John had used the identical words in Revelation 1:13 to describe the person he saw in the midst of the lampstands.
The details of that person’s characteristics and the names he gave himself in Revelation 1:13–20 made perfectly clear that this was the ascended Christ himself. Further, the Lord God had shown his people through Daniel that “with the clouds of heaven” there would one day come “one like a son of man” to whom God would give “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:13–14). Jesus Christ, true man as he is (John 1:14), has ascended into heaven and been crowned with divine glory to be King of kings (Revelation 1:5; Revelation 5:9–10), in fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy and as demonstrated in Revelation 1:13. This is the one John now sees seated on the cloud.
14 Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.