the wickedness of God’s end-time people and their covenant curses

[dennis]

As an early written prophecy against God’s people Israel, that of Amos against Israel’s Northern
Kingdom predicts many covenant curses pertaining to the Sinai Covenant that overtook them in
his day. Just as their transgressions that provoked the onset of covenant curses are generic to any
wicked generation, however, so they foreshadow the wickedness of God’s end-time people. If we
fail to apply these prophecies to ourselves for our own profit and learning, therefore—by simply
relegating them to Amos’ day and moving on—then the point of their preservation in our day is
lost and we aren’t taking God’s warning. Conversely, when we see similar kinds of misfortunes
occurring in our day but without perceiving them as covenant curses, then it can truly be said we
are living in a trancelike state of self-deception and are no better than the Israel of Amos’ day.
While the setting of Amos’ prophecies is indigenous to his day, as we read about the kinds of
evils existing then and the consequences they brought about, we are best served by transposing
them into their modern-day equivalents. Ancient names can serve as codenames as all things
have their end-time parallels. We begin with God’s people’s growing spiritually negligent and
despising those who speak the truth. One result is that God removes his truth from them: They have
despised the law of the Lord, and have not kept his commandments, and their lies caused them to
err, after which their fathers have walked” (Amos 2:4); “The days come, saith the Lord God, 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 Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east,
they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8:11–12)
The Lord inflicts his people with scarcity, drought, and pestilence to persuade them to remember
him: “I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your
places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.
The songs of the temple shall be howlings
in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast
them forth with silence” (Amos 8:3).

[dennis]

quote from Avraham Gileadi offers insights and commentary