5:11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and all of you take from him burdens of wheat: all of you have built houses of hewn stone, but all of you shall not dwell in them; all of you have planted pleasant vineyards, but all of you shall not drink wine of them.

5:12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

5:13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

5:14 Seek good, and not evil, that all of you may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as all of you have spoken. 5:15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

5:16 Therefore the LORD, the God of hosts, the LORD, says thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the high ways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the farmer to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing. (Amos 5:11-16 KJV (new))

Amos was a prophetic herdsman in his day and spoke of things to come. As I many times have said, history repeats itself, maybe not exactly like in the past but, none the less, it repeats itself. In the book of Amos, the Lord say what He will do unless the people come to God and repent.

We are, again, in the same situation. We are in an evil time and many are condoning the evil done by evil men. They refuse to condemn them and support what they say, and the evil ways and we all are caught up in this, whether we want to or not. Unfortunately, we suffer for the evil deeds of others.

In Amos (read the short book), the Lord talks about the suffering He will bring upon the people/nations, why He will bring it and how we (as a people) can be forgiven. In a nutshell, we can be forgiven by lashing out against the people that are evil (and their supporters) for their evil doings. We then must repent, cease our silence and start over in the name of our Lord, not evil as before.

Repenting (praying) alone will not suffice, there must be a physical attempt to help ourselves. An old saying, ‘God helps those that help themselves”. An analogy: while standing beside a well and praying to quench your thirst will not satisfy the thirst. You must physically draw water from the well and drink. You must help yourself and thank God for having the well there and for the cool water to drink.

Now, and especially in November, we have the chance to help ourselves. If we do the right thing, we surly must then give thanks to God that we survived the evil days and pray to never return to those days again. We then must rebuild in the name of God and, at the same time, watch for the enemy attempting to return. Evil is everywhere and will always be. Read Amos.