Daniel 5:25 –
“This is the message that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN.”
The saying “the writing is on the wall” or “Mene, Mene”
came from this chapter to proclaim the end is near. King Belshazzar during a feast where he was using the holy temple cups to drink from, God wrote these words on the wall. Again no one in the king’s court could interpret the writings except for Daniel. And again Daniel interpretation of these writings comes true almost immediately.
If you read you will find this says “numbered, numbered, weighed, divided.” Daniel interpreted this to the king as his kingdom would fall and be divided among the surrounding nations. Sure enough in less than 24 hours King Belshazzar is killed and the unraveling of the nation starts. Think about the great nation that was built in Babylon and how it is only remembered from the Bible and archeological digs. It just went away. Many great and powerful nations have followed suit, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the USSR and the USA. Of theses the USSR flamed out the quickest and the USA is still powerful, but you will notice they all tended to fail over time.
Like King Belshazzar these great nations saw “the writing on the wall” and disintegrated. Are we seeing “Mene, Mene” right now? If you follow the stages of a nation we are on the last few. It starts with bondage to faith, then courage to grow, then liberty, then abundance, then selfishness, then complacency, then apathy, then moral decay, then dependence and then bondage.
We just got out of Revelations and when the decay and break up start, everyone wants to claim the end is here, when it’s just their end. I am not saying our nation cannot pull itself out of this cycle; we just have thousands of years of historical momentum that shows the cycle. I sometimes wonder if we are seeing “the writing on the wall” and if that is really what God wants for a nation anyway. Are we as humans destined to repeat the fall for eternity?