If someone were to ask for a prophecy that places the time of the Coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament, almost inevitably, the focus would be on Daniel 9. However, I submit that there is an additional passage in Daniel that squarely places the Messiah in the first century, and that is Daniel 2. If that is all that passage purported to do, it would not be a cause for controversy with many Christians, but it does much, much more. It also places the Messianic Kingdom as starting during that same time frame which of course makes utmost sense—with the King comes the Kingdom. There is no need to posit any gap, parenthesis, or delay until the Second Coming. The implications of this are not only monumental; they are deliciously intuitive. One need no longer wonder why the “Second Coming” is invisible in the Old Testament as ushering in the Kingdom and allegedly combined with Christ’s First Advent as one event (the unfortunately fabricated “ two mountain peaks blending together when viewed in the distance” theory). [FN 1] One need no longer relegate the Church to a secondary place in the plan of God.

Daniel is interpreting a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar that featured a statue comprising various materials which represented four kingdoms. The identity of the first kingdom is generally not in dispute, though there are splits pretty clearly along liberal/conservative lines about the identities of ...