Who are the saints that are given the Kingdom? Part 1

We are fast approaching the day when the dominion mandate will be given to “the saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7:22). Who are they? Who will rule in the age to come?

Division and Reunification

The dominion mandate was originally given in Genesis 1:26 (KJV), when God said, “let them have dominion.” It was part of the Birthright, along with the earth itself (the Kingdom, its people and its assets). Years later, when Jacob blessed his sons, he divided the Birthright among them, giving Judah the scepter (i.e., the dominion mandate), giving Levi the priesthood, and Joseph the rest of the Birthright (the Kingdom).

Splitting up the Birthright was only a temporary policy until Christ should come and reunite these pieces together under one Head. And so Jesus came the first time of the tribe of Judah to claim His scepter, but He also claimed the high priesthood, which, at the same time, had shifted from Levi to Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:14, 15).

The only remaining portion that remained yet unclaimed was Joseph’s Birthright (1 Chronicles 5:1, 2). This is why there must be a second coming of Christ, for there He comes as the heir of Joseph to claim His Birthright. For this reason He comes with His robe dipped in blood (Revelation 19:13), because therein is He identified with Joseph (Genesis 37:31).

Judah Loses the Dominion Mandate

In Genesis 49:10 Jacob blessed Judah, saying,

¹⁰ The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

Many have missed the fact that the scepter was given to Judah only “until Shiloh comes,” after which time the people would shift their “obedience” (loyalty) to “him,” that is, to “Shiloh.” The meaning of this passage is disputed, but Shiloh means tranquility or peace. It may refer to the Age of Peace, or it may refer to the Prince of Peace Himself. Either way, it shows that Judah was not to possess the scepter for all time, but only “until Shiloh comes.”

In this way, Judah was like Levi, whose claim on Kingdom Priesthood was also temporary. Only the Birthright of Joseph had no end point in prophecy. This means that when all of these parts are reunited under one Head, that Head will be “Joseph,” or more specifically, Jesus Christ manifesting as the Heir of Joseph.

Judah eventually lost the dominion mandate on account of the sins of the kings of Judah. At that time, God told the prophet Jeremiah to put a yoke on his neck and tell the people of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 27:5-7),

⁵ I have made the earth, the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in My sight. ⁶ And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and I have given him also the wild animals of the field to serve him. ⁷ And all the nations shall serve him, and his son, and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings will make him their servant.

God owns all that He created and has the right to give administration privilege to anyone according to His will and pleasure. The dominion was thus given to Babylon for three generations, which was again defined as a period of seventy years (Jeremiah 25:12).

Four Empires of Men, then One from Heaven

Jeremiah did not see the whole picture. His revelation was limited to the rule of Babylon. It was left to Daniel to obtain the big picture, showing how Babylon was only the first of the empires who were given the dominion mandate. Starting with Daniel’s interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, we see four empires that would rule for a very long time:

Babylon (gold head)
Persia (silver arms)
Greece (bronze belly)
Rome (iron legs)

These were to be followed by a Stone Kingdom that would crush all of the “image” on its feet—that is, at the end of their time of dominion. The Stone is interpreted as a Kingdom in Daniel 2:44,

⁴⁴ And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

So during the iron kingdom of Rome, Christ came to begin setting up the Kingdom of heaven. Phase One of that kingdom was according to the pattern of King Saul. It was a Pentecostal Kingdom that was flawed, and yet it provided a starting point and a testing ground for the Tabernacles Kingdom that was pictured by King David.

This kingdom “will not be left for another people.” The original word translated “another” is akhar, which Gesenius Lexicon defines as: “adj. properly following, another, specially one who follows a first, second (from the idea of following).”

http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?strongs=H312&t=NASB

In other words, Daniel says that after these four empires, there will not be another beast empire following the fourth. Instead, the heavenly Kingdom will be given the dominion. This is, of course, an incomplete revelation, for later we find that there was an extension of the Grecian Empire when Alexander’s four generals divided it among themselves. Likewise, there was a “little horn” extension of the Roman Empire. Yet each of these extensions is included in the overall larger empire.

Daniel 7 pictures these four empires, not as metals, but as beasts.

Babylon (lion)
Persia (bear)
Greece (leopard)
Rome (nameless beast with iron teeth and feet)

As I said earlier, this revelation gives more details, for we see an extension of Rome pictured as a “little horn” (Daniel 7:8). We know from history that Rome fell in 476 A.D. and that fifty years later Justinian became emperor in Constantinople. He is the one who changed the calendar and the laws of Rome, empowering the Church and subjecting the civil authority of the emperor to the spiritual authority of the Roman Bishop.

This extension of Rome was to rule and to overpower the saints (Daniel 7:21) until the time of the beast systems was complete. As I showed in earlier studies, that time is now ending in 2014. The heavenly Kingdom, which was first set up in a partial manner on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, is soon to come in a more perfect form with new rulers.

Daniel calls these new rulers “saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7:22). The word kaddesh means “holy one.” It can be used of angels or men. The question is this: Who are the saints who are given the dominion mandate after the beast empires have run their course?

Daniel 7:13 says in the Concordant Version (a very literal translation),

¹³ Perceiving am I in the visions of the night, and behold, on the clouds of the heavens, One as a son of a mortal [enash, Aramaic for enosh] is arriving; unto the Transferrer of Days He reaches, and they bring Him near before Him; to Him is granted jurisdiction and esteem and a kingdom, and all the peoples and leagues and language-groups shall serve Him; His jurisdiction, as an eonian jurisdiction, will not pass away, and His kingdom shall not be confined.

This speaks of Christ and (by extension) His body of “saints.” While the KJV calls Him the “Ancient of Days,” the CV renders it the “Transferrer of Days,” implying that the time has come for the transfer of authority to occur.

He is called “One as a son of a mortal,” showing that it is Jesus Himself, who came as a man capable of death. The passage was written in Aramaic, the language of Babylon, and so Christ is called “son of enash.” The Hebrew equivalent is enosh, which refers to man in his weak, frail, and mortal condition. The term used is NOT adam, or awdawm, which is the most commonly used word that is translated “man.”

Daniel 7:18 (CV) continues,

¹⁸ Yet the saints of the supremacies shall receive the kingdom and they will safeguard the kingdom unto the eon, even unto the eon of the eons.

The NASB says that the saints will “possess the kingdom.” That rendering, no doubt, is accurate, but it is much colder that safeguarding the kingdom. The CV implies that the possession of the kingdom recognizes that God actually owns it, and that the saints are merely God’s stewards who rule according to the mind and will of the Creator.

Daniel 7:27 (NASB) says again,

²⁷ Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.

But who are these “saints”? Daniel’s terms are not specific enough to pinpoint the precise people that will safeguard the heavenly Kingdom.

Daniel as a Prophetic Type

When Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians, Cyrus was the prophetic type of the Messiah, being called “His anointed” (i.e., messiah) in Isaiah 45:1. But Daniel 5:31 tells us that it was actually Darius the Mede who took Babylon and set up 120 satraps (governing officials) to rule the kingdom (Daniel 6:1). Darius put the 120 satraps under three head “commissioners” (Daniel 6:2, 3) and made Daniel the head of these three.

Thus, Daniel foreshadowed a future time when the saints would be given authority under Jesus Christ in the heavenly Kingdom. Yet this was still just a type and shadow of things to come. We need more specific information to know who the saints are.

As we will show in Part 2, the dominion mandate will no longer be returned to Judah, for it must go to “Shiloh,” or Joseph. The question is how may we become part of the tribe of Joseph? Are we dependent upon a genealogical descent from Joseph himself? Or is there another way to become an inheritor of Joseph’s Birthright?