Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Jan | 24 | Floating Fingers

Key Word:- CHANGE

Title:- Floating Fingers

Daniel 5:5 ….In the same hour the fingers of a man's hand appeared and wrote opposite the lamp stand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace;

Roman Emperor from 117AD, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, (AD 76-138), was born this day in Spain. Adopted by his relative the Emperor Trajan, whom he later succeeded, Hadrianus abandoned Trajan's conquests in Mesopotamia and adopted a defensive policy, which included the building of a ‘Great Wall’ across Britain. That Roman fortification called ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ was built to mark England's Northern boundary and was eventually abandoned about 383 A.D. Its ruins run 115 miles from Wallsend on the River Tyne to Maryport in West Cumbria. Archeologists tell us that in some parts, the wall was covered with a glistening, white coat of mortar. This magnificent coast to coast, line of defense against the Picts in the lowlands of Scotland lying directly to the North, has in fact now lay in ruins for over two thousand years. Its still there though. Imagine that!

Now, I wonder if these same floating fingers mentioned in the book of Daniel, wrote the very same words from the rest of our text for today at some other time maybe on Hadrian's brightly glistening and patiently plastered whitewashed walls? Those words of course were, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, You have been weighed in the balance and been found wanting!” If that is the case, then the Emperor Hadrian never saw them and like so many of us, was never even aware of them!

Individuals, communities, nations and all the empires of our day should take these words written by the floating fingers very seriously indeed, for as the then failing and fallen Romans once did, we sorry citizens of crumbling empires, also now both legally sanction and promote the most abominable of perversions. How then can the writing not be on the wall for us as well? Do you see it? Do you see the writing on our walls today? On your walls even?

Tell me, as our countries increasingly abandon their Judeo-Christian heritage and sanction the murder of so many unborn, so that the rising toll of dead from such a slaughter are themselves now so numerous, so vast, that they would themselves constitute a sizable and ever growing nation, tell me dear friends, how this last Sanctity of Life Sunday, we could have ever escaped the writing being forcibly scraped into the walls of our heritage, yes we, the mass murderers of so vast a nation of babies?

Don’t think we so called Christian nations are exempt from God's judgement. Don’t think because we have been used by God in the past that this will excuse our so present and terrible rebellion against Him. Make no mistake, even the ‘tools of God,’ be they individuals or nations, are not beyond His quick and most fierce, fires of raging anger.

The writing is on the wall for us and the longsuffering of God is quickly shortening. Individual and national repentance is our only hope. Let's teach it, preach it and proclaim it before it is all too late, for friends if you look, if you dare to stare at our whitewashed and glistening plaster, that runs both the length and breadth of our ruined nation, then you too will see that the writing of coming judgment, which is indeed blazoned large in burning fire and smoking like a gun, across our falling walls.

Listen: - ….if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

Pray: - O Lord, to us belongs shame of face; to our Presidents, our Prime Ministers, our Princes, and our Fathers, belongs shame of face because we have sinned against You. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness. Though we have rebelled against You and You are justified in Your righteous anger, Oh God, please be merciful to us and turn our hearts to you once more. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. (from Daniel 9:8-9)


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