Belshazzar is Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, and he throws a party while his city is under siege. That detail alone tells you everything about him. He calls for the gold and silver cups looted from the Jerusalem temple — sacred objects — and uses them to toast his gods. It is the defining act of a man who has decided that sacred things exist to serve him.

Then a hand appears and writes on the wall. The party stops. The king's face goes pale, his knees knock together, and he offers the entire third-place position in the kingdom to anyone who can interpret the writing. His sages can't do it. His queen suggests Daniel — the man who handled Nebuchadnezzar's hardest problems. Daniel is brought in, and he declines the gifts before he says a single word about the message.

Daniel's interpretation is devastating. He reminds Belshazzar that his grandfather — who had every advantage Belshazzar has — was humbled by God, lived in a field for seven years, and came back praising the Most High. And you knew all this, Daniel says. Belshazzar had the testimony. He had the warning written into his own family history. And he chose the temple cups anyway.

The writing — Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin — means numbered, numbered, weighed, divided. God has numbered his days. He has been weighed and found wanting. His kingdom is being divided and given to his enemies. That very night Belshazzar is killed. Babylon falls. The party is the empire's last act.