The Minor Prophets

Months ago now, I started a series of Bible studies on the minor prophets. We did a one Bible study, just an introduction to the minor prophets. And then we did two Bible studies on the book of Hosea. And I had lots of handouts and so forth. I do have this one handout that I gave out. I've changed a little bit on it, some dates and a name that I'm looking at, comparing with some more accurate sources. And I made a few changes, so I'll get this, send this out to you at some point with a pastor's update so that you'll be able to just have the most up-to-date dates and the way names are spelled, those kind of things. But so we went through that. And now we're going to go through the second of the minor prophets, which is the book of Joel.

Joel, the name of Joel just means the eternal is God. There's two possible dates that he prophesied during. We know he went directly to Judah. He sent to the southern kingdom of Judah and to all nations. He has a message to all kinds of nations, all the nations of the world. And Joel is one of those books that's so interesting because the message is obvious to those people. But there's a whole huge element of it that is in the future. And anybody who reads that knows, okay, this meant something to those people, but there are whole parts of this book that can only happen in the future. And so it has a real importance in understanding some of the end-time events of what's going to happen. He was somewhere between 835 and 740. He prophesied there's two different kings of Judah that could have been ruling at the time. So there's a little discrepancy. No one knows exactly where he fits in there, but we know about the time. We know what Judah was like at the time, and we know exactly what he's talking about when he gives them the message from God and what was happening. Just like Hosea, we know how destabilized the government had become. Remember we talked about how in Israel, like four out of the last six kings were assassinated. I mean the whole government had become destabilized. And they'd gone from this huge great economy that was slowing down, and there was a lot of just incredible justice going on and poverty, and all these things were happening, but they wouldn't return to God. Well, Judah had an event that he's going to use to make his point. And his main message is about the day of the Lord.

Now I've talked about the day of the Lord before, and in fact I've given a sermon on this, where the day of the Lord isn't just one time. I mean there's different days of the Lord in the Bible. We usually look at the future day of the Lord, meaning the return of Jesus Christ, and God pouring out His wrath on humanity just before Christ returns. There's the day of the Lord that Peter talks about in which the earth is purified by the lake of fire. That's the last day of the Lord. We know that Israel went through its day of the Lord, and Judah went through its day of the Lord. The day of the Lord means a time of judgment. It's a time when God brings judgment on people. And when we look at Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah, much of their message is to Judah and Israel. But then they also talk about the day of the Lord in reference to other people. In Isaiah 2, he talks about the day of the Lord referring to Judah. In Isaiah 13, the day of the Lord talks about God's judgment on Babylon, and specifically ancient Babylon.

Isaiah 34 is, there's this day of the Lord on all nations. Ezekiel 7, day of the Lord is about Israel. And then Ezekiel 30, the day of the Lord is on Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya specifically.

And what we can see is these all had partial fulfillments. I mean, Ezekiel 30 was partially fulfilled with Nebuchadnezzar, who literally brought the Babylonians down and destroyed Egypt, or not destroyed them, but they conquered Ethiopia and Egypt and Libya. So when he's talking about the day of the Lord here, he's going to have an application to Judah at that time, although it would be generations before it actually happened.

God brings prophets. He brings messengers to tell people long before he brings about the day of the Lord, to tell them about it. Sometimes hold generations, you know, to tell them about this is going to happen. And just like we talk today about the, you know, in our messages today, we talk about the day of the Lord. When we talk about that, we're talking about God's judgment on humanity that's going to be poured out before Christ's return. Well, let's go to Joel then, chapter 1. I wish we had an audience where we could have a little bit of give and take, but unfortunately, we can't under this condition here. Verse 1 says, The Word of the Lord, it came to Joel, the son of Pethewell, Hear this, you elders, and give here all you inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children and their children and other generations. So he's saying, what I'm telling you now, you need to pass on to your children and your grandchildren. This message needs to be passed on because what happened, he's using a current event. He's using something that actually happened. And he's saying, what happened here is the precursor of something greater. We could say, COVID-19, it's just a precursor of the time of sorrows that Jesus talks about, the four horsemen of the apocalypse of Revelation 6. This is giving us a little bit of insight into what that's going to be like. In fact, could actually be setting up the events that would lead to that.

So it'd be like saying, remember COVID-19 because it'll let you keep in your mind what's going to happen later. He says, this actually happened. They witnessed it and said, remember it and pass it on as an example of what God's going to do on a greater scale. And here's what happened, verse 4.

What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten. And what the crawling locust has left, the consuming locust has eaten.

Now, they had suffered a devastating locust plague. There's a devastating locust plague going on right now in Africa. Boy, back in March, April, it was huge. It still is. It's actually moved over into, well, I don't know whether it started in the Middle East, it moved into Africa, it started Africa, moved there. But it's the desert locusts like the ones they would have had here. And I've read the other day that it may have actually, swarms of them, they've actually reached India. So this is a huge locust plague going on right now. And there's been locust plagues, of course, throughout history. But what I want to show you to give you an idea of a locust plague. Now, the locust plague you're going to see, what's as devastating as this one. But this is something that the BBC did, I think it was last year, so within the last couple of years, where they went and they filmed the locust plague. So watch this and get a little bit of idea what these people had gone through.

There is no other species on the planet that responds as quickly and as dramatically to the good times as the desert locust. Eggs that have remained in the ground for 20 years begin to hatch.

The young locusts are known as hoppers, for at this stage they're flightless.

They find new feeding grounds by following the smell of sprouting grass.

Normally, it takes four weeks for hoppers to become adults, but when the conditions are right, as now, their development switches to the fast track. As the vegetation in one place begins to run out, the winged adults release pheromones, scent messages, which tell others in the group that they must move on. And when groups merge, they form a swarm.

An adult locust eats its entire body weight every day, and a whole swarm can consume literally hundreds of tons of vegetation.

They have to keep on moving. The swarm travels with the wind. It's the most energy-saving way to fly. Following the flow of wind means that they're always heading toward areas of low pressure, places where wind meets rain and vegetation starts to grow. As they fly, swarms join up with other swarms to form gigantic plagues, several billion strong and as much as 40 miles wide.

They will consume every edible thing that lies in their path.

This is one of planet Earth's greatest spectacles. It's rarely seen on this scale, and it won't last long. Once the food has gone, the steady roar of a billion beating locust wings will once again be replaced by nothing more than the sound of the desert wind. Can you imagine a billion insects a couple inches long? If you read about locust plagues, or just go online and click on videos, do a search on locust plagues and click on videos. You'll see videos where the sky is black. You'll see areas where they eat everything.

Like he said, it won't last very long. The reason it doesn't last very long is that there's nothing left to eat. I read one case in Russia where they landed on a bunch of sheep. When they flew off, none of the sheep were still alive, but none of them had their wool left. They ate all the wool off the sheep.

Well, Israel, or Judah, I mean, had just gone through that kind of event where their whole world, their country, their economy, everything had been just devastated by these locusts. And God, through Joel, tells them, remember this, remember this, because if you don't repent, what happened here is going to be minor compared to what's going to happen. So God uses a lot of times these natural events. Sometimes He doesn't even have to cause them. He just uses them. You see Jesus do that in His teachings.

He uses what happened, these events, to say, look, think about God. Remember this event, because think about what God can and will do if we don't respond to Him. When you go back to the book of Joel now, by the way, you can look up on the Internet. In 1915, there was a huge locust plague that hit Jerusalem and that surrounded Judea.

And it was covered by the National Geographic magazine, and you can find the pictures online. And it's just amazing how they left whole areas as desert. There was nothing there. And as I know I mentioned this in a sermon one time on trumpets when I was talking about these locust plagues, they actually had babies that were killed by them. These things just ate everything. So think of what these people are going through. We think we're having a hard time right now. This is what Judea went through. And Joel comes along. This couldn't have made him a very popular guy. He said, hey, remember this because God's using this as a warning.

And then he goes through some very specific people he warns. Look at verse 5. Awake you drunkers and weep. And he goes up here and he talks to the party people. There were just a lot of people. They had a good time. They had good jobs. Things worked out well for them. They had lots of wine. They were party people. And he singles them out as a group. And he says, you better wake up. All your partying, you're not living the way God wants you to live. You may pretend to be sort of religious and pretend to do what you're doing, you know, should be doing.

So he singles out party people. I find that interesting in a society we live in because it's a very party-oriented society. I'm not saying it's wrong to ever have a party. I'm just saying there's this atmosphere and concept of partying. And there would have been lots of alcohol. Here it's alcohol and drugs and everything else that goes along with that.

Then if we go down to verse 8, he starts in on the priests. Because he says, lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. Because he says, the great offering and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord.

The priest mourned who ministered to the Lord. He says, you know, the priests now, they're mourning because they were not serving God for the right reasons. They were serving God because it gave them certain status. And, you know, they may not be able to own property, but you know, they could eat well. You know, they lived a pretty good life. And he says, but what you've been doing is not teaching my people. What you've been doing hasn't been right. So he says, you mourn too, because this is a message for you.

Then let's skip down to verse 11. He hits the farmers really hard. And he says, you, because remember, it's an agricultural society. This is the majority of the people. He says, I've taken away your entire livelihood. Not I, but these locusts took away your entire livelihood. What are you going to do?

You're going to starve? How's the people in the towns going to eat? No food. So he singles out these people, and then he calls for them in verse 13 to repent. He says, this is a warning from God. This event that's happened should focus you in on God. I think this is important, this is interesting in what we're going through right now. I see what we're going through now, God will use...I'm not saying He caused this problem.

I'm not even sure anybody can define exactly how devastating or bad or... I mean, there's so many different reports on what's happening and what hasn't happened and what hasn't happened. But that's not the issue. That really isn't the issue. The issue is, has this focused you in on God? Because that's what He's telling them. What's happened to you isn't the Day of the Lord. What's happened to you is something that gives you a little idea of what the Day of the Lord will be like. This is just small compared to what's going to happen. So where is your focus right now? What is your focus on? And He's telling them your focus should be on a personal humility before God.

You know, the most important aspect, I've come to the conclusion, in righteousness and in faith, and those two issues, is humility before God. Without that, we have our own righteousness. And without that, our faith isn't really in the will of God. It can be...it just can be stubbornness or something else.

It is humility before God.

And so that's what He tells them. Look what He says in verse 13.

He says, it's at hand. It wouldn't come for years later. But to them, He says, the Day of the Lord is right now for you. Now, I don't know if I'll live to see the Day of the Lord. I'd like to. But the Day of the Lord is for me right now if I die in the car wreck on the way home. You know, Christ is going to be returning. That's my next waking moment. You know, I may miss that pouring out of that wrath on humanity, but my Day of Judgment is, well, at that moment. So He said, focus in on the future Day of the Lord by focusing in on yourself. He says, it's not the food cut off before your eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God. The seed shrivels under the cloth, storehouses are in shambles, barns are broken down. For the grain is withered, how the animals groan, how the herds of cattle are restless, because they have no pasture. Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment. I thought that was interesting when I heard of a flock of sheep that got sheared by locust. O Lord, to you I cry out, this is what Joel says, For fire has devoured the open pastures, and a flame has burned all the trees of the field. The beasts of the field also cry out to you, for the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the open pastures. It's interesting if you read the National Geographic article, the other problems they had, the excrement, because it took days that these just huge, it was swarms that came together, went over Jerusalem. It took days to pick up the eggs and the excrement. They actually had, the government required every person to collect so many pounds of eggs and excrement a day and bring it to a place to be burned. Famine, just, I mean, the water supplies were polluted. The things that happened afterwards, disease, all because of the locust. It's interesting how many, I did watch today some, I knew this was going on, but I did watch some new sources like BBC, new sources from Africa, new sources, we don't cover a lot of world news in this country. We're too consumed with our own self-destruction, just dirty politics and all the stuff, the fighting that goes on. We're missing out on what's going on in the world many times. But we're looking at Africa, even Egypt, it's moving a little bit into the Middle East. Africa's looking at devastation by summertime that may take them years to come back from.

Starvation, we think of the collapse of the U.S. economy, we don't realize what that means in places like Africa where they may not have food in two or three months and have no food to grow because of the devastation. And what happens when we don't send them food because our economy's collapsed?

Tens of millions of starvation.

We'll go fight in the grocery stores because we don't have enough toilet paper.

We could have a crisis here where you and I can eat. We just might not have meat this summer. I don't know. There could be all kinds of problems when you look at what's happened to the meat industry and so forth. And maybe we don't get a hamburger for three months. I don't think we're going to starve.

But how many people will be upset? How many fights will there be? How much crying out in the streets will there be?

Because we're so rich. And how many millions possibly of people will die in Africa because we can't send them food.

But it's just a locust plague. We don't care. We're more concerned about just the politics of the country.

Sometimes when I read through the writer-prophets, it's just us. I know this is to Judah, not Israel, but I don't know. I see a lot of the same things.

So he calls on them to repent because the Day of the Lord is not just a natural catastrophe. It is something God does.

The seven trumpets are not natural catastrophes. They're not. God does it. All the seals before that, a lot of it is what man is doing. But what happens in those seven trumpets? That's God's doing.

So he says in chapter 2 now, Below the trumpet in Zion, and we sing this so many times on the Day of Trumpets, And sound an alarm in my holy mountain, Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, For the day of the Lord is coming, For it is at hand, A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread out over the mountains, A people come great and strong, Like the like of whom has never been, There will never be any such after them, Even from any successive generations. He says the army you're going to face is going to be the most powerful army on the earth for generations to come. And of course we know the Babylonian army came in and destroyed Judah.

He says a fower, he describes this, and we've read this many times. It is a very interesting mixture of what they would have just seen and experienced, and mixture of poetry. And so he says, it's like they're these locusts, and it's like they're crawling over walls. I saw one video this morning, it showed a guy driving his car, he was in Africa, and he stopped, and this was recently, he stopped, got out of his car, his kids were inside screaming and crying because of what they were seeing, and he's filming. The locust must have been two inches of places deep, and the whole road looked like it was moving, it looked like it was mud until he focused in, it was just moving bugs. You know, just moving. And you can see in the field, everything was just moving. And he stand there filming this, and then he said something, and someone started to drive the car off, and it was sliding, you know, because it was just crushing bugs. I remember a Caterpillar plague when I was a kid up in Pennsylvania, and I remember driving down the road and hearing that sound of just crushing bugs. I was a little kid. I'm vivid memories of that. He now describes this army like they're locust, but he says they're well organized, and they march one after another. You know, nothing can stop them. They climb right over walls. Well, they had watched these things climb right over walls in their different stages. You saw in the video the stages where they crawl, then there's the hopping stage. They just hop around, you know, and then there's that flying stage. They can come to a river at the walking stage, and so many of them will pile into the river and drown and they'll build a natural bridge that the other, you know, 900 million will simply walk on top of it. And he uses that to say, this is the kind of army you're going to face on the Day of the Lord. And he goes on and describes that. In fact, at the end of verse 11 he says, Now, you and I don't have to fear the Day of the Lord if we're right with God. Because our judgment's different. You say, well, yeah, but before the Day of the Lord in the tribulation, there's going to be martyrs. You know, my wife and I talked about that today. That, you know, there's going to be martyrs. And, you know, in one way, oh, good, let's get this over worth. And in another way, it's like, I don't want to be martyred. Right? That's true. But God's wrath isn't going to be poured out in these people. Human beings might do something to us, but God's wrath is coming on the world. We have to be focused on Christ's return. And if one thing I've...I'm thinking about giving a sermon on this. One thing I've noticed that's different in the church than when I was, say, in the late 60s, early 70s, a teenager, is our focus was on Christ's return much more. Now our focus is on our things and how much money we have and our jobs and our houses and our boats and our cars. That's our focus. Too much of the time. But the church was more poor back then. I mean, people had to share food sometimes to live. It was much more poor back then. The focus was on Christ's coming. Sometimes I think because we're so rich, physically it feels like we're already living in the millennium. But we're not. This isn't the millennium.

The United States is not the Kingdom of God. We'll talk about that in a sermon coming up. Now it comes down to the call to repentance. Verse 12, Now therefore says the Lord, turn to me, so he says this is what's going to happen, turn to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning, to rend your heart, this is what he wants, and not your garments. Turn to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and he relents from doing harm. And he goes on for the whole rest of this chapter, and he talks about repentance. He talks about turning your heart to God. The message to us right now in what we're going through is, as the people of God, because I need to tell you this, if you haven't figured this out, the United States isn't going to repent as a nation and turn to God. It's not going to happen. You know how I know that? The day of the Lord is coming. The Bible says so. But people are going to repent. Individuals are going to repent. And we repented and we turned to God at one point. But our question now is, the day of the Lord is going to come. If nothing else, this should have woke us up to the realization, oh yeah, my life, this little fairy tale I've been living. Now I say fairy tale. You know, we don't think of that. But compared, I don't know if you listen to services, Sabbath, you know, Mr. Smith, Mr. Frankie's message was right on spot. You know, right now you and I are still living better than most of the people who have ever lived throughout the history of humanity. I think you're eating more than 2,000 calories a day. That's why we're all getting fat. Because we're not getting enough exercise, right? You know, there's many times in history where they didn't get enough, didn't get 2,000 calories a day and the life expectancy was 40. Not because it was a world war, because, well, that's the way the world was. You know, the Blue Body plague three or four times went through Europe and each time killed 25 to 35% of everybody died. The other, you know, 25 or 35% of the people got it but survived and then there was a small group of people who didn't get it. But it killed tens of millions.

World War II, the amount of people that died. Now, I'm not saying that what we're going through isn't stressful. I'm not saying it's not bad. The bottom line is, okay, this is the truth. I could get COVID-19 sometime in the next year, two years, I don't know, because it's not going to go away.

And at my age, I could die. I don't want to do that. I don't want to catch that. I'm going to do everything I can within reason to be healthy and not do that. I'm not going to go to certain places. I'm going to be very careful. I practice social distancing with people when I see them. I don't stand 12 feet apart.

When I go to the post office, I stand four or five feet behind the person in front of me and the person behind me does that. I have no problem with that.

I'm going to try to take care of myself. But you know the bottom line is, when I went to the post office, I could still catch it. Just like I could catch the flu and die. That doesn't mean we should not use wisdom. What it means is, is we have to realize that our focus has to be on having God in our lives so I'm ready right now. I hope I get to see all the things happen and see Jesus Christ coming back even though I know there's going to be hard times. I really hope I get to do that.

Either way, I'm going to be there at the end of the day of the Lord when the seventh trumpet sounds. At least that's my goal. My goal in life is to be there when the last trumpet, which is the last trumpet of the day of the Lord in Revelation. Well, that happens. I want to be there. And that's more important than all these other things. So instead of being focused on everything else, which what Judah was doing, he said, focus in on you.

You! And a lot of times we focus in on each other and we do all kinds of things. If we focus in on ourselves, we can actually be an inspiration to others, help to others. So he goes through it and he tells them to repent, repent, repent. He tells them to weep. He says, well, I sure hope this nation weeps. You know what? I'm not sure.

We can tell this message to the world. About two years ago, I gave an entire television program on this, okay? Tens and tens of thousands of people watched it. You know, thousands of people watched it on YouTube. I think this is just maybe even more important to the Church. If we're not careful, we'll miss this. We have to realize this message is to us too. You know, it's to Judah.

I can read this message to people in any nation in the world and it would have the exact same meaning. Anybody who calls themselves the people of God, okay? So I can go to any place where there's a Catholic or Protestant Church and say, okay, you call yourself the people of God, read Joel. But it's to us too as the Church. We call ourselves the people of God. Right? You believe you're the person... God called you. So you are one of the people of God that this is for us. We need to make sure we're right with God. Because we're going to have to face that day of the Lord one way or another.

And being alive and even protected in it is not going to be easy. Nothing easy about this. But we don't have to live in total anxiety and fear. Here's what picks up in verse 18 that's so interesting. Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, okay, after the day of the Lord, and pity His people. And the Lord will answer and say to His people, Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, and you will be satisfied, and I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.

I will remove far from you the northern army, and of course the Babylonians came from the north, drive them into a barren and desolate land, okay, drive them back towards the sea. Verse 21, fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done marvelous things. Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field. So He says there's going to be a time when He's going to bring those people back, restore the people of Judah to their land. Verse 23, be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God.

And He talks about all these things He's going to do, and they're physical things. Verse 25, I will restore to you the years of the swarming locusts as eaten, the crawling locusts, the consuming locusts, the chewing locusts. And He goes on and He says all these amazing things are going to happen. He promises that to them.

And verse 27, and you shall know that I am the Lord in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God. There's no other, my people shall never be put to shame. There's been attempts to try to say, well this was fulfilled in 1948, when Judah was brought back to the land of Israel. No, this goes beyond that. They're still put to shame. Other nations still oppress them.

We have here then something that gives us a clue to this time period. Verse 28, it shall come to pass afterward, after He has gathered these people back, and of course we know He's going to gather all of Israel back. All of Israel is going to be gathered back and brought back to that land. I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions. And also my man's servants and my maid's servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days. There's two things that are fascinating about this. He says on all flesh, even the Jewish Shonsino commentary says that means Gentiles too. He didn't say I will pour it out on the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All flesh means all flesh. So there's going to come a time when God's Spirit is made available and poured out on all people.

Now the second thing that's interesting, so that hasn't happened, is if you go to Acts 2 at the Day of Pentecost, which we're going to celebrate here in what, less than two weeks, and when God's Spirit was poured out on those people, Peter, through the inspiration of God's Spirit, looked at what was happening and said, wow, this is what the prophet Joel was talking about.

Now what Joel was talking about was much greater than what Peter saw, but understand what Peter saw. The Holy Spirit poured out on all these people right there. They knew they had God's Spirit. There was a power in them. There was a passion in them. They had an understanding. And he saw what had happened. He saw the miracles. He saw the tugs of fire come down upon them. And he said, wow, this is what Joel meant. Well, Joel, what he was told to prophesy, what he saw then, was just the little tiny beginning of it. Because this prophecy is about all humanity, not just Judah or Israel. God's plan isn't just for Judah or Israel.

It's for the whole world. It's for everybody. Every single person is a... God is created to be his child. And he's going to pour out his Spirit on all flesh. We know from the other prophecies that happens when? When Jesus Christ returns. So this has to be about that other day of the Lord. After, when he gathers his people together and he pours out his Spirit on them. God did not pour out his Spirit on Judah in 1948, or on the Jews that he brought back in 1948, because they still haven't accepted Jesus Christ.

You can't reject Jesus Christ and have God's Spirit. God leads us to Christ. Christ leads us to the Father. You know, there's Scriptures to talk about that. So, we know that this part of it is taking us way off into another day of the Lord. Judah eventually suffered their day of the Lord. The Babylonians came in and destroyed them. But, he said, there's another day of the Lord where you will be brought back.

Your descendants will be brought back. And, of course, Ezekiel talks about the physical resurrection of Israel. And he says here that he will pour out his Spirit. Verse 32, And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance. As the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls, He says, there's going to be there in Mount Zion. There's going to be deliverance, because we know that means Jesus Christ.

So, let's pick it up. By the way, he talks about the Babylonians, or the people coming from the North. If you go to Jeremiah, you can write this down. Jeremiah 1, 14 through 19, and Jeremiah 4, 1 through 6, you will see that the Babylonians were called the people of the North. So, we understand what he's talking about here. The people who received Joel's message know exactly what he was talking about.

Chapter 3, He goes down to even mention some specific nations here. We take this and we combine it with a prophecy in Zechariah and a prophecy in Revelation. And we have in both of those places a gathering of nations together and armies together. Let's go to...we'll come back here and finish up here in just a minute. But let's go to Zechariah 14. Okay, Zechariah 14. We're going to just read verses 1 through...well, we'll look at verses 1 through 15.

We won't read all of them. You could do that on your own. But what we'll do is get an idea here. No, that's not what I wanted. What did I want? I wanted Zechariah 14. I don't know why he said 1. Zechariah 14. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst.

And I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. The city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished, and half of the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. And the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as He fights in the day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall split in two.

He goes on to talk about how it will split in two and water will come out. There will be a great earthquake as He destroys all these armies that have been gathered together as He comes to the Mount of Olives. Now we know that Jesus said He was coming back to the Mount of Olives. So it is Jesus Christ here as Yahweh, because we know the Father is Yahweh, and Jesus is Yahweh. And when the place comes back and stands on the Mount of Olives, and He fights the nations who have come against Jerusalem, this is exactly what Joel has to be talking about, because there's no other time period in the Scripture that explains anything like this.

And we know exactly where it is. The armies are in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And what we have here is Jesus coming down to the Mount of Olives and destroying these armies that are gathered together. Now let's go to Revelation 19.

Here we have a gathering together of armies at the return of Jesus Christ. Revelation 19 is all about the return of Jesus Christ and chapter 20 is about Him setting up God's kingdom on this earth.

And they are gathered together, these armies are gathered together, and He destroys them.

I won't read it. You've read this many times. But He destroys them as they come together to meet Him. We know where He is. We know where they are. They're in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. He's on Mount Olives. Now people get confused sometimes because they know the book of Revelation talks about Armageddon and Megiddo.

So it's like, well, the last battle is at Megiddo and Megiddo is north of Jerusalem.

The Valley of Jehoshaphat is called the Kidron Valley today. It runs for at least 20 miles and opens up into a huge area. So I mean it's a long valley that opens up to a large area where you could put hundreds of millions of men if you had to. I mean it's a huge area. But it narrows down, narrows down and goes to the east of Jerusalem and the Kidron Valley ends at Mount Olives.

If you read about Armageddon, once again for lack of time we're not going to go there. But Armageddon is where He gathers the armies.

It really isn't the battle of Armageddon. It's the gathering of Armageddon. He gathers them together there and the Beast Tower comes there, armies from all over the world come there. They march on Jerusalem. Remember, it's the battle of Jerusalem. That's what it's called in Zechariah. What we have here in the book of Revelation is Jesus Christ stands on the Mount of Olives and He sends out fire and destroys them. They're right there in front of Me. Well of course they are. They're coming at Him.

Who knows? These numbers of huge numbers of men, millions.

And who knows what they, you know, maybe airplanes and helicopters and tanks and, I don't know, they may be firing nuclear weapons at Him.

Whatever they're doing. And He comes out and slays untold numbers of these human beings have come together to try to destroy the Prince of Peace.

So the first part of Joel, Zechariah 14, and what we have here in Revelation 19 are all the same event.

Because they're the same description and there's nothing else you can attach them to in the Bible. I mean, they can only be attached to each other.

And so Joel takes and points them towards a future event when it all gets fixed.

There is this hope, this understanding that God isn't going to let this go on forever.

And Joel died anticipating this. Abraham died anticipating this event.

That's what's so fascinating about all the people of God in history. They all anticipated an event that you and I are still anticipating.

But we're a whole lot closer to it than any of them were. A whole lot closer.

So let's go back to Joel now, chapter 3. And we'll pick it up here in verse 17.

He says all this is going to happen. He's coming back to Jerusalem. In fact, verse 16 says, The Lord will also roar from Zion and utter His voice from Jerusalem.

And the heaven and earth will shake, but the Lord will be a shelter for His people, the strength of the children of Israel.

So once again we see, well, God's coming here. Well, through Christ God's coming there.

Verse 17, So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.

Then Jerusalem shall be holy, though alien shall ever pass through her again. Zion can be an allegory for the church.

So this is both physical Jerusalem and the church itself.

And there shall come the pass of that day, that the mountain shall drip with new wine, and the hill shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water, and a fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord.

And the water of the valley of Acacias.

Egypt shall be a desolation, eat them of desolation, desolate wilderness, because of the violence against the people of Judah.

For they have shed innocent blood in their land.

But Judah shall abide forever in Jerusalem from generation to generation.

For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted, for the Lord dwells in Zion.

I will forgive them, because I dwell there. That's the work of Jesus Christ.

They would not have understood that last statement.

The whole probably didn't understand the last statement. He was just giving a message from God.

You and I do. We're looking for to this time when Christ is there, and we are resurrected to be with Him in that Holy Jerusalem, as He starts to prepare the earth for a thousand year reign, so that eventually God brings New Jerusalem to the earth. And we will be there, and we will be acquitted because He dwells there.

This is the message that applies to us.

We don't just read this and look at Judah, okay?

Just don't read this and look at other people.

Ancient Judah or modern Judah or modern Israel, physical people.

Don't just look at it that way.

It is a message for you and I in the Church to prepare our lives, prepare our lives, because the day of the Lord, it's at hand.

I don't care if it's five years, 25 years, or 50 years from now.

It's at hand.

Well, that gets us through the book of Joel, and next time we'll tackle another one of the minor prophets.

So next Wednesday night, right here at 7 o'clock.

And thanks for joining. I hope you found it profitable.