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Amos and Hosea were Obedient to Go
I am here, Jesus:
I now want to review briefly and to summarize the place of Amos in the Old Testament development of the human love, the forerunner of the Divine Love which in the course of time I was designated by the Father to possess in my soul and to therefore proclaim its actuality and presence to all mankind. Had there been no men like Moses, whom I shall speak about separately, or the prophets, men's minds and hearts would not have been, as they were, channelled into the ways preordained as the only ways to a perfect soul and an intense awareness of the reality of that Father who influence of love and mercy kept strengthening the bonds of the human soul to His own great All-Soul, so that in time acceptance of the Eternal commandments of love to God and fellow man, by at least one nation, I speak of Judea, and by other peoples to a varied degree, made it possible for Him to send at His appointed time His Messiah, for the rebirth of the human heart and its partaking of the Divine Essence through prayer to Him.
The story of Hosea, as we have seen, was one of intuition of the Father's Love for mankind, and I showed how it controlled the life of the man to the point where he exemplified, as a true prophet, the love which the Father has for His children. Hosea of course, in his troubles with Gomer, showed in his human soul the full human love of which he was capable as a human being and could not, and did not, have possession of the Divine Love of which at the time the Father alone was the depository, but the fact of his human love, and the sufferings which that love entails is the reason for bringing to you now the truth that the prophets, in their inflexible and adamant stand for moral and ethical law and in the apparent sternness which characterized their demand for absolute adherence to these laws, carried in their souls a great love for their fellow Jews, rebuking them for correction and speaking out fearlessly, regardless of personal convenience, safety or peril, to bring home to these Jews the return to the ways of God, so that God would be able to manifest His love for them, and protect them from their own follies and outside threats and dangers. Though they may not have said it in just these words, they proclaimed that if they would acknowledge the Father and walk in His ways, He would guide them through the vicissitudes and travails of the material world and direct their paths into a material and spiritual homeland of safety and love.
Amos understood this in all its implications. The humble tree dresser and herdsman, in his life of rustic simplicity, held within his being, as an absolute imperative, obedience to God's commandments as the one salvation of the soul as protection from the hostile forces of Nature and Nation -- for he saw in Nature the workings of God and in the activities of other peoples the clay with which God molded His work and brought about His designs, and if he realized that God's laws were for the development of these good things which are embodied in His Love, he thought (but erroneously) that rejection of His laws for the doing of evil, would as in the human heart, bring about God's wrath and anger. He did not understand that evil created its own evil conditions which would rise as a barrier against God's protection and love, so that God would be all the less able to help as His messengers of love and mercy encountered greater difficulty in piercing the sinful conditions surrounding the evil soul.
Amos' determination to go to Beth-el and denounce the evil conditions existing in Israel were therefore, motivated by a soul highly developed in human love, and not in anger, toward his fellow man. He understood that it was not for him to judge, but to relay the message of that Jehovah in whom he had implicit faith and who was to be Judge and administrator, through other peoples, of the judgment He wished to execute upon them. If God did not love these people, who were His own, He would not manifest the concern for their correction; they had to, as His chosen people, live up to the commandments which he had given them through Moses, as a sign of His Love for them, just as, in that very Love, He had brought them forth from slavery in Egypt.
Here then was the story of God's Love for His people through the correction which their falling away from His commandments necessitated; for had there been no correction, the people would have unquestionably fallen into complete paganism, vying with the pagans in abominable acts of ritual slaughter of first born children, and reeking with the foul deeds and thoughts of corruption, such as the accusations and charges leveled by Amos against the Hebrews and the surrounding peoples bring into vivid focus, and the world, or much of it, given over to the brutality and beastiality of the animal in human guise, soul-less and devoid of its link with its Creator, and its fulness of love and kindness and mercy to others.
Amos spoke in terms of the entire nation Israel, for at the time of his life and even in later times, the individual was in some ways as a grain of sand on the sea shore, but he also spoke of various kinds of trespasses, and the effects of the punishment against Israel, as all Amos' hearers could understand, would be felt by the nation as individuals. The very fact that Amos, as one man, could go up to Beth-el, face a hostile assemblage of corrupt worshippers and thunder forth his message of dununciation and doom in the name of Jehovah, gave the individual, as a human soul, greater recognition in the religious circles of Israel. His fearlessness, his resolution, his courage to face physical violence for his principles, led the way to other prophets, to Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and to eventual acknowledgment, that the nation rested on the faith of the individual soul, that it was this soul that prospered the nation or led to its doom, and that it was this soul which was responsible for its own deeds and acts, and salvation or separation from God.
Amos stood in his day for justice -- for justice for the people and freedom from oppression from corrupt and selfish leaders. These have always led to the downfall of peoples, because the message of religion, of the brotherhood of man, has been cast aside when material prosperity beckons. It is for this reason that, weak in the face of materialism, the human soul stands in need of the power of the Divine Love to overcome the world and the flesh and to bring man into at-onement with the Father. Amos declared that deeds of justice and love were the essentials of faith in God, and the only true foundation of any social order; his words stand as a monument to God as the Source of our humanity as living peoples and as living beings, upon whom, in the abundance of His tender care, God would pour out His Divine Love and give them eternal life with Him.
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
