In this hour, the Lord is opening up the Word and revealing truths which believers never really understood before. One such portion of Scripture is found in the eighth and ninth chapters of the book of Amos.
Amos prophesied to the northern ten tribes of Israel. At the time when he made his appearance to prophesy, almost two centuries had passed since the mass drafting of labor throughout all Israel under Solomon, in order to build the Temple of the Lord and Solomon’s palace. After Solomon’s death, the people asked his son, Rehoboam, for less taxes, less oppressive work, and fewer months of the year to work for the government without pay. Then Rehoboam arrogantly said that he was going to give them an even worse time (I Kings 12). Therefore, the ten northern tribes of Israel seceded from Jerusalem under Jeroboam, whom the Lord had chosen to rule over them; and for two hundred years they wanted no part of the throne of David at Jerusalem. This is important to understand.
For two hundred years, the people of northern Israel and their kings turned away to idols. They even drove out the Levites who would not turn against Jehovah, because they did not want the old Law to work. They did not want the people to go three times a year to Jerusalem; for if they came under the influence of the Temple again, where the Spirit of God was moving, they would forget their idolatry and turn back to the Lord. To prevent that, idols were set in the groves of the high places throughout all the northern tribes; and the people were kept from going to Jerusalem to worship the Lord.
Finally, Amos came forth and began to prophesy the word of the Lord. He was not an impressive man, like a statesman or a great priest; neither had he been a prophet or the son of a prophet. He had been a herdsman who gathered and sold sycamore fruit, though not the sycamore that we know about today (Amos 7:14). Therefore, it seems natural that he had this vision concerning fruit: Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold, there was a basket of summer fruit. And He said, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end has come for My people Israel. I will spare them no longer.” Amos 8:1, 2.
Within thirty years after this prophecy, the judgment pronounced by Amos, most of the northern tribes of Israel were shuttled into other nations as captives. Then people from other nations were brought into the land. This situation created marriages between men and women from different countries. This shifting of populations destroyed the history and the heritage of the different people who were mingled together, resulting in a breed called the Samaritans. The Samaritans were so intermixed that when the Jews returned from their exile they were bitterly opposed by those who were only a quarter or a tenth Israelite. There was such a mongrelization of the race that the Jews would not even allow a priest to minister if he could not trace his genealogy to show that he had the right to minister. God was intent on preserving the purity of the Levitical priesthood. In the book of Nehemiah, you can read about Sanballat and Tobiah and the way they were troubling the Jews. When it was discovered that they did not belong in the place of ministry, they were rejected.
In this day of the restoration of the pure walk with God, we can spiritualize that account and understand what it can mean for us. Today a person does not have to belong to a certain race in order to serve God, but he cannot mix the old Babylonian ways with the pure ministry of worship. Today’s priesthood will have to be a pure priesthood that stands and ministers before the face of the Lord. Pure worship cannot really work in an old-order church. There must be a pure ministry, a pure priesthood that comes forth unto the Lord.
After Amos envisioned what was coming, within thirty years the Samaritans were those who came forth. However, the true Levitical priesthood was required as long as the old covenant was standing. Therefore, you can imagine what hostility and vicious opposition came against the parable that Jesus gave about the good Samaritan who ministered to a man who, while traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves and was beaten and left naked and half dead. A Levite came by and a priest came by; but wanting nothing to do with him, they crossed to the other side of the road. Jericho, at that time, was like a nice little resort area where Levites and priests settled. The journey is not too far from Jerusalem to Jericho. A Levite or a priest preferred living in Jericho and traveling up to Jerusalem for official duties. When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” He began teaching what a neighbor really is. After telling about the Levite and the priest who passed by, He told about the Samaritan. This was enough to stir up His hearers, for the Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings with each other. That fact is shown in the fourth chapter of John, when the Samaritan woman was shocked because Jesus asked for a drink from her at the well. A good Jew would rather go thirsty than ask water from a Samaritan woman. In the parable, the Samaritan had compassion. He not only bound up the man’s wounds, pouring on wine and oil, but he carried him on his beast to an inn. He even gave the innkeeper money to take care of him, and he said that if anything further were required, he would pay when he came by again (Luke 10:29–35).
Through this parable of the good Samaritan, Christ was announcing that the Old Testament ritualism and racialism, as far as God was concerned, was at an end. Now He was bringing the grace of God so that everything that came through Abraham now fell upon men of faith. Later, Paul wrote to the Galatians, Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith that are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations shall be blessed in you.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. Galatians 3:7–9. This reveals God’s original intention.
When the Lord said, “The end has come for My people Israel,” within thirty years the northern tribes of Israel ceased to exist as a pure racial strain. In Amos 8:9–13, we read, “And it will come about in that day,” declares the Lord God, “that I shall make the sun go down at noon and make the earth dark in broad daylight.” (God was not speaking about an eclipse, though there may have been one at the time of this destruction under the Assyrians.) “Then I shall turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring sackcloth on everyone’s loins and baldness on every head. And I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and the end of it will be like a bitter day.
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord. And people will stagger from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men will faint from thirst.” In this passage of Scripture, God was not only speaking of the days in which the northern tribes were taken into captivity and judgment; He was reaching ahead to the days in which we are living.
In the ninth chapter of Amos, he prophesied to a spiritual remnant that God would raise up, and the prophecy is opposite to that which was prophesied in chapter 8. To read the books of the prophets without discernment could cause a person to think that God gave a contradiction in His prophecies. In Amos 8:10, God said, “Then I shall turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into lamentation …” These were the feasts that the people were keeping. Zechariah 8:19: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘The fast of the fourth, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth months will become joy, gladness, and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah; so love truth and peace.’ ” In these two prophecies about feasts, we read first about the feasts being a time of much lamentation. (The people fasted in those months because of their disobedience to the Lord.) Then we read that these feasts will be a time of joy and gladness and tremendous restoration. It seems like a contradiction, but it is not. The earth is going to know much heaviness, but in a remnant there will be a gradual level of joy and gladness rising.
A remnant of God’s people today are the spiritual Israel of the Kingdom. Many of them keep the feast days according to their spiritual significance with a deep anointing of the Lord. The keeping of the Feast of Tabernacles is beginning to spring up all over the world, because the fulfillment of its spiritual significance is coming forth. Those who keep a spiritual observance of the Feast of Tabernacles experience a sustaining joy and a glory that is leading them out of the wilderness. While they sing festive songs of joy, the newspapers bring reports of heaviness and the lamentations of the religious world.
According to the prophecies, two things are taking place: the night is falling rapidly with its darkness which coexists with the brightness of a new day. Not everyone is in the day. While children of the day keep singing about the new day, people who are bound in old traditions say, “The new day? Ha! This is the falling away! We just pray we will be able to hold out to the end. Look at all the people who are leaving; how terrible it is!” It is terrible for them, and it is going to be worse than it is now. But those who truly walk with God are not of the night; they are of the day (I Thessalonians 5:5). They are actually walking in another dispensation, and it is not coming forth with some kind of chronological sounding of a gong which announces the end of an old age and the beginning of the new. There is an overlapping period in which they are projecting themselves ahead of their time. They are reaching into a new day and keeping the festival with joy and gladness; and they will be keeping the Feast of Tabernacles and the Sabbath in the days of the great Kingdom.
You can keep the Sabbath and the feasts now. You can actually reach into the age that is to come. Why not move out of the last days and live in the first days? Why dwell in an age that is through? Prophesy its judgment, but believe to walk with immunity right through it. You do not need a rapture if you are already in the millennium and if you maintain a spiritual reality and a positioning of yourself. Those who are still hoping for a rapture before the tribulation will find themselves in more tribulation than they ever imagined. But this will be of God; for as He puts the pressure on, some good people, who are still in spiritual Babylon and whom God loves very much, will come out. And when they come out, those who are walking in the new day will be ready to welcome them into the bosom of the Kingdom.
One of the most amazing passages in the Bible is Amos 9:11–14. In the light of the background that has already been painted, you will find an explosive truth that is hard to understand. “In that day I will raise up the fallen booth” (tabernacle) “of David, and wall up its breaches; I will also raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by My name,” declares the Lord who does this. “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed” (again we see the influence of Amos being a farmer); “when the mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills will be dissolved” (this refers to the great hindrances of God’s people). “Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel …” This prophecy was not fulfilled, according to historical evidence. Where is the true Israel? The prophecies in the New Testament speak about Judah and Israel, but this prophecy must be understood more in a spiritual sense.
Some people wonder if there is truth in the teaching about British Israel. There is truth in it, meaning that you can find traces of the tribes in different nations; and in the scattering and the dispersion of the people, Great Britain and the United States are Ephraim and Manasseh. But it is not a truth of any significance to the Christian. If you base your faith on it, you have to believe that every Jew will go to heaven simply because he is a Jew. However, Acts 4:12 says, concerning Christ, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.” Your ancestry does not matter; only by the grace of God are you a son of God and a new creation (Galatians 3:26). There is no other significance whatsoever. Believers in Christ are the true circumcision and the true Israel; and they worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3). Your natural ancestry is not important, because that which you become in God is by virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ, who made you a part of the new creation. The color of your skin and where you came from has no significance. By the grace of Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor any other race that is significant for salvation. Believers are all one in Christ Jesus.
Amos further prophesied this word of the Lord, saying, “Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, they will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit. I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them,” says the Lord your God. Amos 9:14, 15.
This is interesting, because these people were forbidden to worship in Jerusalem for two hundred years. Then the prophecy came saying that they were going to build again the Tabernacle of David that had fallen down. What is the historical significance of this passage? It was quoted again in Acts 15 during a council at Jerusalem of the apostles, the prophets, and the elders of Jerusalem and those who came from various churches. An issue had arisen concerning the Gentiles who were coming into the Church. The Jews were adhering to what had been established about the pure racial strain of the Jew. They had to accept the Gentiles in Christ, yet they could not believe that they were really under the covenants and the promises. Therefore they were going to have them circumcised and make them observe other regulations also, in order that they would keep the Law of Moses (Acts 15:5).
The Epistle to the Galatians was written because many Jews had gone through their province (which had been mainly settled by blond Gauls), telling the Galatians that they would have to become Jews by being circumcised and adhering to the Law of Moses. Paul wrote to them, saying, Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? Galatians 4:15a. It disappeared when they accepted legalism. When the council at Jerusalem wondered what to do about it, James, the brother of the Lord, who really spoke the word of the Lord, arose as the testimony was coming; and he repeated the word that had come by the prophet Amos. He said that God was going to build again the Tabernacle of David that was cast down; and therefore, the burden of the Law, which neither the Jews nor their fathers were able to keep, should not be placed upon the Gentiles. They were to be under the grace of God (Acts 15:10, 11).
What significance did the Tabernacle of David have in Amos’ prophecy? First there was the Tabernacle which was carried throughout the wilderness, and it was finally pitched in Shiloh until it fell apart with age. It had housed the ark of the covenant and the worship of the people. But not until David brought back the ark of the covenant from the Philistines did he build a Tabernacle at Jerusalem. The Temple was to be built, but God did not allow David to build the Temple because he was a man of war and of blood. However, He did allow him to build the Tabernacle of David which housed the ark of the covenant. After the Tabernacle of David fell down and Solomon’s Temple was built, Amos prophesied the building again of the fallen booth, bypassing Solomon’s Temple for David’s Tabernacle that had fallen. It will be built again, and in it will all the Gentiles who are called by His name seek after the Lord (Acts 15:16–17).
The Tabernacle of David did not have exclusive restrictions. In it there were sacrifices and perpetual praise. Levites and singers worshiped and praised continually. There was no inner court or outer court, and so everyone came in and worshiped God. The ark of the covenant with the glory was in the midst, and everyone worshiped God around it—Levites, priests, purebloods, and half-breeds. Everyone was there worshiping and praising the Lord. James said that this is what God is going to rebuild. God is doing that today. In the presence of the Lord, Jews and Gentiles are to stand without any curtains or partition, without anyone standing afar off. Everyone is brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:13). They all worship day and night, worshiping and praising God continually.
The significance of the Tabernacle of David, in the prophecy of Amos, is simply pure worship before the Lord. It was spoken to the people who rejected David, and yet their fathers saw the Tabernacle of David. Even when the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem was still standing, Amos bypassed it without saying anything about it being destroyed and restored. Amos prophesied that the Tabernacle of David will be restored, and that the plowman will overtake the reaper (in other words, the ground will be broken for a new harvest scarcely before the old harvest is brought in), and the treader of grapes will overtake him who sows seed. Not only will everyone be in the worship and praise of the Lord, but everything will be accelerated so fast that a season of planting and a season of reaping will not be distinguished from each other. In the same services, God will be bringing people into the Kingdom while bringing sons to maturity. The plowman will overtake the reaper. There will not be separate evangelistic services, separate messages for the babes, separate messages for the leaders, or separate messages with deeper teaching. The day will come when many of the distinguishing characteristics that are now in the worship services will be removed. The day will come when a babe in arms, who cannot even speak, will be kept in the services, because God will be doing things for him and filling him with the Holy Spirit, even without his understanding.
We are to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (II Peter 3:18). This is our prerogative. It is not necessarily a process, because our growth really comes when God orders certain circumstances; and sometimes that takes time. When you appropriate something, you actually grow into a new stature. Why not do it all at once? You cannot add a cubit to your stature by taking thought physically, but you surely can grow in the Lord by taking thought spiritually. You are commanded to grow. It is a matter of obedience and appropriation. You may hope to grow by exposing yourself to the things of the Lord. That is a good way to grow; but there is a better way. Begin to believe God to walk into maturity. Begin to believe God to appropriate the divine nature. Put off the old and put on the new.
The day of the plowman overtaking the reaper will be the day in which the very presence of the Lord will bring forth sonship so rapidly that the sons will be as plants grown up in their youth (Psalm 144:12). God prepares hearts, but where do we get the idea that it takes so long to grow? God can make a quick work in the earth and cut it short in righteousness (Romans 9:28). Let us have faith to believe for the quick work that will be done in the earth, an instant crop that God will bring forth.