Things That Cannot be Shaken - Part One
by
Josprel
Matthew 27:50-54: “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks split . . .”
The crucifixion of Jesus literally was an earthshaking event. Meditating on the event, it appeared to me that creation trembled and quaked over what puny men had done to their creator, as though that when a nation rejects God, that nation invariably experiences upheavals and finally oblivion. As the Psalmist noted, “The wicked shall be turned into hell and all nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).
God takes a nation’s mocking of Him and what belongs to Him seriously. Belshazzar, the king of Babylon during the captivity of Daniel, learned this first hand. Daniel recorded that, some time after Babylon sacked the Jewish temple and carried off the consecrated worship accessories, “Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand. While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave commandment to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzer had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.
“In the same hour the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace . . . Now all the king’s wise men came but they could not read the writing . . . Then Daniel was brought in before the king . . . [and said,] ‘You have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the vessels of His house before you, and . . . have drunk from them. And you have praised the gods . . . which do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified. Then the fingers of the hand were sent from Him and this writing was written. And this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
“‘This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom and finished it: Tekel: You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting: Pares: Your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.’
“In that very night Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans was slain. And Dirius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old” (Daniel 5:1-30). God’s warning to Belshazzar occurred almost immediately after the handwriting appeared on his palace wall. In a single night, the powerful, majestic, tremendously feared, presumably unshakable, Babylonian Empire toppled and passed into the shadows of history. “That very night” Belshazzar’s kingdom fell to the Medes and Persians.
Media was the ancient name for north-western Iran. The inhabitants were called Medes or Medians and were descendants of Noah’s son, Japheth. After the Medes participated in the capture of Babylon (Isaiah 13:17 and Jeremiah 51: 1-24) many centuries after their ancestor’s death, Darius the Mede - so-called because his father, Ahasuerus, was of Median ancestry - became the new ruler of Babylon.
Persian history began with the Indo-European nomads of South Russia, who most likely entered the Iranian plateau during the second millennium BC. The nomads, known as “Fars,” began their Iranian community as a small province on the Persian Gulf. Its people were of the Aryan race, descended from Japheth, the son of Noah. Their community was bordered on the north by Media, on the south by the Persian Gulf, on the east by Carmania, and on the west by Elam. Though at first, the Fars’ province was subjected to the Medes, after revolting under Cyrus the Great, it became the principle power in the conquering of Nebuchadnezzer’s empire. Known as the Persian Empire it became the most far-flung of the Oriental empires, conquering and ruling over all the regions from India to Ethiopia. Its capital was Susa, called in the Bible “Sushan the Palace” (Esther 1:2). Though seemingly all powerful, the Persian Empire eventually was conquered and subjected by Alexander the Great in his quest for world dominion. He, in turn, died at an early age and his empire was partitioned by his generals, who ruled the divided empire in his stead. Each of these kingdoms eventually was conquered by Rome.
© Josprel
josprel@yahoo.com CONTINUED IN PART TWO
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