Amos 5:18 - Forerunner Commentary

Amos 5:18

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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain Amos 5:18:

Amos 5:16-20
Excerpted from: Self-Government and Responsibility (Part Three)

Amos is describing an unrelenting awareness of pressure that people are feeling as the Tribulation develops. The people are in a situation like all of us have experienced at one time or another in the course of a bad dream. You are lying on your bed, soundly asleep. Your mind is going at 60 miles an hour, as they say. You find yourself in this dream, almost as if you are surrounded on every side. There is some pressure visible or invisible to you (at least in the dream). It might be a lion. It might be a bear. It might be a man with a rifle or a shotgun or a knife pursuing you. The animal is pursuing you and you lack the strength to do anything. It is as if you are running through a lake of molasses. You can hardly pick up your feet and this thing is terrorizing you. You know that at any second it is going to come down on you and you are going to lose your life.

That is the kind of situation Amos is talking about here. Wave after wave of distress, of intense pressure is coming upon people. He describes it as being as if you are out for a walk when suddenly a lion confronts you. What do you do when you are confronted by a lion? You get out of there as fast as you can and you run! Finally, you breathlessly get to the place where the lion is no longer chasing you. You feel as though you have escaped him. You begin to let down your guard. Then there is a bear and the bear takes off after you. You run and run and run again. Maybe this time you climb a tree or something. You are barely out of the bear's reach. He is pawing away at you until he finally gets tired of the game and leaves the area. As you come down out of the tree, you spot a little cottage or something over there. You feel that if you can just get inside of that, you are going to be safe. You go inside, shut the door behind you, heave a sigh of relief, lean against the wall in exhaustion...and a snake comes out and bites you. Your place of safety turns out to be fatal.

Amos 5:18-19
Excerpted from: A Place of Safety? (Part 1)

It is almost as if Israel is left without a future. Indeed, unless God intervened, there would be no future for Israel. There would be no future for mankind. That is how bad the times are going to be.

Can you imagine how terrifying that would be? If you are in a place where a lion is—you are out of your element; you are in the lion's element. He has the advantage, he is on home territory, and you are in his territory. You are the stranger. You are the intruder there. All by itself that is enough to give a person a feeling of insecurity and then comes the roar of a lion—your hair stands up on end, your loins begin to quake. "Where was he? Where is he now? Is he creeping up on me? There he is! RUN. . .(pant, pant, pant, pant)." You know, you are just out of breath. "Oh I escaped him, I escaped him." And just as you feel safe again. . .

If that is not bad enough—if a lion is not bad enough—how about a bear? Think you can outrun a bear? A bear can run much faster than you can, especially after you just escaped from a lion. "I'll go up a tree." A bear can come up after you—all several hundred pounds of him, if he wants to. Well, you escape the bear and then. . .

That is not a very happy picture. I think that God is trying to draw our attention to the kind of times that are coming. They will be unrelenting in their terror—to such an extent that unless He intervened—"no flesh would be saved alive." Now we have to put ourselves into this. Is God able to protect us in a time like this? Yes, he can.

Articles
Clouds (Part Three): The Revealing of Christ
Do You Desire the Day of the Lord?
Power Belongs to God (Part One)
Prepare to Meet Your God! (Part Seven): The Prophesied Blow Falls
The End Is Not Yet
The Goodness and Severity of God (Part Two)  (2)
Unity and Personal Responsibility

Booklets
Prepare to Meet Your God! (The Book of Amos) (Part Two)

Essays
Why Is Hope Delayed?

Sermons
We Give Our Heads and Hearts
Don't Be Indifferent (1995)
Preparing for Bad Times (Part 2)
Lamentations (Part Two; 1989)
Power Belongs to God (Part 1)
Unity and Our Responsibilities
Don't Be Indifferent
The Goodness and Severity of God
The Book of Joel (Part One)
Lamentations (Part Two)
Lamentations (Part Three)
Don't Be Indifferent
Amos (Part Nine)

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