America's Writing on Wall

Nations, historically, implode from the inside right before they end up in the runes on the ash heap of history. That's what happened to ancient Rome and ancient Greece. They were victims of their own moral corruption.

I recall a comment made by the Soviet premier Khrushchev in the early 1960s. He was being interviewed and he was asked if he worried about the threat of America, and he said not really because he believed America would eventually implode. Well, I want to look today, friends, at a powerful empire that brought ruin upon itself.

Turn in your Bibles to the book of Daniel. We will be in chapter 5. In Daniel chapter 5, we find the account of the great feast of a drunken king. The king was Belshazzar, who was king of ancient Babylon.

When Babylon was at its climax of power and fame, it was well known for its lavish buildings and astounding city walls, which were said to be so thick that chariot races could take place on the tops of them. The city inside the walls occupied an area of about 200 square miles, about the size of Chicago today. It was a pretty big place, but Babylon was most famous for having one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which were the beautiful hanging gardens, which were a fantastic feat of engineering, as multiple ascending stories of tiered gardens seemed suspended in air throughout the city.

The palace of King Belshazzar was colossal. It had a banquet room that was a mile long, and it was here in this big banquet hall that Belshazzar had his righteous feast for his thousand lords. We see this beginning in verse 1 of chapter 5 of Daniel.

Belshazzar, the king, made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whilst he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple, which was in Jerusalem, that the king and his princes, his wives, and his concubines might drink therein. Let me pause here to say, friends, the feast began in revelry, but it ended in debauchery.

As the booze flowed, the crowd got drunker and drunker and rowdier and rowdier and naughtier and naughtier, until it became just one big scene of idolatry, desecration, and blasphemy. Look at verse 4. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. In short, they were looking for more reasons to lift their mugs, to have another toast.

Some drunken lord yelled, Here's to the gods of gold! Another drunken sight hollered, Long live the gods of brass! Old Belshazzar stood on wobbly legs and hiked his mug to the gods of stone, because he was stoned. But soon the laughter would die down, and the merriment would fade, because of what happens next. We see this in verses 5 and 6. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and rode over against a candlestick.

Upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against the other. Old drunken Belshazzar rubbed his bloodshot eyes, for he could not believe what he was seeing.

A ghostly hand floating in the air nearby, and writing a message on the enameled wall. Then the blood drained out of the old boy's face, and he became pale and alarmed, as his knees began to knock like he had the heebie-jeebies. I used to work with a black guy named Charlie, who liked to tell me he used to like to stand outside the liquor store in his neighborhood with his buddies to shoot the bull, and pass the time.

One day the liquor store got robbed, and three police cars came roaring down the street with their sirens and lights on, and came to a screeching halt right in front of Charlie and his friends, and the cops jumped out with their guns drawn. And when that happened, Charlie told me he was so scared that his knees went to knocking so bad, he had to lean back on the wall so he wouldn't fall down. And that's what happened to this old drunken king, who one minute was making toast to false gods with his friends, and the next minute he is sullen, silent, and making, and the only thing making any noise was his knees knocking together as those old bones knocked together like a couple of cucarachas, where the king summons all the wise men of the kingdom to try and interpret the mysterious writing on the wall.

So he comes in with all these clowns, these astrologers, and magicians, and soothsayers, and blockheads, and they can't make any sense out of the mumbo-jumbo. Well finally, it's up to a woman to step into this chaos and make some sense, so she mentions a man named Daniel, for it's the queen now who speaks, and she says there's a man in the kingdom in whom is the spirits of the holy gods in the days of the father. So Daniel is finally brought into the great banquet hall and shown the writing on the wall, and Daniel interprets the words, many.

God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Techo, thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Paris, thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

Now, if anybody had said that at the start of this feast, they would have been laughed right out of the room, because Babylon was a powerful impregnable fortress of a city at the zenith of its power and glory, but that was before King Belshazzar desecrated God's holy vessels and brought down God's judgment upon them. We read of the suddenness of the verdict in verses 30 through 31. In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain, and Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about three score and two years old.

You know, friends, I read about this story about ancient Babylon and its king, and I wonder if my beloved nation of America is not facing the very same thing. I look around today at all the bad things that are happening in this country, all the drug and alcohol addiction, the senseless crimes, the brutal murders that make our cities just hotbeds of vice and violence. Look how sexual perversion has grown lately.

It seems to get at the very root of the fabric of our society, to where it's defended, promoted, and heralded by our government as good and not evil. Am I the only one who sees the handwriting on the wall spelling the doom for this nation? Do you see what I see, friend? I see our young people today, many of whom grew up in church and now are dead drunk or drugged out, living in sin. Many are sexual perverts, but they all are a godless generation with one foot in hell.

I see society in moral chaos, spinning out of control. I see a people bitter and divided, people punch-punching one another at McDonald's for no reason, getting into fights in public places because they hate each other. The White House can't stop the bleeding.

The courthouse can't find a solution to the madness. But the saddest thing to me is that you can't even turn to the church house today for answers because the church has lost her moral compass through conformity and compromise. It looks like the citizens of America are in a mad dash, crawling over each other's backs to see who can get to hell the fastest.

And if we don't repent as a people and turn back to the God of the Bible, you will have no choice but to bring the curtain down on this sin-sick nation. I was having a private conversation with a four-star general in the army, and I asked him what worried him the most about the future of this once great republic of ours. I said, is it the trouble in the Middle East? Do we have to worry about Islam? And what's going on there? And he looked at me and fear filled his eyes, and he said, it's Russia.

We've gotten too complacent about Russia. Listen friends, all it will take is one good nuclear bomb to go off in one of our cities on American soil to start the beginning of the end. The handwriting is already on the wall, but few are taking any notice of it.