Look, the only way the stone could be the church is if it struck the image in the shins, because that's about the time the church was set up on Earth - about 200 years after the rise of the Roman Empire.
Understand?
The Stone that strikes the feet and toes points to the Second Coming, not the start of Christianity.
So the Reformation is meaningless to you and nothing changed even though that was the death nell for the Holy Roman Empire, or papal states as you call them?
While the doctrines of the papal states persisted in several Protestant organizations, the governmental authority was forever removed from being a cohesive Empire. We see the rise of Colonization and declared governmental authority given to several individual countries vying for supremacy. But none ever controlled the earth above all the others, as they all remained independent.
The Second Coming is when Satan revives the 6th kingdom. How can that be the end of the first five kingdoms, when the 6th kingdom has already been mortally wounded for hundreds of years? The reason there is a 6th kingdom is because the first five have been dead for centuries. Daniel 2 only has 5 kingdoms, not 6, not 7, and definitely not 8. Satan was not mentined at all in Daniel 2. The only entity on earth after Jesus left for heaven, was the church, to represent Christ on the earth. The church was never to be a nation or kingdom in authority over the earth. But you claim the papal states as that authority after Pagan Rome. That would be the apostate church, no? I just see that as The Holy Roman Empire, as that is a term used by many for that period of time.
I don't need to argue over who all played a role and who you all think Daniel was referring to. I am just covering the time frame of this Statue in Daniel 2. The time frame is up during a long period of time called the Reformation. It was not an exact year. Just like the transfer between Greece and Rome, was not an exact year, but you seem to want an exact point in time to base your Historicism on.
Obviously you think the stone is only cut out at the Second Coming, as that seems to be the point Jesus would fill the earth, and I don't even know if you think there is going to be a future millennium. So what does fill the earth even mean to you?
The Cross was when the stone was cut out, not when the stone destroyed the statue, so why do you keep saying that is my point? I keep saying that the Reformation was when the toes were hit destroying the entire statue, because that is what Daniel wrote. I have never stated the statue was destroyed during the first century. This stone did not just destroy the toes. The dream states all the elements, gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay were destroyed and mixed together.
"Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them."
None of those elements would have any more power ever. Yet your eschatology is based on the papacy somehow revived at the end.
You keep saying the church was set up. That is not what is set up. The stone was not set up. The stone was cut out and became the church.
This verse is not talking about Jesus Christ, nor the church on the earth.
"And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever."
That was the heavenly kingdom, not even the stone that was cut out. Jesus talked about that heavenly kingdom before He was even crucified. Jesus was the last person sent after many OT prophets talking about that kingdom of heaven.
Now the church on earth are ambassadors after Jesus came and left, but the church is only a tip of the kingdom of heaven. The church represents individuals sent after Jesus, but the kingdom was already established way back in the time of the Babylonian Kingdom. The point of the kingdom filling the earth, is that more and more individuals on the earth would represent that heavenly kingdom, not that the kingdom of heaven had come to the earth. That kingdom of heaven does not even come at the Second Coming. Even pre-mill are wrong as that kingdom established way back in the OT, only comes as the New Jerusalem, and it does not fill the earth. It is just a normal city on the earth. At least normal for that new earth. Not very normal for our current earth.