“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, But rather for hearing the words of the LORD” (Amos 8:11).
Famine is a lack of food and nourishment. We saw that famine for the word in the intertestamental period between the prophet Malachi and John the Baptist, who came in the spirit of Elijah as the herald of the coming of the Messiah.
Prophecy is pattern, and today we see that same prophetic pattern repeating itself; there is a famine for hearing the words of the Lord in these days. There is much speaking of words, but there is little speaking of the words of the Lord brought by His Holy Spirit and there is very little hearing of those Spirit-anointed words. So the prophesied famine is occurring and, once again, it is to be followed by the coming of the Word of God Himself, Christ Jesus.
The way that Elijah fed the gentile woman and her son is a type of the way the ministry of Elijah will function in these final days of famine. In the meantime, commercial ministries will continue to feed the people rubbish, selling them “the refuse of the wheat” (Amos 8:6) and making “the ephah small and the shekel great” (Amos 8:5). In a famine, people will eat anything so it behoves each believer to ensure that the word they are eating is kosher; that is, coming from God and not men.
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