Thousands of lords and ladies gathered for King Belshazzar’s great feast. It’s usually fun when people gather to celebrate. But at this party, something bad happened. The king used the holy vessels that had been stolen from the temple in Jerusalem to drink from. (Back in Jerusalem, only the holy priests in the temple were allowed to touch these vessels during worship!) It got worse. All the lords and ladies used those stolen vessels to toast their idols and say, “Praise the gods of gold!”

God saw what they did. (God sees everything we do!) He acted right away. On the wall appeared the fingers of a human hand that wrote “Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin” (5:25). Spooky, huh? Belshazzar was completely spooked. His face turned white. His knees knocked. His heart raced. His legs gave way beneath him. He was terrified! He was also confused. Those four words meant nothing to him. They weren’t words in his language. So he called his wise men and asked “What does this mean?” They had no idea. The queen, however, knew someone who would. “Daniel can help,” she told the king. “He helped your grandfather interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems” (see 5:12).

When Daniel arrived, the king promised him great gifts if he would read the writing on the wall. Daniel said, “Keep your gifts. God’s wisdom is for free.” Then he explained the words. “Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (5:26–28). What does all that mean? It means that because Belshazzar was so proud and acted in such an unholy way, his days as king were over. In fact, “that very night” the “king was killed” (5:30), and Darius the Mede took over his kingdom. Wow! Can you believe that? What does that teach us? It teaches us that God is against the proud. It also teaches us that God is so powerful, that he “rules the kingdom of mankind” and he decides who will be king (5:21).