Joel 2:28 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy… Upon the promises of physical blessing there follows another of the outpouring of the Spirit: the prophecy by which Joel became the prophet of Pentecost, and through which his book is best known among Christians. The order of events makes us pause to question: does Joel mean to imply that physical prosperity must precede spiritual fulness? It would be unfair to assert that he does, without remembering what he understands by the physical blessings. To Joel these are the token that God has returned to His people. The drought and the famine produced by the locusts were signs of His anger and of His divorce of the land. The proofs that He has relented and taken Israel back into a spiritual relation to Himself, can, therefore, from Joel's point of view, only be given by the healing of the people's wounds. In plenteous rains and full harvests Goal sets His seal to man's penitence. Rain and harvest are not merely physical benefits, but religious sacraments: signs that God has returned to His people, and that His zeal is again stirred on their behalf (Joel 1:18). This haste be made clear before there can be talk of any higher blessing. God has to return to His people and to show His love for them before He pours forth His Spirit upon them.... From Joel's standpoint physical blessings may have been as religious as spiritual, but we must go further, and assert that for Joel's anticipation of the baptism of the Spirit by a return of prosperity, there is an ethical reason, and one which is permanently valid in history. A certain degree of prosperity, and even of comfort, is an indispensable condition of that universal and lavish exercise of the religious faculties, which Joel pictures under the pouring forth of God's Spirit. The history of prophecy itself furnishes us with proofs of this. And has it been otherwise in the history of Christianity? An acute historian observes that every religious revival in England has happened upon a basis of comparative prosperity. (G. Adam Smith, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: |
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