Thursday, August 6, 2015

Introduction to Joel 2:28-3:21


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/6/2015 10:18 PM

My Worship Time                                                                Focus:  Introduction to Joel 2:28-3:21

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Joel 2:28-32

            Message of the verses:  “28 "It will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions. 29 "Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. 30 “I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, Blood, fire and columns of smoke. 31 “The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 32 "And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Will be delivered; For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem There will be those who escape, As the LORD has said, Even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.”

            What I want to accomplish in this SD is to introduce the last main point from the book of Joel which goes from 2:28-3:21, and then introduce the portion from Joel 2:28-32.  We have mentioned that the theme of the book of Joel is “The Day of the Lord,” and that theme is broken up into three categories:  Dr. Wiersbe explains:  “Joel’s message to Judah (and to us) is reaching its conclusion.  He has described the immediate ‘Day of the Lord,’ the terrible plague of the locusts.  This led to a description of the imminent ‘Day of the Lord,’ the impending invasion of the northern army.  All that remains is for him to describe the ultimate ‘Day of the Lord’ when God will judge all the nations of the earth.  ‘For the Day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen’ (Obad. 15).

            “Joel describes a sequence of events relating to this ‘great and terrible Day of the Lord’ (Joel 2:31), what will happen before that day, during that day, and after that day.”

            I have said that it is interesting that at the same time that we are looking at the book of Joel and especially this portion that we are also looking at the book of Revelation as we just finished chapter fifteen and the introduction to the sixteenth chapter which goes right along with this section of Joel for in those chapters the Day of the Lord is what is going on as the Lord completes His wrath on planet earth and those unbelievers who live on it with the final seven plagues which are the bowl judgments.

            Dr. Wiersbe writes the following as his introduction to the section which is quoted above from Joel 2:28-32:  “In the Hebrew Scriptures, these five verses from chapter 3 of Joel’s prophecy; and chapter 4 in the Hebrew Scriptures is chapter 3 in the English Bible.  The Jewish scholars who arranged the Old Testament Scriptures evidently thought that this paragraph was important enough to warrant a chapter by itself.  However, now that we have a completed Bible, this important passage must be studied both in its Jewish context and in the context of the New Testament church.”  We will look at both of these contexts in our next two SD’s from the book of Joel.  

            I have to say that I was a big fan of reading “The Left Behind” series and waited for the next book to come out as I could not wait to see what  happened to the characters in the next book which seemed to me would never get here.  Now one thing that I remember about one of the books had to do with this prophecy from the book of Joel as one of the main characters in the books had some dreams that showed him what will happen in the future.  The Tribulation Period will be the most terrible time that earth will ever see and if it were not for the return of Jesus Christ to planet earth when He does come back no flesh would be left.  This portion of the book of Joel helps us better understand about this awful time that is about to come on planet earth.

8/6/2015 10:40 PM

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