The Subsequent Glories

1 Peter 1:8-12 ESV

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”

The prophet Daniel was now an aged man standing on the bank of the great river Tigris. It is the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia — decades now since he was dragged from Jerusalem in chains. He has outlived kings and empires. He has interpreted dreams for tyrants, been thrown to lions and walked out unharmed, and spent long seasons in prayer and fasting, mourning for his people. He received some of the most vivid and overwhelming revelations in Scripture, standing among those who saw and heard from God with extraordinary clarity.

For three weeks he has eaten no delicacies, no meat, no wine — his body worn thin with grief and prayer. And then, by the river, a figure appears to him: a man dressed in linen, his body like beryl, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches. Daniel's companions flee in terror, though they see nothing themselves; Daniel alone is left standing, and even he says his strength drained away, his color changed, and he fell into a deep sleep, his face to the ground.

It is out of this encounter — trembling, exhausted, undone — that Daniel receives one of the strangest and most sweeping visions in all of Scripture: a vision of times, and half a time, a shattering of the power of the holy people, and then a deliverance of God’s people and subsequent glories "at the time appointed" (Daniel 12:7). And when it is finished, when the messenger has said all he has come to say, Daniel does not respond with confident exposition. He does not draw a chart of the end times or explain to us what it all means. He simply confesses, "I heard, but I did not understand" (Daniel 12:8).

So, Daniel asks the obvious question, the very question we would ask in his place: "O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?" And the answer he receives is not the answer he wanted. He is told to go on his way, “for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end" (12:9). After everything — the weeks of fasting, the terrifying vision, the sheer weight of what he has just seen and heard — Daniel is sent away still in the dark, given a revelation he cannot fully grasp, with subsequent glories sealed for a future he will not live to see.

The mystery was sealed — not because God was unkind, but because the fullness of the answer belongs to a time not yet come. What Daniel longed for and prayed for in the courts of foreign kings was never in doubt. It just wasn’t for his time. The Son of Man would ascend to the Ancient of Days and establish his rule over all the earth, and the world that had conquered God’s people would again be brought into subjection to His authority. Everything Daniel saw in promise and shadow pointed forward to a time when all things in heaven and on earth would be placed under one sovereign rule—nothing left outside His control, every enemy ultimately brought beneath His feet.

The question the rest of Scripture answers is this: when does that sealed time arrive? And for whom is it unsealed?

The Sealed Mystery Unveiled

Centuries later, the apostle Paul writes to the church at Colossae about his ministry, describing it as making "the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints" (Colossians 1:25-26). Notice the vocabulary. This is not incidental. Paul reaches repeatedly for the very language of Daniel — a mystery hidden, sealed, shut up across ages and generations — and declaring that this same mystery has now been revealed at the prophesied time of its fulfillment.

This is a remarkable claim, and we should not move past it too quickly. Paul is not saying that a new mystery has been invented and then revealed in his day. By that measure, every revelation would then be a mystery. He is saying that the old sealed word, the very thing Daniel could not understand, has finally been opened. And what is the content of that mystery once unveiled? "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (1:27). Daniel’s vision, with its calendars and kingdoms, was always driving toward the moment when the long‑hidden mystery would finally be unveiled. What Daniel saw in symbols and sequences ultimately anticipated the revelation that would dawn in Paul’s day, when the servant’s suffering and subsequent glory would be made known, and astonishing grace would be extended as that servant came to dwell within ordinary believers, Gentile and Jew alike, by the Spirit of God.

Here Reformed readers of Scripture have long insisted on something important: this unveiling is not the rise of some fresh and passing era in the Lord’s dealings, but the moment when the quiet promises of the prophets step out of the shadows and shine in their full gospel splendor. Paul’s “mystery” is the clear and gracious announcement that Jew and Gentile are now gathered into one blood‑bought family through the crucified and risen Christ. In this revelation we behold the kingdom in its “already, not yet” glory: already present in the Church’s union with Christ, yet not fully consummated until He appears. Far from marking a brief diversion in the story of redemption, this mystery stands as the mature expression of God’s everlasting covenant purpose, the unveiling of a new humanity that shall stand forever in union with Christ and gladly live beneath His gracious and unending reign.

All authority in heaven and on earth has already been given to Christ (Mt. 28:18). God has highly exalted him at His right hand, making him Leader and Savior, set above every rule and authority (Phil. 2:9; Acts 5:31; Eph. 1:21). All things have already been placed in subjection under His feet; He left nothing outside His control — even though we do not yet see everything visibly subjected to Him (Heb. 2:8). Jesus is reigning now, and He will continue to reign until every enemy is manifestly under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25). But notice that this is only our perspective. Christ’s reign is already complete. His return won’t expand His authority but will expand our ability to see it, removing every veil that now obscures His rule.

The Subsequent Glories Are Ours

Peter now enters the scene, assuring a dispersed and afflicted church that the very reign Daniel longed for—when the Son of Man would sovereignly rule over all things—was already full, though not yet unveiled to their eyes. He then offers what may be the New Testament’s sharpest insight into Daniel’s confusion and the shared perplexity of all the prophets. Peter describes the Old Testament prophets — Daniel surely among them — as those who "searched and inquired carefully" concerning the salvation that would come, "inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories" (1 Peter 1:10-11).

Notice that phrase: “the subsequent glories”. This is the very content Daniel could not decode. The prophets knew something great was coming — a suffering Messiah, and glories following after — but the specifics, the "person or time," were sealed from them. And then Peter delivers the line that should stop us cold: "It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you" (1:12).

Read that again. The prophet’s visions of the glories resulting from the suffering servant were not, finally, for the prophets. Peter says they were for the early church, gathered in house churches under Roman persecution, hearing the gospel preached “by those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven” (1:12). The believers needed to understand that Christ’s reign was already complete and fully in effect. Even though their circumstances were painful and confusing, none of what they faced meant His authority was lacking. Peter will later make this fact even more explicit when he declares that Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” The problem wasn’t Christ’s authority and reign—it was their ability to see and trust that His reign truly extended over everything, even the suffering right in front of them.

And by clear extension of the same logic, it is for us too because we stand within that same apostolic announcement. The subsequent glories that Daniel could not see, that the prophets searched and inquired about with such longing, are the very glories in which we now stand by faith: the glory of the risen Christ, the glory of adoption, the glory that Peter says will be fully revealed at Christ's return, into which "angels long to look" (1:12).

I confess there are still mornings I sit down with my Bible and feel a bit like Daniel — aware that there is more here than I can grasp, humbled by how much of Scripture still exceeds my understanding after all my study. But I take comfort in this: the same Spirit who unsealed these mysteries to the apostles has not gone silent. He is still opening this word to ordinary readers like us, however slowly, however imperfectly.

So, let me leave you with what Peter himself says such truths should produce in us. Though we have not seen Christ, we love him; though we do not now see him, we believe in him and rejoice "with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory" (1:8). That is the appropriate first response to all we have considered — not mastery, but joyful gratitude that what prophets and angels longed to look into has been freely announced to us. And genuine gratitude always leads to obedience. When the heart is rightly thankful, it naturally turns toward doing what God commands.

So, if the subsequent glories are truly ours—not withheld, not sealed away, not waiting for some later age on earth—then we must live as those who already share in them. We are called to walk in the steady confidence of Christ’s reign already secured, to love a Christ already revealed, and to receive the gospel not as a temporary age in history but as the present, living rule of the risen Lord, awaiting only its full and final consummation. Daniel was told to go his way, for the words were shut up until the time of the end; but no such charge rests upon us. The seal is broken. The mystery is Christ. And by grace, that mystery is ours.

With love in Christ,

Pastor Chris