What a solemn thing to die at such a moment!
(Charles Simeon) LISTEN to Audio! Download Audio
Daniel 5:1, 4-6, 26-28, 30-31.
King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way!
This is what these words mean: "God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians."
That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom!
What a solemn thing to die at such a moment! Yet how many are there, who, if not slain like him—yet are called away from the midst of the mirth and pleasures of this life, as unprepared to die as this heathen king!
It was so at the time of the Flood!
It will be so at the end of the world!
It is so daily and hourly!
"The foolish virgins" greatly outnumber those who are wise; and have their oil to seek when the Bridegroom arrived.
Lost sinner! Might not God justly destroy you instantly with fire, as He did Nadab and Abihu? "So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord!" Leviticus 10:2
Might not God cause the earth to swallow you up, as He did to Korah and his rebellious followers? Numbers 16:31
How many sudden deaths take place all around you, some old, some young, and some in the prime of life! Are the illnesses and accidents which you see or feel, no warnings? But you have a hand-writing; yes, the hand-writing of God Himself! You may see it in the Scriptures of truth. There you may see written as with a sun-beam, "God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting."
All hope of entering Heaven will be quickly taken from you, if you do not turn unto God with your whole heart!
While you are living at ease, and putting the thoughts of death far from you, God may be saying, "You fool! This night your soul shall be required of you!" And O, how terrible would this be to you!
"What hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life?" Job 27:8
"How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors!" Psalm 73:19
Your soul must be covered with the sin-atoning blood of Jesus—or your sins will infallibly plunge you into everlasting perdition! Seize then the fleeting hour. Adore your God that you have not been taken away, as thousands of your fellow-creatures have been—with all your sins upon you! "Today, while it is called today, do not harden your heart," lest you perish in impenitence and unbelief!
May the Lord grant that it may never be so with us!