Amos 9:7

"Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith Jehovah. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"

Due to their gross and repeated rebellions against God, Israel had forfeited their status as "God's chosen people"; and here is revealed that God's providences for them had in no sense been heaped upon them without any concern for other nations. Israel seems to have been perpetually blind to the truth that even God's great promise to Abraham, upon which all Jewish and Christian hopes must ultimately rest, had never been given with a view to benefiting his secular posterity alone, but that, in Abraham, "All the families of the earth might be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). Even from the first, as demonstrated by the rejection of a great portion of Abraham's literal descendants, such as Esau, Ishmael, and the sons of Keturah, Abraham's fleshly posterity was never the true possessor of the promise, which pertained to his "spiritual seed" alone, those of a like faith and disposition of their great progenitor.

The Jewish race, all of them, northern and southern kingdoms, had further perverted and misconstrued the promise by applying it, without reservation, to their secular kingdoms. This prophecy put an end to that error, for all who will read and understand Amos.

"Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians...?" In a word, this means that, "Jews, in the fleshly sense, are of no more concern to Almighty God than the Ethiopians, the Philistines and the Syrians. This is still the truth. God has no more any special program for dealing with racial Jews than he does for the Japanese, the Germans, the French, or the Iranians. As Paul put it: "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all" (Romans 10:12). It must be accounted as absolutely incredible that a vast number of "Christian scholars" do not in any sense believe this!

"The Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir ..." God's providence had also been showered upon these nations. Paul, in his great missionary solicitation of the Gentiles did not fail to point out that:

"God, in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways; and yet he left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness" (Acts 14:16,17).