a non-exhaustive list, in chronological order, of what the Gospels and Acts say about the Son of Man and how it fits with Daniel’s vision of Him.