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The message of judgment for sins has always been unpopular with those who want to run their own lives.  It still is.  But the fact remains:  No matter how much we try to put off or forget judgment, it will still occur, right on schedule—both in this world and the next. Judgment for rebellion is no pleasant thought when the Judge is a just God who keeps a very detailed, specific record of every thought and every action we’ve ever known.  The prophet Amos warned the northern kingdom of Israel that impending doom was near.  He had cried out,

“Woe to them that are at ease in Zion…that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock…That chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music…That drink wine in bowls, and…are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that go captive…The Lord GOD hath sworn by himself…therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein…For, behold, the LORD …will smite the great house with breaches…for ye have turned judgment into gall…behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith the LORD the God of hosts; and they shall afflict you…”

(Amos 6: 1-14)

But Israel scoffed at Amos’ words.  In spite of increasing disease and frightful storms, the nation still didn’t really think these were “the beginning of sorrows”.  They thought “somebody will get a handle on this economy…someone will come up with a cure for this rampant disease.”  (Sounds like our sexually transmitted diseases, like AIDS, doesn’t it?)  “After all,” they said, “this Amos-guy doesn’t even have a college degree!  What could he know about judgment from God?”

But Amos faithfully kept trying to warn them.  He cried against their refusal to consider their Godly heritage.  He warned them that God was saying to them:

“You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities…”

(Amos 3:2)

 In other words, “to whom much is given, much is required”.  He cried against the church declaring that, because they would not proclaim the truth to God’s people, “…they know not to do right…”  (Amos 3:10)  He warned them that this compromising of the words of God would bring,

“… a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD…”

(Amos 8:11)

How true of America!  You don’t have to sit in the average church very long before you see and hear God-sickening nakedness and stories of where so-called Christians were the night before—and what they were doing.  Oh, God help us, how much like Amos’ day we are!!

America’s Founding Fathers warned us what would happen if we ignored God’s moral and civil laws.  George Mason, warned us at our Constitutional Convention,

“As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this [one]. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.”

(Mason, George. August 22, 1787, in addressing the Continental Congress. James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 [1787, reprinted NY: W.W. Norton Co., 1987], p. 504. Marshall Foster and Mary-Elaine Swanson, The American Covenant—The Untold Story [Roseburg, OR: Foundation for Christian Self-Government, 1981; Thousand Oaks, CA: The Mayflower Institute, 1983, 1992], p. 142.)

The Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C.—just as Amos had warned 30 years earlier.  Will we refuse God’s warnings until it is too late?

Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children!  And you won’t like what that brings to you.  I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.