Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we finished our 19th book of the Bible. Congratulations!

All right, let's wrap up the back half of Amos.

He starts by calling out the leaders of the land who relax into lives of luxury and pay no mind to the needy and poor,

and who fail to notice that they've gotten so far off track in their relationship with God.

He promises destruction for all the ways they forsaken

God. In Chapter 7, God shows Amos three different images and they all foretell destruction. Twice Amos pleads with God to relent, and he does.

Remember how the Prophet Jonah didn't want the people of Nineveh to repent and God

pointed out how ridiculous that was? Amos is the opposite of Jonah. He begs

God to stay his hand. But when the third vision appears, Amos starts to get the point

that this is inevitable, a necessary part of God's process to turn His

people's hearts back to Himself.

The first vision was of locust eating a field and devouring all the farmer had to live on after he had paid the king with the first portion of growth.

The second was of a fire devouring everything.

And while both of those visions involved land, the third vision is a construction image.

Amos sees a plumb line, which is a tool used to make sure a wall is straight.

It's like a level, but vertical instead of horizontal.

If a wall isn't vertical, it's going to collapse eventually.

Leaning Tower of Pisa, your days are numbered.

The metaphor God is setting up here is that the Northern Kingdom of Israel is about to collapse because they're so far off the standard and can't be set right.

As you can imagine, none of this sits well with Amaziah, who was the priest at the time.

Amaziah goes to King Jerry II, accuses Amos of conspiring against him, and twists the

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