OUR BIBLE BAND by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 24, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 20.

OUR BIBLE BAND

By Editor

Schedule for Week Ending June 4

Sunday	May 29	Ecclesiastes 9-12 Song of Solomon 1, 2
Monday	" 30	" 3-8
Tuesday	" 31	Jonah 1-4
Wednesday	June 1	Joel 1-3
Thursday	" 2	Amos 1-5
Friday	" 3	" 6-9
Sabbath	" 4	Hosea 1-7

THIS is a week for study if we have time to place upon the lesson. We can pass hastily over the former part of it perhaps. The last four chapters of Ecclesiastes come as the first day's reading. The Song of Solomon; one of the one thousand and five songs or poems which Solomon wrote; filled with vivid, warm, Oriental imagery; a dialog between various parties; a poetical picture of Christ and His church; His wonderful love, hers in response, tho often wanting in faithfulness and constancy. Read it alone with God, keeping this thought in mind.

THE book of Jonah was written about 862 years before Christ. We have, outside of the book, in the Old Testament, but one reference to the prophet, found in 2 Kings 14:25. That he was a true prophet of God is shown. He himself certainly wrote the book, and has given us a history of the wonderful work of God in saving Nineveh, and what man is able to accomplish when he does God's bidding and preaches the message that God gives him. Jonah has also revealed to us his own weakness, really the weakness of a great man. Our Lord confirms the canonicity of the book in Matt. 12:39 and elsewhere.

JOEL, one of the oldest of the minor prophets, was written about 800 years before Christ. Some place him a few years later than this. Chapter 3:8 would indicate that he was a prophet of Judah. His prophecy, however, points from calamities in his own nation forward to the great day of God,—our own times. In the third chapter are predicted the great war preparations which we now see going on all around us. God's great message for the harvest-time places all the inhabitants of the world in "the valley of decision."

AMOS was a prophet of Judah, himself a herdsman, whom God called to the prophetic office. The prophecy of Amos is full of the figures which one in his vocation would naturally use. The prophecy goes outside of Judah, and utters judgments against Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and then uses these as an awful warning to Judah and Israel. In the strongest way he pleads with them to return to God. The time, about the year 787 or a little later. The last days and the restoration under Christ are clearly referred to in the last chapters of the book.

HOSEA was contemporary with Amos, his prophetic office exercised in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam (the Second), the son of Joash king of Israel. Altho Israel had utterly repudiated God, God is willing to receive her if she will only return.

OUR readers will remember when Achan committed his great sin, and he and his family were destroyed. The place was called the Valley of Achor, or troubling. See Joshua 7:26. Yet God promises to His sinful, unbelieving children that if they will only return to Him, He will make that Valley of Troubling a door of hope, and will lead His people as He did in their youth when they came out of Egypt. Ephraim and Judah are like a cake not turned; baked on one side only. Their goodness is as the morning cloud and as the dew that goeth early away, when God would have them great fountains of living water.