"And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shalt 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." (Dan.2.44).

The dream of the great image and the prophet Daniel's interpretation, as recorded in the second chapter of Daniel, is very familiar to all students of Bible prophecy. This forty-fourth verse is the focal point of the prophecy; the stone cut out of the mountain which first struck the feet of the image and reduced the whole structure to powder, and afterwards became a great mountain that filled the whole earth, is a symbol of the Kingdom of God which first destroys all man-made systems of government and then takes their place as the long-promised earthly kingdom of Messiah under whose beneficent reign the power of evil is finally to be broken and all nations of the earth be blessed.

There is one element in this verse which is sometimes the cause of misunderstanding. "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom" were the words of Daniel, inspired, we may be sure, by the Holy Spirit and therefore words whose veracity and importance cannot be minimised. On the basis of this expression it has been argued by some that before the present age comes to its end, and whilst the great powers of earth pictured by the four metals of the image are still in active operation, the Kingdom of the next Age will be established in power, in some sense, so that it may be truly said that the Kingdom has been set up and the work of Christ begun while as yet the Kingdoms of this world retain their own power. Since it is perfectly evident that the Millennial kingdom has not been established in an outwardly and physically manifest sense and that Satan is still without any doubt the god of this world the suggestion is made that the Kingdom is set in power "in the heavens"— the sphere of spiritual control of the earth, and that this meets the requirements of the statement in Dan.2.44.

This short note will endeavour to put forward a much more logical and easy-to-grasp explanation. Let it be noted that Daniel did not say the kingdom would be set up in Millennial splendour and power "in the days of these kings"; only that it would be "set up". In the vision itself the stone did not become a great mountain which filled the whole earth until after it had overthrown the image and scattered the residue until nothing of it was left. The Book of Revelation makes it clear that the enemies of the kingdom must be overthrown before the reign of the saints can commence, and the whole of the New Testament bears confirmatory witness. There is no sense in which the Church reigns in glory and power whilst still in the flesh, and it is unthinkable to conceive our Lord commencing His reign without His bride by His side. The 'wedding feast' must precede the shining forth of the saints in the Kingdom of their Father.

The key to Daniel's words lies in Matt. 12.28 "If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come unto you" and even more definitely in Luke 16. 16 "The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it". The Kingdom is dual in its nature; it has an earthly aspect and a spiritual aspect. The earthly aspect is not yet established; it will be so when the Second Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ has reached that phase in which it is openly manifest to all men and the rulership of the world has passed into the hands of His representatives. The spiritual aspect commenced at the First Advent, with the preaching of the Kingdom and the bringing of "life and immortality to light through the gospel" which was characteristic of that Advent.

The more spectacular establishment of the earthly Kingdom at the end of the Gospel Age has tended to overshadow the no less important—in fact much more important—introduction of the spiritual aspect of the Kingdom at the beginning of the Age. The burden of the message preached by Jesus and the Apostles was "Repent—for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand". Those who heard and responded were urged to come into the Kingdom there and then. The Apostle Paul in Col.1.13 plainly declares that we who are the Lord's consecrated followers have already been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God's Son. When the Pharisees in Luke 17.21 demanded of Jesus a statement on when the Kingdom of God should come—and the kingdom they looked for was of course an outwardly manifest Kingdom of Israel in power over the nations—He told them that the Kingdom was not coming in an outwardly perceptible fashion; men would not point here, or there, to show their fellows the Kingdom in power, for, said Jesus, "the Kingdom of God is within you".  What Jesus meant the Pharisees to understand is clearly that in their looking for the Kingdom they were not to expect, then, an outward Kingdom but an inward one, in their own hearts and lives. It was their failure to appreciate His meaning which led them to miss the opportunity for which their whole nation had been trained during the previous fourteen hundred years.

When therefore the writer to the Hebrews exhorts us ". . . wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably" (Heb. 12. 28), he refers to a Kingdom which was a real thing even although it existed as yet only among the believers and in their hearts. Entrance into the "Covenant by sacrifice" has been entrance into the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God has truly been "set up" "in the days of these kings" in the sense that God has called into His Covenant a body of men and women, the consecrated followers of Christ from Pentecost until now, who have been delivered from the power and authority of the god of this world and constituted members of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is true that each such disciple is in the position of being a kind of advance outpost of the new Kingdom in enemy territory, for we live our lives still in the midst of a world system which is opposed to the things for which we stand and with which we have little in common. But the work of the Kingdom is going on, in the hearts of those whom Jesus called "the children of the Kingdom".

AOH