Matthew 21:33-46
33“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who
PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A WINE PRESS IN IT,
AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.
34“When the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce.
35“The vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third.
36“Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them.
37“
But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
38“But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’
39“They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40“Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?”
41They said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the
proper seasons.”
42Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures,
‘T
HE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED,
T
HIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone;
T
HIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE L
ORD,
A
ND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?
43“
Therefore I say to you,
the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and
given to a people, producing the fruit of it. 44“
And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” 45When the
chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them.
46When they sought to seize Him, they feared the people, because they considered Him to be a prophet.
Daniel 2:31-45
31“You, O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome.
32“The head of that statue
was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze,
33its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
34“You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. 35“
Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found.
But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
36“This
was the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king.
37“You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory;
38and wherever the sons of men dwell,
or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given
them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold.
39“After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.
40“Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces. 41“In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. 42“As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. 43“And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.
44“In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. 45“Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
I don't really understand how the gold, silver, and bronze were involved, but I do believe that this was fulfilled through Jesus Christ. It appears, to me, that Babylon, Persia, and Greece had already fallen by this time. But we do know that Jerusalem had been controlled and influenced by all of these nations, including Rome. But this also brings up the question, "If clay represents the Jewish people, then why isn't clay mixed in throughout the statue?".
