He saw a hand upon the wall
And trembled on his throne
Which wrote his sudden dreadful fall
In characters unknown.
Why should he tremble at the view
Of what he could not read?
Foreboding conscience quickly knew
His ruin was decreed.
John Newton
Some call it the 
Marie Antoinette Syndrome. It’s a strange phenomenon named after this famous ill-fated queen of France who was tried and sentenced to death. The story is told that the night before her execution she experienced such horror imagining her death that her hair turned pure white. But Marie was not the only person to have the experience. In October 1901, a train was traveling through Virginia with the full cast of the Wild West Show. There was a violent crash when their train was hit head-on by another train. Although no one was killed, the show lost nearly all of their one hundred horses that were traveling with them. Among the passengers was Annie Oakley, the star of the show. The story claims that Annie’s hair turned white shortly after that accident.
Extreme fear causes many physical side effects. One fascinating side effect happened to Belshazzar. Belshazzar was the king of Babylon, the son (possibly grandson) of Nebuchadnezzar. His place in Scripture covers only a single chapter in Daniel, but we learn a message in those 30 verses that should last us a lifetime.
Belshazzar had invited thousands of his friends to a huge feast in Babylon. Wine flowed freely while Belshazzar, seated on the royal platform, decided to bring out the precious silver cups that his father had plundered from the temple in Jerusalem. “The king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone” (Daniel 5:3,4).
Soon a mysterious hand began writing on the wall. It scratched out four short words: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin! The horrifying sight brought about instant terror in Belshazzar: “His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way” (5:6). (The King James Version [KJV] says, “His loins were loosed,” indicating that this great and mighty king soiled himself in front of all his guests.)
God’s long suffering had come to an end. The party was over because of four small words that not even the brightest and best of the Babylonians could translate. It was Daniel who was called upon to decipher the message. He translated it as saying, “numbered, numbered, weighed, and divided.” Belshazzar was about to pay a price for his ungodliness. Daniel said,“You have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you. . . drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, . . .but you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways” (5:23).
At the very moment that this was taking place, the army of the Medes and Persians was diverting the Euphrates River and preparing to overthrow Babylon. Within hours, the prophecy of those words was fulfilled and Belshazzar lay dead on the floor. God help us that we will never hear the sound of our knocking knees or find that we have been found numbered, numbered, weighed, and measured. Rather may we be mercifully numbered among the saints in God’s kingdom.
Personal goal: Daily fall before your Maker in contrition and repentance, asking forgiveness for another day.
Recent Comments