In the last three weeks we have spent a little time discussing various interpretations of Daniel 2 in which a Stone “cut without hands” (Daniel 2:34) strikes the statue of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision. The Statue depicts a succession of Four Empires—Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. It has legs of iron, signifying the strength of Rome (Daniel 2:40), but has feet of iron and clay, signifying that “the kingdom shall be divided” for the kings of the Fourth Empire “shall mingle themselves with the seed of men” (Daniel 2:41, 43). The Stone strikes the Statue “upon his feet that were of iron and clay” (Daniel 2:34).

One interpretation (see Taylor Marshall’s The Eternal City) is that the Stone represents Christ and the Roman Catholic Church, and the historical manifestation of the Stone is the rise of Roman Catholicism after Jesus’ incarnation. Other interpretations have the Stone striking the Toes of the Feet at Christ’s second advent, when Antichrist is destroyed (see Hippolytus, Fragments, On Daniel, Second Fragment, 2). Others identify the Stone as Jesus’ incarnation during the Roman Empire, and have the preceding empires destroyed upon His ascent into heaven (see Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 32 – 36). Implicit within each interpretation is an assumption about the point in time when the Legs of iron transition to Iron and Clay.  This is why some depictions of the Statue have the transition taking place at the ankle (as shown above), and some depictions have the transition taking place at the Toes (as shown below).

That transition point is critical to our understanding of the Stone and its purpose. If the Stone signifies Jesus’ incarnation, then we are left wondering in what way the Roman Empire can be considered to be in its Iron and Clay phase, divided and mingled “with the seed of men” at Christ’s birth in about 4 B.C..  If the Stone signifies Jesus’ destruction of Antichrist at His second advent when the Stone strikes the statue in the Toes, then we are left wondering in what way the Stone can signify that “the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” during the Roman Empire, which is to say, “in the days of these kings” (Daniel 2:44). This dichotomy is represented in the various interpretations of the Early Church Fathers, which is why different writers assigned completely different time frames to the Stone’s arrival. As we discussed in week 1, one explanation for the two interpretations is that part of the vision seems to occur during the Roman Empire, and another part of it seems to occur at Christ’s return. When Daniel 2 is harmonized with Daniel 7, two judicial movements emerge—one beginning under the Roman Empire and one occurring at Christ’s second advent—and we discussed those judicial movements further in week 2. Because it is clear that the Stone strikes the statue in the feet, and not in the legs, and further, that the feet are of iron and clay, and not the toes only (Daniel 2:33), a consistent interpretation of the Stone must take into account the actual transition point from Legs to Feet, that is, from Iron to Iron and Clay.

One key factor in the vision is that it represents judgment. The Stone smites the image and breaks the feet to pieces (Daniel 2:34) and then all the kingdoms are broken together and “became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors” (Daniel 2:35) and a new kingdom is set up which breaks in pieces and consumes all the preceding empires (Daniel 2:44). When harmonized with Daniel 7, which portrays actual judgment scenes (Daniel 7:10, 26), the impact of the Stone appears to be a judicial act, or rather, as we have noted in the last three weeks, the beginning of a sequence of acts. Two questions therefore pertain, if we are to assume that Jesus’ incarnation is what the Stone was intended to signify:

• In what way did Jesus’ earthly ministry, and the subsequent ministry of His apostles and disciples, represent a judgment against the Roman Empire?, and

• In what way can we say that the Roman Empire was internally divided during Jesus’ earthly life?

The problem we face is that the Roman Empire does not appear to be divided at all during this time, and Jesus’ interaction with the world does not appear to carry any judicial weight to it at all. Nor does the apostolic ministry after Jesus’ ascension appear to bear any judicial significance. Rather than judging the Roman empire, they are instead judged by it. We are reminded several times in the Gospels that Jesus simply did not come to judge the world:

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17)

“And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” (John 12:47)

In these two verses, the words “condemn” and “judge” are the same Greek word, “krinō” (κρίνω), “to judge.” In light of this, and in view of the judicial nature of the visions of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7—especially the fact that the Fourth Empire appears to be the object of judgment in the first judicial movement of the Stone—Jesus’ incarnation and ministry can hardly qualify as the first impact of the Stone of Daniel 2. He simply did not come to judge the world, and His interaction with the Roman empire is entirely passive (Luke 20:25).

Further, just as Jesus’ earthly ministry does not appear to carry any judicial weight to it (in fact He denies it explicitly), the Roman empire at the time of Christ does not appear any more divided than the empires before it—at least not in any obvious, visible way that would account for Rome alone being singled out as a “divided” empire in Daniel 2. Consider the succession of empires before it. Under Nebuchadnezzar, the king threatens to kill all his counselors (Daniel 2:12), and there is even a seven-year period when there apparently was no king at all (Daniel 4:31-36), yet Babylon is not described as “divided” in Daniel’s interpretation. The Persians wrested power away from the Medes with whom they are characterized as a single empire, and yet the Medo-Persian empire is not described as “divided” in Daniel’s interpretation. The Greek empire after Alexander could be considered one long civil war between the four dynasties that succeeded him, complete with assassinations and intramural family disputes, and yet the Greek empire is not described as “divided” in Daniel’s interpretation of the Statue.

Thus, even though there were Roman assassinations and civil wars in the century before Christ—between Julius Caesar and Pompey as well as between Octavian and Mark Antony—the Roman Empire leading up to Christ’s birth hardly qualifies as “divided” the way Daniel uses the term in 2:41. In fact, in its transition from Republic to Empire (49 B.C.) when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to establish a dictatorship, Rome was actually more firmly established as the Iron Empire of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, with unmatched military power. If the transition had been the opposite—from Empire to Republic—we might be justified in seeing the Empire as “divided” and “mingled” at the transition point, but what happened was just the reverse. The Empire was clearly in the ascendant and was many years away from approaching the peak of its Iron phase. Likewise, in the years leading up to Christ’s birth, Rome does not appear to be anything other than a united, Iron empire that “subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these” (Daniel 2:40). This status quo appears to remain at Christ’s birth, and continues unchanged throughout His earthly ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and most of the Apostolic years as well.

In short, throughout Jesus’ ministry, there is no apparent judgment against the Roman empire at all, and no evidence of internal “division” within the empire in the sense that the term is used in Daniel 2:41. By all appearances, if Jesus’ incarnation is the Stone of Daniel 2, then Jesus appears to have struck the Statue in the Legs instead of the Feet; instead of coming in a judicial capacity He came “not to judge the world”; and instead of striking the empire when it was internally divided, He struck it at the height of its unified strength. In other words, the Stone of Daniel 2 strikes the Feet of Iron and Clay in a judicial capacity that is altogether inconsistent with the circumstances of Jesus’ incarnation and earthly ministry.

This “problem” appears to be one of our own making, however, for perhaps we have been looking at Nebuchadnezzar’s Statue incorrectly. Either Jesus arrived and struck the Legs of the Fourth Empire instead of the Feet, or struck the Feet in a way that was indiscernibly judicial at a time when Rome was indiscernibly divided, or Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is simply not what the Stone was intended to signify. The first option makes Daniel wrong, and the second option makes his prophecy indecipherable, but the third option suggests that a reinterpretation is in order.

We, of course, hold to the latter position. If we can discover the transition point from Iron Legs to Iron and Clay Feet, we will be better positioned to identify the timing of the first judicial impact of the Stone, and therefore the Stone’s eschatological significance.

Legs of Iron

Daniel specifically identifies the meaning of the Iron and Clay when he says that “the kingdom shall be divided” because “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men” (Daniel 2:41,43), and seed bears genetic significance. Let us revisit the preceding empires. In spite of their internecine warfare, debauchery and intrigue, they were “undivided” in the sense that they were not “mingled.” The Babylonian empire was ruled by a succession of royalty descended from Nebuchadnezzar, for his son was king after him (Daniel 5:2). Then the Medes reigned, passing the kingdom from father to son, for Darius was “the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes” (Daniel 9:1), and then the Persians reigned passing the kingdom from father to son (see Ezra 4:5-6 and this list of Persian Kings). The Greek empire was then ruled by Alexander, and notably he serves as the sole exception to this rule, and the Scripture points it out for us: he left his kingdom “not to his posterity” (Daniel 11:4). But then his kingdom was left to his generals and to their descendants—most visibly to the warring Ptolemaic and Seleucid families as each king left his portion of the fragmented kingdom to his son. None of these kingdoms are characterized as “mingled with the seed of men.” There was a tremendous amount of internal wrangling between family members and their descendants, and yet none of those empires are characterized as “divided” the way the Iron and Clay Feet are considered “divided.” And when Rome was in its ascendancy, it exceeded the preceding empires in military prowess (Daniel 2:40), but not in political intrigue. From Julius Caesar through most of the first century A.D., the Roman Empire simply appears to be in the phase of the Legs. It is not in any sense a “divided” empire. It is Iron to the core.

But there came time when the Roman Empire took a sudden turn, and we can identify it by evaluating the dynastic succession of the Roman empire from Julius:

Julius Caesar,  (49 – 44 B.C.)
— Civil Wars (44 – 27 B.C.) —
Augustus (27 B.C. – 14 A.D.), Julius’ grand-nephew
Tiberius (14 – 37 A.D.), Augustus’ step-son
Caligula (37 – 41 A.D.), Tiberius’ grand-nephew
Claudius (41 – 54 A.D.), Caligula’s uncle
Nero (54 – 68 A.D.), Claudius’ grand-nephew
Galba (68-69 A.D.), related by marriage and adoption

The succession of these first seven rulers of the Roman Empire bears a resemblance to the succession of kings of Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece in that the succession was kept within a noble family line. Galba, the last of them, was of noble birth and very wealthy, but related only distantly to the preceding six, and his wife, Aemilia Lepida, was also related by marriage to the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. After this, the Caesars began to come from much more diverse and frequently common lineage:

Otho (Jan – Apr 69 A.D.), Estruscan lineage
Vitellius (Apr – Dec 69 A.D.), of Latium or possibly common lineage
Vespasian (69 – 79 A.D.), a commoner
Titus (79 – 81 A.D.), Vespasian’s son
Domitian (81 – 96 A.D.), Titus’ brother
Nerva (96 – 98 A.D.), Coceii family, distantly related to the Julio-Claudian dynasty
Trajan (98 – 117 A.D.), of Hispanic and Italian stock
Hadrian (117 -138 A.D.), of Hispanic, possibly Italian stock
Antoninus (138 – 161 A.D.), from Nimes (southern France)

We will leave it to our readers to research the family lines of the rest of the Roman emperors. Our point here is simply that the first seven emperors of the Roman empire followed the pattern of the preceding empires in that succession was kept within the family in a distinguishable line, or “seed,” civil war and political intrigue notwithstanding. After the first seven emperors, the rulers began to come from a much more diverse genetic and family lineage. This is what we believe Daniel had foreseen when he said, “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men” (Daniel 2:43), “they” referring to “these kings” of the Roman empire. According to Daniel, there would be a significant and observable transition from the Legs to the Feet, and that transition took place in 69 A.D. when Galba was assassinated. The succession beyond that point was “mingled.”

We also believe that this is the significance of the angel’s reference to seven kings in Revelation 17:

“And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” (Revelation 17:10)

The question has often been raised about why the angel would refer to seven kings of the Roman empire when there were so many more emperors yet to come. The answer is found in the transition from Iron Legs to Iron and Clay Feet. The revelation to John thus far has been heavily Danielic, in that the beasts, heads and horns in chapters 12, 13 and 17 all derive from Daniel’s visions. John’s interpreters have been speaking in Danielic terms for a significant part of the book. The significance of the reference to seven kings, therefore, is that the angel was describing the Iron period of the Roman empire, the period defined by the Iron Legs of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The angel’s message is to inform John of the looming transition to the period of the Feet of the Statue, a period fraught with eschatological significance, and we might add judicial significance, as Daniel had foretold.

The fact that John was writing this under the sixth king (Nero),* and that there would only be one more after him who “must continue a short space” (Galba), is not suggestive of the end of the Roman empire, but rather of a very significant transition: Rome was about to move out of its Iron period, and into the Iron and Clay period defined by the Statue’s Feet when “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men.” And when the period of the Feet is upon us, the impact of the Stone cannot be far away, nor can the transfer of the kingdom which Daniel had prophesied.

Feet of Iron and Clay

We find support for this interpretation in a rather oblique reference to Daniel 2 in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The chief priests, scribes and elders were pressing Jesus to identify who had given Him authority to teach what He was teaching (Matthew 21:23, Luke 20:1-2). He would not answer their question, but He took the occasion to speak the Parable of the Husbandmen. In this parable, the husbandmen were entrusted with the stewardship of the vineyard, but “when the time of the fruit drew near,” the husbandmen beat, killed and stoned the master’s servants. The master then sends his own son, saying, “They will reverence my son,” but when he came, “they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him” (Matthew 21:33-39, Luke 20:9-15). What then would become of the husbandmen? What would the lord of the vineyard do to them?

“He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons” (Matthew 21:41, c.f., Luke 20:16).

Jesus had just informed the chief priests, scribes and elders that they were the unfruitful, unfaithful husbandmen of the vineyard, that His Father had repeatedly sent His servants, the prophets, only for them to be rejected, and now He had sent His beloved Son. And He, too, would be rejected and killed by them. For this reason, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). As the Matthew account reveals, those “other husbandmen” to whom the kingdom would be given were the harlots and tax collectors (Matthew 21:32) and the gentiles (Matthew 22:9-10). The saints of the Most High.

It is in the midst of this confrontation with the Jews that Jesus invokes Psalms 118 and Daniel 2, not only to identify Himself as the Stone, but also to identify the period during which “the kingdom of God shall be taken from you”:

“Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? [Psalms 118:22-23] Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. [Daniel 2:34-35]” (Matthew 21:42-44)

Over the course of just a few verses, Jesus invoked the imagery of a Stone as well as the statue of Daniel 2 which is “broken” upon the first strike (Daniel 2:34), and then ultimately ground to dust at the second (Daniel 2:35). Not insignificantly, Jesus here separates the two judicial movements we discussed in the first three installments of this series, describing the first almost as if the Statue tripped over the Stone (breaking its feet), and the second as if the Stone had fallen upon the Statue, grinding it to powder. Even more importantly, He invokes this imagery in the context of the kingdom of God being taken away from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, which is what Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 had foretold. In both chapters, the saints are depicted as receiving a kingdom during the Roman empire:

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” (Daniel 2:44)

“These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” (Daniel 7:17-18)

Both of these passages, as we have noted for the last few weeks, refer to the Kingdom of Heaven being given to the saints during the Roman empire, and according to the Parable of the Husbandmen, it is from the Jews that the kingdom is taken, and it is to the harlots, tax collectors and gentiles that it is given. It was to be taken from the Jews and given to the saints, and this time the kingdom “shall not be left to other people.” Thus Jesus confirms for us that the saints of the Most High do not receive the kingdom from the Roman Empire, as Roman Catholic apologist Taylor Marshall concluded in The Eternal City. When Jesus interprets Daniel 2 for us, He shows the saints of the Most High receiving the kingdom from the Jews “in the days of those kings.” This is the Heavenly Kingdom that John, Jesus and His apostles had been commissioned to announce.

This bears significantly on the transition from the Iron Legs to the Iron and Clay Feet of Daniel 2 because Jesus invokes the imagery of the Stone the Statue and the transfer of a kingdom in regard to events that are yet future to Him and to His audience. At the time of the parable, the Jews have yet to reject the Stone, and they have yet to catch Him and cast Him out of the vineyard, and slay Him (Matthew 21:33-39, Luke 20:9-15), and the Lord of the Vineyard has yet to “miserably destroy those wicked men” (Matthew 21:41) and He has yet to take away the kingdom from them (Matthew 21:43). In fact, the language of taking away their kingdom, and giving the kingdom to another nation, is yet future, and is a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.. It is only then that their kingdom is officially taken away. Jesus’ and John’s ministry of announcing the Kingdom of Heaven was in anticipation of this very thing, for the phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” literally means “The kingdom of heaven draweth nigh” or “The kingdom of heaven approacheth.”

The significance of this to our understanding of the Statue is that by appealing to the imagery of Daniel 2, Jesus has described the destruction of the Jewish nation in terms that place the event chronologically in the period of the Iron and Clay feet that we identified above. As we noted in our analysis of the emperors of Rome, the period of the Iron Legs ends with Galba in 69 A.D., and the period of the Iron and Clay Feet immediately follows. Within the year, Jerusalem would be destroyed.

In Daniel 2 and 7, we are careful to point out, it is the Roman empire, not Jerusalem, that is the object of judgment, and this brings us back to the judicial significance of the Stone. Its target is the Roman empire, and its effect is judicial in nature. The Lord promises that He will punish the nation that harms Jerusalem (Zechariah 12), and Rome would not be punished until after it had leveled the city. Jesus did not use the Stone and Statue imagery of Daniel 2 in order to apply it to the Jews, but rather to inform them of the time period in which they lived. Jesus was telling the Jews the same thing that John heard from the angel in Revelation 17: the period of the Iron Legs was about to end, and the period of the Iron and Clay Feet would soon be upon them. During that period the Jews could expect the kingdom to be taken away from them, and that period would begin in 69 A.D.. That period of the Iron and Clay Feet is when the Stone would make its first judicial move against the Fourth Empire.

The Stone

As noted above and in the previous weeks, the period of the first impact of the Stone must refer to an empire that no longer retained the internal strength of its Iron Legs, but was not yet broken to pieces. It must refer to the period when the Fourth Empire is “divided” in the sense that “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men” (Daniel 2:43), but when it is not yet broken into its fragments. Those fragments are the Toes, the final configuration of the empire before the rise of Antichrist. The first impact of the Stone must therefore be after 69 A.D., but before the Toes of the statue emerge. As we noted in our entry last year, A See of One, emperor Diocletian divided the empire into Dioceses (the Toes) in 293 A.D.. The Stone therefore must strike at the Statue somewhere between 69 A.D. and 293 A.D..

As we have discussed in part 1, part 2 and part 3, the first strike of the Stone represents the first judicial movement, and it is targeted against the Feet of the Statue (Daniel 2:34), which is to say, the body of the Fourth Beast, or the Roman empire (Daniel 7:11). That first judicial movement corresponds to the judicial scene beginning in Revelation 4-5 when “no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth” was found worthy to open the seals until the incarnate Christ appears in the throne room (Revelation 5:3-5). This is what we meant, above, when we said that the Stone does not refer to His incarnation, but is related to it. It is in view of His first advent that the impact of the Stone is possible, for it is not until “a Lamb as it had been slain” Who “prevailed to open the book” that the Seven Seals can be loosed (Revelation 5:5-6). It is the incarnate Christ Who must strike at the Feet of the Statue, but He does not do so until first He ascends to His Father’s side, and even then, He does not begin to execute judgment until the period signified by the Iron and Clay. Then He begins to open the Seals and initiates the dismantling of the Roman empire in order to prepare the way for the emergence of Antichrist. In our discussion on the Seals of Revelation in Do Not Weep for Nicomedia, we noted that the first Seal was opened in 226 A.D.:

We take this First Horseman [the first Seal] therefore to signify the rise of the Sasanian Empire. The Sasanian Empire conquered the Parthian Empire, and its first king, Ardashir I was crowned Shahanshah, or “King of Kings,” in a coronation ceremony in 226 A.D.. The Sasanian empire was known for its horse-archers, and would trouble the Roman Empire at its eastern boundary for years to come. Thus we understand the First Horseman to signify the rise of the Sasanian Empire that “had a bow” and was given a crown and “went forth conquering, and to conquer,” in 226 A.D.

The next Seal is broken, and the next horseman takes peace from the earth, resulting in the Crisis of the Third Century:

The rise of the Sasanian Empire was only the beginning of Rome’s troubles in the third century. The period from 235 – 284 A.D. is called “The Crisis of the Third Century,” during which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed from internal and external pressures. “The Crisis began with the assassination of Emperor Alexander Severus at the hands of his own troops, initiating a fifty-year period in which 20–25 claimants to the title of Emperor, mostly prominent Roman army generals, assumed imperial power over all or part of the Empire.” The period was complicated by a humiliating defeat in the East at the hands of the Sasanians (the Battle of Edessa, 260 A.D.), and by the end of the Crisis, the Empire had been split into three competing states with rival emperors and rival armies. The emperor “beareth not the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4), and rules by “the ordinance of God” (Romans 13:2) Who may grant peace on earth, or remove it, at His pleasure. We take this Second Horseman [the Second Seal] therefore to signify “The Crisis of the Third Century,” from 235 – 284 A.D., when peace was taken from the Roman Empire by the “great sword”—that is, the sword of the emperors themselves.

As historians have long acknowledged, these crises led Diocletian to take control of the situation by dividing the empire into dioceses under a Tetrarchy in order to separate powers, making it more difficult for future military coups and invasions to succeed. The Tetrarchy did not survive, but the diocesan divisions did. It was the Stone that caused the fragmentation of the Roman Empire, and the first judicial movement began with the opening of the First Seal in 226 A.D., when the Stone of Daniel 2 struck the Statue in the Feet, “and brake them to pieces” (Daniel 2:34). Within the next 100 years, the Little Horn of Daniel 7 would emerge among them, establishing an earthly dominion, and wearing out the saints of the Most High who had received a heavenly kingdom, as we noted in part 3.

We will conclude this section on the Feet by highlighting another problem with Taylor Marshall’s interpretation of the Statue in The Eternal City. In order to make sense of the succession of empires, Marshall has the Roman empire ending in 70 A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem. He lists the same seven emperors that we do, above, but he does not arrive at the significance of the listing of them. Marshall has the list of seven emperors signifying the end of the Roman Empire, at which point the Roman Catholic Church is presumed to have the Dominion of Rome transferred to her. By taking this approach, Marshall misses the Iron and Clay period of the Roman Empire entirely, and therefore misses the significance of the impact of the Stone. In reality, the Roman Catholic Church does not even come into existence until the latter part of the Fourth century, as we noted in The Rise of Roman Catholicism, and then only after the Stone has already fragmented the Feet of the Statue. The effect of that fragmentation is to prepare the way for the emergence of Antichrist, and that is when Roman Catholicism received her earthly dominion from the Roman Empire. She is the Fifth Empire of Daniel’s visions, the Little Horn, the Antichrist, and is by no means the object of Christ’s eternal affection.

Conclusion

In this series we began by identifying the fact that the visions of Daniel 2 and 7 have judicial significance for the Roman Empire, but also have judicial significance for the empire of the Antichrist. These are signified by the two judicial movements we identified in the harmonization of the chapters. For this reason, we understand why Justin Martyr understood that the Stone signified Jesus executing judgment after His ascension (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 32), for Revelation 4-5 has Jesus doing this very thing. But we can also understand Irenæus and his statement that the Stone signifies Jesus at His first advent, but that the crushing of the empires takes place at “the resurrection of the just” (Irenæus, Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter 26, paragraph 2). His interpretation is suggestive of the two judicial movements we described in part 2. Finally, we can understand Hippolytus’ interpretation that “the stone shall come from heaven” after Antichrist (Hippolytus, Fragments, On Daniel, Second Fragment, paragraph 2), for Daniel 7 has the Son of Man taking away and consuming the dominion of the Antichrist (Daniel 7:26). Because Antichrist is Roman in identity (Revelation 17:11), but also embodies the three preceding empires as we noted last week, we can see how Hippolytus saw the Stone grinding all the empires to dust as a still future event. These men each saw in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream a portion of the truth, for Jesus is the Stone and He did begin executing judgment after His ascension (Revelation 4-5), and there is a separation between that judgment against the Roman empire and what He does at His return, and that second judicial movement of the Stone is targeted at Antichrist.

Ultimately, Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 together foretell a time when the saints of the most high will receive a Heavenly Kingdom, and then the Antichrist will receive an Earthly Dominion. That took place under the Roman Empire, during the period of the Iron and Clay Feet and Toes. Christ’s Church received a Heavenly Kingdom, and Roman Catholicism received an Earthly one. That is followed by a period when Antichrist is allowed to use her Earthly Dominion for “time and times and the dividing of time” to “wear out the saints” (Daniel 7:25), but for all her wrath, she cannot take away from them their Heavenly Kingdom, for it “shall not be left to other people” (Daniel 2:44). One day “judgment will be given to the saints” who will then possess a Heavenly Kingdom together with an Earthly Dominion, for the Earthly Dominion of the Antichrist will be taken away as well (Daniel 7:22, 26-27; Revelation 20:4).

If one cannot distinguish between a Heavenly Kingdom and an Earthly one, and one cannot differentiate between the saints receiving a Heavenly Kingdom that is taken away from the Jews, and the Antichrist receiving an Earthly Dominion that is taken away from the Roman Empire, then embracing Roman Catholicism as the Church of Christ is a very understandable error. However, once we see that the two judicial movements of Daniel 2 and 7 cannot be collapsed into one, and we see that Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension took place during the Iron Legs period of the Roman Empire, and not during the period of the Feet, the judicial significance of the Stone’s impact during the Iron and Clay period comes to the fore, as does the emergence of Antichrist, the Roman Catholic Church, the Fifth Empire.

“Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Revelation 18:4)

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* We understand that our early dating of Revelation to the reign of Nero may raise concern among historicists who favor a late 1st century date. The concern is largely due to preterists’ use of an early dating to advance a preterist eschatology. We hope it is clear to our readers that we do not subscribe to the preterist position, but rather we are firmly in the historicist school.