Source: The Rock that crushed Rome Publisher: Nick Brady | Author: Nick Brady Published: February 10, 2026 | Archived: March 31, 2026

This is Part 2 of a series. Check out the previous post to get the background.

I was somewhat hesitant to tell my wife (and others) about this word that I thought I may have heard from God in prayer. Honestly, I thought it sounded a bit silly.

But at the same time, as I reflected on its meaning, I was encouraged by the biblical connections that had been forming in my mind.

Around this season of my life—as my wife, two babies, and I hunkered down in our little camper—I had begun to take a deeper interest in understanding the gospel message of the Kingdom of God and its implications upon history.

In the previous season, I had been more focused on ecclesiology—understanding the Church, how it should be ordered, and how it was to live faithfully in this world according to God’s purpose.

Now my focus was expanding. I had come to recognize over the years that the gospel was about much, much more than just one’s personal salvation—particularly “salvation” in the sense of achieving heaven and avoiding hell.

The gospel message, as a Jew in the first century would have understood it, was about God’s kingdom arriving on earth and overtaking and transforming the nations of the world.

A key prophecy in Scripture demonstrating this reality is found in Daniel 2, in which Daniel interprets the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar:

“You, O king, were watching and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary radiance, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its chest and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You continued watching until a stone was broken off without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed to pieces all at the same time, and they were 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 entire earth.

“This was the dream; and now we will tell its interpretation before the king. You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the honor; and wherever the sons of mankind live, or the animals of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has handed them over to you and has made you ruler over them all. You are the head of gold.

And after you another kingdom will arise inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.

Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; just as iron smashes and crushes everything, so, like iron that crushes, it will smash and crush all these things. And 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 within it some of the toughness of iron, since you saw the iron mixed with common clay. And just 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 fragile. In that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in their descendants; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not combine with pottery.

And 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. Just as you saw that a stone was broken off from 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 certain and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
—Daniel 2:31-45 (NASB)

The climax of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream concerns the stone, not cut by human hands, destroying the statue which represents the various kingdoms of the earth that would successively rule their world in the centuries to follow: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.

And in the time of the last kingdom, that rock would arrive on the earth, overtake that kingdom, and become a mountain which fills the whole earth and endures forever.

Of course, we as Christians know that this stone is referring to Christ himself.

When Jesus and his disciples began wandering around Galilee telling their kinsmen to “repent” because “the kingdom of God is at hand,” this “statue-and-rock” imagery from Daniel would absolutely have been evoked in the minds of their audience.

The Jewish people had been under the yoke of these empires now for centuries. They were looking for a deliverer who would be that rock—that mountain—that would bring them victory over all of the demonic forces which were oppressing them via the rule of their pagan overlords: the Romans.

This is a theme that I will explore much more in depth in the future. But for now, I just wanted to explain ONE of the primary meanings that this blog title carries.

The “one rock” that is “Henolith” is about the narrative of Christ himself, the Jewish Messiah, bringing his kingdom to earth and conquering the nations which inhabit it.

Christ’s conquest is not by means of the sword—as many of the first-century Jews had anticipated—but by the giving of himself as a living sacrifice on behalf of the world. And calling his followers to do the same.

As more and more minds and hearts are converted to the message and martyrdom of the Jesus-people, the world capitulates to the reign of heaven—from the slave, to the peasant, to the very kings of the earth.

I had thought that today would wrap up this story and explanation of the blog’s title. But as I now have a sense of the pacing, I see that it is likely to endure for another day or two.

You probably already have a sense of where this is going, since you already know what decision my family ultimately felt we had to make.

But back in 2016, when I first heard the word, “Henolith,” I was stupid clueless about what was to come.