Minor #18

Truth:
1. The first reproof to Israel was due to Israel's not being one with God and that Bethel had become a place for the worship of idols.
2. The second reproof to Israel was because they oppressed the poor, crushed the needy, and indulged themselves in pleasures.
3. The third reproof was the strongest of the three.  The leaders did not care for justice and righteousness and did not care for the people according to the law of God.  They hated him who reproved in the gate, the place where the leading ones exercised judgment, and they abhorred the one who spoke with integrity.  They took a forced gift from the poor.  Instead of making noise and singing songs, they should exercise justice and practice righteousness.
4. In the midst of such a situation, God has done something marvelous.  He came to be incarnated as a man, and He lived on earth to set up a model of how to have the divine life expressed in humanity, of how to have the divine attributes expressed in the human virtues.

Life experience/Application:

Minor #17

Truth:
1. The book of Amos also covers the chastisement of Israel and the punishment upon the nations to bring in the manifestation of Christ, issuing in the restoration, which consummates in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth.
2. Amos in Hebrew mans "burden bearer."
3. The subject of the book of Amos is Jehovah's judgments on Israel and the surrounding nations, with the issue of restoration.
4. Jehovah's judgment on Judah was due to their rejecting the law of Jehovah and not keeping His statues and due to their following their fathers to lie.

Life experience/Application:

Minor #16

Truth:
1. In our study of the Minor Prophets, we have emphasized four points: God's chastisement of Israel, God's punishment upon the nations, the manifestation of Christ, and the restoration of all things.
2. God's history is of two portions -- the history of God with man in the OT and the history of God in man in the NT.
3. Regarding the history of God in man, the incarnation of Christ accomplished two things.  First, the incarnation brought God into man.  Second, the incarnation made God one with man.  As a result of the incarnation, there was a wonderful person -- a person who is the mingling of God with man.

4. The NJ is a marvelous sign demonstrating how God is in man and is one with man.

Life experience/Application:
1. God wants to come into man and to be one with man.  Man, however, does not take God's way but insists on his own way.  This insistence has caused, and continues to cause, great failure.

2. God created us with the intention to gain us so that He could come into us and be one with us.  However, either we do not care for God or we care for God according to our own way.

Minor #15

Truth:
1. It was through the consuming locusts and the suffering Israel that God could fulfill His economy to have an expression.
2. The church is part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history.

Life experience/Application:
1. If we would know the divine history that takes place within the human history, we first need to realize that the Triune God is eternal.
2. If our living is in the world, we are living in the human history. But if we are living in the church, we are living in the divine history. In the church life, God's history is our history.