Who the rock is. Where the rock came from. What the rock did. What the rock is now.

 

Daniel 2:34-35. You watched until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were all broken in pieces and became like chaff. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

The tradition that has read this passage for two thousand years has produced one question it has never been able to answer. If the rock is the kingdom of God arriving on earth, if the rock is Yeshua (Jesus) Mashiach, why did the rock come from heaven when Yeshua was on earth? He was standing in first century Judea. He was walking the roads of the Galil. He was teaching in the temple. He was present in the flesh. Why does Daniel say the rock was cut without hands, cut from above, descending as if from a location that is not the earth?

The question has no answer inside the framework of two separate divine beings. If the Father is in heaven and the Son is on earth then either the Son is the rock that came from earth, which does not match the text, or the Father sent the Son as the rock from heaven, which raises the question of why Daniel describes a single rock rather than a sending. The two-being framework cannot resolve the tension. The one YHWH framework resolves it completely.

The question has never been answered because it was never asked from the right foundation. The rock came from heaven because that is where the seed was, at the right hand, above every earthly power, since David. One YHWH. Simultaneously on earth in the incarnate register and at the right hand in the Av register. The rock descended from where the seed had been held.

 

Who the Rock Is

The rock is YHWH in the incarnate register, the Word who eskenosen (pitched his tent, moved in) among us in the tzelem (shadow or image) of humanity. Not a human king establishing a human kingdom. Not a religious institution expanding through missionary activity. The same I am who declared himself to Moshe at the burning bush. The same one who passed between the pieces in Genesis 15 while Avraham slept. The same one whose name declares behold the hand, behold the nail, Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh, in four Paleo-Hebrew pictures that were always declaring who he is.

Yeshua himself names the rock in Matthew 21:42 quoting Psalm 118:22, the stone the builders rejected has become the rosh pinnah (head cornerstone, rosh, head, the Resh in the second letter of Bereshit, the head in the house, the first and highest, the one the entire structure rests on). The builders, the institutional managers of the covenant testimony, the scribal tradition that had been managing the text since Ezra stood on the migdal etz, rejected the stone. And the stone they rejected became the head of the corner. The rock of Daniel 2 and the rosh pinnah of Psalm 118 are the same identity. The rock that the builders could not place because it did not fit their building system became the cornerstone of the building they did not know was being built, the house that YHWH had declared in the first letter of the first word before anything was made.

The stone the builders rejected. The rosh pinnah, the head cornerstone. The rock cut without hands. One identity declared in multiple places across the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets. The head. In the house. From above. For all flesh.

 

Where the Rock Came From

This is the question the tradition could not answer. And the answer has been in the text since David.

Psalm 110:1. YHWH said to my Adon (Lord, my master, the one above me), sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. David wrote this. David looked at the seed coming from his own body and called that seed his Lord, his Adon, the one above him, the one he served. The seed had ascended. Not biologically. Covenantally. YHWH told David, I will build you a house, and the house YHWH built was the covenant lineage through which the seed would travel. And the seed, having been established through the Davidic covenant, ascended to the right hand of YHWH. Above every earthly power. Above Alexander. Above every Caesar. Above the Herodian dynasty. Above the scribal tradition managing the covenant people’s religion. The seed was at the right hand — held there, protected there, reigning there, from David until the moment the fullness of time arrived and the seed descended into the tzelem.

This is where the rock was cut from. The right hand. Not from the earth. From above. From the position the seed had occupied since Psalm 110, above every earthly power, held at the right hand of YHWH, reigning as King of Kings not as a future title but as the description of the reign already in progress from the moment David received the covenant and the seed passed upward to the right hand.

Daniel 7:13-14 confirms the same position. One like a bar enash (son of man, the human form, the tzelem, the shape in which the divine nature would enter the creation) coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away. The son of man presented before the Ancient of Days, the seed arriving at the right hand position, receiving the eternal kingdom. This is the same event as Psalm 110. The seed at the right hand. The rock in the position from which it will descend.

One YHWH, simultaneously present in the incarnate register walking the roads of the Galil and present in the Av register holding the seed at the right hand above every earthly power. The rock was cut from heaven because the seed was in heaven. Not two locations for two separate beings. One YHWH in two registers of the same divine reality, the incarnate register on earth in the tzelem, the Av register at the right hand above every earthly power. The rock descended from where it was. From the right hand. From above every kingdom that had ever risen. Cut without human hands because no human hand was involved in the placing of the seed at the right hand. YHWH placed the seed there. YHWH held it there. And YHWH brought it down into the tzelem at the appointed moment.

The rock came from the right hand. The position the seed had occupied since David. Above Alexander. Above Caesar. Above every earthly power between David and Bethlehem. One YHWH, at the right hand and in the tzelem simultaneously.
The rock descended from where it was.

 

What the Rock Did

Daniel 2:34-35. The rock struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay. Not the head. Not the chest. Not the legs. The feet. The specific point of contact between the entire accumulated weight of earthly empire and the condition of the covenant people under that empire.

The feet of iron and clay. Iron is Rome, the empire whose military and political power held the first century world in its grip. Clay is the covenant people, you are the potter, we are the clay, YHWH declaring in Isaiah 64:8 and Jeremiah 18 that the covenant people are the clay in his hands. The feet are not a future political alliance of nations still to come. The feet are the specific first century condition, the Herodian dynasty, the precise embodiment of the iron-clay mixture. Herod was an Idumean, not of the covenant line, propped up by Roman imperial power to manage the Jewish people and their temple. Iron and clay. Mixed but not cohering. They shall not hold together just as iron does not mix with clay. The instability of the entire Herodian period, the paranoia of Herod the Great, the division of the kingdom among his sons, the eventual direct Roman administration, is the iron-clay mixture that Daniel described.

The rock struck the feet. The cross struck the foundation of the iron-clay mixture. Not by destroying the Roman Empire, Rome continued for centuries after the cross. Not by destroying Judaism as a people, the covenant people continued. But by destroying their relationship in the body of Mashiach. The cheirographon tois dogmasin (the written record of the ordinances, the institutional management system the scribal tradition had built) was nailed to the cross and rendered inoperative. The dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, the soreg, the fence made stone, was demolished. The iron-clay mixture that had held the covenant people in institutional bondage to the management of the scribal tradition under the authority of Roman political power was struck at its foundation by the completion of the covenant. The cross did not destroy Rome. The cross did not destroy the Jewish people. The cross destroyed the foundation of the mixture, the condition that had kept all flesh from the covenant completion that the first letter of the first word had always declared was coming.

And then the entire statue fell. The iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, the gold, all the accumulated earthly kingdoms from Babylon through Persia through Greece through Rome, broke in pieces and became like chaff on the threshing floor. Not physically. Covenantally. The covenant completion at the cross rendered every earthly kingdom’s claim to ultimate authority null. The King of Kings who had been reigning at the right hand above every one of them from David forward descended to the earth, completed the covenant, and rose on the third day confirming that the kingdom above every kingdom is the only kingdom that does not pass away.

The rock struck the feet, the iron-clay mixture of Roman imperial power and institutional religious management of the covenant people. The cross did not destroy Rome or Judaism. It destroyed their relationship in the body of Mashiach by completing the covenant that abolished the institutional foundation both of them were standing on.

 

What the Rock Is Now

And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Not a great army. Not a great empire. Not a great institution expanding through conquest or missionary program or organizational growth. A mountain filling the whole earth. The covenant completion, sealed for all who slept, for all flesh, from Adam, unconditionally by the one who swore by himself because he had no one greater to swear by, declared as the mountain that fills the whole earth. Not a kingdom that takes territory. A completion that fills. As the substance fills the shadow. As the builder fills the house. As the fullness of YHWH fills the tzelem that was always built in the right shape to receive it.

Revelation 21:3, idou he skene tou Theou meta ton anthropon. Behold the dwelling place of YHWH is with humanity. He will dwell with them. The mountain that fills the whole earth is the Bet of Bereshit (the enlarged house in the first letter of the Torah) arrived at its destination. The first letter declared a house before anything was made. The rock became a mountain filling the whole earth, YHWH dwelling with all flesh, the covenant completion filling every corner of human existence, the self-substitution of God sacrificing himself producing the covenant of peace that will never be removed.

The mountain is not still growing toward its final form. The mountain is what the covenant completion already is, declared complete at the cross, confirmed in the resurrection, proclaimed to those who slept, filling the earth as the first letter always declared it would fill the earth. All who slept are held in it. All flesh is covered by it. From Adam. Forever. The rock that descended from the right hand, cut without human hands, striking the feet of iron and clay, shattering the institutional foundations that had been managing the covenant testimony, is now the mountain that fills the whole earth with the completed covenant for all flesh.

Yeshua said in John 8:23, I am from above. He was standing on earth in the incarnate register and declaring his origin from the right hand position the seed had occupied since David. The rock from above. Descended. Striking. Completing. Rising. Filling. The mountain that was always declared in the first letter before the creation began. The Bet, the house, filled at last. By the one who came from above. Cut without hands. From the right hand. For all who slept. For all flesh. Forever.

 

The rock came from the right hand, where the seed had been held above every earthly power since David. It struck the foundation of everything built without it. It rose. And it became the mountain that fills the whole earth. For all flesh. Forever.

 

 

Four questions. Four answers.

 

Who the rock is, one YHWH in the incarnate register. The I am. The head in the house. The rosh pinnah the builders rejected.

Where the rock came from, the right hand. The position the seed occupied above every earthly power from David until the fullness of time.

What the rock did, struck the feet of iron and clay at the cross. Destroyed the foundation of the iron-clay mixture. Completed the covenant for all who slept.

What the rock is now, a mountain filling the whole earth. The covenant completion for all flesh. The Bet of Bereshit arrived at its destination. Forever.

 

The question the tradition could never answer, why did the rock come from heaven when Yeshua was on earth, answered.

 

Because YHWH is one.

At the right hand and in the tzelem simultaneously.

The rock descended from where the seed was held.

From above. For all flesh. Forever.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams