[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters!The king of Babylonia, Belshazzar, has given a magnificent and enormous banquet for his officials and friends. According to the luxurious customs of the East, a royal banquet of this kind usually attracts thousands of guests. Once again, thousands of merry guests, the nobility of Babylonian society, enjoyed the delights of the abundant food and drink. Wine was consumed without measure, hearts were gladdened, and there was great rejoicing. The king, with his wives and harem girls, sat at a separate table, and in his exuberant, intoxicated merriment brought the sacred vessels of the temple in Jerusalem, the golden bowls which his father had stolen when the temple in Jerusalem fell. The debauched party seized the sacred vessels, and now continued to drink the wine from the golden cups made for worship.
Wine, song and music intoxicated the reveling guests, and the exuberance was at its height - when suddenly a ghostly hand appeared on the grey wall opposite the King's candelabrum. The musicians dropped their instruments from their hands, the laughter of the guests was distorted into horror, the sacred golden goblet fell from the king's hand, he trembled with terror all over his body, and with wide-open eyes he stared at the ghostly hand.
In the sudden deathly, chilling silence, the fingers of the hand moved. Letters arose from the movements, and when the hand disappeared again, three words remained on the wall: Mene, Tekel, Ufarzin. - Mene: that is, God has numbered your days, the time of your kingdom and your life is over. - Tekel: that is, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. - Upharsin: that is, thou shalt be destroyed, both thyself and thy kingdom. - The terrible judgment came on the night of the feast, and a few hours later the Chaldeans entered the palace and killed King Belshazzar, and his kingdom was taken by Darius the Mede.
We have also come to the end of the year 1937 from the birth of our Lord. A few hours more, and this year will pass and the new year will dawn. At this great anniversary, perhaps every man's eyes are more turned towards God than at other times, for it is a very tangible taste of the impermanence of the past. Like the days of this year, the days of our life will one day pass, and we will find ourselves before God himself, to give an account of our past suffering.
If not a whole life, but a whole year is behind us now, let us look back on it and give an account to God of this time that has passed. Let these three words, Mene, Tekel, Ufarsin, appear on the wall before us now, and let us consider what they mean to us.
1) The first word: Mene, which the Scriptures explain as follows: God has taken account of your kingdom and will bring it to an end. One said: to live in an unhappy marriage; the other said: to suffer from an incurable disease; - The deepest impression was made by this answer: to see the good opportunities that have passed from our lives without being used, and which can never return.
The most painful self-reproach one feels is when, at some milestone in one's life, one sees how much precious time one has wasted. Such must be the feeling of a man who, past his thirtieth year, begins to realize that he has lost his way, but that it is too late to regret, that he cannot bring back his youth, that he must now pull on the yoke that will never fit him for the rest of his life. At best, he will be a bitter man who pursues his profession in a dilettante way and his dilettantism in a professional way.
One of the most dreadful mental anguish is the feeling of being beside the coffin of a mother whom one has wronged, and whose cold heart is frozen with grief, and from whom one will never again have the opportunity to ask forgiveness. Oh, if only he could meet her once more! But it is over, all reparation is over forever.
Such, and far greater, anguish of soul may be inflicted on the soul of one who has to stand unexpectedly and unprepared before the direct judgment seat of God. Those who have escaped from some serious life-threat have told of how, at the moment when their existence teetered on the razor-sharp line between life and death, their whole life flashed before them like a crazy film reel. Something like that could happen to us on the day of judgement. Long forgotten sins, precious missed opportunities will be projected before us and will accuse our souls.
We will be like Gerhardt Hauptmann's famous Jedermann, who was called by Death during a great revelry of debauchery, to prepare to give an account of his life to God. Jedermann, desperate and sweating blood, begged Death to give him just one more week, or if not one more week, then just one more day, or at least just one more hour, to make amends for his mistakes, to make up for his failings, the weight of which had now suddenly become so fatal.
Now, as we say goodbye to this Old Testament, I am reminded of a witty French proverb which says that every goodbye means dying a little. We are dead to the past, which means we are powerless to change the past. Let us now entertain the idea that, in the face of everything that has gone before, we are dead. What if God were to hold me accountable for the past?
365 days?
It would be maddening to stand before God now, as I still have much work to do. It is maddening to know that I have cast an innocent soul with lying words like muddy nuggets, and I can never make it right again. That I have sinned against my spouse, and that I have no more opportunity to remove the thorn of suspicion from his heart. That so often I have let God's invitation pass by my ear, and now I am forever late for the great visit.
- O Lord, give me but one more day to atone for all my sins!
This last afternoon of the last day of the Old Year means to us now what that mysterious word meant to the reveling company in Babylon: 'Go,' that is, 'God has counted up your kingdom and will bring it to an end. The days have been numbered, the time has passed, the year is past, the missed opportunities will never come back. Now comes the great reckoning.
(2) The second mysterious word that appeared on the wall of the royal banqueting hall was Tekel, which the prophet Daniel explained, "Thou hast been weighed in the balances, and hast been found wanting. How graphically Scripture expresses the reckoning: God weighs our lives. God has a balance in His hand and He weighs each day of the past year.
The politics of countries, the governance of nations in one pan - the claims of God in another. Old heathenism, pressing national sentiments, wars without declaration, bloody civil wars, cannon and gas masks, gold galore, cold, selfish politics, godless communism, fall into one pan, - God's great commandment, Thou shalt love thy Lord thy God, and love thy neighbour, is in the other. Result: the scales tip over. The gunpowder aspirations of the peoples of this earth are out of balance with God's command, found light in the great reckoning against God's demand.
Churches' lives in one pan - God's claim in the other. I think we can all foresee the result: no church, of any denomination or nation, can stand against God's claim. Christian churches on earth are still only human society, and still not sufficiently representative of the kingdom of God. Result: the scales are tipped again, and the verdict is pronounced.
But now comes the most terrible reckoning: the weighing of our own selves. Our small pennies, once given in alms, fall into a frying pan: oh, how small compared to Jesus' demand: 'Sell all your possessions and distribute the proceeds among the poor!
Our words and thoughts are weighed: oh, how little true love those words and thoughts have brought to other people - but oh, how much more lies, hurt and sin!
There is my zeal, my service, my faith, my love in the frying-pan - but to all of them there is a little vanity, a little selfishness, a little desire for assertion: the balance is tipped: all my good intentions are found to be pusillanimous to God's claims.
My whole life will be weighed in the balance: have I loved my Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength, and served Him with all the endeavours of a miserable life? Have I burned my soul upon the altar of His glory, or have I burned it in the flames of sinful passions? And have I loved my neighbour as unselfishly as I have selfishly loved myself? Yet this was my duty, and God would have required it of me in the past year. Now I can make no amends, time has passed, we have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Now there can be no other result than judgment, the mysterious third word will soon be uttered: the Upharsin, that is, the death deserved, the eternal damnation. We ourselves will see that we are inexcusable before God. It would not be a miracle if God, in the balance of the year, were to take leave of this earthly life and wipe it out by some terrible elemental catastrophe. Often we almost think that this light spiritual world deserves nothing more than the final destruction of which it is already on the precipice.
3) And judgment is always delayed. It is almost incomprehensible that we are still here, since the scales are tipped that we should all have perished long ago. There must have been some miracle here.
Yes, indeed, the greatest, the most incomprehensible, the most blessed miracle is the one that Isaiah dreamed of more than seven hundred years before the birth of Christ: that He (that is, Jesus Christ, the Son of God) "was wounded for our sins, He was bruised for our transgressions, the chastisement of our peace is upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed... The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
This means that because the scales were tipped against us, Christ suffered all the agonies of the terrible death on the cross - or symbolically, He stepped into our sin-laden frying pan. The nearer we came to Calvary, the more our frying pan, which we thought light, sank. Droplets of blood fell from the cross into our frying pan, and as the last word left his lips, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" and "It is finished!"- in God's hand the scales were balanced again. Christ has borne our punishment, made reparation for our failings, made up for our shortcomings: that is, He has fulfilled for us and on our behalf all God's claims.
That is why we have not been judged as we deserve, why we are not lost, why we are still here. In the cross of Christ is the explanation of the fact that, instead of God's scathing judgment, His mercy and boundless love embrace our sinful lives. The merits of Christ bring our frying pan back into balance with God's claims.
That Christ has done enough for us is no longer a spiritual idleness, a religious self-righteousness on our part. The time will come when the days of our lives will be numbered. Then we shall really have to appear before the great tribunal, and our lives will really be weighed in the balance. And if we are found to be light, then we will no longer be able to plead the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we will no longer be deprived of the judgment of punishment.
That time may come tomorrow, it may be years from now, whatever. The fact is, there is still time to make amends now, to make amends by opening our souls to Christ today, by surrendering, by committing our lives to Him for His guidance, so that we may go to the judgment seat of God for the final judgment, enriched by the merits He has earned.
Amen.
Date: 31 December 1937.