In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Grab your Bible with me tonight. What a wonderful message in Daniel chapter 5. As you're turning to Daniel chapter 5, let's pray. Father, we thank you so much tonight for your word. As we're going through Daniel, not just the prophetic parts like chapter 2, but chapter 1, 3, 4, and now chapter 5, they deal with issues that we're dealing with today.

As we look at what's going on in our world, especially in our government and in our culture in this United States, we might even say tonight the handwriting is on the wall. I think that we're living in a time similar to the time that Daniel is living in now under Belshazzar. As we look at these things, help us to make application to these things and to be a people that understand the times that we're living in.

May we be a people that have not just an outlook but an uplook because you told us when these things begin to take place, we're to look up because our redemption is drawing near. May we not be so caught up in the world because the handwriting is on the wall. This world is being weighed and it's being measured and it's being found wanting. You're going to come and deal with it.

We thank you tonight that the way you operate is always to remove the righteous before you bring judgment. You did it in the days of Noah, you did it in Sodom and Gomorrah, and you'll do it again for us. We thank you for that tonight. Bless our study. We pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

As we end chapter 4, we say goodbye to Nebuchadnezzar. I personally believe that Nebuchadnezzar, as God dealt with his pride, humbled him, and broke him, he came to his senses. You remember the decree he makes? He is back to that "cut into pieces, houses dunghill" if you say anything bad about the God of Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. No doubt as we end chapter 4, I believe that Nebuchadnezzar becomes a believer.

I think we're going to see him in heaven. What a wonderful conversation that would be with him. "Hey Nebby, what was it like for seven years to wander around where your hair grew like feathers and your nails like claws and they had to feed you like an ox and God humbled you, and when you finally came to your senses after God broke you, what was that like?" He'll look at us and say, "You know. He did the same thing for you."

God can only use a man or a woman to the ability and to the extent that that person allows God to break them. Simeon said when he was promised to see Jesus before he passed away, and he waited on the temple steps because he knew that Jesus would have to fulfill the law and be circumcised the eighth day of Moses. He sees Mary and Joseph bringing Jesus up the steps of the temple. He runs over to greet them. The Spirit of God witnesses to him that this is the Messiah.

This is the Savior of the world. This is the Lamb of God. He takes young Jesus in his hands and he says, "This is the one who's been set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel." God is not going to build on your pride. He's not going to build on self-righteousness. He's not going to build on self-seeking or your selfishness or your self-centeredness. Self has to die.

God has this wonderful process as Paul says in Galatians chapter 2, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, but it's not me." When you get to heaven, it won't be about you. It's Christ in me, the hope of glory. That's why those gates that'll never be shut as we go through those 200-foot-thick walls into the New Jerusalem, those gates represent one big giant pearl. The pearl was the most sought-after gem in Judaism.

The reason it was the most sought-after gem in Judaism is because it was the only gem or precious stone that never had a man's hand touch it. It was produced through a lot of agitation, a lot of trouble and trial. What that is reminding us is that when we enter into the kingdom of heaven, no man will have any part in it. You have no part in it. Even the faith to believe and the Holy Spirit to kindle that faith in you to draw you to the Father was given to you.

We have no hand in it. Religion is filled with pride and self-will and self-righteousness, and God wants nothing to do with it. Paul, in the book of Galatians, talks about the two covenants represented by Jacob and Esau. He's going to talk about that which was born of the flesh has nothing to do with that which is born of the spirit. He never recognized Ishmael because Ishmael was a work of the flesh. He only recognized Isaac.

It's very important for us to understand as we move out of that chapter that God, if you're in a process right now where God is breaking you, that's not a bad thing. Look at every man that God has used in the Bible. He had to break them first. Look at the great Apostle Paul. That man would have been hard to deal with when he was Saul of Tarsus. A Pharisee of Pharisees. This guy would have been hard to live with until God broke him on the road to Damascus.

He humbled him and he came face to face with the true and living God, and he understood that his righteousness, in fact, he goes on to write later that he considers the righteousness that came by the works of the law to be dung, that he might know him and have a relationship with him, the one who purchased him. As we fade from chapter 4, what a great lesson. God breaks us, strips us of our pride, calls us by his grace, and saves us by his own efforts and not our own.

Now, 23 years have passed. Nebuchadnezzar has passed off the scene, and the very first word in chapter 5 is Belshazzar. Some of the critics of the Bible will say there's no king Belshazzar mentioned anywhere else in the scripture. There's a lot of critics of the book of Daniel when it was written and who wrote it. We do have information from the cuneiform tablets and from the Babylonian Chronicles. They chronicled everything, just like the Medes and Persians did.

Nebuchadnezzar died after reigning for 43 years. When his father Nabopolassar passed away, he became the king. You remember that he's coming back from the battle of Carchemish and he besieges Jerusalem about 605 BC. He's there as he conquers the city and sets up a vassal king. He hears that his father is sick. He rushes back to Babylon and finds out that his father passes away. He becomes the king of Babylon.

The Bible says that God gave him that kingdom and made him a king like no other king. He truly was, in every sense of the word, a true dictator. Whatever he said was without contestation. As he sets up the vassal king, he finds out in 586 that there's an uprising. He goes and he quells it, and he comes back to Jerusalem. After 43 years of reigning, Nebuchadnezzar fades from the scene.

His son, Evil-Merodach, ruled in his stead for two years, but he was assassinated by his brother-in-law, Neriglissar. Maybe Neriglissar thought that he should have been the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, so he assassinates his brother-in-law, Evil-Merodach. Neriglissar ruled for four years and died of natural causes. When you're in those kind of places, natural causes could be stabbing or poison, but historians list him as dying of natural causes.

His son, Labashi-Marduk, his only child, had a diminished capacity mentally. He wasn't all there, and he ruled for only nine months and he was beaten to death by a bunch of conspirators. Those conspirators, they took Nabonidus, the general of the armies of Babylon, and made him the king. This is the timeframe. 23 years have passed. We're now right about 539 BC.

This is when the Babylonian kingdom is about to come to an end and Cyrus the Great king will ride into Jerusalem as he conquers now that whole area. The second part of Daniel's vision will come to the fore, the breastplate of silver, which is the Medo-Persians. King Cyrus conquers. Daniel will be about 85 years old when Cyrus rides into Babylon. Cyrus is on the move at this moment.

The reason why we have Belshazzar instead of Nabonidus as the king here is Nabonidus has gone out to meet Cyrus in battle. He loses the battle. As he goes out to meet him, he leaves his son Belshazzar in charge of Babylon. A lot of times the title for king could be interchangeable, but he was like his son, he was the prince, he was set in charge of Babylon. Nabonidus goes out to meet Cyrus and loses the battle.

Nabonidus is killed in the battle, and Cyrus comes down and will take Babylon. It will be the fulfillment of scripture in a very divine way. Finally, when he overthrows Babylon, he'll make his way toward Jerusalem. When he rides into Babylon, Daniel will be there to tell him all about who he is, how God wrote about him over 150 years ago, and he will spare Jerusalem because of it.

When he rides into Babylon, he will spare Jerusalem because Daniel the prophet is there to tell him who he is and what the scripture has to say about him. That's why most critics say that Daniel could not have been written at the time because it lays out in such great detail that whole period of time and what transpired. Belshazzar is the prince, the son of Nabonidus, the king that went out to meet Cyrus who loses the battle.

Cyrus at this particular moment has besieged the city of Babylon. The city of Babylon, it was a fortress that was to be reckoned with. The walls were 22 feet thick. They were 90 feet high. All around the 17 miles of wall that encompassed the city, they would have watchtowers that were another 100 feet tall where they could shoot their arrows down and pour their oil over. It was considered to be impenetrable.

Not only that, they had storehouses in the city so that they could feed the population of the city for five or six years without even rationing the food. They had a river that flowed through the city so they had plenty of running water, fresh water. Belshazzar, even though King Cyrus now has besieged the city and surrounded it, thinks that everything is just okay. The economy's great. No worries.

Never mind what's going on in the desert. Don't look over there. Don't worry about the borders. Don't worry about the economy. Everything's going just swimmingly well. The reason why there's nothing on the shelves is the economy's so good people are buying all of it. He's so confident, he's so filled with self-confidence, that he throws a drunken party. While the city is being besieged by King Cyrus, he's throwing a drunken party.

He thinks that the 17 miles of walls around the city that are 22 feet thick and 90 feet high and the towers that raise up another 100 feet to protect the city would work. He thinks that the gates that were made of bronze and the system of inner and outer walls would protect him. His security was in himself. He didn't understand that the God of heaven had already given him into the hands of his enemies.

The handwriting is on the wall. Some of you are thinking what's going on in our country. The handwriting is on the wall. God's going to come and remove us. We're going-going home soon. Belshazzar, the king, is second in command, not first, because Nabonidus, his father, is first. He's the second in command. It'll come into play because he tells Daniel that if you can interpret the writing on the wall, I will make you third.

He couldn't make him second because he's second. That's why you do not see Belshazzar show up as a king in any of the other records other than they found these cuneiform tablets that mention it's the tablet of Nabonidus and it mentions a son Belshazzar. Archaeology, when the shovel hits the ground, catches up with the truth of the Bible sooner or later. Belshazzar now is in charge of protecting this great city of Babylon with all its walls and its fortress.

He thinks he's so secure with what's going on that the king made a great feast to thousands of his lords, and they drank wine before the thousands. They're in a drunken stupor. When the world's on a fire, if we're not careful, the church can be in a drunken stupor. Jesus taught the parable of the ten virgins. It's a parable concerning his return when the bridegroom comes.

These ten virgins, they went out to wait for the bridegroom to meet him when he comes because they know that he's on his way. They just don't know the day or the hour, but they know he's coming. They go out and they take their lamps with them. The five wise took extra oil, which is a type of the Holy Spirit. The five foolish only took the oil that was in their lamps. As they're waiting, of course, they trimmed down their lamps to conserve oil.

All of a sudden, the trumpet is sounded and the proclamation goes out, "The bridegroom is here, the bridegroom cometh." He had to wake up all ten of them. I pray that as we're spending this kind of money we're spending to put this book of Revelation that we just finished teaching out on the airwaves, I pray it wakes some of the Christians up. We're living in the last days. We're at the final moments. The handwriting's on the wall.

Jesus told us to look up when we see these things. Should we be about the Father's business until he takes us out? Absolutely. What's the Father's business? Prayer, preaching the word, teaching the word, giving alternatives to the wickedness by starting Plumline Learning Center to get our kids in here where they can get an education in a Christian environment. We need to preach the world as far as we can in this world and spend as much energy as we possibly can.

We've rounded the corner and we're sprinting to the finish line. All stops are out. Paul said, "I want to be spent for the gospel." I pray that when Jesus comes, we don't have a dime in the bank to leave the Antichrist. I pray we have spent it on the gospel and protecting our kids and doing things that benefit eternity because this is all going to burn. Belshazzar is in a drunken stupor.

He is convinced that he is safe and secure in his own means. He throws this great party. Verse 2 says Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and the silver vessels from his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem, that the king and his princes and his wives and the concubines might drink therein. This is an act of absolute abomination.

What he's doing is he's trying to prove to those people that he's invited, those princes and those captains and those sheriffs and those officials that have been invited to come to this drunken stupor while they're being besieged by King Cyrus. He's just outside the gates. He's trying to prove them, "We conquered the Jews. In fact, our god was greater than their God, so bring their vessels in here and we'll defile those vessels in front of you to show you that our god, Marduk, and whatever the gods they had there, is greater than even the God of heaven, even the God of the Jews."

They bring the most precious vessels. Those things that were set apart and sanctified by sacrificial blood of the red heifer, those things that were only to be handled by the priests. Those things were sacred unto the Lord. They are now brought into this party and they're being used in the most vilest of ways. God has a line. I think that this nation and this world is right up on that line.

When this current administration came into office and they signed executive orders to not only fund abortion in the United States but around the world, I think they stepped over the line. And all the other crazy things that are going on. I don't have time to mention because it's so crazy. It's so upside down and inside out. There's no common sense in it.

As we learned in the last chapter, God told Nebuchadnezzar through the prophet Daniel that he sets up even the basest of sorts. He sets up kings and puts them down. This man is in office because God is writing on the wall. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. You have been weighed. This nation that was founded, the only nation in the world that was founded on the four pillars. Every one of them have been removed.

Our founding fathers were not deists. 29 of the 54 that signed the Declaration of Independence, and by the way, if they would have lost that war, they would have been tried for treason and hung, were seminary trained ministers. You can't go to Washington DC and go through any of those monuments there and not see scripture just plastered all over the walls. Outside of Independence Hall, there's a statue of George Washington with his left hand holding the sword and his right hand is leaning on a book that's on a pedestal.

The one there today if you go look at it is made of marble because the original one made of bronze is over in City Hall. When we were taking our kids as we went out to help start a church in Westminster there, a Calvary Chapel, we took our kids so I could do a tour with the teenagers we took with us through Independence Hall. I wanted to give them a little lesson.

We were there in Independence Hall and all the seats are still there and I was trying to explain, "This guy, that guy, he was a seminary trained minister and they would start every session with two hours of prayer and end it with one of these guys bringing the word." The guy that was a tour guide got offended with me. "You think you know more?" I do. Obviously more than you.

I said, "Let me ask you a question. The statue outside of George Washington?" "Oh, that's a reproduction." I said, "I know it's a reproduction, it's made of marble, the original one is over at City Hall, it's made of bronze. But he has his left hand on his sword and he's leaning with his arm of strength, his right arm, on a book that's on a pedestal. What is the book?"

He said, "I suppose it's the law." I said, "It's the word of God." This nation was founded, and the first pillar is that God is the Creator. The second pillar is that God is the Sustainer, not the government. The government wants to buy you. They want to hand out as though you should look to the government. The government, according to our founding fathers, was only there to keep law and order.

They weren't there to restrict us. In fact, our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and all the amendments are there to protect us from a tyrannical government, not to give that government power to rule over us because we hold these truths to be self-evident, that every man is created equal and is endowed by his creator with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They come from him, not from the government.

God is our Sustainer. God promises us in his word that he will bless us with every heavenly blessing in Christ Jesus. There's nothing we'll have need of that he won't take care of if we look to him, if we walk in a right way before him. The problem with this nation is they've turned their back on God just like Belshazzar did. Belshazzar should have known better.

His grandfather or great-grandfather, depending on how we come through the succession, he would have told him, "If you speak against the God of heaven, the God of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, if you speak against that God, you get cut in the pieces, your house is made of dunghill, because he is the God who rules from heaven." 23 years later, we have this Belshazzar mocking the God of heaven.

How is it that this nation has gone from being founded on these pillars? Well, the third pillar is that man cannot govern himself. Man is a wretch and needs to be redeemed. God as Creator has been substituted with, in our school system, with evolution. God as Sustainer has been substituted with the government taking care of your needs. They want to control everything.

The third one is that you're a wretch and humanism says, "Oh no, no, no, in every way and in every day things are getting better and better." No, they're not. We can't govern ourselves. The last one is the word of God is the final authority. We've taken the Ten Commandments out of the courthouse, prayer out of schools. You can teach the Quran but you can't teach the Bible. The handwriting is on the wall.

The church is going home soon. King Cyrus has surrounded us. Look around. I think we're living in a similar time. He's having a drunken party. Now he's going to mock the God of heaven. I was shocked that we didn't go when Obama was the president, when they made a rule and a law making legal marriages between men and men and women and women, which is an abomination to God.

It's a sin that can be repented of like any other sin, but they lit the White House, which represents our capital, in the colors. They stole the rainbow, which was a promise never to judge us by water again. They stole it and they lit it up, which means something that's very abominable to the God of heaven. Marriage has been attacked. In fact, they're teaching in our schools today that there's six different genders. Are you kidding me? What?

It's either XX or XY. I studied biology. Have things changed since I graduated from high school? You're either a male or female. That's what God said in Genesis. "I made them male and I made them female." So we attack gender. Then we attack marriage, that a man should leave his family and cleave to his wife, the two shall become one flesh. There's another family unit. Now marriage and family is being attacked.

Now your kids are being indoctrinated in these schools with all this woke stuff and all of this racial stuff. You don't judge a person by the color of their skin. You judge them by the content of their character, and if they don't got a good character, stay away. Don't let the clean thing bump onto the unclean thing. Amen. This is the world we're living in. Abortion. We're killing our children by the millions.

Lawlessness. Have you noticed? The two things that Jesus said would be very apparent. All others were precursors as he talks in Matthew 24 when he talks about wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines. Those were precursors. Those were only birth pangs. But he said, "Lawlessness will abound and the love of many will wax cold." You look around. Are you kidding me? Homicide in Michigan is up 160%.

You know what the senator from that state says? It's the law enforcement's problem. Their fault. The ones you tried to defund? Lawlessness will abound and the love of many. A ninth grader raped in the bathroom of one of our schools by a boy wearing a skirt, and they covered it up. They sent him to another school and he repeated it. When her father comes to the school board to confront them, "What's going on?" he's arrested.

Obama just recently said that is fake kind of stirring up of emotions. I'm going to tell you what, if they raped my daughter, there would be more than a school board meeting. This is the world we're living in. The handwriting is on the wall. They take the sacred and they make it the common.

Then verse 4 says they drank wine and they praised the gods of gold and of silver and of brass and of iron and of wood and of stone. And in the same hour, the same moment as they're now in this drunken stupor and they brought in the holy vessels from the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had brought back when he sacked the temple there in Jerusalem, and as they're drinking and they're mocking the God of heaven and they're worshipping the gods of this world, the same hour came forth a finger of a man's hand.

I find this interesting because when we read in the Old Testament when God wrote down the Ten Commandments, what do we read there? They were written by his finger. When those Pharisees drug that lady caught in the act of adultery, I have questions about that. It says that they caught her in the act. Well, if they caught her in the act of adultery, where's the man?

Doesn't it take two to commit adultery? There's already an injustice. And how did they catch them in the act? Are they peeping Toms? They dragged this lady through the streets, they throw her at the feet of Jesus, and they say, "What does the law say?" And Jesus bent down and he began to write in the sand with his finger. I think he wrote their sins. One by one, they peel off.

He looks at the woman and he says, "Where are your accusers?" Nobody can accuse us when we're bowed before Jesus in brokenness and shame. She says, "I don't know." If they had mascara in that day, I guarantee you it was running. She was a mess. She goes, "I don't know." He goes, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more." Do you think she ever committed that crime again? No, she did not.

But this is what's going on. The finger of God. This part of a hand shows up and it wrote over against the lampstand upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. This hand appears and it writes it over there so it's lit so everybody can see it. Can you imagine being in a service and all of a sudden you see a hand like over against that big wall over there and the hand just appeared, just a hand?

The finger begins to write something on the wall. Verse 6 says then the king's countenance was changed. Watch how he describes it. "And his thoughts troubled him," I guess they did, "so that his joints of his loins were loosed." He wet himself. He peed his pants. If a hand showed up here and began to write something, you'd pee your pants too. He wet himself.

This is the king Belshazzar. He wets himself in front of all of his friends and his knees smote one against another. His knees began to knock. He was shaking violently. It's all fun and games till God shows up. And he's about to show up because we've stepped over the line. Not we, this nation, this world. We don't belong here. We're the bride of Christ. We're the redeemed of the Lord. He's coming for us. He's going to get us out of here.

The king cried aloud, "Bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, the soothsayers!" And the king spake and said to the wise men, "Is this not a repeat?" 30-some odd years later, we had this same thing going on. Belshazzar calls for all of these knuckleheads and they show up. "Whosoever can read the writing and show me the interpretation thereof shall be clothed with scarlet and have chains of gold upon his neck and shall be third ruler in the kingdom."

Couldn't be second because Belshazzar was second because his father Nabonidus was the first and he's out and has already been defeated by Cyrus. "I'll make him the third." Why would you want to be the third in succession to a kingdom that's about to be destroyed because before the night is over, the Persians will breach the walls. They'll take this great city to the degree that it was weeks later before even some of the people in the city knew that it had been taken.

We're going to read in Isaiah chapter 44 because God prophesied how it would be taken through the great prophet Isaiah, who was a contemporary, actually a little earlier than Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It happened exactly that way. God unlocked the gates of bronze. There was a couple of traders outside of the city that said, "We've seen it one time where they lowered the river and they diverted it over to this pond because they had to do some work on those gates, and we know there's a way to lower the river."

When the river was lowered and Cyrus and his troops came in, they found that the gates of the city were unlocked. God said, "I'll unlock them for you." The handwriting is on the wall. He calls these guys in and says, "I'll reward you." Verse 8 says, then came in all the king's wise men, but they could not read the writing nor make known to the king the interpretation. Nothing's changed.

We got a bunch of knuckleheads up there that can't read the writing on the wall. Jesus said, "You can discern the weather. You know that if the red sky's in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky's at night, sailors delight. You can read the skies, but how is it you can't read the times and the seasons prophetically?" God does not measure time by seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years. He measures time morally.

When the stench of the immorality reaches the nostrils of God, it will demand his judgment. Do you think we might be there? When we're seeing what's going on in the Middle East today, the reports that are coming back where the women are getting their noses cut off and their ears cut off and their babies sliced from their wombs and people being hanged? Islam is evil.

All this stuff is going on in this world. And some of us on Thursday mornings are praying, "God, where are you?" The handwriting is on the wall. They couldn't read it and they couldn't interpret it. Then was King Belshazzar greatly troubled, his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonished. Of course, he's wetting his pants again, drinking all that wine, having all that fear.

Now the Queen. We're not really sure, but this could possibly have been Nebuchadnezzar's wife. She's lived on past him and they summon her. The oldest living queen became queen mother. So possibly this could have been Nebuchadnezzar's wife who watched Nebuchadnezzar go through all of this humbling and come to the conclusion that there's a God who rules in the affairs of men. He's the almighty.

Nobody better speak against him. This queen mother, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet. She wasn't a part of this drunken thing. I think she knew better. I think that she possibly is a believer as well because certainly her husband became one. She wasn't at this, but they summon her, and the queen spake and said, "O king, live forever."

She probably thought under her breath, "You corrupt thing, maybe God just destroy you. If my husband was here, it would be pieces and dunghill for you." But "O king, live forever. Let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed. There is a man." God always has a man. God always has a man. Sometimes that man is a woman. You remember the vision that Paul had when he was leaving Antioch Pisidia?

He's trying to discern what the Holy Spirit wants to do with him next. He thinks he should go up into Asia toward Bithynia, and the Holy Spirit said no. He said, "Okay, well then we'll go down toward Ephesus." The Lord said no. "Just continue going straight, straight toward Europe." For the first time, the gospel will leave the continent of Asia Minor and move over into Europe as the Holy Spirit is leading Paul.

As he gets on his way going that direction following the Lord, he has the vision of a man of Macedonia in Europe crying, "Come over and help us." When he gets there in Philippi, he finds out it's a woman, Lydia, the seller of purple. A church is planted there in Philippi and supports him for his entire ministry, this wealthy woman. God always has a man and God always has a woman.

You remember when Isaiah said, "I saw the Lord high and lifted up and his train, his glory, it filled the temple, and then I realized I was undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell amongst the people of unclean lips." Then the Bible says that the Lord sent an angel and he took a coal from off the altar and he touched my lips. Then I said, "Here am I, Lord," because he heard the Father and the Son speaking, "Who will go for us and whom shall I send?"

Who will stand in the hedge and who will make up the gap? Isaiah said, "Here am I, Lord, send me. I'm not much, but I've been touched, and I'll be that man." We're living in a time where God is still looking for a man, still looking for a woman who'll stand up, who'll stand up for our kids, who'll stand up and take the heat and start an education system in our church that our kids don't have to go and be indoctrinated by the vile stuff of this world.

Who will stand in the pulpit and declare faithfully God's word? Who will go out into this world and share the gospel in the light? Who will stand? "There's a man in this kingdom in whom the spirit of the holy gods, and in the days of thy father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods was found in him, whom the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, made master over the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers."

She says, "Thy father the king, because you ain't acting like much of a king. Your father the king made him master for as much as an excellent spirit and of knowledge and of understanding, interpreting dreams and showing the hard sentences and dissolving of trouble were found in this same Daniel." Notice the name she uses. Not a Babylonian name. Not Belteshazzar. She says, "In this Daniel." Daniel's name means "God is my strength." It's in Daniel.

God is our strength in these last days. Even in a time when the handwriting's on the wall, are we not here for this time? It was said of Esther by Mordecai, "For such a time as this." This is a very interesting time we are living in. For such a time as this, you and I are here. God has put together this church. He's put together you and I. He's brought us in a place in the body of Christ as it pleased him in this little bitty sleepy town that we might reach this world.

We're in 25 different countries, we've got over 18 satellite churches. There's things going on, and I don't know to what degree, but God is looking still for a man and for a woman. This Daniel. Daniel's an old man now. He's probably retired. He's like 85 years old. He will be there when Cyrus breaches the gates on the next day. He'll open the prophecy of Isaiah to him, chapter 44. He'll say, "Yeah, I know you, King. I knew you'd come. Almost 200 years ago, there was a prophet who wrote about you, called you by name."

In fact, the God of heaven says you were his shepherd. He was going to give your enemies into your hands. In fact, he was going to unlock the gates for you. That's why when you came under the moats, the gates were unlocked. You think those people were stupid enough to leave the gates unlocked? When God begins to judge, there's no defense against it. This same Daniel whom the king named Belteshazzar, "Now let Daniel be called, and he shall show the interpretation."

Then was Daniel brought in before the king, and the king spake unto Daniel, "Art thou that Daniel, are you the one that queen mother is talking about that ministered in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar? Art thou that Daniel which are of the children of the captives of Judah, which the king my father brought out of Jewry? I have even heard of thee that the spirit of the gods is in thee and that the light of understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee."

"Now," Daniel's been here before, "the wise men, the astrologers, I have brought them in before me and they could not even read the writing, much less make the interpretation thereof known. They could not show me the interpretation of the thing. I have heard of thee that thou canst make interpretations and dissolve doubts. Now if thou canst read the writing and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with purple and you shall have chains of gold around your neck and you shall be third ruler of the kingdom."

Then Daniel answered and said before the king, "Let thy gifts be to thyself." This ain't about money. I cannot be bought. Governments can't buy me. People can't buy me. I'm not to be bought. You just keep your gifts to yourself and give your rewards to another if they can be bribed. "Yet I will read the writing unto the king and I will make known unto him the interpretation."

We don't know as Daniel walked into the courtroom there where this was taking place, and they've uncovered it. It was 180 feet long, this particular courtroom, and 60 feet wide. This church is 60 feet wide, but it's only 80 feet long, so it was twice as long. This was a big banqueting hall that they were partying in. One of the walls over against there had this writing on it. The hand wasn't there, but the writing still was.

Daniel says, "I can read it. I have confidence in the Lord. I can read it and I'll give you the interpretation of it. O thou king," before he does, verse 18. This is a warning for us. It doesn't seem possible. One of the things I noticed when I had to graph the Old Testament when I was in Bible college, it doesn't seem that one generation was capable of passing on their relationship with the Lord to the next generation.

There was always God blessing, and then the next generation taking for granted the blessing, and then them having to be humbled, and as they humbled and repented, God blessed, and it just doesn't seem like it was ever passed on to the next generation. 23 years later, Belshazzar should have known better. We should know better. If you don't learn from history, you will repeat it.

We read in the New Testament that God says we should know better because in times past, God destroyed this world by a flood for its sin, and the world that is now is reserved for the judgment by fire. The Bible says as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man. When you read about the wickedness in that place, it was so wicked God repented that he ever made man, but he found a man, Noah.

May he find men and women today. It's a remnant, I get it. It's a few, I understand. I remember reading DL Moody, said, "You give me ten men fully committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I'll turn the world right side up." Doesn't take a lot. In fact, we read in the Old Testament that if my people who are called by my name would humble themselves and pray, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then from heaven would I hear and I would heal their land.

The handwriting is on the wall, and it's time to wake up. He says, "Yeah, I can do it, but let me give you a little lesson first. O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom. It came from Him. Majesty and glory and honor. And for the majesty that He gave him, all people, nations, languages trembled and feared before him. God did that."

"Whom he would he slew, and whom he would he kept alive. He had absolute authority. And whom he would he set up, and whom he would he put down. Absolute authority. But when his heart was lifted up and his mind hardened in pride, hardened in pride." Isn't it funny how pride will harden your heart? Pride will make you think you're more than you are. Pride will make you think you deserve more than you deserve. Pride will make you judge other people and criticize them as though you could be their judge.

Pride will allow you to gossip and to slander when you should be on your face begging for God's mercy for your own soul. Pride's an ugly thing. In fact, the six things the Lord hates, the seventh being an abomination, in that six is pride. Pride's what got us into this mess. You can read it in Isaiah 14 when Satan said, "I will lift my throne above the throne of the most high." Who are you to judge another man's servant?

Before the Lord he stands and falls, and the Lord is able to make him to stand. You need to be careful about pride and self-righteousness. You're no judge and I'm no judge. But I know this, I've been judged by the true and living judge, and you know what he said to me? "Because of what my Son did, you get to go free." And that's good enough for me. You can say what you want, but I'm a free man in Christ.

You're a free man and woman in Christ. Whom the Son set free. You didn't set yourself free. Don't let anybody put you back into a cage. The door was ripped off. If you want to go sit in the cell, that's just stupid because there's no door on it. Get out of it. You're free. Then he says this, "He gave him all of these things, but his heart was lifted up and his mind was hardened in pride, just like Pharaoh, and he was deposed from his kingly throne."

God humbled him and they took the glory from him and he was driven from the sons of men and his heart was made like the heart of a beast and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys and they fed him the grass like an ox and his body was wet with the dew of heaven until he knew that the most high ruled in the kingdom of men. Do you know that tonight? Some people are about to learn it because the handwriting is on the wall.

Until he knew that the most high rules in the affairs of men and that he appoints over them whomsoever he wills. In fact, back in the last chapter he says even the basest of sort. I think we got that going on today. Verse 22, "And thou his son, O Belshazzar, you have not humbled your heart, though thou knewest all these things." You should have known better. Nebuchadnezzar knew better. He made decrees and you should have followed them.

"But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven." Look at these vessels you're drinking out of. These belong to the Lord and they're most holy to him. "You have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven, and thou hast brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou and thy lords and thy wives and thy concubines have drunk wine in them, and thou hast praised the gods of silver and of gold and of brass, of wood, of stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know."

"And the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose all thy ways hast thou not glorified." If we understood just how reliant we are on the Lord. In fact, I love that scripture in Colossians that says that all things are held together by the power of his word. Cohesion. Number of years ago down here in Oroville, they drilled way down in to get away from the gamma rays. They did an experiment at the base of the dam because it's over a mile wide and all that dirt and to keep the gamma rays from us.

They did an experiment because they're trying to find out what holds the atoms together. Did you know that? Not 50 miles from us. I wanted to write them and say, "For a lot less than the millions or billions you're spending to do that experiment, I can tell you what holds things together." One of these days he's going to let them go with a great bang and a fervent heat. This universe is going to melt and he's going to speak again and it's going to come back together, make a new heaven and a new earth.

If you don't want anything to do with God, all he has to do is say, "Hey, you're done," and there won't be enough molecules of you to sweep into a test tube. What we see, the very breath that we breathe, the life that we live, in Acts, Paul said, "We live and we move and we have our being in him." He said you haven't understood that. Your grandpa did, you don't, and you have not glorified the God that holds all things together.

Then was the part of the hand sent from him and this writing was written. And this is the writing that was written. Now he's going to read it. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. That's what you see up there. This is the interpretation of the thing. MENE: God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. You're done. You don't go a step further. You've insulted the God of heaven for the last time because the handwriting is on the wall.

MENE: thou hast been numbered and thy kingdom is finished. TEKEL: thou art weighed in the balance and you are found wanting. PERES: thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and to the Persians. You're done. I wonder before we get out of here is this nation going to be given to our enemies. The handwriting's on the wall. In fact, let's turn to Isaiah. I just want to read this.

Isaiah chapter 44. We're just going to read verses 28 into the first two verses of chapter 45. This is God speaking and this is Isaiah writing as God is speaking probably between 150 and 200 years before the event that's before us. Isaiah I think lived about 100 years before Jeremiah and before Ezekiel, who were the prophets who were prophesying to Judah before the Babylonians came and carried them away.

Listen to what he says. "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd." Isaiah is writing about this king that's going to besiege the city of Babylon and he's saying that this Cyrus, and this is the passage that Daniel reads when he comes into the city of Babylon. That's why Cyrus, it's in the historical records, he spares Jerusalem because he reads in the holy writ his name and what the God of heaven is using him to do.

"That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built and to the temple, and thou shalt lay the foundation." You remember what the Babylonians destroyed? Who gave the decrees? Cyrus and Artaxerxes to go back and rebuild that stuff. He said, "You know what? You're going to destroy the Babylonians. My people are going to be set free and you're going to be part of the process of rebuilding my temple."

Chapter 45, verse 1 says, "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held up to subdue the nation before him, and I will loose the loins of the king. I'm going to make that king wet his pants in front of you, Cyrus." What did we just read? His knees smote together and he wet his pants. "To open before him the two strength paneled gates."

The gates of bronze. Herodotus tells us as he writes about this besieging of Babylon that when the waters were lowered and diverted off into this lake off to the side and they went in thigh-deep, the soldiers walked into the city. They found that the bronze gates that blocked the moat were unlocked. The two gates and they just swung open and they walked right into this particular palace that night.

They walked right over to Belshazzar and ended his life. You have been weighed. You have been measured. And you have been found wanting. This is how the swamp gets drained. And the handwriting's on the wall. "And I will go before thee," verse 2, "and make the crooked place straight. I will break into pieces the gates of brass and I will cut the bars of iron asunder."

Almost 200 years before Cyrus rides in, he's written about. You think this story that we're living is not already been told? Unlike Rick Warren, and I'm not related to him physically or spiritually, I don't believe prophecy can be changed. I believe every jot and tittle of God's word will come to fruition just like he said it would. I think the handwriting is on the wall. That's bad news for unbelievers, but it's really good news for us.

We get to go home. So let's finish this book out. "This is the interpretation." Then commanded Belshazzar and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, they hung gold chains around his neck, and they made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler of the kingdom. I can imagine Daniel's like "Whoopee, whoopee, whoopee. Before the night's over, there won't be a kingdom. Don't you understand? The handwriting is on the wall."

And then it says as he closed out this chapter, "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain." And Darius, most scholars believe this is Cyrus. It's either a title given to the king of Persia or it's a prince that Cyrus puts in charge. We're not really sure. Scholarship has many different opinions, but I think it's Cyrus and Darius are one and the same.

It would seem to be when you look at the context of it, and Darius the Median took the kingdom. Cyrus was camped outside, or it might have been one of the main generals, but anyway. As we go into the next chapter, we're going to find that he is like the king. He's a ruler. He's making decrees. I think that this was a title given to King Cyrus. Darius the Median took the kingdom being about three score and two years old, about 62 years old.

He comes in and Babylon falls. This Babylon that we're living in today. I would recommend that you read The Two Babylons by Hislop because we just covered those as we went through 18 and 19, the two chapters in Revelation. God is about to judge this political, economic, and religious system that he calls the Great Whore. When you have religious leaders running around promoting things that God calls sin and wickedness, the handwriting is already on the wall.

That handwriting before he judges, just like in the days of Noah, what did he do? Put his people in an ark and they rode above the storm. What did he do in the days when he had to judge Sodom and Gomorrah? He told Lot, "Get out." He sent an angel to get him out because the sin of this city has reached unto the heavens and it's demanding the judgment of a holy and a righteous God.

Aren't you glad that you and I have already been judged? You have been weighed, you have been measured, I have been weighed, I have been measured, and I have been found wanting and you've been found wanting. And Jesus stepped in and said, "I got this one." And he laid down his life to make the payment for our sin that he might make us worthy.

Aren't you glad that the blood of Jesus Christ has been applied to your life and that you passed from death to life and from darkness to light and that now you're part of the kingdom and one of these days Jesus is coming for you and for me and then he's going to judge this world? But make no mistake, the handwriting, look around, it's on the wall.

We're going home soon. Then they can have this mess. This whole climate change thing? I find it funny. When the seals are opened and the judgment begins in the tribulation, the thing that God does is burn up a third of the trees, a third of the plants. He smokes those things, and then a third of the ocean turns to blood like a dead man and the third of the fresh waters are turned to wormwood bitter.

You want to try to protect Mother Earth? Let me wreck her for you. Now do I have your undivided attention because you need to learn there's a God in heaven who rules in the affairs of men. Well, let's stand. You know what? I used up all their time so I'll. You guys got to go. Amen.