Daniel 2:35

THE STONE THAT GREW

‘The stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.’

Daniel 2:35

This revelation to Daniel was not merely a single gleam of heavenly consolation, but the whole plan of God’s purposes in the world’s history for centuries upon centuries. Empire after empire must rise and set:—Babylon, Persia, Greece—and after Greece, an empire quite unlike any of the three; it is God’s purpose for the powers of this world to have their day, and they are intended by God the Ruler to be allowed to try what they can do towards setting up an abiding kingdom. Scope and verge enough shall they be allowed, that they may prove their inability to stand. Unlike the Babel of the elder time, which God confounded before it grew to its intended height, these shall be allowed their trial, and shall fail. The first three shall grow up to what height they can, and then shall fail of themselves; and, failing, shall demonstrate their weakness. For, all that shall happen shall be that one shall devour the other; until when the fourth empire shall have risen, then—upon it shall fall a Stone; a stone cut from a mountain, cut without hands; and that Stone shall grow, and grow, shattering the last of the world’s Empires, until at last it shall fill the whole earth, and there shall be no room left in the whole world for any more earthly kingdom at all. Then shall come the end. And the Ancient of Days shall sit upon His Throne, and all—all who had ever lived—shall be gathered to His Judgment.

Well, the Jews returned to Jerusalem. The Temple was rebuilt. The worship of God was renewed. Yet, observe, that the kingdom in its old shape was never restored. But Babylon fell; Persia rose and fell; Greece rose and fell. Then Rome, imperial Rome, grew slowly; and in the reign of the Emperor Augustus, just when the great Roman Empire was at its height of grandeur, its growth completed, peace established, the ‘Image’ fully formed, then—what? Oh! the Stone fell. The Stone cut without hands, according to the word spoken by Daniel, did fall upon that ‘Image.’ Christ was born. And from that hour that great Roman power began, slowly but surely, to wane and to decline.

I. A Stone from a mountain: so runs the word.—As the mountains stand while the works of man perish and decay, so the Godhead is changeless and eternal, while time passes, and with time’s changes all things else change and decay. So the Stone cut from the mountain sets forth the fact that the Christ Who came on Christmas Day was no new Personality, but that He had existed from all eternity, the Rock as He is ever called in psalm and prophecy. ‘Cut without hands’—describes His entrance into this world: supernatural, miraculous. ‘Who shall declare His generation?’ So in the fullness of time, in all points according to Daniel’s prophecy, the Stone, i.e. Christ, did fall upon the fourth empire; Christ the Rock, whereon His Church should be built. Nay, rather, as I may say, Christ Who is Himself His Own Kingdom—for what is the Church and Kingdom of God but the Body mystical of Christ—so that when we speak of the growth of the Church we do but speak of Him Who filleth all in all. Thus much is passed. Thus much had passed when St. John wrote the Apocalypse. And from that forward the Stone has gone on growing. Shattered is that Roman Empire. Shattered have been one after another of the governments, and nations, and systems which have grown out of it. But the Church has stood, and spread, and grown. No weapon formed against it has prospered. We see the prophecy of Daniel to be still working its mysterious way onward and upward, ever towards the Divine completion.

II. I ask you to look at one very practical bearing of this prophecy upon our Christian life, and upon the temper in which we ourselves should regard the growth and work of Christ’s Church among ourselves.—The Stone should grow and spread and fill the whole earth. The growth of the Church is here symbolised by the growth of a Stone. It is a remarkable symbol to choose. Surely of all things that we know of which by nature do not grow, a Stone is the one which has in it no principle of growth. Seeds grow, but stones do not. Stones remain the same. Or, if they change, it is by breaking; they may vanish and disappear in fragments. But this Stone grows. And not this only, but even individual Christians are called living stones as well—as if to point out to us that whether as regards ourselves as individuals, or the Church in her aggregate, the life and growth is all from a higher source. For naturally, stones do not live any more than grow. The mark of the supernatural is over all. As it is a miracle for a stone to grow, so it is a miracle for the Church to spread, or for the Christian life to grow. As it is a miracle for a stone to live, so the life of the Christian is a supernatural life. The prophecy of Daniel stands as a perpetual warning to all those who calculate the prospects of the Truth by probabilities drawn from mere natural considerations, from views of expediency, or human policy. The right must win because it is right. The Stone must grow because it is from the Eternal Rock. Our own spiritual life must grow, if we are faithful, not because of our pains, or care, or toil, but because we are parts and members of Him Who is the source of all life in all Creation. Faith knows no doubt, no hesitation, no despair. Social forces may be arrayed against us, human politics may be marshalled on the side of the world-empires, but we are part of that Stone which Daniel saw in his days of exile, and which we too see—already grown—grown far beyond the most daring expectation of merely human hope, or even of human imagination.

Illustration

‘As with the Apocalypse of St. John, so with the prophecy of Daniel; it, too, was an exile’s work. It came not from any priest discharging his peaceful office in the calm precincts of the Temple of God. It came from no member of the prophetic schools, meditating devoutly in the quiet of his college. It came from one who had to say his daily prayer with window opened towards a Jerusalem in ruins far away beyond the Syrian deserts; a Jerusalem which he himself could never hope to see. There, in the midst of idolatrous Babylon, of Babylon rightly called Babylon the Great, but whose glory and greatness were each of them clean contrary to the right, an affront to the Majesty of Heaven, there it was that the mightiest of all the prophecies was revealed to the man greatly beloved of Heaven.’