Please explain Amos 8:11. What is meant by a famine of "hearing the words of the Lord"? O. H. It means this: When God finishes His work in the earth, the seven last plagues of Revelation 16 are impending. His great threefold message of Revelation 14 will have been given. Warning will have come to every soul that lives upon the earth, and the multitudes in the valley of decision (Joel 3:14) will have taken their stand on the one side or the other of the great controversy. Of course great masses will have rejected God's Word. They will have laughed at the warnings, and scoffed at the coming judgments that were predicted as based upon that Word. But when the message has been given, all burden will be taken from the servants of God. They have done their work; God has done His. Then His judgments, the great consequences of sin, will come upon the earth. Men have rejected God's Spirit; God's Spirit is withdrawn, and the fulfilment of all the prophecies pertaining to that time will begin to take place. Men will then see — selfishly see — what they have lost, and they will begin to seek for the Word of the Lord, for hope, for comfort, for deliverance; but the Word then can not be found. They might have had it in their heart to fortify them against the calamities which are upon them, but they would not. And now that the calamities are upon them, according to that Word, then they seek for the Word, but can not find it. "They shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the Word of Jehovah, and shall not find it." The text emphasizes the eternally important truth, "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation."