God’s Word for You

Daniel 7:27 Heaven

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, November 26, 2025

27 Then the kingdom and power
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven
will be given to the people,
the saints of the Most High.
His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom,
and all rulers will worship and obey him.’”

Here at last the angel explaining “the truth about the fourth beast” and the other things (7:19) gives Daniel an explanation of eternal life and of heaven. All of the wonderful things of God’s creation having to do with power, decision-making, authority, and supremacy, are all given to the people of God, the saints. There is a restoration of the way that things were before the fall of man, when Adam and Eve were given “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Luther gives an example of this dominion when he considers the other work that was given by God in the Garden of Eden, which was “to work it and to take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). For Adam, guarding or taking care of the Garden would have been in a world devoid of predators (apart from Satan himself), so that “whereas now such work is fraught with much danger, (then) by one single word, even by a nod, Adam would have put bears and lions to flight.” When we protect our families today, we need things stronger than walls and laws, so that “we can scarcely be safe with our families” (LW 1:103). Such is the kind of authority and power we will have restored to us in heaven, such that, even if there were lions or bears or wolves in heaven, a word or a nod would put them to flight. For most of us with faith in this lifetime have lived under oppression, abuse, and fear, and poverty, and have never really had dominion or authority over anything or anyone. But in heaven all authority—if any would be necessary in a house commanded and lived in by the Lord Jesus—will be ours, but under the will of Jesus all the same.

And the reverse will most certainly be true for unbelievers. They will be terrified “at the sound of a windblown leaf” (Leviticus 26:36). Every creak in the floorboards of hell will terrify them; even the dreadful silences of hell’s lonely caverns and dungeons will bring nothing but dread into their suffering hearts. There will be no rest, no moment to relax. There will only be pain and suffering, or if there is a brief respite from the pain, there will be an even worse dread and fear of what might be coming next. And they will learn that when fear grips their hearts in hell, it will never be what they expect to be coming, but it will always, always and forever be something much worse.

But as for heaven! “The greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven” will be given to us and to all who put their faith in Christ. This was the promise of God from the very first action of how God gave life to man and treated him with love and compassion in the Garden of Eden.

First: “God breathed into the man’s nostrils the beath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). That is, God breathed into Adam a rational and immortal soul. So God created man not only for a physical life which could or would end at a definite time but also for a heavenly and eternal life.

Second: Along with the first commandment (not to eat of the certain tree) God added the threat: “On the day that you eat from it, you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). This means that man would be punished by being deprived of eternal life (this was before faith and the promise of the Savior was given in Genesis 3:15). But it is still evidence of that life eternal that was God’s plan for women and men.

Third: We reach the same conclusion when we are told that God made man in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), since a part of that image is the blessed immortality to which a man would have been translated after completing the course of his natural life without the intervention of death.

Fourth, God raised the hope of eternal life in man’s heart through the promise of the Seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), for “the woman’s Seed shall crush the serpent’s head” means that he will destroy the kingdom of Satan, which includes death (“annihilated and wiped out forever,” Daniel 7:26), and bring back perfect righteousness and eternal life.

It was through sin and on account of sin that our first parents fell into eternal death and the condemnation of everlasting suffering in hell, having fallen out of the blessed immortality that they had been created for. Therefore, the promise of Christ and his forgiveness means the end of death and everything to do with it. It means the restoration of sinlessness, holiness, and the restoration of eternal life in heaven. Let the unbelievers and the skeptics have their riches and their baubles in this world. Let them take our “goods, fame, child and wife.” Everything will be restored to us and far more will be given to us in God’s beautiful Paradise. “Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high!” We will live there and be blessed in his glory forever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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