The Day of the Lord, Joel Chapter Two, Pt. 2

Had I known this little chapter 2 of Joel would capture me, I might have been reluctant to begin….  But I am so glad that it prompted me to dig deep as I have discovered so many interesting tidbits from history - facts that seem lost in our church world today, yet as I read them, feel vital to our understanding of scripture.  Beginning with serendipitously picking up that book on Jerusalem way back in August 2013, I have been on a journey of historical discovery.  I hope you follow as I piece together my thoughts, which, as I’ve always said are my thoughts - not doctrine - as I am a student, not teacher.  I hope there are some of you out there who are on this learning journey with me, have the same questions as I do, and find some help in my posts.  As with so much “prophetic” verse, I have gone back and forth, back and forth, spending some anguishing time in prayer and study, as I struggle with my own questions.  I pray you will hear me out, seek for yourself (as we know that the Holy Spirit was given to lead us and guide us to all truth!) and comment appropriately.

The language of our Lord is at times succinct and harsh.  His use of imagery captures the hearts of every generation, not just the one to whom He spoke, just as when He prayed for his disciples, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which believe on me through their word” John 17:20.  He thus speaks of you, me, every generation till He should come.  But the questions for me are, “Am I wrong to consider the entirety of Joel 2 relating to the the church if Peter extracted v. 28-32 to bear witness to the coming of the Holy Spirit?”;  “was the book of Joel directed to a specific generation?”;  and much as John the Baptist's inquiry of Jesus, “Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” are our questions, “what is and when is the day of the Lord?”  Jesus did not answer John directly, but rather with “Go and tell John again those things which ye do hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me.”  In other words, objectively examine the evidence.

So, I am trying.  I think we miss something, first, if we fail to see that the Old and New Testaments are one continuous message of redemption from sin and reconciliation to God, the obstacle to relationship and how it’s overcome, and second, if we fail to see Jesus as both.  First Cor. 1:23 reads, “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  Truly Christ crucified has been the stumbling block to so many who think He came to begin a new religion, adding just another way to the many in the world, or to take away from their religion, but Jesus claims to be the only way to relationship, the fulfillment of relationship and that offends. He came to free, so many come to enslave.  “There is a way that seems right to man, but the end thereof is death,” and “He who comes to God, must first believe that He is.”  Fundamental statements.  If God is real, can He do do as He pleases with His creation as the potter does his clay?  Yes.  Who would argue that?  We all do.  It offends!  Our reaction is, “That’s not the way I would do it!”  So, if we analyze the offense, we realize we don’t truly believe in God as the Lord of all creation, and we choose a way [god] that pleases us.  Thus in my study, I am finding truly the Jews asked for signs and the Greeks wisdom, but neither leads to truth as signs can be misinterpreted, ignored, or misleading, and the wisdom of the world comes and goes with the information and fad of the age; and Truth cannot be truth if there are many.  Again, I just love the line from A Few Good Men.  Like Kaffe, we cry out to a higher power, "I want truth!" and God bemoans, "You can't handle the truth!"  Hence, Christ crucified, the power and wisdom of God. Beginning with Moses (who divinely penned the Pentateuch), redemption is promised (Gen. 3:15), ending with Revelation, redemption is realized in Christ (Rev. 1:5). 

I believe this is why we find Jesus, after His resurrection, unrecognized, walking alongside two of his disciples.  Was it just to demonstrate how well-versed He was in Scripture?  Is He not making the connection between the two?  The promises of God, fulfilled in Him?  Yet to the Jew, he had to do this to demonstrate one characteristic of Mashiach, and to the Gentile, to show Himself the banner to which all nations would come.  ¹  Luke 24: "Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, expounding to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."  We, like the two disciples, blind (see vs. 16), foolish and doubtful (vs. 25) until the Lord opens our eyes (vs. 31). 

“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.”  The blessing, in my opinion, is the connection between the two:  redemption and reconciliation promised and revealed in Jesus Christ. Rev. 19:10 tells us that the testimony of Jesus IS the spirit of prophecy.  If that is true, then all prophets pointed to Christ. Let’s examine just a few verses (the first mentioned above) that demonstrate what I mean, before I continue posting my journey through "the time that is at hand" as it relates to Joel chapter 2. Ponder these.

Genesis 3:15 to Satan “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed, He will bruise your head and you will bruise His heel.”
Genesis 28:14 to Abraham “…in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Psalm 89:4 to David  “Your seed I will establish forever, and build up your throne to all generations.”
Isaiah 53:9-10 to the prophet Isaiah “And they made His grave with the wicked - But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.  When you make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.”
Matthew 27:38,57 “Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and another on the left.”  “Now when evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.  This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus…When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock.”
Matthew 1:20 “…Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” 
Galatians 3:16 “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made.  He does not say, “and to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.”
Galatians 3:19 “What purpose then does the law serve?  It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made….”
Galatians 4:4  “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.”
Romans 16:20 “And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.”
1 John 3:9 “Whoever is born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”

Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.”
Matthew 2:1 “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king…”

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:  Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel (God with us).”
Luke 1:26-31 “In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David….  You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus*.” 

Isaiah 53:3  “He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;  He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”
John 1:11  “He came to His own, and His own did not received Him.”

Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”
Matthew 2:14-15 “So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.”

Jeremiah 23:5  “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; A king shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.”
Romans 1:3  “…concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,”
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.”

Jeremiah 31:15  “…A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.”
Matthew 2:16  “Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men.”

Zechariah 9:9  “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Mark 11:7-11  “Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and He sat on it….  Then those who before and those who followed cried out, saying: ‘Hosanna!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the Highest!”

Isaiah 48:12 “I am He, I am the First, I am  also the Last. Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has stretched out the heavens.”
Colossians 1:16 “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities of power.  All things were created through Him and for Him.”   
Revelation 1:11 “I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last.”

¹One of the requirements of the Mashiach, according to Judaism 101:
"He will be well-versed in Jewish law and observant of the commandments"
Isaiah 11:10 says, "and in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which will stand for an ensign (banner) of the people.  To it, shall the Gentiles seek: and His rest shall be glorious."