"But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from His temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drink wine from them…you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways. There He sent the hand that wrote the inscription. (Daniel 5:22-24)
Belshazzar had mocked God by his actions and God was bringing judgment against him. The king threw a huge party to celebrate his accomplishments and the greatness of the Babylonian Empire. In the middle of Belshazzar’s celebration, a hand appeared and began writing on the wall, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin.”
Daniel explained the meaning to the king. “God had numbered the days of the king’s reign and it was coming to an end. They had been weighed in a balance and found wanting. The kingdom would be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.”
That very night Babylon collapsed. They became one of the many nations that forgot God. Their greatness became a thing of the past.
Paul wrote, “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to the parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power.” (2 Tim. 3:1-5)
Will America be counted among the fallen nations? Our nation has been blessed greatly by God, but we too have forgotten Him. We are losing the greatness that we once had. Our military power has weakened. Our economy has weakened. We are becoming more and more dependent on other countries for supplies, gas, oil and manufactured goods.
Our country has become our own worst enemy. We are being destroyed from within as we watch more and more of our freedoms slowly disappear. Have we too seen “the handwriting on the wall” and like Belshazzar we believe that it will not happen to us? If that is our thinking then we are as wrong as Belshazzar. His “world” collapsed and so will ours.
