There are nine chapters in the short book of Amos.  When we start chapter eight, we get the fourth vision that God gave to Amos.  Amos 8:1-3 Thus has the Lord God showed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.  And God said, Amos, what do you see?  And I said, A basket of sumner fruit.  Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel;  I will not again pass by them any more.  And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, said the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place…"

Summer fruit.  Sounds good.  But that's not what summer fruit is.  It is the end of all food that the summer will produce.  The leavings from the harvest.  The dregs.  Nothing else to harvest.  The end.  The end is upon Israel.  And once again God says:  "I will not again pass by them any more."  But worse than that,  all attempts to sing in the temple will be as a howling on the ears of God.  They can go to church.  They can sing, chant, and play the harp, but the sounds will offend the ears of God.  He's through with them.

Then Amos gives a particular warning to the wealthy in Amos 8:4-7.  He says that they swallow up the needy and falsify balances by deceit.  They do this so they can "own" the poor and buy the poor for a "pair of shoes" and so that they can sell the poor the refuse of the wheat.  Food not fit for the dogs.  It is a scathing indictment.  God ends by saying "I will never forget any of their works."  God has always had a heart for the poor and downtrodden.

And God has a long memory.  Those who rack up wealth at the expense of the poor had better listen.  God's message back then is God's message today.

I didn't quit!!!  My router or modem or my "something"went south.  The big 'you know who' company promised a new one in 24 hours and when it didn't show, things went from bad to worse.  But the good news is that all the computer junkies in my family clued me in on something they assumed I knew.  I could go to McD's or Starbucks, etc. to use their WiFi.  Like I told you two or three months ago, I am in kindergarten when it comes to software, hard ware and every other kind of ware.  I also didn't know how WiFi worked or what it was.  So I've learned something.  Maybe I'll graduate to first grade.

While I'm on the subject, I will be out of country from the 19th to the 28th, so don't give up on me.  I'll be back to normal blogging on March 1.

Now…..back to Amos.  He's been warned by the high priest to get out of town.  And like any good prophet, he ignores the high priest and the king.  Amos has been working for a higher power than either of those guys and he isn't impressed with their credentials.  Amos is God's prophet and even though Amos didn't come from a line of prophets, he seems to know his business.  Prophesy the prophecy.

So… Amos replies to Amaziah the high priest and says: (My interpretation) Amos 7:15-17  "Listen you dummy.  I don't get my orders from you.  You told me not to prophesy, but God came out to my neck of the woods where I was tending my flock and said: Go.  Prophesy to Israel."

"So you had better listen to what I'm telling you.   Israel will--do you hear me--will be captured and taken captive.  God says so.  I'm just the messenger.  You, the king and every one else in Israel are going to lose everything.  All because of your wickedness."

"And while i'm at it, your wife is going to end up hustling on the street and your sons and daughters will be killed with the sword.  Your land will be divided up, parceled out to your enemies and you are going to die in a polluted foreign land where you will be a nobody.  A dead nobody.  Now get out of my face."

"I will not again..."  Final.  God is done.  But Amos continues to warn the people.  And the high priest of Bethel, Amaziah, gets word of it and he's not happy at all that Amos is upsetting his congregation.  So, like any good  religious zealot who sees his power threatened, Amaziah goes straight to the authority, the king, Jeroboam.  He reported to the king that Amos was  committing treason.  He was telling the people that God was going to kill Jeroboam by the sword and that Israel would be led away captive.

But Amaziah wasn't through.  He then went looking for Amos and threatened him and dissed him.  Amos 7:12-13  I'm going to quote this scripture in my own words.  (Janie's interpretation)  "Then Amaziah found Amos and said:  You voodoo ignoramus.  Get out of here.  Go down to Judah, set up a place down there to live.  And practice your black magic down there.  But you are not to ever prophesy up here in Israel again because it is the king's stomping ground.  The king runs the religion business in Israel and I am the high priest."

What it actually says is: "...Amaziah said unto Amos, O you seer, go, flee...away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there;  But prophesy not again anymore at Bethel:  for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. "  There is no reference to indicate that the king told Amaziah to tell Amos all this.

And then Amos replies: (Again, my interpretation)  "I am not a king.  I am not a high priest muckety muck like you.  I wasn't even a prophet in the first place.  I don't come from a family of kings  or high priests, or television evangelists.  I am nobody.  But you better listen to what I am going to tell you very carefully because I have something you don't have.  I have an appointment from God Himself."

Here's the real scripture.  Amos 7:14-15  Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was a herdsman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit; And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, Prophesy to my people Israel."

God finally has had enough.  I don't know the timeline between the visions, but there was more than enough time for Amos to warn the people and for the people to repent.  But they didn't.  So God spoke to Amos again in a vision.

Amos 7:7-9  "Thus he showed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.  And the Lord said to me, Amos, what do you see?  And I said,  A plumb line.  Then said the Lord,   Behold, I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel:  I will not again pass by them any more:"

Have you ever used a plumb line?  I used to wallpaper, and if you didn't get the first strip straight, the entire job would be crooked.  So I used a plumb line and the law of gravity gave me a perfect vertical line to begin on.  It is either straight or it isn't.  And Amos got the message.  Israel wasn't straight.

So God gave the last vision to Amos.  He did not tell Amos to warn the people.  The vision was for Amos.  God wanted Amos to see what God saw.  That the people were out of line.  Crooked.   And God had forgiven the people in the first vision and ceased his plan in the second vision.  All for Amos.  Because Amos asked God.

Don't you wonder how long God will tolerate his American people.  We began a nation based on the moral law of the Bible.  We had high ideals.  But little by little we have compromised our values.  Our nation is no longer a Christian nation.  The latest statistics say that the majority of Americans answered "None" when asked the question, "What is your religion?".

It will be horrible to hear God say, "I will not again pass by them any more."

  Well, God's mercy didn't change the behavior of the people.  They continued perverting the worship center they had constructed into something they invented for their own convenience, with their own perverted lives.  They broke the covenant they had with God.  They continued to break His commandments--big time.  So God spoke to Amos about all of this again.  One thing about God, He doesn't change his mind about sin.  Sin is sin.  Many years ago, an evangelist named Billy Sunday had a sermon called "Payday Someday."  Someday was here.  Payday was coming for the house of Jacob.

The second vision of Amos occurs in Amos 7:4-6  "Thus has the Lord God showed unto me:  And, behold, the Lord God called to contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part.  Then I said, O Lord God, cease, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.  The Lord repented for this:  This also shall not be, said the Lord God."

When I lived in Santa Ana, California, we were always afraid of the winds whipping fire down through the valley.  I'm sure you have seen these fires on television as they tear through everything in their paths.  They lick up water in cow ponds and evaporate pools.  It is devastating.  People are left with nothing.  Amos saw a vision of what God was going to do to Israel, and again he went straight to God. But this time instead of asking God to forgive, he begged God to cease.  He appealed to God to remember that these were His people, and to consider how few they were.  How could they ever rise from the ashes if God carried out His intentions?

Once again, God repented.  Repented!!!  And told Amos that the vision would not happen.  All because of Amos' plea.  God tells Amos what is going to happen to the house of Jacob, Amos asks God to cease, and then God changes his mind.  He must have really loved Amos.  It was a sure thing the people didn't deserve His mercy.  God was simply affirming  the relationship He had with Amos.  I wish I had known Amos.  He would have been a really good friend.

In Amos 7:1-3,  God sends ordinary, goat-sheep herder Amos a vision.  And Amos had enough sense to know when God was speaking to him.  Even though Amos was a common every day kind of man, he kept his prayer life up.  He was on speaking terms with God.

Incidentally, I use the King James version because that's where I have written my notes in the border for more than 45 years.  But I have taken the liberty to change the thous, thees, haths, etc. to common English.

Amos 7:1-2 "Thus has the Lord God shown to me; and behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.  And it came to pass, that when they had made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I beseech you: by whom shall Jacob (the tribe) arise? for he is small.  The Lord repented  for this: It shall not be, saith the Lord."

The king got the first growth; the grasshoppers got the second growth.  The people starved.  Now whether this was a warning of what was going to happen, or what had already happened, Amos loved the people and desperately called on God to forgive them, to spare them or they would be wiped out.  They were small (few).  The people were guilty of all the sins described in chapters 1-6, but Amos pleaded for another chance for his people.

And then a remarkable thing happened.  God repented!!  God listened to a simple man like you or me, and God changed His mind.  Think of that!!  You and I have the power to change God's mind.  Simply by a sincere plea.  I can't hardly wrap my mind around that.  Prayer changes things.  Prayer can change the mind of God even when people are guilty.  I suppose you would call that ' mercy'.

My group that I teach on Sunday is studying the book of Amos.  If you will take time to read the book, you will find that you can divide it into two sections.

For the first 6 chapters, I very honestly found the book hard to teach.  Mainly because I am an application teacher, and there didn't seem to be much to apply.  Chapters 1-6 are the "Words of Amos".  Mostly prophetic speeches or messages.  Doomsday is coming to Israel.  Amos is warning them.  They aren't listening.  I literally had to wade through it.

But by the end of the sixth chapter, I could see the comparison to America today.  For almost 200 years Bethel was a spiritually degenerate worship center.  Israel wasn't supposed to worship at Bethel in the first place.  And Amos was warning Israel what was going to happen to them.  I couldn't help but think that America has been a country for 236 years and has been on a spiritual slippery slide downhill.  Where is Amos when you need him?!!!

Chapters 7-9, sometimes labeled "The visions of Amos" are going to be easier to teach.

Amos was just a normal guy.  Very ordinary.  He wasn't a preacher's kid.  Definitely not in the prophecy business.  He was a day labor kind of man.  He was a herdsman and a scraper of sycamore figs.  Piercing the tree's fruit to help it ripen.  But God chose Amos.  God will use an ordinary person like you and me if we are willing.  You don't have to go to a seminary to be God's choice for service.   You can read God's words and understand them on your own.  All you need is to be willing.  You can respond to Him and be an Amos-onian.  People need to know what you  know.  And they don't need everything all at once.  A little dab'll do'ya.  (If you are young, ask someone over 60 years old about that.)

I'll share the highlights of the last three chapters with you as I blog.

One other controversy concerning Adam that I may as well mention.  Since I commented that I think that there may have been some sort of people here before Adam, and I felt that Adam was the first person who held the Breath of God, I might as well go ahead and mention the verses in the fifth chapter that further add confusion to this subject.

Genesis 5:1-2  This is the book of the generatons of Adam.  In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

Because of the "them, their and they" plurals, some scholars think that 'Adam' was a 'race' of male and females.  If so, you have a problem with the fact that the man had a name "Adam" and the woman had a name "Eve."  And Eve was made as a 'help-meet' for Adam.  They were a pair.  Not a race.  Besides all which, they had children who married.  Male and female.

I think I am through discussing the first five chapters of Genesis.  Certainly not in detail, but enough for you to start searching Scripture for yourself.

I'll talk about something different tomorrow.   But Genesis and the Indwelling Spirit is a subject I have great passion about so it will keep cropping up.