The above is a photo of an oil painting by 19th century....(the period of Romanticism).....English painter John Martin....who was known for his epic religious themes. If this grainy photo piqued your interest....please Google....John Martin....Belshazzar's Feast....Yale University....where the image that will appear is not grainy....and you can expand it to see just how incredible this oil painting is!
What you are looking at is John Martin's idea of what Belshazzar's Feast from Daniel 5 may have looked like.
"Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand." Daniel 5:1
If you look closely (on the Yale website)....you can see a menorah on the wall on the right....and vessels brought out to serve and drink the wine.....vessels that were taken by Nebuchadnezzar from the first temple in Jerusalem.
"While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his Lord's, his wives and their concubines might drink from them." verse 2
On the right of the oil painting you can see Belshazzar wearing his crown....seeming to fall back in fear at the writing on the wall to the upper far left of the painting. Daniel is in the middle interpreting what God is saying in those words....mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. John Martin placed this celebration in a ceilingless outdoor hall where above the back pillars and arches you can see the ziggurats of Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens.
If you look very closely....not in the painting but in all of Scripture....you might be able to see all of us today....divided....the Democrats as they 'interpret' the word 'God' for their own purposes....and the Republicans....as we wave the Bible around....claiming to trust all that is in it....and bring it to this election campaign just as Israel brought the Ark of the Covenant to the battle....thinking that it surely would guarantee victory. (It didn't)
In the same hour that the celebration was at its highest...
"They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, and bronze and iron, wood and stone. 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...." Verses 4 & 5
Well the academy of that day....NASA....and James Carville and Tucker Carlson of the soothsayers....and all the experts were brought in to explain the writing that was on the wall....what was happening....but none of them could....so Daniel....the man of God for that day....was brought in and explained how the king had the evidence of God before him....but did not humble himself and glorify God!
"This is the interpretation of the word. MENE: God had numbered your kingdom and finished it; TEKEL: you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." Verses 26-28....all of this NKJV
Note: Both Upharsin and Peres apparently have the same meaning but a different tense of the word....divided.
