Evil is a real thing; it is not an illusion. The forces of evil are powerful and clever, and they are intent on prying people away from God. There is a war going on, and it is not pretty.

And here’s the reason why this is so important:

Most of the people reading this blog have never really known poverty. Few of us will ever have to worry about being thrown in prison and tortured for our beliefs. We live in relative comfort and ease — an age of unprecedented wealth and affluence. Certainly, this is a blessing in many ways. Many of us live in nice homes and eat good food, have drinkable water and access to good medical care.

But times and conditions like these are abnormal in human history. Only recently has comfort and ease become part of an average person’s lifestyle. And, as much of a blessing as this has been, it is also something of a curse as well. It’s made us soft. It’s made us forget that there are people — even people in our world today — who do not have it so good. More people have been murdered for their faith in Jesus in the last 100 years than ever before. There is a war going on still. Persecution is not a thing of the past. Neither is it something that will happen one day during “the tribulation”. It goes on today in places like the Sudan, Indonesia, China, Afghanistan.

Being a Christian does not mean everything will go well for us in this life. Because of our current living situations, we often plug away with what we think is a vital faith. But when something bad happens with our health or our job or a relationship, we’re tempted to have that faith shaken to its core and wonder why God is not keeping up his end of the bargain.

Daniel’s vision tells us: Expect trouble. There is a war going on, and the goal of that war is to pry people away from God. It went on in Daniel’s time. It’s going on in our time as well. It will continue until Jesus returns.

So here’s the challenge for us: Stop taking your comfortable lifestyle for granted. Receive it as a gift from God, but don’t expect it to last forever. Don’t feel guilty for having nice things and making good money. Realize that you’re called to use that wealth to further God’s purposes in this world. Remember those who are still persecuted for their faith. Pray for those who go to bed hungry tonight or imprisoned. If you’re interested in doing more than sending happy thoughts, you might want to go visit a couple of websites and get some information on how you can roll up your sleeves and get involved in working for justice in this time of war:

Voice of the Martyrs: www.persecution.com
Compassion International: www.compassion.com

Keith Brenton is the only one who ventured a guess at what Daniel 7 is about. He says it’s all about God’s sovereignty, and in some sense it is. But first, the text mentions all these wild beasts with wings and horns, multiple heads and dental problems. What’s up with that imagery?

I think these are images of evil. A beast with parts of another beast stuck between its teeth might be translated: evil is violent or evil feeds on evil. A beast with four wings might mean that evil travels swiftly. A beast with four heads might mean that evil is shrewd. A beast with horns might mean that evil is powerful.

So, the message I get from this part of Daniel is this: expect trouble. Evil is a real thing, and its effects are felt universally. If you live in this world, expect trouble. Don’t be taken by surprise when bad things happen. Sometimes God’s people get defeated and taken away in chains. Sometimes the ruling powers of this world make you choose between idolatry and death. Sometimes good people get thrown into bad places for doing the right thing.

There is a spiritual war going on, and we shouldn’t expect life to be comfortable. The fact that most of the people reading this (including the guy writing it) live in unprecedented luxury is abnormal in human history. It’s abnormal in contemporary society. The notion that once you come to Christ, you’ll never have to face difficulties, sickness, loss of job, poverty, depression, divorce, the death of a child or persecution for your faith is absurd.

Jesus himself said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, “Don’t worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).

That’s it? Trouble today and trouble tomorrow? Thanks a lot, Jesus.

No. That’s not it. But that’s part of it. And we cannot skip over it and jump to the happy ending just yet.

“In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying on his bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream.

“Daniel said: ‘In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.

“‘The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it.

“‘And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, “Get up and eat your fill of flesh!”

“‘After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.

“‘After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast — terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.

“‘While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully’” (Daniel 7:1-8).

Okay, we’ve been working our way through Daniel, and it’s been great so far. We’ve touched on a lot of very familiar stories, but now we’ve come to the last part of the Book of Daniel — the part no one ever reads (except for those prophecy guys on TV). What are we supposed to do with all this? I mean, read those eight verses again.

A lion whose wings get torn off? A bear with ribs between its teeth? A leopard with four wings like a bird? Do birds have four wings? Four heads? What the…?

As confusing as this all is, I believe people usually take the wrong approach when it comes to deciphering it. I do not think it is wise to play a matching game with current nations or organizations. Ten horns…hmmm…there are ten seats on my local school board. You don’t think…?

There have been people trying for centuries to play that matching game, and they’ve always been wrong. Every time we find out that Kissinger isn’t the anti-Christ or the USSR isn’t the bear with ribs in its teeth the Church gets a black eye and it gets a little bit harder to proclaim the gospel.

I know lots of good Christian people have different views on how things are going to end, but I think it would be very helpful if we’d all just stop the matching game.

So, if the point of this portion of Daniel is not to figure out who is which beast, what is the point?

I spent the last few days in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Every year for the last three decades, that city has hosted the largest gathering of people from the Churches of Christ in the world. The numbers have declined somewhat in recent years, but — for those of us who grew up making the annual pilgrimage — it is like a family reunion. We never even had to use the whole title (Tulsa International Soul Winning Workshop); we simply said “Tulsa”. People knew what you meant.

I saw people I hadn’t seen in years. Jeff Walling. Lynn Anderson. Marvin Phillips. Rubel Shelly. Mike Cope. Max Lucado. These are the rock stars of the Church of Christ. John Dobbs. Wade Hodges. Tim Spivey. Jon Mullican. These are, in my opinion, some of the rising stars.

This was an important year, historically speaking. One hundred years ago, a division that had been forming for several years was formally acknowledged between Restoration Movement churches that chose to use instruments and churches that chose not to. To some of my Evangelical friends, this division seems to be much ado about nothing. To those of us who grew up with it, it was huge.

This year, that division was acknowledged by thousands of people as having been wrong — sinful even. It was fascinating to watch Max Lucado and Bob Russell share the platform. It was heartwarming to hear the cry for reconciliation and cooperation echoed with such force. Unity is important to God, and it is becoming important to Christians now.

I must admit, I was expecting some sort of fireworks. I know that people in the Churches of Christ can be fiesty, and I wondered if someone might see this as an opportunity to voice their disagreement. But nothing like that happened at all. As one friend said, “All the mean people stayed home.”

Who knows what the future holds? How much longer will a gathering like this continue to be viable? How many more unified events will we see? What will it lead to? God only knows.

One thing’s for sure: these are interesting times to be alive. God is on the loose, and his kingdom has broken into our world.

One other thing’s for sure: family reunions bring mixed emotions. They remind us of what things were like — good, bad and ugly. They hint to us of how things might be — more good, bad and ugly. They cause us to reflect, and (hopefully) they cause us to project as well.

One final thing’s for sure: there is coming a family reunion to end all family reunions. It will be interesting. The mere thought of it brings about mixed emotions in me. I want it to come tonight, but I want it to hold off a while longer, too.

“Your kingdom is broken and taken away from you.”

That’s God’s final word to King Belshazzar, shattering his final illusion that the circumstances of his life would be ultimately under his own control.

It’s absolutely baffling to me how we can live our entire lives with the idea that we’re in control of everything. Certainly, there are some things that are in my control, but most of life happens to me rather than through me. And, in the end, I know I’m going to die. I have one life, and I have no idea how long it will last. But I do know that when it’s over, I’m going to be asked to give an account for what I did with it.

I have no idea how many days I have left, but when it’s over I hope the words that describe my life are not these three: numbered; weighed; broken.

I guess when I look at those words, though, they do describe me to some extent. They describe each of us. We’ve all been numbered; we’ve all been weighed; we’re all broken. I suppose that’s why Jesus came.

Now the question becomes: What are you going to do about all this?

The cautionary tale of King Belshazzar continues as Daniel reveals the second word God personally wrote on the wall.

“Tekel: You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

With this word, God is puncturing the illusion that a person can get away with doing wrong. For some reason, most of us believe that getting caught is for other people. Over and over again, you can ask people who have tripped up by scandal, and they’ll tell you: “I never thought I’d get caught.”

Ask Pete Rose. Ask Barry Bonds (after he comes out of denial). Ask Jim Bakker. Jimmy Swaggart. Bill Clinton. Martha Stewart.

We tend to think that we’re too clever to get caught. We know what we’re doing. We’re not like those other people. We’ll get away with it.

Several years ago, when we lived in Texas, Anabel was old enough for us to take the railing off her baby bed. She thought this gave her permission to get up and roam around the house after bedtime. She’d sneak up on me while I was working on my laptop in the living room or watching baseball late at night, and I’d usher her back to her room.

After a while, she figured that maybe if she couldn’t see me, I wouldn’t be able to see her. So, she dumped the books out of a basket we had in her room and put the basket on her head like a helmet. She would stumble out of her room, groping around with her hands and be shocked when we would discover her! It was hysterical, and my wife and I would collapse on the floor laughing at her. We even have a picture of her with the basket on her head standing in the middle of our kitchen (looking for cookies probably!).

It’s a good thing we grow out of that kind of thing, right?

Or maybe we don’t.

I still know people who think that if they can’t see others, others can’t see them. We do that at church, don’t we? If you didn’t see me looking at pornography, maybe I didn’t really look at pornography. If I can’t see you getting high, maybe you never did get high. If no one sees you fix that expense report, maybe you really did spend that money legitimately.

The bottom line is: It doesn’t matter if anyone you know sees you or finds out. There is a God who sees everything. Belshazzar was just as out of touch with reality as Anabel was — closing your eyes doesn’t make you invisible. It makes you naive.

God comes to the king and says, “You’ve been weighed. And if you think there’s anything I don’t see, if you think you’re more clever than I am, if you think you’re going to get away with defying me — you’ve got another thought coming.”

God sees everything. He hears every word and knows every thought. He weighs us each on the scales of his judgment, and we all come up short. You can close your eyes all you want, but there is no end-run around responsibility.

King Belshazzar’s party came to an abrupt halt when a mysterious hand appeared and wrote three words on the wall. No one could figure out what they meant until the Queen remembered Daniel and his ability to solve problems like this. Daniel told the king the meaning of the three words, and each word punctures an illusion that propped up the life of King Belshazzar.

The first word was “mene”, which means “numbered”.

Many of us, like King Belshazzar, live with the illusion that our life is our life. My life belongs to me, and I am only accountable to myself for what I do with it.

God comes to the king and says, “I’ve numbered your days, Belshazzar. I’ve already decided how many days to give you. Your life is not just yours; it is on loan from me. You are where you are because of me; you have what you have because I gave it to you. I created you and gifted you and presented you with opportunities to do things in the brief time you have on this earth. And, in the end, you will be held accountable to me.”

When Daniel walked into the room, he saw the gold and silver goblets that had been taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. These were sacred objects reserved for use in the worship of God. Obviously, he would have been horrified to see them used in such profane ways.

But the most sacred object the king was perverting was his life. God sees each of us as a golden vessel set apart for his purposes. When we spend our life only on ourselves — gratifying our every appetite and never being used in service to others — God sees us the way Daniel saw those objects that day: profaned.

You’ve been given one life, and one day you’ll stand before your Maker and give an account for what you did with it. And God knows when that day will be. Do you?

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Daniel has been summoned out of retirement to help this bratty king Belshazzar. He walks into the room to see that the king has been engaged in a drunken orgy and has been using sacred goblets stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem in his festivities. Then the king has the audacity to ask Daniel for a favor — even offering him rewards if he does his job well.

One habit that Daniel has demonstrated is his willingness to tell hard truth when that’s appropriate. Perhaps this was one of the reasons the new king has put Daniel out to pasture. Refusing the king’s rewards, Daniel delivers the following message:

“O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor. Because of the high position he gave him, all the peoples and nations and men of every language dreaded and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death; those he wanted to spare, he spared; those he wanted to promote, he promoted; and those he wanted to humble, he humbled. But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal; he lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like cattle; and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven, until he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets over them anyone he wishes.

“But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hands your life and all your ways” (Daniel 5:18-23).

The king has not asked for any of this. He just wanted to know what the writing means. This has all been Daniel’s opinion.

The phrase that Daniel delivers that is hardest for my ears is this one: “You knew”.

It’s bad enough to do stupid things like the king has done, but the worst part is that he knew better.

What about you? Any areas in your life where you’re behaving foolishly even though you know better? There are plenty of those areas in my life, but the thought that someone like Daniel might one day stick his finger in my chest and say, “You did all of this, even though you knew better” is devastating to me!

Let’s all take this weekend and let Daniel say that to us anyway. Conviction like that is a difficult but necessary part of the process of growing up into the people God wants us to become.

Daniel had been King Nebuchadnezzar’s right-hand man for a long time. He was a high-ranking official put in charge of an entire province — over all the other wise men.

But now Daniel has been put out to pasture. He’s an old man now, past his prime. The new king doesn’t even know who he is…until the new king has a problem.

In the middle of his drunken party, a hand appears and writes a strange message on the wall. Then, as mysteriously as the hand appeared, it disappears. The king’s first instinct was probably to switch to coffee, but soon he realizes that this wasn’t a hallucination; it was real.

He calls all his wise men and asks them to decipher the message, but they cannot. Then the Queen (probably King Belshazzar’s mother) remembers Daniel. He used to be good at this kind of thing. Maybe he could do it again.

So, they send for Daniel.

What does Daniel see when he walks in? Obviously, he’s going to see the writing on the wall. He’s also going to see the new king — the one who discarded him in his old age. He sees the aftermath of a huge drunken orgy. But what may have caught his attention more than anything else were those goblets from Jerusalem. They were made of gold and silver and stood as a reminder of what worship used to be like in the Temple.

How long had it been since Daniel had seen them? What was going through his mind and heart when it occurred to him what they’ve been used for here?

Not only has the new king insulted Daniel; he’s insulted Daniel’s God. And now this impudent king says to Daniel, “Do me a favor and tell me what that scribbling up there means. I’ll make it worth your while.”

If I was Daniel, I’d say, “Figure it out yourself.”

But that’s not Daniel’s style. Once again, my character has a long way to go before I respond like Daniel.

One other thing that Daniel may have seen: opportunity. The king is offering to restore Daniel to prominence. This had to be tempting for him. It may have even tempted Daniel to shrink away from telling the king the whole truth.

That’s not Daniel, though, because — more than anything — what Daniel saw was one more chance to serve God by making a stand. Just like he did in chapter 1 with the king’s food. Just like he did in chapter 2 with the king’s dream about the statue. Just like he did in chapter 4 with the king’s second dream about the tree. Daniel has demonstrated a clear pattern of integrity that he has no intention of violating now.

What Daniel saw in the writing and in the new king and in the old goblets was the hand of God moving steadily — sometimes visibly — most often invisibly — to bring about his purposes.

In Daniel 5 there’s a new king. Nebuchadnezzar has been dead for quite some time, and his son Belshazzar has taken over, and here’s what we learn of his character right off the bat:

“King Belshazzar gave a great banquest for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzarr his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone” (Daniel 5:1-4).

Read back through that and see if you can find the one verb that’s repeated several times for emphasis.

{waiting}

Find it? King Belshazzar apparently likes to drink, doesn’t he? The writer mentions it five times in four sentences.

The church in which I grew up did not condone drinking at all — not even wine with dinner. In fact, I remember the scandal that erupted when one of the girls in our youth group let it slip that her parents enjoyed a little vino every now and again. Drinking was universally understood by everyone in our church as out of bounds. It was one of the ways you knew someone was serious about their faith. If they had any alcohol in the house, they were nominal Christians — people you wouldn’t trust with your kids with. That person was automatically disqualified from a leadership position at church.

So, we didn’t talk much about some parts of the Bible. For example, the Psalmist says that God makes “wine that gladdens the heart of man” (Ps. 104:15a). We didn’t read that psalm during our Sunday morning assembly. Or Deuteronomy 14 — where it says that if you live so far away from the Tabernacle or Temple that you cannot carry your tithe, “Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice” (Deut. 14:26).

We didn’t talk much about those places in the Bible, and we explained away the whole notion of wine being wine. It was grape juice. I’ve actually got books in my library that jump through amazing hoops to explain how wine didn’t have any alcohol in it back then — even though people could somehow get drunk on it. Maybe it was some kind of sugar buzz.

The Bible does not say it is sinful to drink wine. But the Bible does warn people very strongly about the dangers of drinking too much wine.

In Daniel 5:2 we read, “While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them.”

That first phrase could be translated, “While he was under the influence of wine….” The implication being that alcohol prompted him to do something he wouldn’t have done otherwise.

I’m not going to say that Belshazzar’s problems started with his alcohol consumption. I think it’s pretty clear that there was a larger pattern at work here, which we’ll see in the next few days.

But the booze didn’t help.

I don’t know everyone who reads my blog. But statistically speaking, someone who reads my blog has a drinking problem. I don’t know who, but that person probably does. If that’s you, get some help. Too often, Christians and churches don’t talk openly about this, and I know folks who have suffered quietly in fear. Don’t let your fear keep you from getting the help you need. There’s help available for you if you want to crawl out from under the influence.