Amos begins his preaching to the northern kingdom in a clever way. Not clever with deceit, but with a disarming cleverness. He first proclaims the judgments coming on the neighboring enemies of Israel: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites, and Moab. He even declares he southern kingdom is targeted for judgment.

About one hundred years before the northern kingdom was carried into exile by Assyrian armies, and just two years before the earthquake, the Lion roared from Zion. Yahweh raised up and sent his prophet, Amos of Tekoa, into the northern kingdom to announce a coming inescapable judgment. Exile.
Amos, a rural sheep herder and dresser of sycamore figs, was an unlikely choice for the Lion’s roar. Not only was he a country farmer sent to preach against an urban decadence that was crushing the poor, he was also from the southern kingdom of Judah. With Amos the Lord was about to smuggle an outsider into the north because Israel had officially silenced their own prophets (2:12). Jeroboam would try to silence Amos too (7:10-17).
Amos begins his preaching to the northern kingdom in a clever way. Not clever with deceit, but with a disarming cleverness. He first proclaims the judgments coming on the neighboring enemies of Israel: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites, and Moab. He even declares he southern kingdom is targeted for judgment.
All of this perfectly paced to get Israel listening. They might welcome a new prophet after all, if he speaks to their advantage. But then, cleverly mentioning them last, the northern kingdom becomes the chief concern of Amos’s word of doom.
What entrenched and multiplied transgressions brings the Lord to come against his own people? In a word, oppression. In more words, oppression of the poor by an unchecked appetite for luxury and leisure.
The wealthy and powerful of Israel – and those who wish to be – “sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” (2:6). They “trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted” (2:7).
Read More
Related Posts:

We, therefore, are the ones who must be changed in order to suit the world, not the other way around. Thankfully, this is the very thing God has promised to do in the new birth. Through the giving of His Son and the pouring out of His Spirit, God has begun a new creation in the hearts of His people that will not be eclipsed by sin or decay.

As is the case today, so it was true in the ancient world that pagan creation myths begin with chaos. Whether we think of Marduk subjugating the Babylonian deities to create the sky and earth, or the Darwinian forces of natural selection working to bring order out of an inherently disordered universe, pagan thinking always begins with rivalry. The order we perceive throughout the cosmos, in other words, is not the result of sovereign and almighty wisdom, but rather the conclusion of a violent struggle between competing powers. And the strongest wins. “Might makes right,” to the unbelieving mind.
The Scriptures, however, turn this pattern on its head. In contrast to the fundamentally chaotic character of both ancient and modern pagan thought, the Bible presents God as He truly is: the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. As the repeated phrase “And God said…And it was so” demonstrates with sterling clarity, the God of the Bible contends with no one for His seat on the throne of the universe. He simply speaks and reality is shaped according to His will:
Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. (Ps. 33:8)
Read More
Related Posts:

She is up to her gills in religion. And her religion is of course radical environmentalism. She worships at that altar, and wants all of us to do the same. For many people today who have thrown out the one true God, the vacuum is replaced by various substitutes. Hardcore green religion is one of them. We all need to live for something greater than ourselves, and if we reject the one who created us, then we run with cheap imitations.

Yes, I realise that honorary degrees are usually not worth the paper they are printed on, but in what has got to be the joke of the decade, climate alarmist Greta Thunberg is to be awarded an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Helsinki!
The 20 year old Swede has already been honoured with a doctorate by the Belgian University of Mons, and was named Time’s ‘person of the year’ in 2019. She is held up by many as our only hope. About the only accolade left is to proclaim her to be the long-awaited Messiah.
It seems to me that Thunberg does not have a theological bone in her body – certainly not any Christian ones. Yet here we have another woke university declaring that she might be Scandinavia’s greatest theologian – if not the world’s. Wow, not bad for a day’s work.
Theology, as I might need to remind some folks, is a word easily broken down. It has to do with the study of God. I am not sure what contributions young Greta has made to that field of study. None, I suspect. But now we must esteem her as some great mind – some great academic.
But as far as I know, she has not even finished a bachelor’s degree. And I am not sure how hot she was even in her high school studies. But none of that matters. In our PoMo world image triumphs over substance any day of the week. Never mind that she basically runs with a script spoon fed to her by her leftist parents. She is now to be bowed down to with her every word taken as gospel.
However, to insist that she is not some renown Christian theologian is NOT to say she is not religious. She is up to her gills in religion. And her religion is of course radical environmentalism. She worships at that altar, and wants all of us to do the same.
For many people today who have thrown out the one true God, the vacuum is replaced by various substitutes. Hardcore green religion is one of them. We all need to live for something greater than ourselves, and if we reject the one who created us, then we run with cheap imitations.
Worshipping Mother Earth or Gaia or Deep Green spirituality is one way to proceed. And this is not new: we have always been looking for alternative religions to embrace. Back in 1982 American sociologist Robert Nisbet (died 1996), remarked that environmentalism has become the third great redemptive movement in human history, following Christianity and Marxism. As he wrote in Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Harvard University Press):
From the Gospel of Capitalist Efficiency to the Gospel of Utopianism’ would serve very well as subtitle here. It is entirely possible that when the history of the twentieth century is finally written, the single most important social movement of the period will be judged to be environmentalism.
Read More
Related Posts: