Daniel 10:12-14
“Don’t be afraid, Daniel,” he said to me, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me after I had been left there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to help you understand what will happen to your people in the last days, for the vision refers to those days.”
The year is maybe 535 BC. The place, by The Tigris River. And Daniel encounters The Ancient Of Days (aka Christophaney). Daniel faints at the sight of him and falls into a deep sleep. Like John who wrote down the Revelation, all his strength was gone, he became weak and anguished. He's awakened by the touch of an angel and is given understanding about the future, but not without first needing the reviving touch of God's messenger.
Imagine what Daniel was experiencing. He's in the presence of the God of the Universe. Through prayer he finds himself involved in a tangible moment of a manifestation of God in something like human form, aka a theophany. This wasn't the first time biblical people have encountered this sort of phenomenon. In many instances the pre-incarnation Lord appears (a Christophany and sometimes Theophany) in all his glory to Daniel but also; Adam and Eve, Job, Abraham, Jacob, Moses with Aaron and his sons and the seventy elders, Joshua, Hagar in the wilderness...and many more in many forms (i.e. pillar of fire, burning bush, a small still voice).
Fact of the matter is, if we're paying attention, we discover that we've met Jesus, son of the living God, many times prior to the New Testament. Jesus himself points this phenomenon out to the disciples. And in a remarkable scriptural statement, the Apostle Paul, (1 Corinthians 10:4), speaks of God’s people in the Old Testament being led through the wilderness by Christ. Likewise the disciple Jude reminds his readers that it was Jesus "who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, and afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” And so we have it on the authority of the New Testament writers that Christ has appeared to Old Testament persons time after time.
Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ is the One who makes the invisible visible.
In John chapter 1 the apostle puts it like this:
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . . No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side [Christ], has made [the Father] known, “anyone who has seen [Christ] has seen the Father.”
What can we make of all this?
Our God is to be encountered, wrestled with, seen and heard. Our God has made us this promise, “I will make my dwelling among [you] and walk among [you].” The heart of God is for him to be among his people. And he intends to bear fruit in us now and forever, “I am with you always.” This is our God, physically and visibly and inseparably present with His people. And he comes in whatever form he determines is most suitable for the situation.
I've encountered him in a voice. At a prayerful waking dream moment, (while driving so not accidentally asleep while in bed or while at rest). I was not expecting to hear him, I've spoken to him in prayers many many times and heard nothing tangible from him. I have prayed and wept and felt comforts and peace, but never heard a word. And then on that day of encounter, when I was trying to understand why I should risk everything to move into His purpose, he spoke these words, "I was there, I heard you, and I'm answering your prayer."
He was there, when I was a small boy praying for love and family. He heard my crying and prayers. And to the adult man he said he's answering that heartfelt request.
The understanding that followed was that he made his answering known to me, he was making me aware of what had already been accomplished long before...in fact began at the moment when the young boy prayed. And as if to put a pin in this understanding, he flooded my thoughts with visions of my own history. All the events of my life that brought about my own new family. He did that, he created that family, he blessed it and fulfilled the young boys hope. And now everything that makes that boy into the man he became is in someway or another part and parcel God's doing.
He came and revealed this to me...and I've never been the same since. On a long trip along a quiet road in Upstate NY, God appeared in a small still voice. And a disciple was made.