The Handwriting on the Wall of Babylon

The Handwriting on the Wall of Babylon


"Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared, and began to write on the plaster of the palace wall...and the king could see the hand as it wrote."
Daniel 5:5

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The prophet Daniel has ordained in scripture that just before the western world is toppled by the kings of the east, a message to that effect must first be written on Babylon's wall (Dn.5:23-31).

"You have praised gods of gold and silver, of bronze and iron, of wood and stone, which you can neither see, nor hear nor understand; but you have given no glory to the God who holds your breath and all your fortunes in his hands. That is why he has sent the hand which, by itself, has written these words. The writing reads: 'Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin'. The meaning of the words is this: Mene: God has measured your sovereignty and put an end to it; Tekel: you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; Parsin: your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.'...That same night, the Babylonian king Belshazzar was murdered, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom..." (Dn.5:23-31).

That message, inscribed by the hand of God in four graphic images, "Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin", to the king of Babylon just before he was murdered and his kingdom overthrown, previews the fall of western civilization and the "wrath" to follow ­ the anger Jesus warned was coming to destroy the wicked of the earth in a "second death" that will strike all who refuse to follow Christ to the place of safety God has prepared.

This coming wrath is why the message of Jesus is centered on a call to leave ­ to get out of here as quickly as we can before the destroyer arrives. "Go away, go away, leave that place, touch nothing unclean. Get out of her, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. But you are not to leave like fugitives. No, the Lord will go in front of you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard." (Is.52:11-12). We have been called to leave by the path of righteousness. The only route to safety is the path Jesus came to show the world. All other paths lead to death (John 14:6).

The message is clear. We are not to leave in panic. We are to leave by righteousness.

Since the warning is to be inscribed on Babylon's wall, we need to know just what that wall is. In order to answer that question, we need first to address, what Babylon itself is.

The Bible tells us that Babylon is the harlot that ruled the world before the appearance of Jesus. She is a prostitute who has defied God by renouncing His rule and choosing pagan ways instead. Babylon was mortally wounded by Christ and His followers. In keeping with the prophecy in the Book of Revelation that the mortal wound would heal in the last days, we can see images of Babylon reappearing in the secular world civilization today. These images can be seen from the north pole to the south pole; from east to west. As far as the Bible is concerned, there are only two cities (two philosophical cities) on earth, Babylon and Jerusalem. All the people on the planet belong to either one or the other. Babylon, then, can be said to command all the people of the world not in the House of Israel.

God has decreed that the House of Israel is to be ruled by Jesus Christ.

Hearing the word of Christ preached to them, the citizens of the world embraced His message and changed course, setting off, instead, on the path Jesus prescribed, a move that brought the entire western world into the House of Israel.

Through the power of prayer, the people remained secure behind God's own wall of protection where they remained for almost 2000 years. That choice proved a mortal wound to Babylon. But the mortal wound has since healed. Today the people of the world have discarded prayer, foresaken Christ's power, and chosen other lovers. They have transformed themselves back into Babylon, and in so doing have become a harlot, chasing paganism once again. And in that renunciation of God, they have rejected the wall of His Spirit and chosen for their defense a wall of worldly weapons instead.

At first, the city of Babylon (pagan rule) was located in what is now Iraq. Since the days of Alexander the Great, however, the capitol city of Babylon has been situated in the western world. At the time of Christ, that rule was vested in the hands of Rome. Rome, however, converted to Christianity and throughout the millenium, Rome has remained the world's capitol under the spiritual rule of the Church. But with the secularization of the world (the rebirth of Babylon) that rule has passed to the pagans. Today it is in the hands of the United Nations, a conglomerate of representatives from most of the world's secular countries.

Because world rule has changed from Christian to secular, the capitol city of Babylon has seemed to change as well. Since 1945, the capitol of Babylon has resided in the city that houses the headquarters of the United Nations. Those headquarters are in New York City, the crown jewel of the commercial world, and that is the reason why the handwriting appeared there.

The "wall" of Babylon is the strength of world civilization. At the moment, that wall is America. While the rule of the planet's people is vested in a group of nations, the power that keeps that organization viable in the world is the U.S. armed forces. The people of the world are able to live in order rather than chaos because they have in place a powerful wall of armed protection. The world's wall used to be Christ, but it is no longer.

Because America represents the current "wall" of Babylon, we might expect the "handwriting on the wall" ordained by Daniel to be inscribed graphically on American soil, and that is what we have seen.

The attack on the "World" Trade Towers in New York City obviously represents the lead headline in Daniel's divine notice ­ a graphic image warning the world of the approach of imminent disaster. The attack was aimed at the world, but it took place on American soil (on Babylon's wall). Far-off traders stared in horror as the fires raged (Rev.18:9-11). The smoke from the wreckage ascended for months (Rev.19:3), and the king of Babylon sat transfixed as the fiery words unfolded before his eyes (Dn.5:5).

The implications were not lost on anyone who watched. A doomed harlot had been put on notice. The Wrath had begun. Across the barren fields of a dying harvest the arid east wind had sent its first scorching flames. The handwriting was clear. The third day would be a day of fire and destruction ­ a day of bitterness for Babylon.

All this is occuring now because we have entered the 'third Day' ­ the day scripture tells us Christ will return, 'Wash and clean for two days and on the third day, see God face to face' (Ex.19:10). The "washing and cleaning" relates to the repentance and baptism that guarantees salvation during God's Day of Atonement.

The third day in the Christian millenium was ushered in January 1, 2001, a day that began the third millenium in the era of the Lord. Just nine months into that third day, came the trade tower attack. The sign was obvious to everyone who watched. The sons of the east, launching their rise to power, had carved their message into the heart of New York City, across the wall of Babylon's economic palace, the military rampart of the world's people.

It was a sign from God written in response to Daniel's ancient text. It announced the arrival on the world stage of the 'Fourth Persian Empire' (Dan.7:7), the fearsome iron-toothed beast whose arrival would change the management of Babylon's people. It's message spelled doom for the western world. It spelled doom for all of Babylon. The harlot was about to be condemned to her face. The tares were about to be bundled.

We have long known that before Christ can return, a great wrath must take place on earth. Jesus said in a parable that before the children of God are rescued, God is going to bind up the tares for burning (Mat.13:24-30). That bundling up of Satan's weeds is the wrath.

"Take up your positions around Babylon...Shout against her on every side! She surrenders, her towers fall, her walls are torn down since this is the vengeance of the Lord..." (Jer.50:15). "The east wind has shattered you, surrounded by the seas." Ez.27:26

Jeremiah has predicted that the world will be given a definitive "proof" by God that all these events will occur as written. That proof remains unfulfilled (Jer.44:29-30), but with "Egyptian" troops now lining the Euphrates, the completion of Jeremiah's omen may not be far away.

And then a fourth sign will bring the forces of nature to bear on Babylon's wall, to topple it.

Scripture predicts that a sea wave of devastating proportions will strike Babylon and Tyre. "Now you (Tyre) are shattered by the waves, surrounded by the seas." (Ez.27:34). "The sea will rise over Babylon, she will sink under its roaring waves." (Jer.51:42). We have shown before that the prophecies of Tyre strongly correlate with America., the current 'wall' for Babylon.

There is a people-element to these roaring seas as well (Rev.17:15), but on the wall of Babylon, it seems, a marine catastrophe that crashes ashore not long after the burning of the towers will be the premonitory warning. "Then a powerful angel picked up a boulder like a great millstone, and as he hurled it into the sea, he said, 'That is how the great city of Babylon is going to be hurled down, never to be seen again." (Rev.18:21).

In this respect there may be a correlation between Jeremiah's prediction of sudden disaster (Jer.51:42), and the prophecy of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen.19:1-29). The ruination of those two cities (and the sins they stood for) is certain to play a significant role at some point in the final chronology.

Since the lifestyle that characterized Sodom and Gomorrah has been suddenly and openly embraced again by the world in defiance of scripture's dire warnings, we can expect God to act in a manner similar to the details defined in the Book of Genesis in fulfillment of that prophecy.

Sodom and Gomorrah is not a story about the past, it is about the future (2 Peter 2:6). Those two cities are a warning of something to come. They point to our own time when a similar lifestyle surfaces. Since this warning dictates divine annihilaton for sodomy it relates to a sin that threatens instant death to entire urban townships. That means the two cities in biblical times are sure to relate to two cities today. Which two they might be are unknown. They are certain to be key cities, otherwise, the wall would not fall.

The Book of Revelation describes an Atlantis-like event occuring soon after the towers fall and in relation to those structures (Rev.18:21). In light of this prophecy, the city that housed them is one possibility.

National catastrophe never comes out of the blue. There is always a precipitating factor ­ some unremitting wickedness that underlies it. Defying God is dangerous, doing so against the backdrop of Lot's city is particularly so. "Does misfortune come to a city if God has not sent it? (Amos 3:6) "If God does not guard the city, in vain the sentry's watch." (Ps.127:1-2).

Scripture predicts a mountain, all on fire, will hurtle through the air and crash into the sea with terrible force. "The second angel blew his trumpet, and it was as though a great mountain, all on fire, had been dropped into the sea: a third of the sea turned into blood, a third of all the living things in the sea were killed, and a third of all ships were destroyed." (Rev.8:8-9). Revelation's asteroid impacting in the sea and the ocean wave foreseen by Ezekiel and Jeremiah may, in fact, be two parts of the same vision.

All of this relates to the fall of the "wall" of Babylon (Jer.51:44) and the profligate lifestyle that brings it crashing down in an economic and political crumbling that leads to the fracturing and collapse of western civilization, a disintegration that allows the east to rise up in its place. All of these events relate to the processes involved in the exchange of Babylon's rulers. They may happen differently than written above, but the message is clear. Salvation is only in the Gospel of Christ. Outside the righteousness of His words, there is no future.

The handwriting on the wall describes the final images that are to take place during the last vestiges of twilight remaining in God's Day of Atonement. The time for repentance is drawing to an end. Those who have not yet turned to Jesus for salvation, need to do so quickly. The handwriting is not the wrath, it simply foretells the wrath. The handwriting will not bring the world to its end, but the events that follow those signs will.

These are the days leading into the long-predicted Fury when the godless, consumed by wickedness and refusing to acknowlege the Lord are to be pummeled by mercilous anger day after day all the way to the end. The third day is to be a time of agony and weeping, a time of signs and portents and global rage. "When that time comes no grown man will know peace, for many troubles will inflict all the inhabitants of the country." (2 Chron.15:5).

Despite the catastrophic nature of the messages that may be written on its cities, America will not be destroyed by the calamity that topples it as the world's rampart. Because it surfaces so powerfully later in the prophecies, America is shown in scripture to remain a potent and critical force in opposition to the beast all the way to the end of the world. It is to be one of the final refuges on earth of the Christian faith.

In the wake of the breach in Babylon's wall, the U.N. (the United Nations) as we know it will fracture and divide. The nations of the world, no longer unified, will restructure themselves into four international coalitions, in a format closely resembling the circumstances that occurred in the wake of the sudden demise of Alexander the Great's empire in the days of Daniel (Dn.8:8).

It is on this demise that the handwriting on the wall is centered. The handwriting is the prediction of that sudden death. When it happens and the world splinters, Daniel says that none of the parts are going to think or rule in the way we do now (i.e., in terms of democracy or capitalism). Instead, he says everything goes to the generals (Dan.11:4). All the parts go out to four different types of armies. That means the business and commercial world America oversees and has sent to every part of the globe will end overnight and never return.

Then the east will rise to power, its ten nations with it, and all the other things foreseen for these times will occur as well, just as written.

[link to goodnewschristianministry.org]