Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “From Arrogance to Destruction”. Belshazzar’s demise. We look at this event of October 12, 539 B.C., the very day the “Golden Empire” of Babylon passes to the “Silver Empire” of Medo-Persia. As always, I look for statements and concepts in the quarterly that need more detail or more clarification. In this lesson for the week, the quarterly implies an idea that I find needs such attention. That idea is that, “in using the temple vessels in a palace orgy, Belshazzar desecrates them. Such an act of desecration is tantamount not only to a challenge of God but an attack on God Himself” (quarterly for Sabbath, February 1). The implication in the lesson, and even the implication by Daniel (Daniel 5: 23), is that this is what brought God to the point of action. That God could not abide Belshazzar and the orgy-gang to use His temple vessels that way. Hmmm??? Is this true? I take exception to this idea. It’s as if God will tolerate so many things they did, but this was just too much. In effect, God saying, “This is more than I can stand! You’ve pushed me too far!”
In an earlier lesson from 2018, regarding the death of Ananias and Sapphira, the quarterly made the contention that the two had “pushed the limits of grace”. In effect, God saying, “This is more than I can stand! You’ve pushed me too far!” This cannot be!! God is not some tin-pot potentate that takes such offense. On the contrary, God is much more concerned with what we do with ourselves, His true temple, than what we do with the symbolic vessels of his symbolic temple. What concerns Him about what Belshazzar and the orgy-gang did is more the alcohol inside themselves than the alcohol in the vessels. The use of the symbolic vessels in this manner symbolizes the use of themselves, and such, God finally gives them “up” to the natural consequences of their choices.
This is not just my idea. Here is a long quote from C. Mervyn Maxwell’s book “God Cares… Book 1 Daniel”, on page 87, 88…
“King Belshazzar of Babylon made his life choices. Later, God ‘weighed’ those choices to see how they measured up. In the judgement of October 12, 539 B.C., Belshazzar’s choices were found ‘wanting’ or deficient, and God ‘gave up’ Belshazzar to their natural consequences.”
“God treated Belshazzar as a responsible individual in several ways. First, He allowed him to make his own choices. Second, He allowed him at last to suffer the consequence of his free choice by removing His special protection from him. Reluctantly, God ‘gave him up’ to the power of his enemies. God would much rather, we can be sure, have protected Belshazzar from the Medes and Persians just as a few months later He would protect Daniel, when the Medes and Persians lowered him into a lions’ den. But Belshazzar did not want God in his life, and God respected his decision by stepping aside.”
“A third way God treated Belshazzar as a responsible individual was by ‘giving him up’ during his later years to the deepening addiction of his own bad habits. In Romans 1: 18-32 the apostle Paul reveals God’s attitude to everyone who chooses to live as Belshazzar did…"
“Daniel, clear of mind and eye, reprimanded the alcohol-addled king of Babylon for desecrating the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the temple in Jerusalem. In desecrating these vessels in the way that he did, by drinking alcoholic beverages in them, Belshazzar became guilty of profaning not only the Jerusalem temple but also his own ‘body temple’.”
“1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20 says: ‘Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own: you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body’. A somewhat parallel passage, 1 Corinthians 3: 16, 17 reads: ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple are you’.”
“God was not living inside Belshazzar on October 12, 539 B.C. Belshazzar’s body was a violated, desecrated, blasphemed, empty temple of God. It was so, because Belshazzar chose to ignore God as much as he could and to use his living temple for gluttony and intemperance instead of for holy purposes as directed by the Holy Spirit. And God, reluctantly ‘gave him up’ to his ‘dishonorable passions’.”
“On October 12, 539 B.C., God in an act of judgement, decreed that King Belshazzar should be permitted to meet the final consequences of his free choices.”
Remember, there is no end to God’s love and His grace. In the end, the irreclaimably wicked do not perish because they have gone beyond God’s love and grace. They perish fully loved with God’s grace as present as ever, but they have despised that love and rejected His grace. And God will sadly give them what they want… and they will perish. Let us make sure we represent our Great God aright. I pray we each covet the commendation God gave to Job… you “have spoken of me what is right” (Job 42: 7, 8).
With brotherly love,
Jim