Daniel 2:44
Daniel 2:4444In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will shatter all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself stand forever.
— "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed" — is a foundational Watchtower proof-text for the 1914 doctrine. JWs teach that this kingdom was established in heaven in 1914, with its earthly expression (the paradise earth) arriving after Armageddon.
The timing clause is "in the days of those kings." The vision identifies a succession of empires — Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, Roman — and situates the setting-up of God's kingdom within the days of the fourth kingdom, Rome. That is exactly when Jesus arrived, announcing "the Kingdom of God has come near" ( NWT). It is exactly when Jesus told the Pharisees "the Kingdom of God is in your midst" (). The first-century fulfilment is the natural reading. The stone was cut out and struck in the days of Roman rule; the kingdom has been enduring and expanding ever since. A 1914 alternative requires relocating the "days of those kings" nineteen centuries beyond the Roman empire, and requires a Gentile-Times calculation built on a 607 BCE date for Jerusalem's fall that no major historian accepts (the consensus date is 586/587 BCE). stands on its own feet in the New Testament's first-century answer.