‘THE COWS OF BASHAN’: Welcome to the Declining Church of the Fat Cows

Amos Chapter 4:1 - Amos Chapter 5: 15

by James Jacob Prasch

Bashan is the modern area to the east of the lower Golan Heights across the Jordan opposite the Greco Roman region of Decapolis in the time of Jesus. It was the area north of the brook of Jabbok, the location of Peniel where Jacob wrestled with the ‘Angel of The Lord’, a christophany or Old Testament pre-incarnation enfleshment of Christ and an area renowned for its lush meadows highly suitable for the grazing of cows. 

In a time of national apostasy prior to the Assyrian captivity of 720 BC/BCE Bashan was characterized by an adulation of wealth achieved by a religious exploitation resulting in a gross proliferation of economic injustice among the people of God akin to and foreshadowing what the Epistle of James prophetically predicts will overtake the church in the Last Days (James 5: 1-6).

Israel was to be the wife of YHWH as the Church is the Bride of Christ, and it is on this basis that Amos is divinely inspired to typologically describe the backslidden mindset of the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel as “Cows of Bashan”. It is perhaps better translated as “fat cows of Bashan” using the Hebrew term ‘kine’ (female ‘heifers’ and not to be confused with the “Bulls of Bashan” from Psalm 22 where the crucifixion of Jesus as Messiah is prophetically described.) His description of these cows using their husbands as their mere servants in verse 1 of Amos chapter 4, there to pander to their selfish wants and desires is undoubtedly colored by the history of the Northern Kingdom where Jezebel simply used King Ahab as her self-serving ‘meal ticket’ to serve her corrupted desires at the expense of the exploited populace. 

The conversed marital relationship of Ahab and Jezebel framed the national character from the time of Elijah & Elijah onward and reflected Israel’s out of order marriage to God.

In verses 2 and 3 Amos relates how God has sworn His coming judgment with the Assyrian invasion and describes Israel’s vulnerability to it due to their being oblivious to the breaches in its walls by virtue of their self-aggrandizing obsessions. What is important to observe, however, is that this was not a mere matter of socio-economic injustice, but a system of extortion driven by the pretense of religiosity. They sacrificed, paid tithes, and brought offerings all of which were perforated with the leaven of sin and false doctrine that, according to the books Hosea, Kings, and Chronicles, included idolatry.

The ‘clean-ness of teeth’ diatribe in the urban areas in verse 6 indicates a punitive lack of food. In the context of Amos however the lack of food is not primarily ingestive but rather “a famine for the hearing of the Word of God’ (Amos 8:11). This very much articulates, at least in figure, with the ministries of Elijah & Elisha that preceded Amos in the pre-Assyrian captivity history of Israel. Things had become so desperate for hearing God’s Word in Israel that God had no indigenous prophet, so he needed to summon Amos from the Southern Kingdom of Judah. It is becoming much the same in UK & USA. A few British indigenous voices remain such as David Pawson and Clifford Hill who still hold to a fundamentally solid doctrinal position, but after the era of Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, Dr. Campbell Morgan, David Gardiner, and FF Bruce there are very few indigenous British expounders of God’s Word who have not succumbed to popular trends of error, spiritual seduction, and moral compromise. Now that Dave Hunt, Chuck Smith, and David Wilkerson are with The Lord, the USA is also moving in the same tragic direction.

The withholding of The Holy Spirit being outpoured (drawing on the “Living Water” imagery of John 7: 38, John 4:10, and the Millennial description of Ezekiel 47) is seen as the next phase of judgment as the greater judgment from Assyria was impending in verses 7&8. There would be pockets of rain only, yet there was to be no repentance. 

The serious lack of exegetically grounded scriptural teaching in the contemporary church is evident. The utter nonsense from such Neo-Gnostic practices as “soaking” plainly rooted in mysticism (in the way the manifestations of the Toronto deception of 20 years ago derived from Kundalini yoga), to the New Age dogma of the Emergent Church, to the theological insanity of the New Apostolic Reformation compounded by demands by supposed Evangelicals to alter opposition to same sex marriage, to the antichrist religion of ecumenism, to the Mammon worship of the Word-Faith money preachers, and the various other lies from hell we have raised caveats regarding over the years … all testify to a “clean-ness of teeth’. There is a grain shortage and the fat cows are too stupid or ignorant to know they are dining on cloves not grass, whose Co2 reactions kills cows causing their internal viscera to inflate and lacerate, inducing internal hemorrhage. If such cows are not drenched and fed proper food, no veterinarian can save them.

This becomes the inevitable ramification of false doctrine.

This is followed by spiritual drought as the cows venture in desperate search of Living Water in verse 8. They wander from city to city seeking God’s Spirit; be it Pensacola, Bill Johnson’s mental asylum in Redding, California, and the financial and sex scandal the plagues Hillsong from Sydney, Australia that equates the worship of the Islamic Allah with the worship of the God of Christians and Jews. Wander as they may, they are not satisfied and cannot be unless they repent, but there is never repentance, only more foolishness and lies. As with the ‘Cows of Bashan’, it is always about money. Counterfeit revivals that are rackets, pretended music ministries that are music industries, and those undiscerning and ignorant enough to buy into such con games being taken to the proverbial cleaners.   

The next stage for which the Cows of Bashan are bound is described as a plague with specific mention of Sodom & Gomorrah. It is no coincidence that one Hillsong leader, Carl Lynn and youth minister Steve Chalk, pop singer Cliff Richard, and Tony Campolo and his son Bart have all caved in on upholding the Scriptural position concerning homosexuality. 

Referring to the conflict between Egypt and Assyria (as described in the Book of Nahum) , verses 9-13, a final judgment is then irreversible. 

In Amos Chapter 5 (there is of course no chapter division in the original Hebrew canon), tells us that the onset of this destruction is depopulation (Amos 5:2) against the reverberating echoes of God’s pleading that they would seek Him and live. Yet the people popularly persist in their same old games. 

Both the Brierly and Barna reports show a steady decline in Evangelical church attendance and denominational membership over the last 20 years that gained momentum after the Toronto deception, that by the most accurate assessment witnessed declines of 17% in the immediate aftermath of that carnal fiasco. It is moronic to imagine that Hillsong and Bethel will not end up the same way. While house churches are growing as shelters for refugees from denominational churches, mainstream evangelism as represented in the denominational systems and the Evangelical Alliance is in obvious and undeniable decline. Most of what growth we do have is transfer growth and not actual Biblical growth. 

The colonization of Samaria by the Assyrians saw a deportation of Hebrews and a remnant that hybrid with their pagan captors. It is no coincidence that Hillsong calls Allah worship the same God as the God of believers, that twisted churches are teaching Islam, and that so many churches - including Baptist and Methodist but especially Anglican - are now turned into mosques. This is the judgment of God on the Cows of Bashan. 

What is crucial however is to know that in verse 18 of Chapter 5 Amos relates this to the Close of The Age and The Day of The Lord when the trend is recapitulated as the Apostle James confirms. Indeed, the following chapter of Amos (6) opens with a reference to the lukewarm Church of Laodicea: “Woe To Those Who Are At Ease In Zion”.  God states that He hates the religiosity and festivals of the Cows of Bashan (Amos 5:21); indeed Hillsong and those of their ilk make Him sick (Amos 5:23). The most crudely visible demonstration of the Cows if Bashan was the Hillsong women’s conference in New York where thousands of Hillsong women sang the Frank Sinatra song “New York, New York” to a “Jesus” dressed in female drag as the Statue of Liberty with the Lady Liberty crown replacing the crown of thorns. This blasphemous spectacle watchable on YouTube and reported widely in the secular media was followed by a choreographed worship extravaganza where these Cows of Bashan celebrated in dance and song before the Hillsong youth minister dressed (actually undressed) in church as the ‘Naked Cowboy’ wearing only cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and carrying a guitar to cover his groin from the worship stage. 

At Hillsong, which targets youth and women, their wives become harlots and their children fall by the sword (meaning The Sword of The Spirit - God’s Word).

The Cows of Bashan, according to Amos, saw their husbands as there only to cater to their selfish whims and self-serving demands for entertainment and carousing. So, it is with the Cows of Bashan in the churches today.  It is not only the women however, it is the church corporately.

The only thing left for the faithful people of God to do, in backslidden Israel, was to flee south to Judah as some did during the reign of good kings in the Southern Kingdom such as King Asa. The only thing for faithful believers to do today is the same thing. Get out quick! If you cannot find a good church, meet in a home. Jesus is coming for a spotless bride. He is not coming to marry a fat cow.