“And it shall come to pass IN THAT DAY, saith the Lord GOD, that I WILL CAUSE THE SUN TO GO DOWN AT NOON, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:” (Amos 8:9 KJV).
This is a clear reference to the Day of the Lord, which is recorded in Matthew 24 and Revelation 6, where the sun and moon are darkened and the stars fall down from heaven. But notice that here in Amos 8:9, the sun is said to GO DOWN, but in Revelation 6:12 (covering the same event), “the sun became black as sackcloth of hair” while it was still in the sky. This demonstrates that when the Bible talks about the sun “going down” or “rising” or “going up” or “setting”, etc., it isn’t literal for the sun changing in elevation, it is defined by the King James Bible itself as merely being darkened from your view, as it will be darkened in the second rapture. On top of that, when the sun is darkened, the Bible is clear that it will come not by the sun itself running out of light, but by a dark cloud covering the face of it from the whole earth, “And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.” (Ezekiel 32:7). So when the King James Bible talks about sunrise, sunset, etc., it is all a metaphor for the sun being darkened by something obscuring it, like a cloud.
““AS THE MOURNING OF AN ONLY SON” (vs. 10) clearly marks the passage for Zechariah 12:10 (“AS ONE MOURNETH FOR HIS ONLY SON” ), and the context of both passages is the Second Advent. Furthermore, what follows (Amos 8:11–12) is so clearly a reference to events beyond A.D. 1900 that only a Bible-rejecting Fundamentalist could join hands with a postmillennial Modernist in rejecting the truth of the matter. And although Isaiah 3:24 (JUDAH, not Israel) and Jeremiah 6:26 (JUDAH, not Israel) were preludes or “overtures” to the great drama of Daniel’s Seventieth Week, neither of them bring Amos 8:7–10 to the great fulfillment of “THAT DAY” (vs. 9). In the Tribulation sunlight does go “slap out” (Rev. 6:12) exactly as it did down in Egypt (Exod. 10:22–23), and the earth is darkened on a “clear day” exactly as was done in Egypt (see Rev. 16:10) under the ministry of Moses. The earthquake will come (Rev. 16:18) as prophesied here (vs. 8), and the land will be inundated (Dan. 9:26) with a literal flood (Rev. 12:15), exactly as the Nile inundates Egypt (Ezek. 29), while the remnant (Matt. 24:16) run for their lives (Rev. 12:6).”
(Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, The Book of the Minor Prophets, Amos Chapter 8).
