A Call To Accountability

Amos 5:18–24 NASB95

Alas, you who are longing for the day of the Lord, For what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you? It will be darkness and not light; As when a man flees from a lion And a bear meets him, Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall And a snake bites him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light, Even gloom with no brightness in it? “I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. “Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. “Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. “But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

The Lexham Cultural Ontology Glossary Justice

Justice

Definition

Concepts of right and wrong, especially as they relate to people and wrongs committed by a person against another.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Justice

1 a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments

750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers and Writers 352: Justice

Justice 352

The name Al Capone brings to mind crime, gangsters terrorizing a city, and Scarface himself beating three of his wayward subordinates to death with a baseball bat.

But that view of Capone wasn’t always the case.

During the 1920s many people viewed Al Capone as a respected citizen, a sort of Robin Hood, says writer Ron Grossman. In 1930 students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism were asked to name “the outstanding personages of the world.” Capone made the list, along with George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Einstein.

But Capone’s days of power were short-lived.

In 1931 he attended a football game at Northwestern University. In years past when he attended sporting events, he often was saluted by fans. But this time he was booed out of the stands and left the stadium in humiliation.

In 1931, after only six years as mob boss in Chicago, Capone was convicted of income tax evasion. He ended up in Alcatraz. Eight years later when he was released from prison, he was suffering from the advanced stages of syphilis. He lived as a recluse, dying in 1947.

During his time at Alcatraz, Capone worked in the prison shoe shop and shared a cell with a convict who worked on the prison newspaper. Capone told his cellmate one evening, “I’m supposed to be a big shot and I’ve wound up in the shoe shop; you’re supposed to be a safe cracker and now you write editorials. What kind of a screwed-up, lousy world is this?”

This world is a place where those who violate God’s law may flourish for a season, but their days are numbered. Sooner or later, on this earth or at the great judgment seat, evildoers pay for their evil deeds.

Judgment, Law of God, Reaping, Sowing

The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volumes 1–5 Justice

JUSTICE, jusʹtis צְדָקָה, çedhāḳāh, צֶדֶק, çedheḳ; δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosúnē): The original Heb and Gr words are the same as those rendered “righteousness.” This is the common rendering, and in about half the cases where we have “just” and “justice” in AV, ARV has changed to “righteous” and “righteousness.” It must be constantly borne in mind that the two ideas are essentially the same. See RIGHTEOUSNESS.