A Time of Waiting Unique in World History (III)

“In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” The second important prophecy foretelling the time of the Messiah’s coming could be found in the last book of the Old Testament, Daniel, which, by the time of the Virgin Mary, had already been put together and read in that form for two centuries. In Chapter 2, the book recounts the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in which he sees a stone shattering a great statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. The king is troubled and cannot sleep until Daniel is able to interpret it correctly for him: “After you another kingdom inferior to you shall arise; and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, (...) shall it break in pieces and crush…” (...) “As the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.” (...) “In the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty of it be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever…” (...) “The great God has made known to the king what shall happen hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation of it sure” (Dan 2:39-45). Now, after Nebuchadnezzar came the Persians aided by the Medes, then the Greeks who, under Alexander, dominated the whole earth, then the Romans, who by means of iron, reduced all their adversaries to dust, until, in the first century, Israel was divided between the iron of Rome and the clay of Herod. The stone which was to break the statue was to become a huge mountain that would fill the whole earth. The humble Virgin, mother of Our Lord, perhaps had an inkling of the lowly beginnings of this Messianic kingdom which “would never be destroyed and would remain forever” - reflecting, like Blaise Pascal who was to write about the prophecy of the little stone that became a mountain, “It was foretold that Jesus Christ was to have lowly beginnings and would grow in stature.”