If we want to be part of what God is doing in our time, we must understand that human history since the cross has two parts. We are involved in a game of two halves. During the first half, the church mostly struggles, but during the second half, the Kingdom of God grows to fulfilment.

These two stages are described in Daniel 2. The Babylonian king dreamed about a great statue. When God revealed the dream and its interpretation to Daniel, he explained that the statue represented four kingdoms. The head of gold symbolised the Babylonian empire. The feet of iron and clay represented the Roman Empire, which would come 300 years later. Nebuchadnezzar also saw a great rock smash into the feet of the statue and destroy it.

While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace (Dan 2:34-35).
The vision warned that when the Roman Empire came to power, God would set in process his plan to destroy the empires of the world.
The Hebrew word for stone (eben) is linked with the word for son (ben). God sent his son into the world to rescue it. After his ascension, Jesus sent the Spirit from heaven to build the church on earth. During the first part of the New Testament age, God's activity is centred on the church, which is represented by a rock.

Daniel then described a second stage of history that is represented by a mountain.

But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth (Dan 2:35).

Daniel explained the meaning of the mountain.

In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and end them, but it will itself endure forever (Dan 2:44).
Jesus established a Kingdom that can never be destroyed. When the time is right, God will crush all other kingdoms of the world and they will be swept away like chaff in the wind. When the church inherits this Kingdom, it will become a great mountain that fills the entire earth. This promise has not yet been fulfilled, so we are still in the age of the rock.

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