(In our studies of Amos references to Charles Lee Feinberg [1909-1995] come from The Minor Prophets, Moody
Press: Chicago, 1976. Dr. Feinberg
earned numerous degrees including Th. D
from Dallas Seminary and Ph. D in
Archaeology and Semitic Languages from Johns Hopkins University. He was a scholar, deeply devoted to Christ
and to the Bible as God’s inerrant word.)
In our prophecy
blogs we are going to study Amos because I believe it to be especially
pertinent to the United States, the Western world, and the world at large. Amos world is quite like the world
today. Let me explain.
Amos was among
the sheepbreeders of Tekoa (1:1) who tended the sheep and additionally
cared for an orchard of sycamore trees.
He was a hard working man who likely also owned his sheep as well as
having responsibility for their care.
What he was not by birth was a prophet
(7:14). He apparently spoke for God at a
particular time and for a brief time, taking His message to the people of
Israel. Which is interesting because he
was from Tekoa, a city of Judah about 12 miles SE of Jerusalem. He was sent to Bethel, about 20 miles N of
Jerusalem (7:10,13). Bethel was the
primary place of idolatrous worship in the Northern Kingdom (there were two
locations, Bethel and Dan).
The prophetic ministry of Amos took place
during a time of great prosperity in both Judah and Israel. Uzziah (also known as Azariah) had become
king in Judah in the fourteenth of forty-one years of Jeroboam’s reign in
Israel. It was a time when agriculture was
booming, the housing market was on an upswing, and many people lived in luxury
with an excess of discretionary funds.
My observation of my own country (the USA) is
that we are just like this. And I say
this as a political conservative who doesn’t like the way the current president
(Obama) has managed the economy. And yet
I will say that, for me and for the people I know, we seem to have no shortage
of ability to own and maintain a lot of things that we could get along without
if we needed to. This is not a complaint
about how people have and use money. It
is just an observation.
What we know from Israel is that when they
prospered they became lukewarm in their religion and then tended to turn to
idols. They had no time for God and His
word. And that is how it is in Amos’
days as well as in my day (now!).
Further, Amos prophesied two years before the earthquake, a natural catastrophe
of such magnitude that over 200 years later Zechariah was talking about it
(Zech. 14:4-5; Feinberg p87). In their
prosperity, no one thought to see this event as God’s call to turn to Him. And that also reminds me of my country.
So let us hear the word of the Lord through
this businessman/laborer/part-time-prophet.
Through him the Lord roars from
Zion.
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