Baxtor F. McLendon

”Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." Dan. 4:27

Little is known of the young man to whom these words were sent, either in sacred or profane history. Libby speaks of him once as a vicious and vulgar young fellow. The sacred historian speaks of him but once, and that in connection with his carousal; so we know little of the man. He died as the fool dieth-unsept unhonored and unsung. His history is an everlasting blank, and his word of praise, a silent note forever. But in the city in which his doom was enacted, there is opportunity for information. Historians have vied with each other in their descriptions of Babylon. They have told us of its waterways, its walls of masonry and artificial mountains, its hanging gardens and marble palaces. It was known and noted for its wealth, culture and magnificence it became proverbial for its luxury, lust and licentiousness. The narrative tells us that the king gave a great feast to a thousands of his lords and ladies. It is said that they drank wine and praised the gods of gold, while the partly nude and wholly lewd women weaved through the contortions and distortions of the vulgar oriental dances. Jest and repartee flew from mouth to mouth.

The hilarity became more boisterous; the language, more obscene and vulgar. Louder and louder the instruments faster and faster spun the feet of the dancers.

In the midst of the wine-guzzling, dancing licentious carnival, suddenly there fell a death like hush upon the festivities. What was it? An harmless hand with gruesome fingers, writing in characters of fire! All eyes turned in the same direction; this was the center of observation. Belshazzar was about all in. The Book says that his countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him and that he trembled and quaked like a leaf in the autumn wind. In the graphic language of the book of Daniel, he cried, "Bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers," the men we would call mediums in our day. These men came, puffed with deceit, inflated with egotism and pompous with pride, expecting to be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the king as they had been doing all the years that they had been at the godless court. But the soothsayers found that their art had deserted them; and in the presence of that mysterious writing, they stood dumb.

When he found that these men could not read the mystery, Belshazzar, like many another man when he reaches the end of his string and needs some good old-fashioned advice, sent for his mother.

She walked in with stately tread and tried to reassure her royal son. She reminded him that in the palace was young a man from the tribe of Judah who had been taken captive, and she advised him to have the young man brought, in the hope that he might be able to clear the mystery.

Notice that they had to send out after Daniel. He was not at the wineguzzling, licentious blowout that night.

He did not arm and glove with that kind of a God-forsaken bunch.

Daniel came, and Belshazzar met him, saying, "Look here, Old Top. Ma has been singing your praises to me. She says you are on your job, that Grandpa used you and that you could make interpretations and disolve doubts. Do you see that writing there on the wall? Well, this set of fourflushers and false alarms who have been wining and dining at my expenseit is meaningless hieroglyphics to them; it has raised them clear out, If you will read it, I will clothe you in scarlet and put a chain of gold about your neck and make you secretary of state."

But Daniel did not get excited over that line of unreliable information. He scorned with noble pride the proffered gift and said, "Nothing doing. Give your scarlet robes and gold chains and position to another! I will read the writing but before I do, I want to preach you a sermon that you will remember when suns faint and stars go out." Then he proceeded at once to read the king's death warrant:
"O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar they father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory and honour.

"And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down.

"But when his heart was lifted up; and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him: "And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses; they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.

"And thou his son, O Belshazzar, has not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this;

"But has lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, their wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold of brass, iron, wood and stone which see not, nor hear nor know: and the God in whose had they breath ism and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified."- Dan. 5:18-23.

And when he had finished the sermon, Belshazzar took a gold chain and said, "This chain was given me by my grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar"; and he put it about the neck of Daniel thus rewarding him for reading the doom of the great oriental city in which he reigned.

But the merriment became greater and greater. The royal banquet went on. The hilarity increased. The women danced, and the Devil's feast went on. But listen! I hear the tramp tramp of soldiers marching! The armies of the Medes and persians have arrived, and with their arrival comes the downfall of Belshazzar. One hundred twenty-five years before that night Isaiah had prophesied what would take place. He had prophesied the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. He had said that the enemy would enter by three gates. That prophecy was fulfilled to the letter; for on that night of revelry and feasting, the armies of Cyrus had turned the water of the Euphrates and had come in by the riverbed and the leaved gates of Babylon.

I can hear the shouts of the soldiers, the crashing at the gates, the screams of the men, the wailing of the women and the dull thuds of the battle-ax. In the streets of the city the blood of human beings runs like the wine had run at the feast. In that night was Belshazzar slain and his kingdom divided and given to the invaders.

Those Who have No Time for Salvation Will Find Time Die
Belshazzar had time for lords, time for wives and concubines, time for pleasure and licentious dancing carousals, and no time for God; but he found time to die.

Men and women of my hometown Bennettsville, you have found time for white houses fat horses, sleek mules, automobiles, bank accounts and plantations, politics and pleasure; you have found time for your friends; but you have found no time for God. Just as sure as God is on His throne, the judgment day is set, and Death is on your track Enternity is hanging out in view, and your lamp of life will soon be extinguished. Your race will be run, the grave will open to receive you and you will open to receive you, and you will find time to die.

I knew a man in North Carolina, one of those avaricious, sordid, rapacious, penurious kind of miserable characters, always grasping, grabbing and filching. He had added houses to houses and lands to lands; he had silver and gold, bank stocks and bonds.

When this man was sixty-five years old, Death knocked at his door and said, "I have come after you." He was lying on his bed with his face to the wall, breathing heavily. His friends had gathered in his room, and his sister was sitting by his cot when they heard him say, "O God! Time for money, time for politics, time for plantations, time for friends! But no time for God! And now I am dying without God!"

His sister turned around and said to the friends who had assembled in the room, "Brothers is not rational!"

He hurled himself over in the cot and said, Sister, don't you say I am not rational. My mind is as clear as it has ever been. I have cursed preachers and damned evangelists and hated the church. I have absented myself from the means of grace, lived in sin, broken God's commands, grieved the Spirit, resisted the truth, trampled on the blood, hardened my heart and stabbed my conscience! I have found time for money, corn and cotton and big plantations, but no time for God and the church. Now I am finding time to die without God!"

Three days from that time he lay dying on his cot while his friends held him in bed, his bloodshot eyes rolling in their bony sockets and his swollen tongue lolling in his parched mouth and crying out, "Time, time, time for everything, but not time for God! And while Death blew his cold breath in his face and crowded him against the wall, he shrieked and screamed, "Time, time time for everything but God! And now I am dying without God!"

He died and went to Hell with the awful lamentation on his parched lips, and he did not carry a blank check or the price of a yellow cur dog.

Belshazzar had been weighed in the balances and found wating. In whose balances? In the balances of God! Not in the balances of public opinion, not in the balances of his own infarmy, not in the balances of his own estimation, not in the balances of human philosophy, not in the balances of courtly flattery-but in the balances of an outraged God!

Every man and every woman is to be weighed in the same balance, and the balance is God's Word.

"And if any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world."

"He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the words that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day" - John 1:47,48.

My friends, if there is anything that will condemn you, it will condemn you when the stars are being wrung from their sockets and the moon is bleeding and the sun is fainting and graves are bursting and worlds are crumbling and Jesus is splitting the sky in great majesty and glory, surrounded by the bloodwashed armies of Heaven. Unless you come to God through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, you will be lost! Some of you people wriggle and squirm and twist under the preaching of a little one-horse evangelist as if you had a hornet in your clothes. Where will you stand when the all-seeing, X-ray eye of Almighty God is turned on you and every passion of your soul is read in the white light of the words that Jesus spoke while on earth?

I don't care if you are a leading citizen! I don't care if you have received the approval of the public; that does not weigh an ounce in the divine balances. I don't care if you are a social leader! God cares nothing about the foibles and fancies of society. I don't care if you are a scholar and have taken diplomas from a dozen colleges. The question, and the only question, is Can you measure up to the standard that God has established?

Those who offend will be found wanting.

"The son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; "And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." - Matt.
13:41,42.

Just think of the thousands of ways you can offend and displease God. Go home, get your concordance and look up those words offend and displease; see how many times they are mentioned in the Scriptures.

(To be continued)