July 20

<p>Amos 8-9 We are in the Exile Stream reading from The Message. 7streamsmethod.com | @7StreamsMethod | @serenatravis | #7Stream | <a href= "https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=YPPA8XGTQ2YHU">Donate</a></p> <!--more--> <p>Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis</p> <blockquote> <div>Lord, we hear of your great and terrible deeds done in millennia' past. Do your work of cleansing us today and restoring us here [as it is to be] on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.</div> </blockquote> <div>8 - The symbolism is that Israel is a basket of fruit that is "ripe for destruction."  It reminds me of a neighbor we have in our town who prepared over 100 lbs of peaches for drying so they could chew on them all winter long.  They were washed, peeled, pitted and sliced and laid on racks to dry for two days and nights.  Well, a bear snuck on to the property when it smelled the fruit, broke through everything and made quick work of all the luscious provisions and devoured it <u>all</u> in mere moments.  Keeping this bear away or stopping him once he began to consume the fruit would have been a deathly assignment - best to let the peaches go, and let the bear have it.  Israel's fate was,... a bowl of ripe fruit left out and it wasn't going to last long in these conditions; they were quickly coming up on two centuries of aggressive sin.</div> <div>Israel was going to suffer severely.  They were smug to God, addicted to selfishness and darkness in all aspects of behavior, and they were utterly brutal and heartless to the poor and weak that were among them.  For this (and 200 years of it!) God was unleashing the Assyrians against Israel.  Dead bodies would be strewn far and wide.  Israel was arrogant as they come!  Judgment day was approaching and it would be swift. The party was near over and it wouldn't take God long to turn it all into a national funeral. Death of your children, national famine, and drought, life in ruins- this is all that's coming for all of you from Israel committed to false gods and pagan