SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/23/2013
9:30 AM
Today’s Spiritual Diary will be different than the
regular SD that I do each day as I wrote in yesterday’s SD that I want to take
some excerpts from the sermon that John MacArthur preached on the fifth chapter
of Daniel. At the end of this message
that he did in 1980 he compared some of the sins that were committed in the
latter days of the Babylonian Empire with the sins that are being committed at
that time in our country, and there are some that we can add to this list in
the year 2013.
Excerpts from “Divine
Graffiti: The End of an Empire”
“First of all verses 1-4.
‘I see the sin of drunkenness.’
Do you see it there? When he was drunk it all really began to
happen. Cyrus had had it all. All except Babylon. And Babylon looked to be unassailable. And so in a drunken stupor of debauchery,
they though themselves impregnable.
“By the way, you might like to know that in the same
place, in the same city of Babylon, in the very same palace, 200 years later, Alexander
the Great, undefeated by all the armies of the world, died in his own vomit in
a drunken stupor. It wasn’t just Belshazzar.
Alcohol had destroyed many rulers.
It’s destroying some in our own country.
“Drunkenness: We
have millions of drunks in this country.
Our leaders are drunken, as well as our people. In the United States, there’s a death from
auto accidents due to alcohol every 11 minutes and an injury every 18
seconds. We are a drunken nation.
“Secondly, pleasure madness. They were having a party while the end of the
world was a few hours away. They didn’t
understand how serious it was. Pleasure
mad, crazy about entertainment wives, and concubines, and sex, and dancing, and
drinking, and feeding themselves.
“And here we are in the same kind of condition; Sports,
and movies, and TV, and shows, and sex, and restaurants, and on, and on. And we spend billions and billions on these
things.
“Thirdly, immorality:
The worship of the Canaanite gods involved sexual perversion and sexual
stimulation that I would not speak of.
Archaeologists have discovered artifacts in the digs around Babylon that
have engraved on them pornographic pictures from this era. They had their pornography.
“But I don’t think it could be any worse than what we
have in America.
“Fourthly, this society was destroyed because of its
idolatry. They were worshipping all their manmade gods and blatantly rejecting
the true God. There were thousands of deities that cluttered their
culture. And we have the same
thing. We have zillions of false
Christs, false messiahs, religious phonies, cults and occults, gods of sex, and
money, and things and pleasure, and education.
And we have literally crowded God out of our whole country, except for
vestiges here and there of those who really know Him. 7/23/2013 11:30 PM
“Fifthly,
Blasphemy: This nation was destroyed
because of blasphemy. It wasn’t enough
to reject a blasphemed God, they mocked God.
You can’t believe how fearful a thing that is. I couldn’t conceive of doing that. And yet we produce movies like Brian, which is a spoof Jesus Christ
that makes him into some kind of a clown and superstar. Monty Python’s Jesus is a sick joke. Is a sick joke mocking God. We mock God with our empty prayers before
congressional meetings and football games. (In 2013 we will get into trouble by
praying at a football game.) We mock God
with religious charlatans who use His holy name to get rich and fill the needs
of their empty egos.
Sixthly,
I believe America is characterized like Babylon was of willful rejection. No nation that I know of in history of the
church has had any greater opportunity to hear the gospel than this
nation. Isn’t that true? It was founded for Christian freedom. We have heard it but we don’t care about
it. We’re not interested. It is a willful rejection. And over in verses 18-22, Daniel said to
Belshazzar, ‘You know all the facts about how God revealed Himself to
Nebuchadnezzar. You know the whole
story. And you willingly sin against
light.’ ‘To him that knoweth to do good
and doeth it not to him it is sin.’ We
got churches all over this country on every block and all the way down the
streets of this country. In every little
town, there are churches and they are empty, and they are liberal. And schools are pumping out people denying
the Word of God supposed to pastor those churches. We are turning our backs, willfully rejecting
the very thing we know to be true. No
nation ever had greater opportunity than America. And I’m fast believing that no nation every turned
its back on it, either, as severly as we have.
We don’t learn anything from history.
How foolish.
“Seventh,
another problem that I see in this particular thing is unrelieved guilt. This country, this Babylonian society was
basically ridden with guilt. Because sin
brings guilt. And know what? The king saw the writing on the wall and his
countenance was changed. His thoughts
were. ‘And the joints of his lions were loosed,’ and verse 6, ‘And his knees
smashed together.’ Why? Now if you and I were here and all of a
sudden we saw some writing on the wall, we might say, hey, the Lord is giving a
message. But that would only be because
we know the Lord and we have a secure heart.
But if we were a bunch of ungodly people in the midst of an orgy and
supernatural fingers started to write a message, we’d react a little
differently. The reason they reacted the
way they did was because their guilt convicted them, you see?
“We
interpret everything that happens to us according to our consciences. And conscience makes a coward of us all. The enemy on the inside condemned them like
Adam and Eve.
“Our
nation is so guilt ridden it’s unbelievable.
We’re literally ridden with guilt.
Never have there been so many psychiatrists, psychologist, counselors,
mental illness, alcohol, drugs, misery, sorrow, suicide. It’s all over the
place, because we are totally unrelieved in our guilt.
“Eight,
America’s characterized by greed and impure motives, and that’s what was part
of the destruction of Babylon. In verse
7, he says, ‘I’ll give you gold, and I’ll give you scarlet, and I’ll make you
the third ruler in the kingdom,’ and in verse 17, he says it to Daniel. Verse 16 ‘I’ll give you all this stuff,’ and
Daniel says, ‘I could care less.’
“Number
nine: Materialism. Power was equated with your clothes and your gold, the
decadence of living for prestige and riches.
I don’t think there’s even been a country in the history of the world to
know the wealth of America for such a long period of time spread over so many
people. There are wealthier people in
the Arab states, but the mass of people don’t really experience that. We are wealthy and we are decadent.
“Number
ten: Another thing that struck me about
this was their confidence in human security, their confidence in human
security. Did you notice that they were
having this feast because they thought their city was impregnable? What could happen to them?”
MacArthur
goes on to speak of how we have a similar mind set in our country because of
our military strength, but after 911 we should realize that we are venerable.
“Another
thing that hit me in this passage that is indicative of a dying society is
corrupt leadership. (If you listen to
the news today you will hear of things like the IRS scandal, the cover-up in Libya,
and other scandals that have actually fallen on deaf ears.” What were all these princes doing getting
just as drunk as the king? Corrupt
leadership, and all the soothsayers, and the Chaldeans, and the magicians had
absolutely no help. They couldn’t give
them an answer. The whole bunch of them
were as drunk, and immoral, and as inept, as everybody else.
“Can
I throw in another thing? I read one
author this week who said on of the problems with Belshazzar was that he wasn’t
as good as his father. He wasn’t as good
as his adoptive father, Nabonidus, and he wasn’t as good as his father or
grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar. I told you
in our last study (chapter 4 of Daniel), that I think Nebuchadnezzar became a
believer. Remember that? But there’s a big gap from Nebuchadnezzar to
Belshazzar. And it illustrated to me the
decline of the family. I see that in
America, too. Where is the Godly
seed? Where is the righteous generation?
“A
last one: And this is the sum of
it. What made Babylon fall? Pride. Verse 22, ‘You didn’t humble your heart. You didn’t humble your heart.’ Pride.
Listen to this: ‘At the feast of
Belshazzar and 1,000 of his lords, whild they drank from golden vessels as they
book of truth records, in the night, as they reveled in the royar palace hall,
they were seized with consternation at the hand
upon the wall. See the brave
captive Daniel as he stood before the throng and rebuked the haughty monarch
for his mighty deeds of wrong. As he
read out the writing, it was the doom of one and all, for the kingdom was
finished said the hand upon the wall. Se
the faith, and zeal, and courage that would dare to do the right which the
spirit gave to Daniel this the secret of his might. In his home in Judea, a captive in its hall,
he still understood the writing of his God upon the wall.’ See our deeds are recorded, there’s a hand
that’s writing now. Sinner, give your
heart to Jesus, to His royal mandate vow.
For the day is approaching, it must come to one and all when a sinner’s
condemnation will be written on the wall.
The message that I have for you tonight is this: Sin brings destruction. We started with Ezekiel 18:10, and we
finished with it: ‘The soul that
sinneth, it shall die.’ Be it a man,
woman, be it a nation. Doom is inevitable
in the world as it gets worse and worse.
The Bible promises that those who put their faith in Jesus Christ shall
escape the wrath to come, shall be delivered from the hour of tribulation. Shall be saved from judgment and taken to
heaven.”
One
of the reason for this blog it to get the message of salvation through Jesus
Christ out to those who read the posts on it, and I also pray that believers
who read this will grow in grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord,
and the last reason I write what I write is to spark holy revival in the hearts
of believer who read this so that they too can tell others of the Good News of
the Gospel.
7/23/2013 12:30 PM
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