The day of the Lord is a central theme in biblical prophecy with resounding implications for humanity’s future. In our study, we discuss how this concept is woven through the book of Joel, exploring its symbolic meaning and historical context. Listeners are invited to engage with the scripture, reflecting on letters from fellow listeners and understanding how these ancient prophecies connect with contemporary faith and expectations. This episode is a deep dive into the threads of prophecy, providing a clearer view of God’s plan as narrated through the divine words of Joel.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
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If you take a step back and look at the timeline of history, you see that we’re all moving towards a series of events still in the future. And the Bible speaks often of this as prophecy. Welcome to Through the Bible. In our study, our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, traces a thread through the Old Testament book of Joel to describe an event that’s still in the future. Have you heard the term the day of the Lord? Do you know what it means? If not, stay tuned as we discover what it was in Joel’s time and what it will be for all of mankind in the future. I’m Steve Schwetz, your host on our five-year journey through God’s entire word. And as you find your spot in Joel chapter 2, we’re going to read a couple of letters from our fellow passengers on the Bible bus. First, here’s one from Dr. McGee that he enjoyed receiving a long time ago.
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It says, first, may I thank you for your insistence on the truth that Israel is indeed Israel in the Old Testament and the New. Thank you for your clear distinction between Israel after the flesh and spiritual Israel. Now, this part, it says, I thought you might be interested in the procedure of of the Orthodox Sephardic wedding as practiced still, particularly in Jerusalem. And I gave this some time ago in connection with 1 Thessalonians, the fourth chapter, and John 14 in particular. that on the background of a wedding of the first century, the Lord Jesus spoke in John 14. Now, this is quite interesting, and I’ll read just a few excerpts here. It says, “…the seven days of the wedding are enormously important. During that time the groom negotiates…” and procures everything he desires, job, house, position in the community, funds, alliances, etc. That is his week, and he spends all his energies establishing his future holdings with friends, family, business associates, and the community in general. After this week of hard bargaining for all that will be his, he enters the synagogue and sits on a throne. Yes, a throne. These thrones are part of the permanent furnishings of the Sephardic synagogues. A king for a day, having accomplished all that he wished during the preceding several days. Then the marriage is complete. It is interesting to note that all that is required in a Jewish wedding is the giving of a gift by the groom to the bride in the presence of two witnesses. This is the totality of the ceremony required, although prayers have been added to make a liturgy. And then this party goes on to talk about that. And may I say it hasn’t been changed too much in 2,000 years. And the more they change it, the more it resembles the Lord Jesus Christ taking the church as his bride.
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And here’s a more recent note from a listener named Steve left for us on Facebook. He writes this, This study in Hebrews, particularly the section on His goodness towards us, is definitely more real to me than the previous occasions that I’ve read and listened to the program. I pray it is a blessing to all those who listened as well, even if their situation differs greatly from mine. We can rest assured that He will have more than enough mercy and grace for those who put their trust in Him. Well, Steve, by the way, you’ve got a great name, and thanks for your great letter as well. How about you? What are you learning as we spend time together in God’s Word? Are these studies making a difference in your life? Well, why don’t you tell us about it? You can click on Feedback in our app. You can share your story by emailing us at BibleBus at ttb.org, or you can send a note to Box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. And you can even leave a message at 1-800-65-BIBLE. Or, like Steve, you can post on our social media accounts. Now let’s pray together as we turn our minds and our hearts towards God’s Word. Heavenly Father, thank you for what we’ll learn from the slice of history that we’re about to study. And please teach us your truth through your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen. Now let’s dive into our study of Joel chapter 2 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now, friends, we’ve come here to the second chapter of the book of Joel. And this is the theme, looking to the day of the Lord, the prelude of it. And we were introduced to it back in verse 15 of chapter 1, where it says, Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. By the way, I said at that time that when we moved on into this little prophecy, that we would find that the day of the Lord is actually mentioned six times, five times by name, and then it’s called that day, and that we would be adding to it. Now, here is Joel, the first of the writing prophets, defining what the day of the Lord is. Now, there had been promised to David a kingdom, and that kingdom became the theme song of all the prophets after that. That’s the great message, that the millennial kingdom was coming upon this earth. And it was something that sounds like a stuck record when you read the prophets, because one after another looked forward to it. But now, Joel comes along, the first of the writing prophets, And he makes it clear that the day of the Lord, which of course would include the millennial kingdom when the Lord is ruling on this earth, that it’s not all peaches and cream ahead, that it’s not all roses and sunshine, that there is coming before the millennial kingdom this time that the Lord Jesus defined as the great tribulation period. And it’s included in the day of the Lord. And now we come to chapter 2, and it will make that, I think, rather clear to us. We find that Joel now writes this, “…blow the trumpet in Zion, sound an alarm in my holy mountain, let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is near at hand.” Now, there’s several things that we want to say about this, and let me attempt to enlarge just a little on the day of the Lord again. Here, the first of the writing prophets looks way down, sees the day of the Lord. Now, it opens in darkness, and as we have said before, that that is the Hebrew day. The evening and the morning are the first day. It begins, you see, in darkness, the day of the Lord does. A period of judgment. Then he comes to the earth and establishes his kingdom. And that’s when the son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings and establishes his kingdom upon the earth. Now, we find that all of the prophets mention the day of the Lord also. In fact, it became so commonplace that that they could call it the day or the great day or that day. And one of the last of the writing prophets, Zechariah in chapter 14, verse 1, still talking about the day of the Lord. He says, Behold, the day of the Lord cometh. So it’s obvious that Joel, the first of the writing prophets, uses this plague of locusts as a sort of a springboard to introduce the day of the Lord and what all is involved in it. And we have already called your attention to the fact that when you move into the New Testament, it’s still a subject there. And we have discussed that before. But the day of the Lord is mentioned 75 times in the Bible. And actually, it becomes a little monotonous in the last part of Zechariah, one of the last books of the Old Testament. But now notice how he opens this chapter here. Blow the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in my holy mountain. That is from Jerusalem. And this matter of the trumpet is something we need to understand. And I’m going to take the time today to go back to the book of Numbers to pick this up because it’s been a long time since we’re in the book of Numbers. And many of you are new listeners. And this is the reason that it’s so important to know the whole picture. We need to have a full-orb view of the Bible. We need on any subject to put our thinking down on all four corners so that we can make an induction. We can gather together what the writer’s talking about. And friends, this idea today of just pulling out a little text of Scripture And preaching on it, you can make it mean anything you want to, for that matter. You can take any kind of a sentence. Dr. Warfield always called that torturing attacks. And that’s what happens to a lot of them. But we need to understand what does he mean here by blowing the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in my holy hill. Now, when the children of Israel started through the wilderness… God had two trumpets, two silver trumpets made. He gave the instructions to Moses. It’s found in the 10th chapter of the book of Numbers. Now, I’d like to read several verses here, beginning with verse 1. The Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver. Of a whole piece shalt thou make them, that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly and for the journeying of the camps. Now, when they were in the wilderness, God used the trumpets to move them on the wilderness march. The first blowing of the trumpet was a signal that everybody should get ready, ready to march. Then when the pillar of cloud would lift, and move out, then you would find that they would take the tabernacle down, and then immediately the trumpet would sound again, and Moses and Aaron would move up front, and the tribe of Judah. The ark now has gone out ahead because the pillar cloud is over. Now the camp, and each section, each area on the four sides, Three tribes on all four sides would move out. And they moved out by the blowing of trumpets. Actually, there were seven blowings of the trumpets. In other words, seven times. Now, when you come to the book of Revelation, you have the blowing of the trumpets. And a great many today feel that is for the church. Now, the church has no blowing of the trumpets. And there are those that will take that passage in 1 Corinthians 15, where it says, Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Now, what is the last trump there? Well, we’ve got a group today of theologians that tried to identify that with the seventh trumpet in Revelation. And there’s not a scintilla of suggestion that it’s that trumpet at all. To begin with, there’s no trumpet connected with the church at all. And those of you that have been with us through 1 Thessalonians, when it says the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, he’s coming personally. He’s the one that gives the shout and the voice of the archangel. He doesn’t need any archangel to help him raise his own voice. His voice, because of its majesty and dignity and authority, will be like the voice of an archangel. But when he said, Lazarus, come forth, Lazarus came forth. And when he calls his church, they’re coming. Most of them have already passed through the doorway of death and their bodies are asleep throughout this world today. And he will call them. Then it says, then and the sound of a trump And somebody has come up with the idea that maybe Gabriel is going to blow a trumpet. Well, Gabriel doesn’t own a trumpet. And if he owned one, he couldn’t blow it. And that voice, he’ll descend from heaven, the shout, the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. His voice will be like a trumpet. Now, somebody’s going to say to me, do you know that? And I know that. Somebody wrote the other day and said, you sure dogmatic at times. I am when I’ve got scripture to back me up, friends. Now, if you turn over to Revelation 1.10, you’d find John on the Isle of Patmos, and he was given a vision. He said, I heard a voice. Like the sound of a trumpet. You mean a voice like a trumpet? Yes. And he says, I turned to see the voice. And you know who he saw? The glorified Christ. It’s his voice you see. Now, at the last trumpet here, my friend, the last trumpet here in 1 Corinthians hasn’t anything to do with Revelation. It’s his call to the church, and it’s his last call to the church. The church is now complete. He takes it out of the world. The seven trumpets over there are identified with the nation Israel, and it’s his voice that’s like a trumpet. The church has no trumpet today, unless you’re going to have a trumpet solo in your church. That’s all right, but it hasn’t anything to do with this. Now, God gave to Israel these trumpets. Now, how were they to use? Well, on the wilderness march, Moses wanted to get everybody together, the elders together, to make some announcement, to give instructions, why he’d call to have the trumpets blown. And if they were blown a certain way, then it meant a certain thing. Now, notice what he says here in verse 3, “…and when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee, the door of the tabernacle, the congregation.” That is, the assembly would be the leaders. Now, in verse 4, and if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are head of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee. Then, the second way it was to be used, when ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east part shall go forward, and so on down. Then, he says in verse 6, when ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps and so on. Now, After they get in the land, verse 9, and if you go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresses you, then you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets. and ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings, that they may be to you for a memorial before your God. I’m the Lord your God. So when they got in the land, And it was the time of war. That trumpet would sound calling the men of war. And it was an alarm to the people to defend themselves that an enemy was coming. Now here he says in verse 1, blow the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in my holy mountain. Why? Well, let all the inhabitants of the land tremble for the day of the Lord’s coming now. For it is near at hand. You see, the Lord has now called his church out of the world. He’s turned again to this nation, and they now become the object of worldwide anti-Semitism. And the day of the Lord comes, and it’s near at hand. Now, he’s going to have something to say about this, and I would like to say another word to in this connection. The prophet now begins to look beyond the locust plague to the great tribulation period. In fact, there are two extreme views that we have of this chapter. One view is that all that is mentioned here is just that local locust plague of that day, and it’s over with now, and therefore this would be meaningless. Well, you can understand that that is the position the liberal would take. He’d like to dismiss a great deal of the Word of God. And so that’s the way that they eliminate this. Then we have extreme fundamentalists. And they see in it only the great tribulation period. Now, I think you have here in Joel, as we saw in the first chapter, he just moved right out of the locust plague to the day of the Lord that’s way down yonder in the future. What a marvelous blending there is. And that was the practice of the prophets. They spoke into a local situation and then moved out yonder into the future and to the day of the Lord. And the day of the Lord included the kingdom. But how is it going to open? And will you notice now what he says here? Actually, for the people in that day, it was more than a locust plague. For both the northern and southern kingdom, the Assyrian army was coming down. And he very definitely moves that far ahead. Because he says over in verse 20, but I will remove far off from you the northern army. And I think it’d be rather ridiculous to call a plague of locusts the northern army, the army that’s coming down out of the north. He’s now moved into the area of the Assyrian. And the Assyrian becomes the picture of the enemy that’s coming down from the north. In the last days. And that, of course, many of us believe in the 38th and 39th of Ezekiel. We’ve seen that. Refers to Russia, the present day Russia. And they will come down. And God will judge them. In fact, I think that is what really ushers in the last three and a half years of the great tribulation period. Now, the thought of the day of the Lord for the average person in that day would be, well, the kingdom’s going to be established. Yes, but how does that day of the Lord begin? And we’ve seen it’s not just a 24-hour day. It’s a period of time. Paul says today, if you’ll hear his voice, that this is the day of salvation. It doesn’t mean any particular day. It means this period of time. And it doesn’t mean the day of the Lord is not the Lord’s day. And as we said before, It’s like saying a chestnut horse and a horse chestnut are the same thing, but they’re not. You’ve got two words, but when you arrange them, you come out with something different. It’s like saying anti-fat or fat-anti. And there’s a difference between anti-fat and a fat-anti, by the way. And here, the Lord’s day, that’s referred to in Revelation, refers, I think, to the first day of the week. We’ll see that when we get to it. But the day of the Lord, now, is this period of time, and how does it open? Now, listen to this man, Joel, because he’s going to put down God’s definition of That will condition and limit the prophets that will speak in the future. All of them will speak into this period after this. And that, by the way, is something interesting. You don’t find any of the prophets contradicting each other in this connection. Now, will you notice? And I ought to add to that, that some of these prophets didn’t know that the other prophets were prophesying at all. Now, verse 2 of chapter 2 of Joel, a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, like the morning spread upon the mountains, a great people and a strong. There hath not been ever the light, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. Now, this is the same period the Lord Jesus Christ spoke into, and he made the statement here. The prophets had made it. Now he makes it here. There’ll be no day like it. There’s no day like it before, nor will there be a day like it afterward. And the great tribulation begins. Opens the day of the Lord because that’s the way the Hebrew day opens. Begins in the evening, a time of darkness. Now, I have a notion that when that plague of locusts came over, it is said that sometimes it would darken the sky, that it would be so terrible. And then he moves on and he says, a fire devoureth before them. and behind them a flame burneth. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness, yet nothing shall escape them. I think definitely speaking of this plague of locusts, before them it was like the garden of Eden, green, everything green, and rich, luxurious foliage. It was beautiful, but back of it, everything was eaten and destroyed and nothing green was seen. Now, the coming of the day of the Lord on the earth will be like that. When the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride through this world, there’ll be a time of famine, a time of great plagues upon the earth. And in one fell swoop, one fourth of the population is taken out. Another time, a third are taken out. You talk about reducing the population, the great tribulation is going to do it. Now, verse 4, the appearance of them is like the appearance of horses, and like horsemen, so shall they run. And as we indicated last time, that actually the locusts, when you look at it, the head of the locusts looks like the head of a horse. And the Latin word, and I should say the Italian word for it, means little horse. And as we said before, that the German word means hay horse. A horse eats hay and they would eat up everything that was green. The appearance of them here in verse 4 is like the appearance of horses. And like horsemen, so shall they run. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap. like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, like a strong people set in battle array. Now, I can’t go any farther, but I will next time pick up in the book of Revelation, because you have there at the blowing of the fifth trumpet, that’s interesting, the blowing of the fifth trumpet, you have that great plague of locusts And they’re the funniest kind of locusts you’ve ever seen, only they’re not funny, by the way. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
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As we wait for the Bible bus to return, read through Joel 2 and Revelation 9 so you’re ready for all that we’ll learn as we continue to make our way through the Bible. And if you’d like to be in touch, please call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE or find us at ttb.org.
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All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
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