27 Jun A Vision of the Eternal One: What Daniel and Revelation Reveal About the Glory of Christ
Lately I’ve been studying Daniel 10 and the subject of prayer. I was intrigued by Daniel’s encounter with Christ in chapter 10 and wanted to reflect further on the christophanies elsewhere in Scripture — the moments when Christ appears in visible, embodied form before His incarnation, and in resurrection glory after it.
I set out to piece together a composite portrait drawn from the christophany passages themselves: Daniel 10:5–6, Revelation 1:12–16, and Revelation 19:11–16. What I discovered was striking. These passages are not independent descriptions. They are the same figure, witnessed by different men across centuries, described in language that strains against the limits of human vocabulary.
The following is the result of that study — the passages woven together, footnoted by source, with my own reflections on what the language is trying to carry. My thesis, if you can call it that, is simple: Christ is glorious, and that glory is almost impossible to describe in human experience. The writers don’t give up trying. Neither should we.
What Is a Christophany?
The word itself is a combination of two Greek words: Christos (Christ) and phainein (to appear). When you put them together you get “Christophany” — Christ appears.
Traditionally the term refers to visions of Christ after His ascension, such as the bright light of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. But following the example of early church fathers like Justin Martyr, some appearances of divine figures in the Old Testament are also identified as pre-incarnate appearances of Christ.
The key question in any given passage is: who is this figure? Is it an angel, or is it the Son of God appearing before His birth in Bethlehem?
The Apostle Paul puts the answer plainly in Colossians 1 — Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ is the one who makes the invisible visible. Whenever God takes human form in Scripture, the theological consensus of the early church was that it is the Son who appears — because no one has ever seen the Father.
Daniel 10 is one of the clearest examples. The personal descriptions of the figure in Daniel 10:5–6 resemble what John saw on the island of Patmos — namely, the Son of God in Revelation 1:13–16. Most conservative scholars conclude that Daniel encountered the pre-incarnate Christ. John encountered the risen and glorified Christ. They describe the same person.
The Passages That Informed This Study
This composite portrait draws from the following texts. I’d encourage you to read each one before or after you read the synthesis below:
Daniel 10:5–6 — Daniel’s vision by the Tigris River
Revelation 1:12–16 — John’s vision on the island of Patmos
Revelation 19:11–16 — John’s vision of the rider on the white horse
Daniel 7:13 — the “one like a son of man” before the Ancient of Days
Taken together, these passages are not four separate events. They are four angles on the same eternal reality — the glory that belongs to the Son from before creation, revealed in fragments to two men who fell face-down when they saw it.
A Vision of the Eternal One
The following is a composite text drawn directly from Scripture, woven from the christophany passages listed above. Footnote numbers indicate the specific verse for each phrase.
Behold, one like a son of man¹ — Faithful and True,² the Word of God.³
He is clothed in a long robe⁴ dipped in blood,⁵ and a belt of fine gold girds his waist.⁶ His body is like beryl.⁷
[Beryl is a gemstone that ranges from deep sea-green to blue-green, with an inner luminosity — think of light refracting through clear ocean water, or the color of glacial ice caught in sunlight. It carries both translucence and weight, suggesting a body that is not merely flesh but radiant substance.]
The hairs of his head are white like wool, white as snow.⁸ His face is like the appearance of lightning⁹ — like the sun shining in full strength.¹⁰ His eyes are like flaming torches,¹¹ like a flame of fire.¹² His arms and his feet are like the gleam of burnished bronze, refined in a furnace.¹³ ¹⁴
[Burnished bronze is metal that has been hammered and polished until it achieves a mirror-like sheen — deep amber-gold in tone, glowing from within like heated metal that has passed through fire and come out purified and brilliant, catching and throwing back light with intensity.]
From his mouth comes a sharp two-edged sword,¹⁵ and the sound of his words is like the sound of a multitude,¹⁶ like the roar of many waters.¹⁷
On his head are many crowns.¹⁸ In his right hand he holds seven stars.¹⁹ On his robe and on his thigh a name is written that no one knows but himself,²⁰ and over it this: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.²¹
In righteousness he judges and makes war,²² and he will rule the nations with a rod of iron.²³
He is the first and the last, and the living one.²⁴
The Footnotes: Where Each Phrase Comes From
“One like a son of man” — Revelation 1:13
“Faithful and True” — Revelation 19:11
“The Word of God” — Revelation 19:13
“Clothed with a long robe” — Revelation 1:13
“A robe dipped in blood” — Revelation 19:13
“A belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist” — Daniel 10:5
“His body was like beryl” — Daniel 10:6
“The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow” — Revelation 1:14
“His face like the appearance of lightning” — Daniel 10:6
“His face was like the sun shining in full strength” — Revelation 1:16
“His eyes like flaming torches” — Daniel 10:6
“His eyes were like a flame of fire” — Revelation 1:14; Revelation 19:12
“His arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze” — Daniel 10:6
“His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace” — Revelation 1:15
“From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword” — Revelation 1:16
“The sound of his words like the sound of a multitude” — Daniel 10:6
“His voice was like the roar of many waters” — Revelation 1:15
“On his head are many crowns” — Revelation 19:12
“In his right hand he held seven stars” — Revelation 1:16
“He has a name written that no one knows but himself” — Revelation 19:12
“On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords” — Revelation 19:16
“In righteousness he judges and makes war” — Revelation 19:11
“He will rule them with a rod of iron” — Revelation 19:15
“I am the first and the last, and the living one” — Revelation 1:17–18
What Daniel and John Had in Common
Both men were broken by what they saw.
Daniel was standing on the bank of the Tigris River when the vision came. He saw a man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.
Daniel’s companions did not see the vision. They felt something and fled. Daniel stood alone — then he fell. His spirits were all so employed in intense contemplation of the glory of this vision that his body was left in a manner lifeless and spiritless. He had no vigor in him, and was but one remove from a dead body.
John had a similar experience on the island of Patmos. He heard a voice like a trumpet, turned to see it, and came face to face with the risen Christ standing among seven golden lampstands. His response: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).
Two men. Six hundred years apart. The same reaction: collapse.
This is worth sitting with. We live in a moment when the name of Christ is everywhere — on coffee mugs, in pop lyrics, printed on motivational posters. We refer to Him casually. We invoke Him to bless our sports teams and our business endeavors.
The men who actually saw Him couldn’t stand up.
The Language of Inadequacy
Both Daniel and John reach for comparisons because direct description is impossible. The face is like lightning. The voice is like many waters. The body is like burnished bronze. The word “like” appears again and again — not as a rhetorical device, but as an admission.
Human language was built for human experience. The prophets are trying to describe something outside that experience, and their words keep bouncing off the surface of it.
Revelation draws on Daniel 10 in describing a glowing figure with fiery eyes and shining limbs. What’s striking is that John, writing centuries after Daniel, doesn’t simply quote his predecessor. He sees the same thing independently and uses the same vocabulary — because there is no other vocabulary available.
The similarity between the man described in Daniel 10:5–6 and the glorified Christ in Revelation 1:13–15 has led conservative scholars to identify the figure in Daniel as a genuine theophany — an appearance of Christ as the Angel of Jehovah.
In other words: Daniel and John saw the same person.
A Curious Detail: A Body Like Beryl
Of all the images in this composite portrait, the one that arrested me most was “his body was like beryl” (Daniel 10:6).
Beryl is not common in modern experience. It’s a gemstone — sea-green to blue-green in color, with a quality of inner luminosity. The appearance of the body as a jewel called “beryl” gives the impression that the entire body of the man in the vision was like a gigantic transparent jewel reflecting the glory of the rest of the vision.
Think about that for a moment. Not skin. Not cloth. A body that catches light and throws it back.
This is not the Jesus of the Gospels. The Jesus of the Gospels was tired enough to sleep in a boat during a storm. He wept. He asked for water from a Samaritan woman. The word became flesh — ordinary, mortal, touchable flesh that got hungry and dirty and eventually bled.
But this is what that flesh was always housing. And this is what it looks like when the veil is removed.
Why This Matters for How We Read the Old Testament
One of the theological implications of christophanies is that Christ has always been present in Scripture — not just announced, but actually there.
The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10, speaks of God’s people in the Old Testament being led through the wilderness by Christ. And Jude is similarly explicit: “I want to remind you that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
When the burning bush speaks, that is not a disembodied voice from heaven. It is the Son of God, appearing to Moses in a form Moses can approach without dying. When Jacob wrestles with a man through the night, he names the place Peniel — “I have seen God face to face” — and he limps away. That was not an angel in the generic sense. That was the pre-incarnate Christ.
The christophanies in the Old Testament are powerful reminders that point to Christ’s eternal nature. They make sense of things like John 8:56–58, where Jesus says “before Abraham was born, I am.”
Without a pre-incarnate existence, that statement is incoherent. With it, everything lines up.
The Response That Scripture Records
Every person who encounters the glory of Christ in Scripture has the same response. None of them composed themselves and asked a clarifying question.
Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, His glory filling the temple. His response: “Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Job received a direct answer from God out of a whirlwind. His response: “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent” (Job 42:5–6).
Daniel fell into a deep sleep, face down. John fell as though dead.
This is what happens when you get a vision of Jesus Christ. You are humbled to the ground.
The text never records anyone standing composed in the presence of Christ’s unveiled glory. That detail is not incidental. It is a data point about the nature of what they encountered — something so far beyond ordinary human experience that the body’s default response is shutdown.
A Note on Daniel 10 Specifically
The vision in Daniel 10 comes at a particular moment. Daniel has been fasting and mourning for three weeks. He has been praying — and in the chapters that follow, we learn that a spiritual battle has been raging in the heavenly realm for the entire duration of his fast. The “prince of Persia” (Daniel 10:13), a demonic power, has been resisting the angelic messenger sent in response to Daniel’s prayer.
Then Christ appears. Not the messenger — Christ Himself, by the river.
Daniel 10 is written to help us understand that life is hard and why life is hard, but also to remind us that we are not alone in our struggles. It shows us that the conflicts we experience here on earth are the counterpart of a great spiritual conflict that is presently ongoing in the heavenly realm.
The vision of Christ’s glory doesn’t come to Daniel at a moment of triumph. It comes at the end of three weeks of fasting and prayer, in the middle of spiritual warfare Daniel couldn’t see. That context matters. The glory is given to someone who has been on their face before God, not someone who stumbled onto it casually.
Pre-Incarnate Glory and Resurrection Glory Are the Same
One of the things that strikes me about placing Daniel 10 and Revelation 1 side by side is that the descriptions are nearly identical — even though one is pre-incarnation and one is post-resurrection.
John saw Christ in post-resurrection glory. Daniel saw Christ in pre-incarnation glory. Jesus Christ was not created when He was born; He existed eternally. And so we see exact parallels in these descriptions.
The Incarnation — the birth in Bethlehem, the carpenter’s hands, the tired feet — did not diminish the eternal glory. It veiled it temporarily. The Resurrection did not create new glory. It uncovered the glory that was always there.
This is one of the most important things Paul says in Philippians 2: Christ “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” The emptying was voluntary. The glory was not surrendered — it was covered. And Daniel, standing by the Tigris River centuries before Bethlehem, caught a glimpse of what was behind the veil.
Names Written and Names Unknown
There is a detail in Revelation 19 that I find extraordinary: “He has a name written that no one knows but himself” (Revelation 19:12) — followed immediately by a name everyone can read: “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Revelation 19:16).
The one who is fully knowable and fully revealed — the Word of God, whose story fills every page of Scripture — carries within Him a name that remains beyond human comprehension. He can be known. He has made Himself known. He has become flesh and dwelt among us. And yet there is a depth to who He is that no human mind, even in eternity, will ever exhaust.
That strikes me as one of the most important things Scripture says about the nature of God. He is knowable and infinitely deep at the same time. The vision is real, and it is also partial. The glimpse is not the whole.
What to Do With This
I didn’t set out to write a systematic theology. I set out to trace what the text actually says about what Christ looks like when the veil comes off — and I found that two different men, in two different centuries, in two different circumstances, described the same thing in nearly identical language.
That convergence is not coincidental. It is the Bible doing what the Bible does: bearing witness to the one who stands at the center of every page.
The practical implication for me is this: the Jesus I refer to casually, the Jesus whose name appears in greeting cards and worship song choruses, is the same Jesus whose face Daniel and John could not look at. That should not make Him feel more distant. It should make every encounter with Him in prayer, in Scripture, in everyday life and ministry feel like I am partnering with the most powerful man in the universe. Our Savior, is mighty and more capable to handle anything the comes our way more than we know. It should instill mystery, yes, but also great confidence in his person.
For now, here is a question I’m sitting with after this study: If the men who saw Christ’s glory fell down and lost all strength, what does that suggest about how we approach prayer?