A song for our times
Dear Friends,
The song ‘Ancient of Days’ by City Alight seems particularly apt for our times, with all their political turmoil both within and without the United Kingdom:
“Though the nations rage, kingdoms rise and fall
There is still one King reigning over all
So I will not fear for this truth remains:
That my God is, the Ancient of Days.”
This nation, along with others, is indeed raging, while kingdoms which once seemed everlasting have long since fallen. Where now, for example, is the Roman Empire? And yet there’s one King who reigns over all and for ever: our God, the Ancient of Days. There is, as the chorus goes, “None above him, none before him.”
Curiously, “the Ancient of Days” only appears as a name for God in one chapter of the Bible: Daniel 7. It it not so much that God is very, very old, but rather that he is eternal and therefore all-powerful, the one before whom “the kingdoms of this world are short-lived,” and the one who will judge those kingdoms. He will outlast them because their kings will die and he will not.
It is this Ancient of Days that “one like a son of man” approaches and receives “authority, glory and sovereign power … an everlasting dominion that will never pass away” and a kingdom “that will never be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14). When Jesus calls himself simply “the Son of Man” he is really making a rather big claim, as well as bringing us unspeakable comfort.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)