Weighed In The Balance

All the vessels used for the worship of YAHWEH in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem were special, having been designed by God with strict specifications, crafted by the very best skilled craftsmen and then consecrated for His worship. As such, only certain people, namely the Jewish priests, were ever allowed to touch these vessels. However, many of them were removed from the temple when it was destroyed by the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar. They were taken back to Babylon as ‘treasures of war’.

God’s Eye Is On The Scale

There would have been many other instruments that were used in the various temple duties of the priests and the High Priest. Among these would have been scales used to correctly and precisely weigh the ingredients used in the compounding of the oils and fragrances that God required for Temple worship. Knowing how precisely God created everything we can see, the use of the balance scales would have been extremely important.

Such scales are visible in most judicial settings as an indication that justice is to be honest, fair and precise so that only the guilty are punished while the innocent are set free. Usually the person holding the scales in these instances has a blindfold in place showing that true justice is determined not by what a person can always see, but by what forms the basis for any code of justice: TRUTH and LAW.

God, who raises up rulers and takes down rulers is always aware of what is happening in the kingdoms of the world. He continuously assesses the deeds done by these rulers and their actions are recorded and weighed using God’s scale to determine what is in their hearts.

Judgment Deliberated – Babylon Weighed

Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, had been arrogant and prideful in his own mind when he failed to give God the credit for his kingdom. God’s response was to strike him with a serious mental illness (lycanthropy) that changed his human mind into the mind of a wild animal for seven years. He was driven into the wild and ate grass and lived as a wild animal would live, but when the seven years had passed, his mind was healed and he returned to his palace as king, and from that moment on, he glorified the Jewish God as the ruler of all things.

After his passing, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar, became king and was as arrogant as his father had been. While holding a great feast for a thousand of his ‘lords’, he and many of his company drank wine from the golden vessels that had been stolen from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. This was a serious breach and an affront to God by the Babylonian king.

Judgment Decided – The Handwriting on the Wall

As Belshazzar and his company were drinking wine from the stolen vessels and praising their false gods, the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote something near a candlestick on the wall and Belshazzar saw the fingers and the written words. When he saw the words, “his countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed and his knees smote one against another” (Daniel 5:5-6 KJV). Quite obviously, the action of the fingers writing on the wall caused a great sense of fear and dread to strike Belshazzar.

On the urging of Belshazzar’s wife, he called for Daniel, the prince of the Jews who had interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, and asked him to ‘read the writing and show the interpretation thereof’. Daniel was promised great rewards if he could do so; being led by the Spirit of God, he refused all the offered rewards but still agreed to interpret the writing.

The words on  the wall were: “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin”. A sound translation of these words is:

Mene: “God has numbered your kingdom and finished it” (Repeated for Emphasis)

Tekel: “You are weighed in the balance and found wanting”

Upharsin: (plural of the base word ‘Peres’ meaning ‘division’: “Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians”.

Judgment Delivered – The Fall of Babylon

This was obviously devastating news to Belshazzar. I imagine he had thought that his kingdom would last forever with himself in charge, living the good life. However, that very night, the Medes and Persians attacked Babylon and the mighty kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar fell and the life of Belshazzar was forfeit.  When God pronounces judgment it does not take long for it to be delivered.

The Judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah – Deliberated, Decided, Delivered

I’m not sure how many people lived in the evil twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but on His way there to deliver judgment, God stopped to have a conversation with His friend, Abraham. He explained what He was planning to do in those wicked cities, and being a man of compassion, Abraham interceded for the cities and asked if God would spare them if He found fifty righteous souls there; God agreed that He would not destroy them if fifty righteous were there. Then Abraham lowered the number required to forty-five and again, God said He would spare them if forty-five could be found. Abraham continued lowering the number until he reached ten and the Lord agreed to spare the cities if He found ten righteous souls there. Obviously there were less than ten righteous souls living there because the cities were destroyed. The story indicates that God had been deliberating/weighing the ‘good versus evil’ in Sodom and Gomorrah and eventually, the cities were found wanting.

The wonderful part, the part of God’s nature that so many miss, is that He mercifully spared the righteous souls there: Lot, his wife and his two daughters. The ‘sons-in-law’, either married, or betrothed to the daughters of Lot, scoffed at Lot when he urged them to leave with him. Thus, they were both destroyed in the fire and brimstone that rained down from God in heaven upon the cities. They both chose to believe that their actions would not cause them harm, but they were wrong.

Lot and his family were ordered to flee the city and ‘not look back’. However, Lot’s wife  was disobedient and, obviously not wanting to be separated from it, turned back to see the city; thus, her disobedience brought about her death and Lot was left alone with his two daughters. Fearing that they would not ever produce children, they gave their father wine, got him drunk and had sex with him, resulting in the birth of Moab from the elder daughter and Ammon from the younger. These two men were the fathers of the Ammonites and the Moabites, which are now part of the nation of Jordan, a people that hate the Jews and cause many problems for the Jewish people.

Is the United States Now being weighed in the Balance?

I am an American and can only speak of the issues we see here in my country; however, I personally believe that all the nations of the west are currently being scrutinized by Almighty God. As in the case of the Babylonians and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, God closely watches the people who formerly identified as ‘Christian’.

Here in the US, we have seen what has been regarded as the freest nation in world history,  the most powerful nation militarily, decline to a place never before experienced by Americans.

Our political system has been proven to be totally corrupt, our financial system is corrupt and in shambles with our economy struggling to survive. Our Congress is almost totally corrupt, nearly irrelevant and bordering on criminal. In fact, nearly every US government institution, including the Presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court, our military leadership and every bureaucratic office, especially the Department of Justice, appears to be corrupted beyond any hope of repair.

The American people have voiced their displeasure by stating in recent polls that they have very little confidence in any US government institution.

Our religious system is approaching corruption, with most churches and ministries accepting the ‘tax-free’ 501c3 status, indicating that the Love of Money that Paul warned Timothy about is becoming even more deeply entrenched in the religious realm. Our pulpits seem to be paralyzed into silence by government threat and edict and the fear of losing precious money by participation in the 501c3 scam.

Our cultural ‘norms’ have been shredded by ‘wokeness’, diversity and inclusiveness, with citizens accepting what they are told by MSM pundits and social media dictators is ‘truth’, rather than actually looking for REAL truth and deciding what they should believe based on that real truth. Mutual respect for each other is no longer regarded as important or relevant. We are a nation divided along nearly every line where division can occur.

Our own manmade gods have replaced the only TRUE God, Yahweh, and their false worship now seems to have eclipsed TRUE God worship in practice. If God is considering the sad state of our formerly great nation, He must be very sad indeed at the situation in the United States of America.

The Balance of the Scales – Judgment Deliberated?

Just as a scale that is used to weigh goods in a store or marketplace MUST be calibrated by comparing it to a ‘standard’ and adjusting it periodically to ensure that anything weighed in them is accurate and honest, so is God’s scale used to determine that all who are placed on it meet the standard for His scale: His Holy Word. The true sole arbiter of any variance in the status of justice in all American institutions is the Lord God. It is difficult to accept that He is not now closely examining those scales and deliberating whether an indictment of criminal, anti-God activity needs to be leveled against our nation.

I believe that ALL nations, including the United States, are now being weighed in God’s balance scale and will soon be made aware of their status based on the standard that God’s righteousness demands.

Any who believe that God holds them, or their nation, in such high regard that they can do whatever they want and not face His retribution, are only deceiving themselves. They are like the dishonest shopkeeper who secretly places his thumb on the scale in order to cheat a customer out of his money. The shopkeeper/thief may never face retribution in this life, but one day, all will stand before the God who created all things. At that point, it will be too late to make the changes that will allow one to escape God’s judgment.

Judgment Decided?

I am only one keen observer of the activities prevalent in the US that would seem to demand an execution of God’s judgment and whether that execution should be considered imminent. If, as I believe, the United States and many of her citizens are indeed being weighed and compared to God’s standard, it would behoove every true believer to closely examine his or her personal life to look for, root out, and ask forgiveness for, all deviations from God’s standards.

Judgment Ready for Delivery?

Once judgment is decided (by the Perfect judge of all the earth) there will be no begging for mercy, no ‘throwing oneself on the mercy of the court’. The decision made by The Judge is final and will definitely be followed by a time (the length of which only God knows) of waiting for that decision to be revealed.

I cannot say whether God has now pronounced His decision on the United States or any other nation, but there has long been a saying: “If God does not judge the United States for her sins, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah”.

Conclusion

Please dear reader, be aware that no nation can thumb its nose at a just and righteous God and NOT expect the kind of retribution that eliminated the Babylonian Empire, or the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

If judgment is coming, to either the United States or any other formerly Christian nation, make sure you have first judged yourself and make every effort to be on the right side of God’s judgment.

Blessings!

Maranatha!

©Bud Hancock. All rights reserved.

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