Panel essay · Daniel · November 9–15, 2026 · Doctrinal connector
Written by an AI persona connecting the block to Restoration scripture and modern teaching — not a real person.
Few Old Testament books have been pulled as deeply into Latter-day Saint scripture as Daniel. Its stone appears in the Doctrine and Covenants and in the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer. Its "Ancient of days" becomes a title of Adam, tied to a place in Missouri. Its "Son of man" is, according to the Book of Moses, a name for Christ "in the language of Adam." This essay follows those threads and checks what the Restoration texts actually say, which is often narrower and more interesting than people remember.
In Daniel 2 "a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet... and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (2:34–35). Daniel's reading: "in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed... and it shall stand for ever" (2:44).
The key Restoration text is Doctrine and Covenants 65:2: "The keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth, and from thence shall the gospel roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth."
Three things stand out. First, it is a simile: the gospel rolls forth as the stone does, and the revelation never names the empires. Second, the verb is new. In Daniel the stone strikes and then becomes a mountain; it never rolls. "Roll forth" is the Doctrine and Covenants' own word. Third, the section heading calls it a "Revelation on prayer," and it reads like one: "Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come" (D&C 65:6). Joseph Smith received Daniel 2 as something to pray toward, not something to boast about. Verse 5 also joins Daniel 2 to Daniel 7. The kingdom on earth is prepared for the day "in the which the Son of Man shall come down in heaven, clothed in the brightness of his glory, to meet the kingdom of God which is set up on the earth." The stone of chapter 2 goes out to meet the Son of Man of chapter 7.
The Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer turns the image into a petition again: "that the kingdom, which thou hast set up without hands, may become a great mountain and fill the whole earth" (D&C 109:72). The same sentence asks the Lord to remember "all their sick and afflicted ones... all the poor and meek of the earth." In this temple prayer, the kingdom that fills the earth looks like a community that cares for its sick and poor, not a conquering power.
Modern prophets have kept to this reading. In October 2007, at his last general conference, President Gordon B. Hinckley cited Daniel 2:31–45 and D&C 65:2 together and said of the Church's growth, "A great miracle is taking place right before our eyes" ("The Stone Cut Out of the Mountain"). Elder D. Todd Christofferson, in the talk this week's lesson quotes, called the Church "that prophesied latter-day kingdom, not created by man but set up by the God of heaven," and then added a limit that is easy to miss: "Before that day, it will not be a kingdom in any political sense" ("Why the Church," October 2015). So the stone's breaking "in pieces" of other kingdoms (2:44) is not a mandate for the Church to overthrow governments. It waits for Christ's return.
The Restoration texts also never settle which empires the metals stand for. Common Latter-day Saint teaching has followed the traditional Christian sequence (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome). Most critical scholars, including John J. Collins in his Hermeneia commentary, read Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece, with the climax in the second century BC. Doctrine and Covenants 65 works under either reading, because it borrows the stone, not the metals. Its claim is about where the kingdom comes from ("without hands") and that it lasts.
The lesson suggests comparing Daniel 1:15–17 with Doctrine and Covenants 89:18–21. The parallel is real. After the ten-day test, "God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams" (1:17). The Word of Wisdom promises that those who keep it "shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures" (D&C 89:19), and "hidden treasures" fits a man who will praise the God who "revealeth the deep and secret things" (2:22).
The difference is just as instructive. Daniel's stated reason is not nutrition: he "purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine" (1:8). The issue is defilement by a pagan court's table, and the healthy faces after ten days (1:15) are a sign of God's favor, not the motive. That makes Daniel 1 a story about the Word of Wisdom's deeper purpose rather than its health rules. Daniel's diet marked whom he belonged to in a place built to rename him (1:7), and the reward was knowledge given by God.
The lesson pairs Daniel 3 with Alma 14:8–13, and the two stories end in opposite ways. In Daniel 3 the three young men tell the king, "our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods" (3:17–18). They are delivered. In Ammonihah, believing women and children are thrown into a fire along with "their records which contained the holy scriptures" (Alma 14:8), and they are not delivered. Alma tells Amulek, "The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory" (Alma 14:11). When Amulek fears for their own lives, Alma's reply is Daniel 3:18 in Nephite form: "Be it according to the will of the Lord. But, behold, our work is not finished; therefore they burn us not" (14:13).
Together the two stories keep "but if not" from becoming a slogan. The same God who delivers in Babylon receives the faithful of Ammonihah "unto himself, in glory," and that second ending only makes sense inside a plan of salvation where death is not the end. Elder Dennis E. Simmons built a conference talk on Daniel 3:18 ("But If Not...," April 2004), calling the young men's answer "a statement of true faith" and grounding it in the premortal plan: mortality is "a brief segment of the great plan." His summary: "The but if nots can become remarkable blessings."
The Restoration's fullest "but if not" passage is the Lord's word to Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, which reads almost like a list of Daniel's dangers: "if thou shouldst be cast into the pit... if thou be cast into the deep... and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" (D&C 122:7–8). The pit and the gaping jaws call Daniel's den to mind, and the answer is the Son of Man, who went down below all of them.
That bears on Daniel 3:25, often read devotionally as a glimpse of the premortal Christ. The King James "like the Son of God" translates Aramaic bar ʼelahin, more literally "a son of the gods," and these are the words of a polytheist king. Three verses later the same king calls the figure "his angel" (3:28). The verse cannot bear the weight of a proof text for Christ's divine Sonship, and it does not need to. The faithful in the fire are not alone, and Restoration scripture names the one who goes down into suffering with them (D&C 122:8).
The first thing taken from Jerusalem is "part of the vessels of the house of God," carried "to the house of his god" (1:2). Belshazzar's crime is pouring wine into those vessels and praising "the gods of gold, and of silver" (5:2–4). Daniel's rebuke names this as the center of the sin: "they have brought the vessels of his house before thee... and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified" (5:23). That night the king is "weighed in the balances, and... found wanting" (5:27).
The Kirtland dedicatory prayer, the same prayer that quotes Daniel 2, asks "that no unclean thing shall be permitted to come into thy house to pollute it" (D&C 109:20). Belshazzar is the reverse case: holy things dragged into an unclean setting. The Restoration's emphasis on temple worthiness answers chapter 5 directly.
Daniel 6:10 is the positive side of the same theme. "His windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime." That posture follows Solomon's dedicatory prayer, which asked that captives who prayed "toward... the house which I have built for thy name" be heard (1 Kings 8:46–49). Daniel is acting on a temple-dedication promise, and he is praying toward a temple that, in the story's setting, has already been destroyed. His orientation is covenant, not geography.
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf imagined Daniel spending "many hours on his knees praying, laying his questions and fears on the altar of faith" ("Be Not Afraid, Only Believe," October 2015). Chapter 6 adds that the habit ("as he did aforetime") held even when it was outlawed.
Daniel says that "the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow... thousand thousands ministered unto him... the judgment was set, and the books were opened" (7:9–10), and that "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. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom" (7:13–14).
Restoration scripture identifies the Ancient of Days as Adam: "Michael, or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days" (D&C 27:11); "Father Adam, the Ancient of Days and father of all" (D&C 138:38). It also gives the vision a place. Spring Hill, Missouri, "is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet" (D&C 116:1). The pattern for that future gathering lies in the past. Three years before his death Adam gathered his righteous posterity "into the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman," where "the Lord appeared unto them, and they rose up and blessed Adam, and called him Michael, the prince, the archangel" (D&C 107:53–54).
Joseph Smith's most direct comment survives in Willard Richards's notes of an 1839 discourse: "Dan VII Speaks of the Ancient of days, he means the oldest man, our Father Adam, Michael; he will call his children together. & hold a council with them." The notes go on: "The Son of Man Stands before him & there is given him glory & dominion.— Adam delivers up his steward ship to Christ... but retains his standing as head of the human family." In this reading Daniel 7:13 shows a steward returning his keys to the Lord of the household. D&C 78:16 states the same order: the Lord "appointed Michael your prince... and given unto him the keys of salvation under the counsel and direction of the Holy One."
The title itself has a Restoration source. Moses 6:57 says that "in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge." That fits Daniel's scene, which is a court: "the judgment was set."
Critical readers see it differently, and the difference should be stated plainly. Collins and most critical commentators take the Ancient of Days as God himself. They read "one like a son of man" (Aramaic kebar ʼenash, "one like a human being") as an angelic figure, often Michael, or as a symbol of "the saints of the most High" (7:18, 27). There is an irony here: critical scholarship often finds Michael in the scene too, only in the other role. The Restoration reading does not come from Daniel's original setting. It is a revealed reinterpretation that places Daniel's courtroom inside the priesthood order of the plan of salvation.
"The saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever" (7:18; compare 7:22, 27). The beasts' dominion is "taken away" (7:12, 26), and dominion is given first to the Son of Man and then to his people. The Lord promised Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, "thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever" (D&C 121:46), close to Daniel's own phrase "his dominion is an everlasting dominion" (7:14). The difference is in "without compulsory means." Every beast in Daniel 7 rules by devouring and stamping (7:7, 19). The power given to the saints is defined by its opposite: "when we undertake... to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves" (D&C 121:37). Nebuchadnezzar, who boasted of "the might of my power" (4:30), recovered only when he "lifted up mine eyes unto heaven" (4:34).