An Invitation to Destruction

Transcription of the sixth episode in Studies of the Book of Amos brought to you by Pastor Rusty Tardo.

You can listen to the series here.

“We're going to continue our studies in the Book of Amos, an 8th century BC prophet. I really, the more I read Amos, the more I realize how relevant his message is to America today. He could be Amos' prophet to America.

He really could. Because the times in which he lived, the times, the things that characterized Israel, so characterized the United States today. In fact, we'll see tonight even some further things that are remarkably similar to America today in the way God is dealt with Israel, and I believe the way he's dealing with us even now.

Let's pray. Father, we just thank You for being with us tonight, that You are here, Your presence is in our midst, that You are among us. And Father, we ask now that You would illumine our hearts and our minds, help us to understand, help us to grasp, help us to comprehend.

And Father, help us to apply the things that we learn to our lives today. Father, cause Your Word to just come alive in our hearts tonight. Just cause it to leap into our hearts and our understanding.

Let it not be the dry pages of a book of history, but Father, the relevant message of Christ to Your people today. And Father, help me to speak by Your anointing, I pray. We give You the glory, in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amos 3. Let's begin reading in verse 9.

We dealt with verses 1 through 8 last Wednesday night, so we're going to pick up here in verse 9. Publish in the palaces at Ashdod and in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumults in the midst thereof, and the oppression, the oppressed in the midst thereof. For they know not to do right, saith the Lord, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.

Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, an adversary there shall be, even round about the land, and he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled. Thus saith the Lord, as the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion, and two legs are a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed and in Damascus in a couch. Hear ye and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord God, the God of hosts, that in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground.

And I will smite the winter house with the summer house, and the houses of Ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the Lord. Now, in this passage, you want to keep in mind what we've read and studied so far. Amos is predicting judgment upon Israel.

He's already in chapters 1 and 2 predicted judgment upon all of the nations that surround Israel. Now, he's predicting judgment upon Israel itself. At the beginning of chapter 3, he reminded Israel that they have experienced all these great privileges, that they alone, he said in chapter 3, verse 2, you only have I known of all the families of the earth.

They were recipients of great privilege. They had the revelation of God. They alone had the covenant of God.

God dwelt only in Israel's midst in that unique sense. So they were people of privilege, and as a result of that privilege, they had great responsibility, responsibilities they had failed to uphold, and therefore, God was going to visit them with judgment. Keep in mind also that Israel at this time, in her history, was very wealthy.

They were dwelling in luxury and ease. You see the reference in verse 15 of the summer house and the winter house. They were so wealthy that at least the wealthier ruling class were enjoying summer homes.

They would go live in the mountains in the summer time, so it would be cooler, and they wouldn't have to put up with all of the heat of the desert, arid land. And in the winter time, they would come down and live in the valleys where it would be warmer and so forth. So they had their summer and winter homes.

It speaks of their great houses. They lived in luxury. Also, you see about verse 12, how they lived in their couches and beds.

And the idea is they basked in ease and luxury and wealth and enjoyed a great deal of prosperity. But God's telling them here, it's all going to come to an end. Now, I've titled the message tonight, An Invitation to Destruction.

Because that's exactly what this is, this last part of chapter 3. It's an Invitation to Destruction. Notice, we're going to point out several things, three or four.

But notice, first of all, Amos invites the nations to come and watch, come and assemble yourselves. Verse 9, he says, publish in the palaces at Ashdod. Ashdod, the Phoenician capital.

He says, publish in the capitals of Ashdod, the palaces there and in the palaces, in the land of Egypt. These two nations that were, of course, enemies of Israel. And I believe that they stand at this point as representative really of all of the heathen nations.

And here is what Amos is telling them. He's saying, assemble yourselves. Notice this.

Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumults in the midst thereof and the oppressed in the midst thereof. He's calling the nations. He's saying, come.

If we were going to put it in our common vernacular, we'd say, hey, pull up a chair. Pull up a chair and come see this. You don't want to miss this.

This is what God is saying, excuse me, to these heathen nations, come and watch what's about to happen to Samaria. Samaria was the capital of Israel. Israel is the northern kingdom.

Judah the southern kingdom. Samaria the northern capital. And God is calling all of these heathen nations.

He's saying, come pull up a chair. Come assemble in the mountains round about Samaria and look. Come and see.

And I want you to notice several things that Amos is calling them particularly to notice. He says, behold, I want you to see the great tumults in the midst thereof. Come see.

Come look at Samaria. And notice the great tumults there in the midst of the city. Come bear witness to this.

I want you to see this. Here is the city, the nation, that has so much light. This is the nation that has so much privilege.

This is the nation that I have made a covenant with. This is the nation that I'm supposed to dwell in the midst of. And yet look at the confusion, because that's literally what it means.

Come see the confusion, the darkness in the midst of this city, the midst of these people, the people who are supposed to be walking in light. Come see the darkness, the trouble in the city. In fact, in Proverbs, Proverbs 15, 16 translates this same word that's translated two molts here.

Proverbs translates it troubles. Come see the troubles, the problems, the chaos, the confusion. Somebody else translated it the wild living, because they say that's what it has a reference to.

God is calling the nations to come bear witness. Come look at Samaria. Samaria, the nation with so much privilege.

And look at the way they live. Look at the wild lives they live. Look at the idolatry.

Look at the confusion, the chaos, the darkness. Look at the things they chase after. Look at the things that make their world go around.

Look at what's important in their lives. He's calling all the nations, come and see this. Behold this.

You are my witnesses. Behold this. Bear witness to this.

And notice also, he says, not only are you to behold the great tumults there, but also the oppressed. If you have a marginal reading in your Bible, it will say, are the oppressions in the midst thereof. And the whole reference here, the oppressions is a reference to violent acts that injure and kill, pillage and robbery.

That's what he's talking about. So Amos is saying, here is Samaria, the capital of the kingdom. And as the capital goes, so goes the nation, the empire.

And the capital was given over to greed. The whole capital, the people were given over to lust, for personal gain, even to the point that justice had been perverted. The rich, wealthy, ruling class were oppressing the poor.

And they didn't hesitate to use violence, if that's what was necessary, to get what they wanted. They didn't hesitate one moment to use violence. So, you know, that in itself sounds pretty much like America today, doesn't it?

It really doesn't sound much different. Now, here's the second thing we want to notice. Not only the invitation to the nations to come and see this strange thing, the city that was supposed to be a city of light dwelling in so much darkness, then we see secondly in verse 10 the shame of Samaria.

The shame of Samaria. Let's read verse 10 again. For they know not to do right, sayeth the Lord, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.

Now, this is an interesting expression. They know not to do right, God is saying. Literally, it reads this way.

They don't know how to go straight. They don't know how to walk straight. They've walked crooked for so long.

They've walked a crooked path for so long, they don't even know what it means to walk a straight path anymore. The people have lived in darkness for so long. Their minds have been corrupted for so many years.

Morally, ethically, spiritually, they've been destitute for so long that now they don't even know what right is. You know, that happens to people. They become so accustomed to the dark that they forget what the light even is like.

They get so accustomed to crookedness that they don't even understand. They can't even comprehend what it means to be straight. It's like young people who are brainwashed, who grow up, let's say, in a ghetto area without any ethical training or standards, their parents don't train them, don't teach them.

All they learn about on the streets is lying and stealing and dope and drugs and theft. They have no idea of what ethics is. They have no concept of what it means to do right, to be honest, to be sincere.

I mean, they've lived so long with two faces, you know. They've lived so long stealing, lying, living for themselves, greedy, thinking only of themselves, never thinking about others, never thinking about how it might hurt an old lady if they knock her down and steal her purse and take away her welfare check. And here's an old lady who's got to go for a whole month with no money, no groceries, nothing to eat, how she's going to pay her rent, how she's going to pay her electric bill.

They don't even think about those things. It's so foreign to their thinking. All they've been indoctrinated in all their years is thinking about yourself, getting what you want, getting your fix, getting your drugs, buying things for yourself, that they have no comprehension of how their actions might affect others.

They can't even conceive it. They really can't conceive of how their actions hurt others. They can't understand it.

They've walked crooked for so long that they don't even know what it means to walk straight. No comprehension whatsoever. Now, the same thing is spiritually true.

Just like that is physically true, the same things are spiritually true. You can get so corrupted spiritually by false teaching, false doctrine, by dead religion. You know, that's what happened for centuries.

People became corrupted for hundreds and hundreds of years. Religion was nothing more than just a dry, ritualistic, ceremonial... No real experience with Christ.

It's just something you went and watched. That's what religion was. It didn't offer anyone anything except they came and witnessed a rite.

That's all religion offered them. You come see this ceremony. You know, we're talking about high church, Roman Catholicism, Episcopalianism.

We're talking about high church, where it's very ritualistic and so on. For hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, that's all people ever knew. That's all they ever experienced.

As far as many people, when they thought about Christianity, that's all they thought about. The Reformation, Protestant Reformation was actually born out of a reaction to the deadness, the rite, the ceremonialism of dead religion. They thought that true Christianity should bring us back to the Bible.

You see, high church, ritualistic church, that's what I mean whenever I say high church, that refers to ceremonialism, ritualism. High church left people dry, cold, dead, spiritually, lifeless. And it had its roots, not really in the Word of God, but in its own tradition, in its own rites.

And so the Protestant Reformation was born to bring people back to the Bible. It was supposed to be anchored in the Word of God, get people back to the Word, put that anchor down in the Bible, get them back to simple faith in Christ, let's throw away all the right ritual ceremony and so forth and have a real relationship with Christ. And that's how the Protestant Reformation got started.

Unfortunately, I think that they've cut their anchor loose also because Protestantism today is in bad shape. Mainline Protestantism is. I don't know how many of you saw it in the paper the last week about the Presbyterian USA Church.

Agreeing to ordain homosexuals into the ministry, practicing homosexuals. They're now going to admit into the ministry of the Presbyterian USA Church. Not only that, but they signed a paper that they expect will be approved, saying that they would no longer condemn people living together, unmarried people living together.

They didn't think that it was wrong, as long as these people really loved each other, and so on. Now, let me tell you something. The Presbyterian Church was one of the very bastions of the Reformation, that reacted against the deadness of Catholicism, and said, let's get back to this Bible.

This is where we're to go. This is what we're to follow. This is what we're to believe.

This Bible, what's happened, you think, to its mooring? It's lost its mooring. They cut their anchor loose.

Man, they're drifting out into Never Never Land now. And that's just one of the many denominations, unfortunately, that have departed from the Bible and have lost their way. They've walked now in darkness for so long, they don't know what it is to go straight.

They don't know what the truth is anymore. They've been so confused for so many years. Protestantism has become very, very liberal these last 25 years.

And you know what's interesting? The more liberal they become, the more they lose their membership. The more the people leave, they have nothing to offer anybody.

You know, they try to cater to the homosexual crowd, but even the homosexuals don't go to their churches. So I don't know what it is they have in their minds, but I'll tell you, I do know this much, that they have become crooked for so long, perverted, distorted. They have walked in darkness for so long.

“They don't even know what the truth is anymore. They have lost their moorings altogether. And that's why they are just out, they are just drifting, man.

They are drifting from their foundation a long time ago. They have been drifting for years. Unfortunately, I can see where Pentecostalism and the charismatic churches in many regards are drifting also because today it seems like a lot of things are more important than the Bible.

Prophecy in many circles is more important than Bible truth. Doctrine is a bad word. The stage is already being set for the whole Pentecostal charismatic movement to forsake its mooring also, which is supposed to be the Bible, and to cut itself adrift and follow after the Protestant path.

You know, the Roman Catholic High Church path has a long time ago forsaken the Bible. They've been rooted in tradition and ceremony and rite and their own history and pomp for so long that they don't know what the right way is either. These are dangerous times spiritually.

They really are dangerous times. It's the same situation Israel was in. You see, Israel, when it became a separate nation, when it forsook its king, now, let me just remind you what happened.

King Solomon died. He was the last of the monarchs, the last of the single kings over the entire nation. When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam was to become king.

But the northern tribes rebelled against Rehoboam and established their own king, Jeroboam. Rehoboam established the southern kingdom of Judah. Jeroboam had the northern ten tribes of Israel.

At that time, from the time of the divided kingdom, the northern kingdom under Jeroboam set up the calves, remember, in Dan and Bethel. We've studied these things numerous times. We've mentioned this numerous times.

They set up calves both in Dan and Bethel, in the northern border and the southern border of Israel. And the people were directed towards calf worship rather than towards the true worship of God and staying with the covenant God of Israel. So they established a corrupt religion.

Now, they still claim to be Jews, still claim to follow God and worship God, but they were adrift. They had cut themselves loose from their anchor. And they were involved with calf worship.

And for 200 years, for 200 years after Jeroboam, the Northern Kingdom continued in its corrupt religion. For 200 years, throughout its entire history, never once did it have a godly king. Not once.

Every king that ever sat on the throne of Israel, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, was corrupt. Every single one. Every single one continued the tradition established by Jeroboam of calf worship, of idolatry, of involvement with the heathen neighbors, of polluting themselves with idols, and so forth.

After its 200 years of idolatry, after its 200 years of rebellion, because it rebelled against its king, you see it rebelled against Rehoboam and established its own kingdom. After those 200 years, God had said he had had enough, and he judged the nation. Now, I'm going to mention something about that in just a few minutes, but I want you to think a little bit about America herself, who was just a little bit over 200 years old, and was established in rebellion against its king.

Now, at a time when patriotism is running high in America, and I'm not being unpatriotic in saying this, but this nation was founded in rebellion against its king, against the king of England. That's the roots of America. It was founded in rebellion, just like the northern kingdom of Israel was founded in rebellion against its king.

The northern kingdom lasted some 200 years, a little over 200 years, and then God brought judgment down upon it. Our own nation is just a little over 200 years old. I don't know how long we have, but I do know this, that spiritually we're in the same condition Israel was.

We too are a nation that has been visited with great light, with great privilege. In fact, more privileged than any nation that's ever existed, even more privileged than Israel was. We've had more like, more privilege.

And yet we're a corrupt, wicked, repubate, ungodly, selfish, greedy nation, just like Israel was. So it causes us to believe that unless there is wholesale repentance across America, judgment just cannot be too far off. But I wanted you to see that the religion of Israel was confused, chaotic.

The people themselves had walked a crooked path religiously for 200 years. They didn't even know what right was anymore. They didn't know what was straight.

They didn't know what was true. They couldn't even recognize. They couldn't even think straight anymore.

Now, notice the latter part of verse 10. God says, Who store up violence and robbery in their palaces. Israel's sins were so numerous and so flagrant that they were literally piling up, stacking up in great heaps, just crying out for punishment.

So then in the last part of this chapter, verses 11 through 15, we see a promise of destruction. Verses 11 through 15, a promise of destruction. Amos prophesied the total ruin of Israel.

And here's two aspects he speaks of to her downfall or to her ruin. First of all, verse 11, he says, an enemy, an adversary, will surround Israel and then just tear them down. They'll pull down their strength and they'll plunder the land.

Look with me, verse 11. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, an adversary there shall be even round about the land, and he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled. An enemy, an adversary, will surround you.

That adversary was Assyria. Isaiah chapter 10 speaks about this very thing, Assyria, the rod of God's anger that God Himself would bring against Israel to bring judgment upon them. And then here's the second aspect of this judgment.

The nation of Israel would be ripped and torn to pieces with only fragments scattered about and left alive. And verse 12 is a very graphic description of the horrible judgment that was approaching Israel. Look at this verse with me, verse 12.

Thus saith the Lord, as the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of an ear. Now, that's pretty descriptive, isn't it? Here's a shepherd who catches a lion devouring his sheep.

And so he takes off after the lion and either attacks it with his sling or with his staff. And all he manages to do, because it's ripped this poor sheep to shreds, all he manages to do is get a couple of legs out the lion's mouth and a piece of an ear of the sheep. That's all that's left.

The rest has been torn and ravaged and eaten and devoured. It's pieces and blood and froth scattered all about. So it's a very descriptive picture.

And this is what Amos is prophesying is going to become of Israel. Just like the lion devoured the lamb and left just remnant, just pieces, that's what's going to happen to Israel. Verse 12, So shall the children of Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria, in the corner of a bed, and in Damascus, in a couch.

Hear ye and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord God, the God of hosts. Hear this, it's a proclamation. This is the way it's going to be.

Just as the lion ravaged the lamb and shredded it in its jaws and left only fragments and pieces, that's what's going to happen to Israel as a nation. This prophecy of Amos was literally fulfilled some 40 years later when Assyria laid siege to the city of Samaria. In ancient siege warfare, you know, the cities, the capitals, were all walled.

They had huge walls, big towers, motes around them. Many of them had motes around them, draw bridges. They actually had those things.

And those walls might be 30 feet thick, 40 feet thick, 60 feet thick. They were difficult to penetrate. They were huge and tall.

The great towers had catapults on them. And the siege warfare was a whole different animal in itself. Attacking armies would try and beat down the walls with battering rams.

But as they approached the cities, the motes prevented them from getting up close to the cities and being effective with their battering rams. So they were pretty well equipped. About the best thing these attacking armies could do, because these mighty cities like Samaria was so well-fortressed, so well-built, walls so high, almost impenetrable, the best they could do is starve them out, lay siege to the city.

And most of these cities had their own water supplies. Sieges could go on for years and years and years. Well, this siege went on for three years.

The siege of Samaria. Finally, after three years, Samaria collapsed. And in 721 BC, Assyria took the city of Samaria and ravaged it.

They tore down their walls and their towers. They looted the city and they drug off over 27,000 Jews. They drug them off out of the city, took them captive.

Assyria had a procedure. We talked about this in some of our earlier studies. I think it was when we studied the Book of Jonah.

One of the things Assyria did that made them different from most other nations, they were a cruel and vicious people. But one of the things they did was when they attacked the land, they would take a great many of the population out of that land and drag them off into other countries and scatter them all over. And then they would bring people from those other countries and bring them back into that land.

And that's exactly what Assyria did with Israel. They took over 27,000 people out of Israel and scattered them all over, all over Persia, Asia, Africa, different areas like that. And then they brought in people from those areas, and scattered them all through Samaria.

They brought tens of thousands of foreigners in there. And their whole purpose was to mix the people up. Eventually, all those people would be assimilated into those cultures.

It would be very hard for those nations to mount any sort of a rebellion against Samaria, against Assyria rather. And that was their purpose in mixing up the people, mixing up the population. That way, they never could mount a very effective rebellion or revolt against the Assyrians.

I want you to notice an interesting passage over in Second Kings. Keep your finger here in Amos, but I want you to turn with me back to Second Kings. Second Kings is the record of what happened to Israel.

It gives the account of the Assyrian invasion that occurred 40 years after Amos' prophecy.

Second Kings, Chapter 17. I want to read a few verses over here.

We're gonna begin in verse one.

Second King 17.1, In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, began Hosea, the son of Elah, to reign in Samaria over Israel, nine years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. All of them did that which was evil.

Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Hosea became his servant and gave him presence. They called those vassals, vassal kings, where they served as king. Hosea was king, but he was king only because Shalmaneser let him be king.

And the way he remained king was, you paid tribute, heavy tribute, to the king of Assyria. Verse 4, and the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hosea, for he had sent messengers to sow, king of Egypt, and brought no presence, or refused to pay tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year. Therefore, the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison.

Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. That's the siege we were just talking about a few minutes ago. Samaria was laid siege to by the king of Assyria.

And in the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Hela and in Haber by the river of Gozin and in the city of the Medes. So it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt and from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the statues of the heathen whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel and of the kings of Israel which they had made. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God.

And they built them high places in all their cities, from the Tower of the Watchmen to the Finch City. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill and under every green tree. And they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them.

And they wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. For they served idols whereof the Lord had said unto them, You shall not do this thing. Now, this is the list of sins against Israel.

The same things that Amos prophesied, that Amos blasted them for. This was the sins of Israel, the catalog of our sins, that Amos blasted them for. But I wanted you to notice, verse 6, how Assyria not only took the city of Samaria, but they carried Israel away into Assyria.

They scattered the people of Israel, brought them out of the land of the northern kingdom, and scattered them all over into various lands.

I'll tell you, this passage in chapter 17, as you read it, it really is a strong indictment of the actions, the sins, just a catalog of sins of Israel. How they actually, verse 17 says, they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire. They actually sacrificed their children to these pagan deities.

They used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, and provoked him to anger. Therefore, the Lord was very angry, verse 18 says, with Israel, and removed them out of his sight, there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

Well, I'll tell you, you read these passages, and you see why God was angry with the people of Israel, and why He judged them the way He did. Now, I want you to notice with me in verse 24. You're still in 2 Kings 17?

Notice verse 24. And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Kuta, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sephirim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel. And they possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof.

So this was the Assyrian custom. They drug Israel out, spread them all over in foreign lands. They brought the foreigners in from Babylon and all these other lands, and spread them throughout Samaria.

This passage right here, in fact, this chapter right here is the origin of the Samaritan race. That mixed race, that mongrel race that the Jews despised down at the time of Christ. You see, the Samaritans were not true Jews.

They were a mongrel race of Jews with a spattering of Babylonians and all these others, Cushas and Nevas and Hathas and all those that had been brought in. You see, after a period of time, those people just get assimilated into the population. They marry the Jewish women or the Jewish men marry the Babylonian women.

Eventually, they became a race all their own, a Samaritan race, right? They are living in Samaria. And that was the despised race that the Jews hated and rejected because they were a mongrel race.

They weren't true Jews. Also, this chapter spells the end of the northern kingdom of Israel. The northern kingdom existed no longer after this.

They were destroyed. The northern kingdom was destroyed. They were carried off into captivity.

A hundred and thirty-three years later, the southern kingdom was invaded by Babylon and they were destroyed. And everybody was dispersed for seventy years. And after that dispersion, the people of Israel returned back to their land.

All of them eventually returned back to their land. But they were no longer a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. They were just Israel again.

This spelled the end. This passage right here spells the end of the northern kingdom. There is no more northern kingdom after this.

So this is interesting things to know. And I think we should have a grasp of Israel's history because if you do, you will be preserved from a lot of the eras that unfortunately in many cases predominate a lot of circles, religious circles even today. You see how these passages perfectly fulfilled Amos' prophecy?

What did Amos tell them? Just like a lion chews up the land and leaves only fragments. And all the shepherd can rescue is a leg here and an ear there.

That's what's going to happen to you, Israel. And that's exactly what happened 40 years later, 40 years after Amos' prophecy. Israel was invaded, ravaged, destroyed, and carried away captive into foreign lands where they were dispersed all over.

And only fragments of Israel remained in the land of Samaria. And those fragments later were assimilated into a mixed population that was drug in from Babylon, tens of thousands of people from foreign nations. And so the Samaritan race was born.

The Samaritan race that you read about in passages like John chapter 4, you know, the woman at the well of Samaria. And Jesus speaks to her. And you know, you people don't even know what you worship.

They worship this hill, that hill, this mountain, that mountain, which is the true temple and so on. Well, I think you get the idea. I want you to look back with me to Amos chapter 3.

So for some 200 years, God tolerated the sin, the idolatry of the Northern Kingdom. Even though they had this heritage of light, of truth, of privilege, they walked in every kind of evil imaginable. We read some of the evil that they were involved with, 2 Kings 17.

But God said they were laying up their sins as heaps, and finally He judged them for it. After 200 years, He destroyed them and left them no place to hide. And that's the whole idea of verse 14 and 15 here in chapter 3 of Amos, when He says that in that day, in the day of judgment, I'll visit the transgressions of Israel.

Upon him I will visit the altars of Bethel. Now that's the pagan altars where the calves were set up in Bethel and Dan. And the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground.

Now, the significance there is the horns of the altar in the Old Testament were considered a place of refuge. If someone had committed a crime or a sin and they were trying to escape wrath or punishment, they would cling to those corners of the altar as a plea for mercy, and they usually found mercy there. But God says in this day of wrath and judgment, there's not going to be any mercy.

There's not going to be any sparing. There's not going to be any place to hide. Because you cling to the horns of the altar, I'm going to cut the horns off.

Judgment is going to seek you out and find you. There'll be no place to hide. That's what He's saying.

There'll be no place to run. The very wealthy, they have escaped judgment for all these years by buying off the judges, by corrupting the judicial system. They live in their fine palaces and their winter houses and their places of luxury.

But the very rich are going to be judged because you can't bribe God. You can't pay off the courts of heaven. Judgment was going to fall on the very rich as well as upon the very poor.

There'd be no place to hide, no place to run. Judgment would fall. And that's exactly what happened.

Second Kings, Chapter 17, judgment fell. Some 133 years later, judgment fell upon the Southern Kingdom of Judah as well, and the Babylonians invaded. The Babylonian Empire just took over there and destroyed the Southern Kingdom of Judah as well as conquering Assyria.

I want to deal just briefly with an error that has arisen from this incident that Amos prophesied against and that we read about over here in 2 Kings 17. Have any of you ever heard of the British-Israelite theory? The Anglo-Israelite theory?

Have you ever heard of that?

British-Israelism originated sometime in the end of the 18th century, maybe the beginning of the 19th century. Basically, what they believed is this. I'm just going to cover this ground briefly because this era is still with us today.

Basically, this is what they believed. When the Northern Kingdom of Israel was carried off captive by Assyria, this is what British-Israelism teaches. Those Northern tribes, the 10 tribes of Israel, became the Lost Tribes.

Have you ever heard of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel? Have you ever heard that expression? Well, that's where British-Israelism, that's the terminology they use.

There is no such thing as the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. I want to say that right off the bat. There is no such thing.

As soon as you hear people talking about the 10 Lost Tribes, you know where they're coming from. That's British-Israelism. They're lost.

There was no 10 Lost Tribes. But what this is a reference to is that these 10 Lost Tribes were carried off up north, and for 1500 years, they wandered around. The people of Israel just wandered around.

Eventually, they wound up invading. They became the Scandinavians. They became the British.

They became the Saxons, the Anglo-Saxons, the white Anglo-Saxons that settled in the Scandinavian countries, France, Western Europe, the British Isles. And, in fact, Israel today is not the Jews that live over in the land of Israel. Israel today is the British and their descendants, including the Americans.

Israel today, according to this theory, is the white Anglo-Saxon race, because they are the ten lost tribes of Israel. They are the ones who wound up. Now, listen to this.

They've got some pretty clever things that they used to teach this doctrine. When it first came out, most people laughed at it because there's no historical evidence of anything like that ever happening, that there never was ten lost tribes. Everybody knew where the ten tribes went.

They were assimilated into those foreign nations, and eventually they all came back to Israel, or at least many of them did. They never went up into those areas and became the Saxon race and so on. But listen to what they did.

And you know the one who made this theory really popular? Herbert W. Armstrong.

Herbert W. Armstrong is the main proponent of British Israeliteism, but also a lot of your white supremacist groups believe this same thing, or some derivation of it. Your white supremacy groups, they use it as an excuse for their anti-Semitism, hatred of blacks, and so on.

Now think about this. This is what they say. The word Saxon actually comes from the word Isaac's sons.

Isaac's sons. You just take the I off of Isaac, because, you see, they say the Jews, they didn't have vowels. So you just have Saxons, Saxons.

That's the white Anglo-Saxons, you see. That's who the Jews are. They are Isaac's sons.

Sounds logical? Well, it might, except in Dr. Freeman's book, Every Wind of Doctrine, he points out that in Hebrew, Isaac's name is not Isaac at all. It's Yitzchak.

That's his Hebrew. That's really his name in Hebrew, Yitzchak. So you can't get Saxon from Yitzchak.

And Dr. Freeman points out very well that if Herbert W. Armstrong knew any Hebrew, he wouldn't have made such a blunder, such an error. But they also point out other things that give some credulity to their theories.

For instance, the Danube River was named by the tribe of Dan as they passed over that area. You see, there's different little landmarks that they left behind that they claim was evidence of this theory. Also the fact that the word berith, the Hebrew word berith means covenant.

The word ish, I-S-H, means man. And if you put those together, berith-ish, British, you have a covenant people. You see, that's what they claim.

The covenant people. That's who the British are. The covenant people.

And America is the covenant people because we're descendants of the British. We came here through Britain. Of course, there's problems with that too.

You see, Armstrong likes to drop vowels whenever it's convenient for him. He drops the ones that are convenient, he keeps the ones that are convenient. And even if you put together a mongrel word like that, it wouldn't read people of the covenant.

It would rather read a covenant of the people. And that would destroy his theory in itself. At any rate, let me give you a few refutations to this era.

I don't want to spend much time here, but just to make you aware of it.

First of all, Israel was scattered. The ten northern tribes of the northern kingdom were scattered, but they were largely assimilated into those lands that they were scattered in, and no body, no large body of them wandered all over for some 1500 years, winding up in England. That just didn't happen.

In fact, there were communities of Jews maintaining their culture and their religion and so forth all over the area of their dispersion. They really weren't a wandering people. They went up a set of housekeeping.

And even after the time of the dispersion during Daniel's Day, remember after the arranged for the people to return, after the 70 years that even the Southern Kingdom had been taken captive into Babylon, you know, they had a difficult time getting a lot of those people to come back to the land of Israel because they had set up businesses, they had set up their homes, they had been living there for 70 years, many of them. And they just they just stayed there. A lot of them did.

And it took quite a bit of a persuasion to get Israel to come back even to their own land. You know what else is interesting about this British Israelite theory? They believe that the Queen of England actually sits on the throne of David.

And that when Christ returns to the earth to establish his kingdom, it's not going to be to reign and rule from Jerusalem and sit on the ancient throne of David, but it's to rule from the throne that the Queen of England sits on. That that's the literal throne, right there. The throne of David.

Well, interesting theory. Also, keep in mind that there were no ten lost tribes. The Northern Kingdom was taken captive.

They were dispersed, but as far as lost, they were never lost. And they did eventually return to their own kingdom. You might also keep in mind that the Bible refers to the twelve tribes of Israel even in the New Testament as still being in existence.

In fact, Acts 26 verse 7, you can just write that down. Acts 26, 7 speaks of the twelve tribes. So, they were no ten lost ones because even the New Testament refers to the twelve as being in existence.

One other thing you might want to consider about this theory.

If America is Israel, then that's no claim to fame because according to Romans 11, Israel has been set aside until the time of the Gentiles become in. So, I don't see how Armstrong or the others claim any spiritual benefit from claiming to be Israel. They claim that any time you read about Israel in the Bible, after this period in history, you're reading about the British and America because we're Israel.

Literally, that's what they believe. We're Israel. Well, that's a pretty shallow argument, but you'd be surprised how many people have bought it.

Quite a number have bought it. I would suggest that if you don't have a copy of Dr. Freeman's book, Every Wind of Doctrine, that you ought to have it in your library. He has a good section dealing with the British Israelite era, and it would do you well to go over it.

Well, praise God. We're going to stop there. We'll pick up with chapter 4 next time.

Let's stand together.”