A Famine of the Word

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it’” (Amos 8:11-12).

I have no idea whether this prophecy has ever been fulfilled in any specific sense, i.e., time and place in history. It may have been fulfilled fifty years after Amos when the Northern Kingdom was destroyed.

The Southern Kingdom had two revivals, both related to reading the Scriptures. One under Josiah (2 Chronicles 34:14-33) and the other under Ezra (Nehemiah 8).

The famine today is not in the unavailability of Scripture. In Josiah’s day, there was only one copy, and it had not been looked at for several generations. We have the Scriptures, and we do not read them daily. There is spiritual decay in the land.

Written September 1988.

This post coordinates with tomorrow's reading in the To the Word! Bible Reading Challenge. If you are not in a daily reading plan, please join us at TotheWord.com. We would love to have you reading with us.

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