Today is the 10th day of December.

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian.

It is a privilege to be here with you today.

I am grateful. Grateful deeply to be here around the global campfire.

Another day, another step forward. Actually, and another

book. So we read the book of Joel yesterday and then began the book of Revelation. Today,

we will begin a new book in the Old Testament, the book of Amos, which is likely one of the earliest, if not the earliest collection of written prophetic utterances in the Bible.

So Amos prophesied in the mid-eighth century BC, E, at a time when the northern and southern kingdoms,

like everything is at peace, they are very prosperous.

And ironically, Amos, he's not a person that has been trained for religious orders.

He seems to have been an ordinary person

living like an ordinary life, maybe a life of a shepherd and farmer. We don't know whether

he was like just a laborer, or whether he owned his own flocks and groves.

But it's certain that maybe the latter is more likely,

but he was certainly educated and certainly aware of what's going on around him.

Amos lived in a city called Ticoa,

and now is about 10 miles south of Jerusalem. So that places him in the southern kingdom of Judah.

Oddly, his mission was to prophesy in the northern kingdom of Israel, So that probably had him going just north of Jerusalem, just across the border,

to the bordering city of the northern kingdom, which was Bethel at the time.

And that was a hub for trade and commerce and idolatry.

The Northern Kingdom had fully been led away into idolatry.

So the Northern and the Southern kingdoms are both experiencing

...