First let's get something clear about erroneous notions of Paul and his founding a new religion, which he didn't. True, the halakhah of his Judaism switched from the Pharisaic oral law to the Ruach Hakodesh, but his religion was still one of the Judaisms of the time, not a new non-Judaism Gentile religion.

Amos preached around 760 B.C. (before Micah's ministry began,

though Isaiah, Hoses, Amos, Micah and Jonah are all prophets of the

same general time period). From Dan (the farthest point north) to

Beersheba (the farthest point south) there were pagan centers of

worship. Bethel and Gilgal had also become perverted into places

boasting of idol temple sanctuaries, Bethel itself being

the royal pagan sanctuary of King Jeroboam II (782-753 B.C.) with

Amaziah his official priest (see 7:10-13; 4:4; 8:14). The northern

kingdom was enjoying great military, political, and economic

prosperity and success at this time, and the idol shrines were

well supported and maintained with pride. G-d raised up a country

prophet, a raiser of sheep and a cultivator of figs from Tekoa, a

small town six miles south of Jerusalem. G-d called him to leave

Judah and gave him a short-term shlichus or mission

to the foreign kingdom of Israel. The burden of his message from

G-d was that the Exile was coming and that the people must repent

of sin, injustice, immorality, drunkenness, and idolatry or

perish in the coming conflagration. The people of the northern

kingdom of Israel had created and were exploiting an underclass

and G-d was angry and was on His way to bring judgment. Amos'

preaching got him into conflict with the religious authorities

and caused him to be thrown out of the national cult shrine of

their false religion (see Amos chp. 7).

A minister does not necessarily earn his living from the ministry. In fact, there are times

when G-d appoints (and the people of G-d acknowledge His

appointment) of an individual, but at the same time G-d wants the

person to keep economically independent of the ordained clergy.

Such a person has a secular income-earning vocation but also a

prophetic mission. Such a person was Amos. Amos was secularly

employed, a shepherd who had to hold down two jobs while

idolatrous kohanim (as immoral as bribe-taking judges) preached

bland messages in order not to lose their backslidden tithers and

lucrative positions. It often happens that backslidden

denominations and religious movements corrupt their dedicated

elite and then attempt to silence their true prophets (2:11-12;

5:10), since the prophets represent the true G-d of the

poor-in-spirit who are hungry for something more than empty

formalism. In Amos' day the kohanim's toleration of the immorality

of the population left everyone oblivious to the deteriorating

moral condition of society, making it like a basket of fruit,

ripe for G-d's destruction (8:1-3). And so it is today in those

countries where abortion stockyards make people worse than

cannibals (who it seems don't normally butcher their own flesh

and blood), and where the poor, although loved by G-d, are

treated like scum by the immoral rich, who are preoccupied with

materialistic and sensual goals. Fortunes are extracted from the

life-blood and sweat of the poor who must try to keep their heads

above water in a suffocating climate of greed. The poor barely get

a chance to breathe before the greedy landlords and unjust

merchants and employers and judges pull them under again (2:6-8;

4:1). The message of this book is that the indulgent life of the

wicked privileged will come to an end, as surely as it did for

Nazi Germany (see 3:15; 5:11; 6:4-6).

At the call of G-d Amos left his home in Judaea as a mere lay

maggid (preacher) without any ecclesiastical authorization or

status as a recognized prophet. He refused to be intimidated by

the apostate religious leader, Amaziah. Amos predicted Amaziah's

wife would become a prostitute when foreign armies invaded

Amaziah's "parish" and this corrupt priest would see all that he

possessed taken from him as he was dragged off to the unclean

lands of the heathen (7:10-17). Amos in effect says to him, Fear,

G-d, maggid (preacher)! When G-d defrocks you, Amaziah, you will

know it! It is worth noting in passing that, in the tradition of

Amos, and to protect himself from his critics (who were quick to

challenge his motives), as well as to give himself travel and

monetary independence, Shliach Sha'ul refused to take a salary

for preaching the Besuras Hageulah (though he did, on occasion,

accept free-will offering support, especially when he was in

prison).

Amos broke from the tradition (I Sam. 9:7; Micah 3:11) that a

prophet should be remunerated in some way before being consulted.

Amos refused to let himself be cast in the role of "organization

man". Amos refused to be a spokesman for the evil political and

religious establishment, the type of spokesmen that preach for

pay or position and say only what their employers want to hear.

Rather, in the tradition of Micaiah ben Imlah (I Kg. 22:14), Amos

could speak only the word that the L-rd gave him, and took no

"professional remuneration" since G-d alone was his boss and

pay-master. This tent-making preacher model is

especially useful when the paying religious institutions are

wicked and Scripturally aberrant as they were in the northern

kingdom with its calf-idol cult of the renegade non-Davidic King

Jeroboam II and its Baal heresy. However, this is not the same as

proud and unteachable charismatic "prophets" who disguise their

independent carnality and rebellious immaturity with an "I don't

listen to men but to G-d" attitude in defiance of Hebrews 13:17

which says, "Obey your leaders."

Amos was called for a short term shlichus or mission

(his ministry as it is recorded is only a single year's

work). He had to leave his native land and go to another nation

(for Israel was divided into two kingdoms at this time). He had a

very hard message to proclaim: that the dynasty and the

unbiblical religious shrine and the entire population of the king

(Jeroboam II) would be uprooted and destroyed (7:9,11).

Naturally, this was a dangerous message sure to cause Amos

resistance from the "establishment" political and religious

leaders of the land. One of the reasons Amos was listened to is

because he spoke of an earthquake (8:8) two years before it

happened (1:1), just as he spoke of the exile of the nothern

kingdom (760 B.C.) nearly 40 years before it happened (722-721

B.C.E) at the hands of Assyria (which Amos does not name).

There are those who would reduce our faith to an observance of

days (Sundays), rituals (hymns and pew calisthenics), and

doctrines (dead orthodoxy), a purely religious Besuras Hageulah

as opposed to a "social" Besuras Hageulah. Amos opposes them,

declaring that political and religious and social corruption must

not go unchallenged by true believers. The poor must be aided and

the legal corruption must be confronted, whether it be judges who

take bribes or land grabbing money grubbers who turn farmers into

serfs. Of course, liberal Brit Chadasha kehillah leaders have

used Amos as a retreat from the fundamental Besuras Hageulah of

salvation from gehinnom through faith alone in the korban kaporah of Moshiach

Yehoshua, and have preached Amos as their key text for a works

righteousness universalist message. But the

true Besuras Hageulah is not an either/or religious/social

Besuras Hageulah, but a both/and religious/social Besuras

Hageulah (Moshiach Yehoshua did kiruv ministry but he also fed and

healed the poor).

It has been said that most evangelicals in

America have never experienced a true Biblical spiritual turn-around as far

as deliverance from the world is concerned. There are those who think that because

they are religious, G-d will accept any kind of behavior from

them. They love any religion that doesn't require the new life of

G-d from them! (Therefore, their religion teaches them to

transgress--4:4-5--and at its center is rebellion against the G-d

of regenerated humanity.) They profess to be regenerated and that

once saved, they are always saved; therefore, they can get away

with high-handed (presumptuous) sin. Although they are bored with

G-d (8:5), they believe that religious observance safeguards

them so that they can eat, drink, do with their bodies anything,

go with their friends anywhere, do anything, and get away with it

because they are religious. Then, just when these religious

hypocrites are settling down to their antinomian "cheap grace"

and empty religious formalism, Amos steps in and says "You fat

cows of Bashan...All the sinners of My people shall perish by the

sword, who boast, 'Never shall the evil overtake us or come near

us.' Yes, you alone have I singled out and known of all the

peoples of the earth; therefore (instead of holding you

unaccountable to live anyway you like), I will call you to

account and punish you for all your sins!" (see 4:1; 9:10; 3:2).

The people of Amos's day had a popular theology that said nothing

bad could happen to them because they were religious. They

thought they would be the survivors, the remnant, no matter what

happened. The people had an eschatology that they were the remnant and the day of the L-rd

would be bliss for them and trouble for everyone

else. Amos said, in effect, "Remnant? O yes,

there will be a remnant--what's left of a finger

after the L-rd slams the car door on it!" (See 3:12.) "Behold,

the L-rd G-d has His eye upon the sinful kingdom: I will wipe it

off the face of the earth!" (9:8). With uncompromising radicalism

he meets the superficial religiousity of his contemporaries who

have grown self-sufficient and comfortable in their smug

ritualism and worldliness. He did not let the stubborn resistance

of his audience stop him. He criticized the shallow doctrines of

assurance and the last days in vogue in his day ("you who put far

away the evil Day (of the L-rd) and bring near the status quo

rule of violence"--6:3) and inverted them to point to the coming

judgment. He preached that mere outward religious practice could

not off-set their sinful lives, and that the End (HaKetz) was

coming, the day of the L-rd (8:2).

Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word, and since

the people Amos preached to had no taste for the Word of G-d but

wanted only to get their religion over so they could go home to

pursue their cut-throat materialism (8:5), Amos promises that G-d

will bring a famine of hearing the Word of G-d (8:11). That

famine, a judgment of G-d, has already descended on many places

in the world. Wherever the people are not open to a revival in

the Word they experience a famine of the withdrawal of the Word.

The people at this time were living in a society where the rich

were very rich and the poor were very poor and exploited. The

greed of the wealthy knew no bounds, drinking and adultery were

everywhere, and yet a hypocritical attempt was made to please G-d

by empty religious profession. But G-d knows the difference

between empty profession and a living faith at work in love to

help the poor (whether it be people who are poor in money or poor

in spirit).

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK: UTTERANCE AGAINST THE NATIONS,

ch. 1-2 Because of war crimes, G-d-angering deportations,

fratricidal conflicts, inhumane "overkill" kinds of outrages

against Israel, the nations living around Israel are ripe for

imminent judgment. But so is Judah for spurning the Word, and

Israel, for worshipping sex and money instead of G-d; also for

social exploitation of the poor. ("For two transgressions and for

four" means "for an ample number of offenses.")

JUDGMENT AGAINST ISRAEL, ch. 3-6

Hunger, drought, crop failure, contagious disease, natural

calamity are all part of the judgment of G-d on these wicked

people.

PROMISE OF RESTORATION AND BLESSING, chp. 9:11-15

See Chapter 5. The smaller farmer no

longer owns his own land (a sacred trust!); he is a tenant of the

urban class which is corrupting with bribes the serf's last court

of appeals protecting widows and orphans, the court at the

village gate. For Amos the court in the village gate is the

central institution in Israel (and constitutes Moshiach's picture

of the millenium, with disciples on thrones as a court of the

Messianic millennial kingdom). What G-d wants is righteousness in

the courts and marketplaces, not mere rituals in the shrine holy

buildings! Landless serfs did not exist as an economic class

much before the 8th century because prior to that time there were

fewer Ahabs and Jezebels to seize the land of the Naboths of

Israel (see I Kgs. 21). Land was a holy trust belonging to G-d

and leased by the families to be used to serve the L-rd. Small

landholders were now swallowed up by the large estates of the

commercial class, who had secularized their concept of land and

left G-d out of the picture entirely.

However, the people of his day lived in pride and thought

themselves invulnerable. Chapter 6 shows they had confidence in

their country because of momentary peace and prosperity due to a

fleeting international situation where their national enemies

were preoccupied (momentarily) elsewhere. Americans think they

made it through the World Wars and Viet Nam and they can go on

making it no matter how they live. Did Nazi Germany make it? Are

we with our abortion clinics and porno industry that much better

than they with their anti-Semitic literature and their ovens?

American homes where once the Bible was taught by G-d-fearing

fathers are now overrun with TV pornography, and, now, who feels

discomfort? "They drink straight from the wine bowls and anoint

themselves with the choicest oils--but they are not concerned

about the ruin of Joseph (6:6)."

(7:10) Amos had to fearlessly preach the revelation of G-d's

burning wrath against his people. Amos said, "I am not a

prophet" (7:14). He meant, that is, by profession! He meant he

was not a member of that economically sychophantic professional

clergy caste who attached themselves to a shrine or a political

leader and tamely prophesied disaster for national enemies and

prosperity for all their religious followers. When Amos said, "I

am not a prophet's son" (7:14), he meant he was not a trainee of

their devious theological schools!

Amos declared that you can't love G-d and money, no matter what

any maggid (preacher) tells you!

Amos today would preach on our streets. He would point at the

pimps and the drug dealers and the lurking muggers and criminals

and the brazen men who sexually assault women on the street with

their fiercely foul mouths.

The last four verses of Amos are quoted by Ya'akov in Ac 15:16;

the book of Ya'akov is also highly indebted to Amos. But the

point Ya'akov is making in Ac 15 is that wherever people turn to

Moshiach ben David the fallen wilderness hut of David is being

resurrected again to prepare for the ultimate salvation of Israel

and the world.

In Amos 9:8 G-d promises to preserve a She'erit (remnant) through

the coming judgment and to "raise up" (Akim "I will raise to

stand up i.e. even from the dead") David's fallen sukkah

(hut/booth/tent--9:11). This is a Messianic prophecy fulfilled

more literally and more gloriously than anyone ever expected.

AMOS 8:11

Behold, the days come, saith the L-rd G-d, that I will send a

famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for

water, but of hearing the words of the L-rd.