“And this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” (vv.25-28)
Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon, knew the power of God but he chose to ignore it. He was well aware of the things that happened to his grandfather king Nebuchadnezzar through the written records his grandfather left behind. The madness that he experienced until the seven seasons had passed over him, his restoration, and the proclamation that his grandfather made, "there is no god in all the earth like the God of Daniel who is able to set up those whom He would and bring down those whom He would. And sets in authority those whom He will" (v.21).
Belshazzar knew all of this, including that the vessels he used for his feasting were from God’s holy temple in Jerusalem. Yet he blasphemed God anyway (by desecrating the sacred goblets looted from the temple in Jerusalem for his partying), the God in whose hand his very breath was in (v.23).
Now during this fest a supernatural hand appeared and wrote an inscription on the wall which no one could interpret. So Daniel was called in to give the interpretation. He told the king that God had “numbered” or “counted out” his kingdom and finished it. In other words God was saying, “It’s over Belshazzar,” your time is up – Both Babylon and Belshazzar were about to face God's judgment that very night (v.30), as the Medes and the Persians would overtake Babylon and execute the king.
There will always be people like Belshazzar who will belittle the existence of God. People who seem to be so forward in their mockery, ridicule, and blasphemy of God, that they have no fear of Him within their hearts at all - just brazenly living in open denial. Are these people beyond His reach? Absolutely not, but all of our days are numbered, each one of us has a limited amount of time on this earth, to change the course of our lives. And God alone knows the length of time given to each person.
Therefore, I pray the Lord of the Harvest to make himself known to all those who need to be humbled in your life - for there will come a time of judgment when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is LORD. Better to do it now as a part of His family, than to hear those chilling words, “I never knew you, depart from Me, you workers of iniquity” (Matthew 7:23).
The Truth: "Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." (Psalm 90:12)
