People of all generations have...
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People of all generations have looked forward with mixed feelings of hope and fear to the coming of the day of the Lord, which means a time of judgment and of the end of the world as we know it. Most people take the optimistic view that if there is to be a separation of the sheep and the goats, of good and bad, they will be chosen as one of the good ones. But God makes no such promise. The day of judgment will be a day of doom for those who have displeased God. Long before the Christian era, the prophet Amos proclaimed this warning to the religious leaders of his people. "Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!" he said. The people of Israel fully expected that such a time would be a day of glory for them when their enemies would be destroyed. What they conveniently overlooked was the fact that their formal religious exercises cloaked their inward apostasy, injustice, and disbelief. For such people the Lord's day would bring "darkness, and not light ... and gloom with no brightness in it." The only way to escape God's condemnation, Amos said, was for righteousness and justice to flourish throughout the land.
