oun t Down 'ILLEY artin Co., Cocoa, Florida
tekel, upharsin — is this: you and your kingdom are weighed in the balances and found wanting. God is counting down on you.” And that night King Belshazzar was slain. God had counted down. And I believe that today He is weigh ing us in the balance. May He not find us wanting. And then we come to the most seri ous count down in world history, as recorded in Matthew 27:35,36, “And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots. And sitting down they watched him there.” The Son of God! The one who in herited heaven and eternity past; the one who put the moon 280,000 miles out there in space; the one who has set the earth up so that it travels more than six million miles a year, more than 18 miles a second. In perfect balance it goes around, as we stay here on the earth. And when He was bom into this world they called His Name Jesus. He walked on this earth for 33 years, and then men began to count down on Him. They called him a blasphemer, and finally they took Him and crowned Him with a crown of thorns. Then they led Him out of the city of Jerusalem and nailed Him to a cross. And finally we hear the last mo ment of the count. Then He says in that triumphant note, “ Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Salvation’s work was completed; God’s beloved Son had atoned for sin. Now He’s buried. Three days later God picks up the count. And we find that He was raised from the dead by His own power, the same power that put the heavens where they are; that created the heavens and the earth; the same power which raised Him from the dead, the power of God. And God took up the count, and He’s been counting ever since. “ This same Jesus which is ascended into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” He’s coming again. Soon
— the count down. And Abraham was wondering, and tense, and bothered ga las we would be today. He didn’t realize that God was going to come in as He did, but he had faith. And God came in. As those last seconds ticked off and Abraham raised his hand to slay his son, the voice from heaven said, “ Stay now thine hand.” This was a time of testing, a count down time for Abra ham. And I believe that you and I have times of testing today, times when God is counting down for us. In Exodus we read about Pharaoh, as he was holding the children of Israel in the land of Egypt. God tried Pharaoh in many ways: by sending plagues to the land, and doing other things. Bu t P h a r a o h refused to change, and God began his count down. Finally, He said to Moses, “Tell the children of Israel to put blood on the lintels and on the doorposts. To night the death angel is going to come over.” And every firstborn child in the land of Egypt, whose father had not put blood on the lintels, was slain. And in the royal palace that night the crown prince was slain because Phar aoh had not listened to the word of God. God had moved in on Pharaoh. God moves in on men; He moves in on nations; He moves in on rulers. I believe God moves in on Christ-re- jecting countries and governments. We have seen it in the past. And I believe God will eventually move in on our country unless we listen to and heed His Word. God is counting down. In Daniel we read that Belshazzar sat in his banquet house and he was having a wonderful party — wine, women and song. He was really en joying himself. And then, he saw a hand writing on the wall. He became frightened. None of the wise men could tell him what it said. Finally, Daniel was found to read the hand writing for him. “ Belshazzar,” he said, “ you did not listen to the way of your father. You did not listen to the God of your fa ther, and God is moving in. The hand writing on the wall — mene, mene,
He’s going to rule and reign. He’s taken up the count, and that day of His coming is fast approaching. One day in 1917, as a boy of 16, I made ready for His coming and passed from death unto life. I listened to a sermon on that wonderful verse, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life ” (John 3:16). The best I knew how I put my hand in the nail-pierced hand of the Saviour, and God took up the count for me. “ And those whose names were not written in the lamb’s book of life were cast into the lake of fire.” The last count down. The last few seconds in a missile count down are tense. You’ve put in hours of work; you’ve tried to make everything perfect. But sometimes there’s failure. In this count down, when God sets up His judgment throne, there can be no failure. God has said, “ None that defileth shall enter in.” Unless we put our faith and trust in the Per son of the Lord Jesus Christ, all we do and all we say will be useless. We will change for the worse, and when we come to that last moment, that last count down, when the sorrows of death flow over our soul, we will be weighed in the balances and found wanting. May God in His love and mercy help us to make our decision. “ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
APRIL, 1959
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