Post 58-What Is Joel Saying About Prophecy?

John asked Dana on Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 8:08 AM

Hi Dana

            I started reading the book of Joel this week.

            In Joel 2:28  NIV, it is written

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
  Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
   your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.

            If you have time, what does “prophesy” mean in this?

John

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Dana replied on Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 3:07 PM

Hi John,

     Thankfully we get our last two shipments of grapes in today and tomorrow.  Harvest came in early and is leaving early--and I'm ready.  We've essentially crammed three months of work into two months, and these old bones are feeling it.

     I went back over my part and made some corrections and added a few Scripture references.

 

     To prophesy essentially means to speak God's words to people, for God or in God's stead.  God gives the words, but the mouthpiece (or writing) is human.  Biblical prophecy often has multiple fulfillments.  There is an immediate, or quite soon fulfillment, and then there are later ones, perhaps even eschatological ones.  One of the best illustrations of what I’m talking about is in Jesus' Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD (a quite soon event), and He also prophesies events surrounding His second coming (eschatological fulfillment) as well.

     Joel is a tough book, in that no one knows its date.  Scholars are as divided as to the date as there are schools of thought on the end times.  Joel doesn't mention anything to which we can concretely pinpoint a particular time.  Not knowing who his immediate audience was is a problem in that regard--not an insurmountable one, as it is the Word of God, thus it is valuable for belief and faith, and, Joel's principles are sound for any generation.

     Joel speaks a lot about the “Day of the Lord,” which is held to be an end time event, including Jesus' return, and final judgment.  But not all of what he writes is about the final end times per se, in that Peter interprets Joel's prophecy about the pouring out of the Spirit on Pentecost as being fulfilled by that event.

     Peter declared in Acts 2:16-21:

¹⁶ But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams;
¹⁸ even on my male servants and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
²⁰ the sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
    before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
²¹ And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (ESV)

     Compare this with Joel's actual text:

Joel 2:28-30

²⁸ “And it shall come to pass afterward,
    that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.
²⁹ Even on the male and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

³⁰ “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. ³¹ The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. ³² And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls. (ESV)

     Interesting that Peter, in quoting Joel, changes Joel's, "And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh...."

to:

"And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh...."

     Also interesting is what Peter doesn't quote from Joel's passage.  Peter leaves out, "...For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls."

     It certainly appears that Joel has this futuristic, almost apocalyptic ending to the passage going on and that Peter begins the passage with "...in the last days...."  Could it be (and I think it is) that Peter saw the coming of the Spirit as the inauguration of the "last days”?

I mean that there is nothing else of cosmic redemptive significance slated to happen until Jesus' return, rapture or not, or millennium or not, notwithstanding.  We have the Bible, so we cannot expect any new "revelations" between now and then.  Churches around the world may or may not have revivals, and scholarship and church practice may evolve or devolve, but basically all (again of redemptive significance) has happened that is going to happen until Christ's return.

     It is important to be clear here.  I expect that certain details in Daniel and Revelation particularly, are going to be happening going forward as they have been prophesied.  How and when and in what form they happen are certainly open for debate.

But like I said, we have the Bible, and there are going to be no new books or chapters added--the canon is closed.  Jesus has already provided the ultimate sacrifice, so what else can take place (in the redemptive sense) except Christ's return? 

     Yes, I believe in the appearance of the two witnesses spoken of in Revelation 11, but depending on the school of eschatological thought from which one comes, said witnesses could take on quite different forms.  Some see the two witnesses as Enoch and Elijah, since they are two Biblical figures who never died a human death, although the text from Revelation 11 doesn't claim that they are. 

     On the other hand, there are those who see the two witnesses as symbolically representing the pastoral and missionary aspects of the Church at large during the Church Age, but again, the text doesn't definitively say that either.  So their appearance might have happened already, or it will happen in the future, or it could be happening now, again, depending on which side of the eschatological fence one is standing. But the point is, said appearance, at some point between Christ's first coming and His second coming, will take place in some form or fashion, but that’s not a new redemptive phase or plan.

     The witnesses, along with the rise of an Anti-Christ, or the plagues, etc., etc., do not count as part of some new redemptive plan God sets in motion.  However they play out, those events are part of God's original plan, and therefore there is nothing new coming outside of what's already been revealed.

     That said; we know that there are examples of prophesying taking place following the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit. In Acts 21, Luke records that Philip's four unmarried daughters were prophetesses, and in the same chapter, we are told of Agabus' prophecy regarding Paul.  For that fact, Revelation was a prophecy as well; the last one. Paul in 1^st Corinthians 12 lists prophecy as a spiritual gift—but he doesn’t explain its proper use or operation.

     What about today?  I'm skeptical of the modern, so-called prophetic and apostolic offices claiming to be functioning today, as they do not resemble the prophetic or apostolic offices shown in Acts and New Testament times in general, much less command the same authority. 

In Acts 1:15-26, the 11 disciples/apostles in seeking a replacement for Judas Iscariot, required that the apostolic candidate had to have been with Jesus and them from the beginning, going back to John’s baptism, and having been a witness to the resurrection. 

     The term apostle comes from a Greek word which means "sent," so an apostle is, at its most basic, a "sent one."  I suppose if someone is sent somewhere by some officiating group, they could loosely be referred to as apostles, but that's about the extent of it.  Since there is no human alive who has been in physical proximity to Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh, the qualifications are, to my way of thinking, a bit steep.

     In fairly recent times there has (mostly in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles) been a trend where certain people have self-canonized themselves, or canonized likeminded cohorts into "apostles."  I'm more than a wee bit dubious of such.  There were twelve genuine apostles who had been with Jesus, and there was Paul, who had an encounter with the risen Christ.  I am aware that there were others referred to as such in the New Testament, but I do not see any historical or ecclesiastical trend to keep the institution of apostleship ongoing, or, that there was a conferring of the official position or title upon a person beyond New Testament times. 

     There are churches who claim to follow apostolic "traditions," so to speak, and call their leaders "apostles." Not to put them down, but just because a church calls itself apostolic and its leaders call themselves "apostles," they are not apostles within the strict New Testament framework provided in the Bible.

     Some may not like that, but that's just the way I see it.  Prophecy is another matter sort of along the same lines.  Since the canon of Scripture is closed, what does a modern day "prophet" do?  One could say that one who proclaims God's (already revealed) word is a prophet, but again, like apostles, they generally do not do so in the way prophets are depicted in Scripture. 

     If preachers are the prophets of today because they are proclaiming God's word, then they are not quite like Elijah, Isaiah, Daniel, Joel, et al are they?  So, is preaching modern day prophesying? Is that how the Spirit chooses to operate prophetic gifts today?  

     Not wanting to step on any Pentecostal or Charismatic toes, but I'm also somewhat wary of those, who today, claim to have “prophetic gifts.”  Having attended a Pentecostal Bible College, I knew several people who claimed to have such gifts.  Generally the times I witnessed those "gifts" being exercised were during worship services. The “prophecies” or “prophetic utterances” were similar to a message in tongues in their delivery, but were spoken in the speaker's known native language, thus needing no interpretation.

     99 times out of 100 or more, the content of said "prophecies" was basically a call to corporate worship, which interrupted an already ongoing worship service.  Right in the middle of an enthusiastic worship service, someone would loudly and forcefully speak up above everyone else, and exhort everybody who was already worshiping God to...worship God. 

     Now if it was the Holy Spirit giving the message to the speaker, I had to wonder why God would interrupt His people lovingly and aggressively worshiping Him, so He could tell them to worship Him.  Such "prophecies" had no purpose, in reality.  Why would one who is already doing something need to be told to do it while they are doing it?  It makes no sense.

     That may seem harsh, and I mean no offense, as I'm sure the people delivering the “prophecy” were sincere (not charlatans,) but honestly, I never heard a prophetic utterance (as they were supposed to be) that ever delivered any content beyond the obvious.  There was never anything new, unknown or even corrective being revealed. 

     If the "prophet" had announced a coming war, or the collapse of the World Trade Towers, or even that old Brother So and So was secretly cheating on his wife, then I could say that that would more accurately describe what a word from God, spoken through a human who didn't already know the information they were speaking should be like. 

     Before the criticism arises, I do know that a good portion of Biblical prophecy wasn’t necessarily predictive in nature, so I’m not saying that today it must always be predictive. Biblical prophets also exhorted people to repent and turn to God. But of the dozens of "prophesies" I encountered, I never received any useful insight or knowledge, and I never heard a call to repentance or a turning away from idolatry...maybe because it was taken for granted that the audience was already saved.  Well intended though they may have been, they were essentially useless.

     So what did Joel mean by prophesying?  I'm just not sure, John. It’s not impossible to think that God could give a particular message to His Church through a human entity, be it in a sermon, or in a word a speaker may feel compelled so to deliver.  That message could not be held as equivalent to Scripture, but I would not rule out its possibility of happening.

     Perhaps every preacher who mounts a pulpit on Sunday morning is prophesying in a very generic interpretation of the term. Also it’s not beyond the realm of reality to suggest that God could wake one of His children up, and give them a message that others are just not receiving so as to get His point across.  I referenced this a couple of blogs ago, but there was a guy (unknown to me) who said something to the effect that God had told him that the church doesn’t need to be praying for revival, but rather to get its house in order. Might that (if it is indeed so) qualify as prophecy?  We might be getting warm with that one.

     I don’t want to come off as too negative, but in any spiritual endeavor there exists the potential for both the highly subjective and the overly emotional, and also downright abuse, hence we have to judge such endeavors by the standards that are revealed in Scripture, and not how we may have been affected by them.  Should one claim to be a prophet of God with an air of authority, it could set up a strange dynamic in the minds of the ones who were told such.  Said “prophet” could try to use the alleged office to gain control, and lead people astray.  I mean, if he or she really IS a prophet of God, then they should, by all means, be listened to, but who conferred the title upon them?  We have Biblical qualifications for deacons and elders, but where are the qualifications for prophets outside of what they prophesy actually coming to pass? 

     Old and New Testament prophets, for the most part, had supernatural encounters with God.  Is that, or should that be a qualification for modern prophets?  Who then would or could verify it or refute it?  Becoming a canonized saint in the Catholic Church requires several undeniable references for verification.  Should we expect less of one claiming to be a prophet?

     I don’t want to give the impression that God cannot act in any way He chooses in regards to how He communicates with His people, although He does not need to say any more than He already has said in the Bible.  I don’t want to give the impression either, that I believe the Spiritual gifts mentioned above from 1st Corinthians 12 are no longer being given to the Church today.  I believe they are.  However while healing and working of miracles may be more self-evident in their nature, prophecy for today is a more nebulous term.

     Elijah called down fire from Heaven, and slaughtered the prophets of Baal. I’m not seeing a lot of that kind of prophetic duty being practiced in the Church today, so that presents another questionable aspect of how the office of prophet should be performed here in modern times.  Have you heard a donkey speaking lately, a la Numbers 22? My wife would probably say that she does every day, but that’s beside the point.

     More interesting to me is what Joel meant when he said, “…your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”  I don’t claim to know exactly what the prophet means by saying such, but that’s a pretty fascinating thing to contemplate.  Dreams of what? Visions of what? I’m getting kind of old; do I have that to look forward to?

     I’ve had a couple of dreams that I know were from God.  They were definitely communications; not new revelations, but something particularly personal and instructive that I needed to know or do.  I’m open to the whole God communicating through dreams concept, because He did so in several places in the Bible, and He changes not, so I consider that avenue a valid option.  Not every dream is from God; but is He limited in some way from using that method?  I don’t think so.

     My rambling has probably not answered your question satisfactorily.  I apologize for that. I don’t believe prophecy operates the same way today that it did in Biblical times, but at the same time, prophecy is a gift of the Spirit, so in some way it has to be operational today.  I just don’t know how it is to function today beyond several of the examples I’ve cited. I’m willing to keep an open and inquiring mind on the subject, and weigh any instances of said activity against the Scripture for verification or refute.

     I’m open to any suggestions,

Dana