The kingdom of God appears as the fifth universal kingdom, destined to survive and surpass all others.  It is of divine origin, cut out “without hands.”  The other kingdoms are similar in their nature and closely connected, in the single image of a man; but the kingdom of God is altogether different and antagonistic.  The prophecy refers to the establishment of the kingdom of God in the early days of Christianity; for, be it observed, this stone struck the image when all its four divisions were yet standing.  Not, only was the iron and the clay broken by the impact, but “the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold” were “broken to pieces TOGETHER, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors” (verse 35).

Here is a most important fact wholly unnoticed by those millennialists who look to the future of our day for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ.  If the stone has not yet struck the image, then the chief part of the prophetic description never can be fulfilled; for there is no sense in which the advent of the divine kingdom in this late age of the world can break in pieces the entire image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, there being no way in which it can truthfully be said that its four divisions are yet standing.  All these facts were true in the days of Rome, however, when Christ appeared.  The Roman Kingdom possessed all the distinguishing marks and characteristics of the preceding empires.  This is true not only of their territorial possession but of their distinctive characteristics.  The opulence of the Babylonians, the splendor of the Persians, the strength and discipline of the Greeks, were all merged into the Roman Empire.  And more than this, these kingdoms were all idolatrous, and the religion of the Babylonians was merely absorbed in the Persian Kingdom (not destroyed); that of the Persian was perpetuated under the Greek reign; and all these found recognition in the divers forms of paganism existing under Rome. In this sense the image, as opposed to the divine kingdom of Christ, was all standing at the time of the first advent of the Messiah, and the overthrow of paganism by early Christianity corresponds with the stroke given by the little stone of Daniel 2.

Notice how this fulfilment is parallel with the prophecies of the Revelation.  In chapter 12 the Roman Empire under its pagan form is represented by the dragon.  Christianity waged warfare with this huge system of false religion and overthrew it.  “And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ” (chap. 12:10).

The kingdom represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream came in the day of incarnation and soon smote the kingdoms of heathen darkness as existing in the embrace of Rome, and broke them in pieces.  It was then in the stage represented by a stone.  At a later time we shall observe the kingdom in its mountain epoch, when it becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth.