And I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire . . . I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him . . . Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. (Dan 7:9, 13, 22)
And also with Michael, or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days. (D&C 27:11; cf. 116:1; 138:38)
Latter-day Saints are rather unique in rejecting the popular equation of the Ancient of Days in the book of Daniel with God the Father; instead, with the revelations received by the Prophet Joseph Smith equate, not just Michael and Adam with one another, but Michael/Adam with the Ancient of Days.
Admittedly, there is scant support for this identification in early Jewish and Christian literature. Phillip B. Munoa III wrote a book, Four Powers in Heaven: The Interpretation of Daniel 7 in the Testament of Abraham (Journal for the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series, 28) that forwarded the thesis that the Testament of Abraham associates the Ancient of Days with Adam and the one like the Son of Man as Seth, although it should be noted that this thesis has not been well-received, and ultimately, Latter-day Saints will have to admit that the ultimate reason we identify Michael/Adam with the Ancient of Days, just as we identify Adam with Michael, is due to modern revelation, although such should not be problematic, as we reject the false Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura (see Not by Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura).
Interestingly, Latter-day Saints are not the only ones who reject the identification of the Ancient of Days with God the Father. John Thomas, the founder of the Christadelphian movement, in his 1868 Exposition of Daniel, associated the Ancient of Days with the then-future Messiah and how Jesus would be the “God-manifestation" (cf. Thomas' Phanerosis: An Exposition of the Doctrine of The Old and New Testaments Concerning The Manifestation of the Invisible Eternal God in Human Nature; for a modern treatment, see James H Broughton and Peter J. Southgate, The Trinity: True or False?):
The coming of the Ancient of Days is a great event in this prophecy. He is said to sit, and one like the Son of Man to be brought to him, after which He is said to come. When the prophecy was delivered He had not manifested Himself in the flesh--the Son of Man had not been born; hence that peculiar representative mode of expression: but he has since been born, or manifested, and gone into a far country, where the manifested Son has appeared in the presence of the Ancient of Days, or the Father, for the purpose of receiving from him "dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, and nations, and languages, should serve him; and all rulers obey him" (Dan. 7:13, 14, 27; Luke 19:12, 15). Though these things are promised to him, and though he is the heir of them all, he has not received them; as is manifest from the fact that "all people, and nations, and languages" serve the rulers of the Gentiles, and especially that system of governments represented by the Greco-Roman Dragon. But when the time appointed arrives, as the Ancient of Days embodied in the holy spiritual nature, he will come, having received power and authority to take the dominion, glory, and kingdom, promised him. Thus the Ancient of Days comes, and sits in Jerusalem, the Holy City, to judge all the nations round about (Joel 3:12, 16) -- there he sits, "his throne being like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire", and sends forth from before him a stream of fire.
For the signification of the Wheels and Fire read Ezekiel's first and tenth chapters. They are parts of his imagery put for the whole in this text of Daniel. "The Spirit of the Living Creatures is in the Wheels." They represent the same as the four living creatures in Rev. 5:8-10. They are the "redeemed out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation", raised from the dead, in consuming and destructive motion against the body and horns of the Graeco-Roman Dragon. They are the thousand thousands who minister to the commands of the Ancient of Days; and go forth with him as a fiery stream against the "Beast and the False Prophet, and the Kings of the earth and their armies", to give them "of the wrath of God poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation" -- thus tormenting all the adherents of the Beast and his Image with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy messengers, and in the presence of the Lamb (Rev. 14:10; 19:19-21).
When the manifested Ancient of Days comes, this judgment is set, and the books are opened; and whosoever is found written in the Lamb's Book of Life awakes to everlasting life, and to a participation in the judgment upon the Four Beasts; and whosoever is not found written there is cast into the burning flame that destroys the body of the Dragon (Rev. 20:15; 21:27).
Another Christadelphian author, Edmund Green, followed John Thomas on this point:
The Ancient of Days
Who is the “Ancient of days” of verse 9? It has been debated whether he represents the Father Himself, or His manifestation in Christ. The parallel dream of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2 underlines the fact that God rules in the kingdoms of men and giveth them to whomsoever He will. We know from Psalm 2 and other Scriptures that the recipient o the kingdoms is to be the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Jesus had not yet been born, so he is symbolised by a “stone cut out of the mountain without hands.” The emphasis is on the fact that it is he who does the destroying o the constituents of the image. Of course, it is God who is “ruling”; and what is done is done not by human might or power, but by His spirit (Zechariah 4:6). In Daniel, this “spirit” is clothed in the symbolic language of manifestation. Instead of a “stone” destroying the image as in chapter 2, we have in chapter 7 “the Ancient of days,” judging the fourth beast, and especially its “little horn”, for its blasphemous utterances.
“I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I behold even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame” (verse 11).
The Father has committed all judgement unto the Son: “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgement also, because he is the Son of man (John 5:26-27). Daniel is granted a picture of something that lay long in the future, when Jesus, the Judge, had not yet been born. When he was born, this office was accorded to him “because he is the Son of man”.
Thus, the Judge, sitting as in a court of law, is depicted in symbolic terms, the meaning of which we have to ascertain by comparison with parallel Scriptures. The cryptic description is as follows:
“I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgement was set, and the books were opened” (verse 9, 10)
The garments and hair like wool link up with Revelation 1:14, which is obviously a vision relating to Jesus Christ who is depicted symbolically as a manifestation of God. The whiteness symbolises righteousness (Revelation 19:8); the throne issuing with a fiery flame infers the destruction of His enemies (cf. Psalm 50:3; 97:3; Isaiah 66:15-16). The wheels as burning fire are connected with the highly symbolic cherubic figures of Ezekiel 10:2-13, which were a similar manifestation to that other contemporary prophet. This cherubic symbolism is in turn derived from the tabernacle of witness symbology, where the cherubim were significantly made “of one piece” with the mercy seat, thus indicating the sameness of nature of redeemer and redeemed. The mercy seat between the cherubim was the place of meeting between God and Moses, on Israel’s behalf.
The divine manifestation Daniel saw is called “Ancient of days” because Jesus, when he was granted the Holy Spirit without measure, possessed power which had existed from all eternity. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks from the point of view of this power, which was that of the Father working in him (e.g. John 5:17, 19, 36; 6:38; 8:18-19, 28-29; 14:10-11). Though Jesus only existed as a person from the time of his birth to Mary, he was manifesting his Father who had existed from all eternity; all he said and did he attributed to his Father—hence the title “Ancient of Days”. (Edmund Green, The Prophecy of Daniel: God Rules in the Kingdom of Men [Birmingham: The Christadelphian, 1988], 69-70)
