The Daily Audio Bible

The Locusts

7 The Lord God showed a vision to me. I saw a crowd of locusts. The Lord was ready to send them to destroy the crops in the fields. They would come after we had taken the early crops to give to the king. Then the later crops were beginning to make grain. ² I saw that the locusts came and they ate everything. I asked the Lord, ‘Lord God, please forgive your people. We cannot continue to live if those locusts destroy our food. We are too weak!’

³ Then the Lord decided not to do it. He said to me, ‘That will not happen.’

The Fire

⁴ After that, the Lord God showed to me a vision of a fire. He was ready to send it to punish us. I saw that it caused the deep sea to become dry. It also burnt all the land. ⁵ I said, ‘Lord God, please do not do that! Your people cannot continue to live. We are too weak!’

⁶ Then the Lord decided not to do it. He said to me, ‘That too will not happen.’

The Lord measures the wall

⁷ Then the Lord showed this vision to me. The Lord God was standing next to a wall. In his hand was a string with a heavy weight on its end. The Lord was hanging the string down the wall. He was looking to see whether the wall was straight. ⁸ He asked me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ I said, ‘You are measuring the wall to see if it is straight.’

The Lord said, ‘Understand this. I am ready to measure my people with this string. I will test them and I will punish them for their sins. I will not forgive them any more.

⁹ I will send enemies to destroy the holy places of Isaac's descendants. All Israel's holy places will fall down. Enemies will use swords to kill King Jeroboam and his family.’

Amaziah speaks with Amos

¹⁰ Amaziah, was a priest at the holy place called Bethel. He sent a message to Jeroboam, the king of Israel. He said, ‘Amos is speaking against you among all Israel's people. What he is saying will deceive the people of our nation. ¹¹ Amos is saying, “Our enemies will kill King Jeroboam. They will take all the people to a foreign country as prisoners.” ’

¹² Then Amaziah said to Amos, ‘Go away, you prophet! Go back to your own country, Judah. Speak your messages from God to get your food there! ¹³ Do not speak God's message here in Bethel any longer. It is where our king and our nation come to worship.’

¹⁴ Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘My job was not as a prophet. My father never did that work. My job was to work as a shepherd. I also took care of fig trees. ¹⁵ But the Lord told me to leave my work as a shepherd. He told me to go and to speak his message to his people, the Israelites. ¹⁶ So listen to the Lord's message to you! You are telling me, “Do not speak God's message against Israel. Do not say that trouble is coming to Isaac's descendants.” ¹⁷ The Lord says this to you, Amaziah: “Your wife will work as a prostitute in the streets. Your sons and daughters will die in war. Enemies will measure your land into separate pieces and they will give it to others. They will take your people away from here as prisoners to a foreign country. And that is where they will die.” ’

Fruit that is ready to eat

8 Then the Lord God showed another vision to me. I saw a basket with summer fruit in it. ² He asked me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ I answered him, ‘I see a basket of summer fruit.’ Then the Lord said to me, ‘The time has now come to punish my people. I will not forgive them any longer.

³ On the day that I come to punish them, people will not sing in the temple. Instead they will weep loudly. There will be dead bodies everywhere. Be quiet now!’ That is what the Lord God says.

Trouble will come to Israel's people

⁴ So listen to me, you who are cruel to helpless people. You try to destroy people who are poor and weak. ⁵ You say to yourselves, ‘We want the new moon festival to finish so that we can sell food again. We want our Sabbath day of rest to finish so that we can sell grain.’ But when you sell things, you cheat the people who buy from you. You deceive them with false weights, and you make the price too high. ⁶ When poor people cannot pay their debts, you buy them as your slaves. You pay a silver coin to buy them, which would not even buy a pair of shoes. You also mix dust with the grain that you sell.

⁷ The Lord has promised this: ‘You proud descendants of Jacob, I will never forget the wrong things that you have done. ⁸ The whole country will shake because of your sins. Everyone who lives there will weep. The ground will rise up, like the floods of the Nile river in Egypt. Then it will go down again, like the water of the Nile.’

⁹ The Lord God says, ‘At that time, I will make the sun go down at noon. I will make the earth become dark in the daytime. ¹⁰ Your parties will become funerals. You will not sing happy songs but you will weep. You will wear rough clothes and you will cut off all your hair. You will be as sad as if your only son had died. That will be a very bad day for you.’

¹¹ The Lord God says, ‘Listen to me! At that time, I will cause you to be very hungry. It will not be because you need food and water. Instead, everyone in the land will want to hear a message from me. ¹² People will travel everywhere in the country, north and south, east and west. They will want to hear a message from the Lord, but there will be nothing for them to hear.

¹³ At that time, your beautiful young women and your young men will become very thirsty. They will be weak and tired. ¹⁴ They worship Samaria's idols. They use the names of those false gods to make promises. They say, “In the name of the god of Dan,” or “In the name of the god of Beersheba.” Those people will fall down and they will never get up again.’

The Lord is powerful

9 Then I saw a vision of the Lord. He was standing beside the altar in the temple. The Lord said, ‘Hit the tops of the pillars so that the whole foundation shakes! Cause the building to fall on the heads of all the people. If anyone is still alive after that, I will cause them to die in battle. Nobody will escape! ² They might try to dig deep into the earth to save themselves. But my strong hand will pull them out of there. They might climb up into the sky. But I will pull them down from there. ³ They might try to hide on the top of Mount Carmel. But I will find them and I will take them from there. They might try to hide from me deep down in the sea. But I will command the great sea snake to bite them. ⁴ Even when their enemies take them away as prisoners, I will cause them to die in battle. I have decided to destroy them. I will not help them.’

⁵ The Lord God Almighty will do this! When he touches the earth, it shakes. Everyone who lives there weeps. The ground rises up, like the water of the Nile river in Egypt. Then it goes down again, like the river. ⁶ The Lord builds his palace up into heaven, with its foundation on the earth. He takes up the water from the sea, and he pours it out on the earth as rain. The Lord is his name.

⁷ The Lord says, ‘You Israelite people, do not think that you are more important to me than the people of Ethiopia. It is true that I led you safely out of Egypt. But I also brought the Philistines from Crete. And I brought the Aramean people from Kir. ⁸ I, the Lord God, am carefully watching you Israelites. I see that you are a wicked nation, so I will remove you from the earth. But I will not completely destroy all the descendants of Jacob.’ That is what the Lord says.

⁹ ‘Listen to me! I will cause trouble to come to Israel's family, as they live among other nations. It will be like a person who shakes a sieve to remove dirt from grain. ¹⁰ Those among my people who do bad things will die. They say, “God will not send trouble to us. Nothing bad will happen to us.” But their enemies will kill those bad people in war.’

The Israelites will be strong again

¹¹ The Lord says, ‘When that time comes, I will make David's kingdom strong again. It has become like a broken hut, but I will repair it. I will cause it to become as good and strong as it was when king David ruled. ¹² You Israelites will fight the Edomites who still remain. You will win against them and the other nations that once belonged to me.’

That is what the Lord says, and he will do it.

¹³ The Lord says, ‘The time will come when food will grow very well in your fields. People will need to work quickly to cut down all their crops before they plough the ground to plant again. Lots of grapes will grow on your vines. People will work quickly to make wine from the grapes before they plant new vines. So much juice will pour out of the grapes that it will run down the hills!

¹⁴ I will bring the people of Israel, my people, back to their own land. Enemies destroyed their cities, but now my people will build them again. They will live safely in them. My people will plant vines. They will drink wine from their grapes. They will eat the fruit from trees that they have planted in their gardens. ¹⁵ And I will plant my people in their own land. That is the land that I have given to them, and nobody will ever pull them out of that land.’

That is what the Lord your God says.

Jesus' message to the believers at Philadelphia

⁷ ‘Write this to the angel of the church at Philadelphia:

“This is my message to you. I am the one who is completely good, the true God. I have King David's key in my hand.^[a] When I open a door, nobody can shut it. And when I shut a door, nobody can open it.

⁸ I know everything that you do. Look! I have opened a door that is in front of you. Nobody can shut that door. I know that you are not very strong. But you have obeyed what I told you. You have continued to believe in me. ⁹ Some people there say that they are Jews. But that is not true. They are telling lies. Instead, they belong to a group of Satan's people. I will cause those people to bend down low in front of you to give you honour. Then they will understand that I love you. ¹⁰ I have told you to be patient in this difficult time. You have obeyed what I told you. Because of that, I will keep you safe from the time of great trouble that will come. This trouble will come to everyone who lives in the world. It will show me what each person is really like.

¹¹ I will come soon.^[b] Continue to obey my message that you already know. Then nobody can take away your crown which is God's gift to you.^[c]

¹² Everyone who wins against Satan will be safe in God's house. I will make them like a strong pillar in the temple of my God. They will never leave that place again. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of his city. The name of that city is the new Jerusalem.^[d] It will come down from heaven. My God will send it down to the earth. I will also write my new name on those people. ¹³ God's Spirit is speaking to you in the churches. You should understand what the Spirit is saying to you. You have ears, so listen carefully!” ’

Jesus' message to the believers at Laodicea

¹⁴ ‘Write this to the angel of the church at Laodicea:

“This is my message to you. I am the one whose name is ‘Amen’.^[e] I faithfully tell people God's true message. Everything that God has created starts with me.

¹⁵ I know everything that you do. I know that you are neither cold nor hot. It would be better if you were either cold or hot. ¹⁶ But you are only warm. Because you are neither cold nor hot, I am ready to throw you away completely.^[f]

¹⁷ You say, ‘I am rich. God has helped me to have many things. I do not need anything more.’ But you do not know how very poor you are really! You are like people who cannot see. You are like people who are without clothes. Really, other people should feel very sorry for you. ¹⁸ So I tell you that you should buy gold from me. With my gold, you would be really rich. My gold is the best, because it has been through fire. You should also buy white clothes from me to dress yourselves. Then you will not be ashamed because you have no clothes. You should also buy medicine from me to put on your eyes. Then you will be able to see well.^[g]

¹⁹ I help everyone that I love. When they have done wrong things, I tell them, ‘You have done a wrong thing.’ I show them the right thing that they should do. So be serious about how you live. Stop doing wrong things and turn to me. ²⁰ Look! I am standing at the door of your house. I am knocking on your door. When you hear my voice, you should open the door. Then I will come in. We will eat a meal together as friends.

²¹ Everyone who wins against Satan will come to sit with me on my throne where I rule. I won against my enemies. Then I sat down with my Father on his throne. I will give you the same authority. ²² God's Spirit is speaking to you in the churches. You should understand what the Spirit is saying to you. You have ears, so listen carefully!” ’

A song to sing as we climb.

David wrote this song.