Painting a little picture in history sometimes helps people to understand what the verses of Scripture really mean. In talking so much about the day of the Lord, Amos had in mind the manifestation of the day of the Lord that occurred within thirty years of the time of his prophecy. Amos lived in the southern tribe of Judah, but after God gave him a word, he came to Bethel and prophesied.
The northern kingdom, constituting the ten tribes that had seceded after the death of Solomon, left only Judah and part of the tribe of Benjamin in the southern kingdom. The northern people became idolatrous because their kings would not let them go to Jerusalem to worship. The kings set up places to worship idols because they wanted to distract the people from their loyalty and patriotism toward Jerusalem. They thought their kingdom would be weakened if they let the people go there to worship, so consequently idolatry came in an unparalleled way.
At the time that Amos prophesied, the people of the northern kingdom, especially Bethel and Samaria (Samaria was the capital and Bethel the religious center) were so filled with iniquity, yet they were exceedingly prosperous and very religious. The book of Amos describes how cruel those people could be. Some of the prophecies of Amos were so literal it is almost frightening. He told them that the Assyrians were going to come and take them away. The priest rebuked him: “Go on back to Judah and do your prophesying. Don’t prophesy up here.” Amos said, “You’re going to be led away by hooks,” and that literally happened. The Assyrians took meat hooks and fish hooks and put them into the lips of the children of Israel in the northern kingdom and led them off captive. “You will be led away by hooks” Amos said, “by meat hooks and fish hooks,” and that prophecy in the book of Amos literally came to pass. When everything seemed to be so beautiful, Amos came to warn them of what was really going to happen.
Who was Amos, some famous prophet? No, he calls himself: among the sheepherders from Tekoa. Amos 1:1. Tekoa was in the wilderness area and that was probably the same area where John the Baptist was preaching the word and ministering about eight centuries later. Amos lived around 750 B.C., “Two years before the earthquake” (Amos 1:1). There was a large earthquake that came, so important and so famous that two hundred years later the book of Zachariah refers back to it in genealogies. He is trying to identify the time that he prophesies. Sometimes we think of earthquakes as disasters, but in ancient times they built their genealogies and records around them. That earthquake has helped to establish many dates in history because people measured time from the earthquake.
About the time young Amos came along, Elijah had been translated and Elisha had probably completed most of his ministry. Amos the sheepherder was also called a gather of sycamore fruit (Amos 7:14). Sycamore fruit was a combination of mulberries and figs which produced a kind of a sick looking, very poor quality, little fruit. This half-breed fruit that was almost inedible could be used for animals, and some human beings would eat it also. So Amos was not an established tradesman; he was just a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. It was a very, very humble station, but God began giving him visions and a word.
Besides knowing Elisha, Amos probably knew Jonah because he lived at the very same time. Chances are that he knew Joel, since Amos also prophesies about the great locust plague. Some believe that is the same locust plague of which Joel prophesied—the locusts that would come and strip down the vineyards of the Lord. The two of them were probably contemporaries and had seen the same visions and prophesied them.
In addition to that, as Amos was preaching the word of the Lord, he also had a young contemporary by the name of Hosea. Hosea was one of the last prophets really raised up to preach to Israel. Amos was from Judah, but he prophesied to the people in Israel. Some prophets prophesied to the northern tribes, but most of them were prophesying to the kingdom of Judah. Keep in mind the division of these tribes that existed.
It had been two hundred years since the northern tribes had broken off from the southern tribes, and God had sent messages to each one. The people in the north drifted away from God much quicker than the people in the south; consequently, the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdoms completely and came right down to the gates of Jerusalem. But Isaiah prophesied against the Assyrians and Sennacherib, their king, and one hundred eighty-five thousand of his choice soldiers were slain by the angel of the Lord in one night. Sennacherib went back only to be assassinated by his own son after this awful disaster. Isaiah kept prophesying, “Don’t be afraid of the Assyrians because God is going to stop them,” and He did. Isaiah and Micah came on the scene right after Amos had prophesied.
There was only a thirty-year interval from the time that Amos prophesied the word of the Lord at Bethel until the Assyrians destroyed them completely. The miracles of God delivering Judah had not taken place for Israel. They were wiped out. Destruction as outlined in the book of Amos was total. The judgments of God were thorough.
In reading the Old Testament one cannot help but see the contrast there to what we are experiencing today. They were almost without hope, except the prophet would lift up his eyes and look way off through the centuries and see the day of the kingdom that is yet to come. That was the only hope they had, for the immediate future held nothing but utter destruction. God had seen them fail utterly under the law and so He brought them down to total destruction. But now, under the grace of God, as we are believing by faith, a remnant is going to walk in the blessings of the Lord.
Reading this in the Old Testament, I rejoice that we are living at this end of history when God is opening the door for us to have real deliverance. There will be days as dark as anything ever described in the Old Testament prophets, but it is not without hope. “Then I raised up some of your sons to be prophets and some of your young men to be Nazirites. Is this not so, O sons of Israel?” declares the Lord. “But you made the Nazirites drink wine, and you commanded the prophets saying, ‘You shall not prophesy!’ ” Amos 2:11, 12. Even when God raised up men the people wouldn’t have them; they didn’t want them.
Amos said, as he spoke about the terrible destructions coming: If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it? Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy? Amos 3:6–8.
The Lord God has sworn by His holiness, “Behold, the days are coming upon you when they will take you away with meat hooks. And the last of you with fish hooks. You will go out through breaches in the walls, each one straight before her, and you will be cast to Harmon,” declares the Lord. Amos 4:2–3. That was literally fulfilled. The Assyrians were notorious for this: they would take meat hooks (in some cases when they ran out of meat hooks they used fish hooks) and run them through the lips of their captives. That was the way they led them off because the captives couldn’t get the hook out and so it made them very willing followers. They led them straight out through the breeches in the wall. This was literally fulfilled, exactly as Amos prophesied it would be. God did everything Amos had said to them.
“And furthermore, I withheld the rain from you while there were still three months until harvest. Then I would send rain on one city and on another city I would not send rain; one part would be rained on, while the part not rained on would dry up. So two or three cities would stagger to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the Lord. Amos 4:7–8. Jonah was a little more successful. The ancient world of Nineveh had a spectacle that was interesting. They took the human skulls of the peoples they had conquered and built them up into a pyramid. Anyone who came to Nineveh could see those white skulls, the sun shining on them, for a long distance. The Ninevites were a fierce people, yet they repented and humbled themselves under Jonah.
God’s people who won’t humble themselves will come out on the bad end of things every time. They will be judged more fiercely, more drastically for not repenting than a sinner out in the world who humbles himself before God. God resists the proud and He will deal with that pride of heart and bring it down every time. There is a contrast of what happened in the contemporary times of Jonah and the prophet Amos: Amos preached and they wouldn’t listen. Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria, Amos 6:1a. In Judah, up in Mount Zion, and in Samaria, there were those who were at ease. They wouldn’t listen to what God had to say; yet Amos said it was going to happen to them so quickly they would hardly be able to believe it.
Amos received a vision and the Lord said to him, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold I am about to put a plumb line n the midst of my people Israel. I will spare them no longer. The high places of Isaac will be desolated and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste. Then shall I rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is unable to endure all his words. Amos 7:8–10. In this day the people are going to say the same thing of the word of the Lord: the land is unable to endure all his words. God has a lot of words to speak.
“For thus Amos says, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile.’ ” Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah, and there eat bread and there do your prophesying! But no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence” (This priest came rebuking him to send him away).
Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord said to me, ‘Go prophesy to My people Israel.’ And now hear the word of the Lord: you are saying, ‘You shall not prophesy against Israel nor shall you preach against the house of Isaac.’ Therefore, thus say the Lord, ‘Your wife will become a harlot in the city, your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword, your land will be parceled up by a measuring line, and you yourself will die upon unclean soil. Moreover, Israel will certainly go from its land into exile.’ ” Amos 7:11–17.
Just imagine a man coming and speaking things like that during such a time of prosperity and ease. What does Amos call them? “The cattle of Samaria,” in other words, they were ready for the slaughter. Hear this word you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring now, that we may drink!” Amos 4:1. In other words, he calls these prosperous old dames of Samaria, “cows of Bashan,” saying they were ready for the slaughter. They had been mincing around like the greatest in the world, but God was saying, “Go ahead. You are coming to your end and that right sudden.” There wasn’t anyone who escaped this judgment.
“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.” Amos 8:11–13. Amos was pointing out that the people weren’t listening to what God had to say and the time would come when people would look to find a word from God; they would be anxious for it. Many times King Saul in the Old Testament turned away from the word of the Lord. The day finally came when God wasn’t speaking to him, and he went to Endor to find a witch to try to get some word, and she called Samuel from the dead to find out what was going to happen. Samuel’s prophecy was true, and the next day Saul died in battle.
The desire for a word from God would come to the people in Samaria but it would be too late. There would be a famine. They would search everywhere to find a word from the Lord. We quote this prophecy many times because in a sense it is being fulfilled today, but not as totally as it was then. There is a difference between the day of the Lord that is coming now and the day of the Lord that came to the people in Israel. It was a day of heaviness and there was no escape from it.
What we are facing is more like the prayer which the prophet brought, “In the midst of wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:2). A remnant is coming forth right now far greater than before. God is accomplishing His purposes. He is judging the Christian world for its apostasy. He is judging the nations of the world for their rejecting God. In that sense there is a close parallel to the day of the Lord, the day of judgment coming upon us now as it did then. There is this difference: we are with so much hope and so much promise of the positive thing God is doing. Even while one day is coming to a close in darkness, God has already caused the light of a new day to spring forth in a whole remnant of people. All over the face of the earth it is beginning to happen. You are among those who have seen the light; God has opened it to your heart to see it.
Amos came to preach to the people who had been separated from the king of Judah, from the worship in the temple for two hundred years. There seemed to be no hope that they would ever come back because God was saying that He was going to destroy them and bring them into captivity. And He did—within thirty years it happened. Amos was grieving in his heart. God had started out with twelve tribes of people and now ten of them were gone, and two would remain for a few more years.
He began to mourn, and God brought a message telling him what He was going to do, because they were concerned about the House of David being the reigning line. “In that day (way down in the future) I will raise up the fallen booth of David, and wall up its breeches; 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. Amos 9:11–12.
This passage is never quoted until the fifteenth chapter of Acts, when they had a council in Jerusalem because many of the Jews insisted that the Christian converts be circumcised and keep the Mosaic Law. That was a prohibition which they did not accept. And the prophet’s word came quoting out of the book of Amos: “It will come to pass that I will build again the tabernacle of David that has fallen and the nations will come into it.” That means the Jews and the Gentiles would all come into this tabernacle of David. What was the real meaning of it? In the Old Testament tabernacle, built under Moses, there was an exclusion of the Gentiles. There was an outer court in which the women could come, but the Gentiles simply didn’t come in. This was still followed in New Testament times and a riot began because Paul had brought a Gentile into the temple. This was a very strong point.
But at one point in history this was not so—the time when David had brought the ark of the covenant back from the Philistines. He built a tabernacle in Jerusalem and kept the ark of the covenant and presence of the Lord there. They weren’t interested in the old rituals; it was a large open tabernacle, a tent, and they continually offered up sacrifices. There was no exclusiveness about it. The word comes to Amos: “I’m going to build again the tabernacle of David and the Gentiles and nations will be gathered into this also.”
This prophecy is most significant because God was going to destroy ten of the tribes, and Judah was coming into judgment. The prophet looked on and saw this in the distant future. He saw that God was going to open the door for everyone, all races, all people. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28. He opened the door for all of us to participate equally.
The tabernacle of David is being restored out of its ruins. People come and stand before the presence of the Lord, make their sacrifices, worship together, and it doesn’t matter who they are. We are living in the day that Amos saw. We are living in a day of real liberation for the people of the Lord.
I can’t go through the book of Amos without saying, “Thank God I am not living in Old Testament times.” Even looking at a hundred years ago I say, “Thank God I’m not in that day.” You may lament and say, “This is a terrible day in which we live,” but it is the springboard into the greatest period that the world has ever known. You may say, “What about all these other things?” God will bring them all down. It is no more of a challenge for God to bring down these corrupt systems about us than it was to wipe out beautiful, prosperous Samaria with one stroke of His hand. He can do it!
We may be in a day of judgments, but we are also in a day of new beginnings, new blessings. Another age is coming with the mercy and the grace of God. From all nations and all races there are people now standing and worshiping the Lord in the tabernacle of David that is being rebuilt because they know that the King is coming back. Our Lord is returning to this earth again. The kingdom of God is going to be set up and we’re going to worship Him.
He brings the promise. “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; and the mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills will be dissolved. And I will restore the captivity of My people Israel (the margin reads: I will restore the “fortunes” 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 9:13–15. Some would apply this only to natural Israel and Palestine, and I’m sure there is a realm of fulfillment there, but I know the real fulfillment lies in the realm of the spirit.
Today you can say, “What advantage would there be for me to be a Gentile? I would rather be a Jew.” I don’t think it makes any difference what you are, for the Scripture says “There is no other name given among men whereby ye must be save” (Acts 4:12). It doesn’t make any difference who you are or what your racial background is because you can go to hell just as fast being a Jew as you can being a Gentile. God is saying, “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; circumcision is that of the heart” (Romans 2:29). We are the true circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3. This is Scripture, and we believe it. We have been brought into the tabernacle of David as the true Israel of God.
The time Amos saw is really coming, and he didn’t see it only for Israelites after the flesh. He saw the judgments coming upon them, but he saw this day when the nations would be gathered into the tabernacle of David which would be built up again. He spoke of the day in which we are living, especially when he spoke concerning the rapidity with which things happen. “The plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes overtake the one who sows seed.” (Amos 9:13).
How can the treader of grapes overtake the one who is sowing seed? Because while sowing the seed, it is springing up so fast that the next phase of harvest is taking place almost simultaneously. How would we apply that spiritually? In one service the Lord could plant the seed in someone’s heart and you could see that person move into experience after experience and come into a walk with God, whereas it used to take months and years to happen. Don’t think that it takes a long time to make a saint; it only takes an open heart to walk with God. God can lead as fast as you want to go, because this is the time that the treader of grapes is going to overcome him who sows the seed. The plowman will overtake the reaper. God keeps moving so that there is no seasonal distinction—one thing is happening just as rapidly as the next.
I am not limited in my growth by time. I am only limited by the openness in my heart to God. If I will let Him, He can do as much in my heart in one month as formerly happened to people in years and years of their lives. The early church saw people filled with the Holy Spirit while the Apostles were talking, and this is happening now as rapidly as then.
The events at the house of Cornelius and the day of Pentecost were ten years apart. It was a long time before those disciples understood that God loved the Gentiles and was going to bless and minister to them also. When Peter went back to Jerusalem, the other apostles questioned him, saying, “Why are you going to the Gentiles?” He answered, “God gave them the Holy Spirit exactly like He gave us in the beginning.” Then they all rejoiced together, “Well, that’s fine if that’s what they Lord is doing,” but they still did not grasp the idea that Jesus had died for all men. The church was ten years old and they had still been trying to convert only Jews to the Lord. Suddenly the Lord broke over all the boundaries.
Paul had been in Antioch of Syria where a great church was started. Antioch was the third largest of the ancient cities; many people were gathered there, and all opened up to the Lord. When it was heard that the Gentiles were believing there, Barnabas was sent up to exhort and encourage them. It was something new—the church already being ten years old before a Gentile came into it.
In the fifteenth chapter of Acts it was all settled. The apostles had a council in Jerusalem and said, “God has raised up the tabernacle of David exactly like Amos prophesied and everyone is allowed into it—Gentiles and all. So, let’s not lay any burden of the Law upon these Gentiles. Let them be free. Let them serve Jesus Christ and not put upon them the bondage of Moses.”
Today, God is saying to us, “Open your hearts to one another. You can grow as quickly as you want to grow. What you are and your background have nothing to do with it.” Open your hearts to God and He will love you. The tabernacle of David is built and now everyone may come into it.