I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, "Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will kill the last of them with the sword: there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape.
The reason that the temple was widely viewed in Israel as "God's house" is that God indeed did accommodate to it, as also he did in the case of the monarchy; and so long as the Lord continued to send prophets to the northern kingdom, so long did they, despite all their sin, still pass as belonging to the "people of God."  This points up the relevance of this reference to the temple at Jerusalem, which Keil defined as, "the divinely appointed sanctuary and the throne of Jehovah."[6]  Thus, what happened to the temple and the kingdom of Judah was of the most vital relevance to Israel also, hence the inclusion of this fifth vision of Amos' prophecy. God appeared at the altar in Jerusalem, because there at the true sacrificial place of the nation (both of Judah and of Israel), their sins were heaped up; and from that perspective the Lord will judge and punish them.