AP

Amos 9:10  All the sinners among my people will die by the sword, all those who say, ‘Disaster will not overtake or meet us.’

Amos’ prophecy is very confronting, with particular application to our own generation.  A persistent belief embedded in our present culture, and to which our children and grandchildren are constantly subjected, is that ‘God’ is whatever we may shape him to be, and we have no room in our thinking for the true God who has revealed himself so clearly and unambiguously in his Creation, in his Written Word the Bible, and in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

There was a time (in my lifetime) when the fear of accountability and Final Judgement was a strong incentive for taking the claims of Jesus seriously – but that time has now gone.  It may have been a less than honourable motive to try to scare people into heaven, and perhaps should not have been part of ‘Evangelism 101’, but if it was the means God used to rescue many people from eternal separation from him in hell then it should not be rejected because of its unpopularity.  Amos was a very unpopular prophet. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, said of him, “The land cannot bear all his words”, and said to him:“Get out, you seer!  Go back to the land of Judah.  Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.  Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom” (see 7:10-13).  Today, we would just call him ‘Un-Australian’!

The very first thing we must do to be saved, i.e. to put our trust in Jesus as our Saviour, is to admit that we are sinners who need a Saviour!  If we prefer to be like the people to whom God sent Amos, and to convince ourselves that the ‘God’ we have created in our own minds is only a God of love, and that ‘disaster will not overtake or meet us’ then we will never turn to Jesus and be saved!  The trouble with that approach, as it was in Amos’ day, is that it is not the real, true situation, but only a figment of our own imagination – and it puts us in a hopeless situation when the Day of Judgement comes.  Many years ago, I heard a Christian debating with an Atheist on ABC Radio and the Christian’s final comment was telling: “When we die, I’d rather be me if you’re right than you if I’m right!”

– Bruce Christian