The Statue and the Stone That Smashed It

The four boys who had grown strong on vegetables were still new to Babylon when King Nebuchadnezzar woke up shaking from a dream.

He called in every magician and star-reader in the city. "Tell me my dream," he said, "and what it means. If you can't, I will have you all killed." (Anyone can make up a meaning. He wanted proof.)

The wise men looked at each other, and nobody wanted to go first. "No king has ever asked such a thing! Only the gods could tell you, and the gods don't live with people."

So the king ordered every wise man in Babylon killed, and that included Daniel and his friends.

Daniel asked the king for a little time and ran home to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. "Pray," he said. "Ask the God of heaven to show us the secret."

That night God showed Daniel the dream. Daniel praised him. "Blessed be God's name forever! He sets up kings and pulls them down. He knows what hides in the dark."

Daniel ran to Arioch, the captain of the guard. "Don't kill the wise men! Take me to the king." Arioch hurried him to the palace. "I have found a man who can tell the king his dream!" (Daniel had found Arioch, but Arioch liked his own way of telling it better.)

"No wise man can do this," Daniel told the king. "But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has shown you what is coming.

"You saw a statue, O king, huge and blazing bright. Its head was gold. Its chest and arms were silver. Its belly was bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were iron mixed with clay.

"Then a stone was cut out, though no hand cut it. It struck the statue's feet, and the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold all broke at once into bits as light as chaff. (Chaff is the papery skin around grain, the stuff farmers let the wind blow away.) The wind blew them away, and not one crumb was left. And the stone grew into a mountain that filled the whole earth.

"You are the head of gold. Other kingdoms will come after you, silver, then bronze, then a kingdom as strong as iron that ends up split, part iron and part clay. In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. It will break all the others and stand forever."

The king fell on his face. "Your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings!" He made Daniel ruler over Babylon, with his three friends beside him.

Kingdoms came and went, just as Daniel said. Gold fell to silver, silver to bronze, and then came iron Rome. Each was built by human hands, and each was waiting for the wind.

In the days of the iron kingdom, a carpenter walked through Galilee saying, "The kingdom of God has come near." He told the leaders he was the stone the builders threw away, and that anyone the stone fell on would be crushed. Roman soldiers nailed him to a cross, and he died. On the third day he was alive, and he stood on a mountain and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth is mine. Go to all nations."

Jesus is the stone. His kingdom is rolling out from that mountain across the whole earth, and when he comes back it will fill everything and stand forever.