Amos was early among our prophets. We are given the reigns of Uzziah and Jeroboam son of Joash to date the book. Isaiah mentions Uzziah dying, so Amos comes first.

Amos starts with pronouncements of punishments.

Each place is judged for how it treated others. These were acts of war, but God is still displeased with them. War is no excuse.

One of the judgments pronounced against them is that they killed pregnant women to enlarge their borders. You don’t get to just steal, kill, and destroy for your own benefit.

One of the judgments is not taking any pity on his brother.

One of the judgments is not remembering their covenant.

War is no excuse. You don’t get to just do as you please. God is watching. It had seemed at the time like they won, like they got what they wanted. God can execute judgments years later. You don’t get away with things, no matter what it looks like in the moment. God is watching and He is your judge.

The good news is that God removes our sins from His sight, throws them into the depths of the sea. Bring sin into the light, confess, repent. Get them taken care of before God has to take care of you!

For each place He is going to punish, the word of the Lord is that He is going to send fire.

Fire in the Bible is used to talk about judgment, trials, hardships. Peter talks about fiery trials. We walk through the fire and are not burned, right?

Holy Spirit power is not described as fire in the Bible. We have the one time of the Spirit falling and flames are seen. That’s all we have connecting the Holy Spirit and fire, but it’s never described like that again. What is described as flames of fire are angels in Psalm 104:4.

I don’t know that I can say definitively that the Pentecost flames were messengers, but they certainly could have been. I don’t think from the one scene we can definitively say that fire represents the Holy Spirit when it comes up in phrases such as baptism with fire.