Amos 7-9: A Basket of Ripe Fruit

Amos was nothing more than a shepherd.  As he said:  "I was neither a prophet nor a prophet's son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees.  But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel.'  - Amos 7:14-15 NIV

The priests of Israel would not listen to or acknowledge Amos, but that didn't stop God from revealing the truth to him, illustrated by a basket of ripe fruit. 
This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.  "What do you see, Amos?" he asked.
      "A basket of ripe fruit," I answered.
Then the LORD said to me, "The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
"In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "the songs in the temple will turn to wailing.  Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!"  - Amos 8:1-3 NIV

The ripe fruit will turn into famine.  A famine unlike any the people of Israel have feared.  It will be a most terrible day of the Lord.
  "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD,
       "when I will send a famine through the land—
       not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
       but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
   Men will stagger from sea to sea
       and wander from north to east,
       searching for the word of the LORD,
       but they will not find it. - Amos 8:11-12 NIV

The most terrible day of the Lord will not be when Israel loses their palaces, their temple, their homes, their flocks, their grain, or any of their possessions.  The most terrible day will be when they cannot find the word of the Lord.  The very thing the priests do not want to hear will disappear and they will stagger for lack of it. The time is ripe, the basket of ripe fruit is full.