Stephen Miller: “The Old Testament prophet, Amos, was a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the larger cities of…”

“The Old Testament prophet, Amos, was a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the larger cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos was just an unsophisticated country hick. But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues, and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets. That familiar quote of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Justice will rush down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. . . . Those are Amos's words. Amos was the first to propose the concept of a universal God and not just some tribal deity. He also wrote that God demanded moral purity, not rituals and sacrifices. This blunt-speaking moral conscience of his time warns, in Chapter 8, verse 11 of the Book of Amos, as if he were speaking to us today: The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or of thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. ``A famine in the land,'' has anyone more accurately described the situation we face in America today? A famine of ``hearing the word of the Lord.''”