Joel 2:28

If you look at Joel it is clearly this: "And it shall come to pass afterward" — after God has restored Israel, and set them in blessing in their land, and they acknowledge Messiah, then they get the Spirit... The Lord will do great things for them. He will restore them in blessing, He will be jealous for His land, and will pity His people, so that they will never be ashamed. They will know that God is Jehovah, and "afterward I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh." Here Peter changes the word "afterward" to "the last days," and so takes in a different testimony.

"And it shall come to pass afterward." Here is where we find the clear break. Verses 28 and 29 stand quite apart from what went before. This is blessing of a higher order, flowing from the love of God, but plainly in a spiritual way.

But this was not all. This was earthly blessing — Israel set up again in the blessing of earlier days, on the ground of grace, which would keep them from losing it. But there was a new thing to be given to them: God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh.

Here, in Joel, it is the Spirit poured out upon all flesh, to manifest the presence of God, and the blessing that rests upon all men, and is no longer confined to the Jews.

While several places foretell the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Israel (Isaiah 32:15; 44:3; Ezekiel 39:29), only Joel includes the Gentiles, and he does it in the term "all flesh." And since the Church was to be made up of souls from Jews and Gentiles, made one new man in Christ, only the words of Joel's prophecy explained what men had seen that morning.

We only need to note that it was on all — young and old, male and female servants. There is no trace of a clergy or of any group it was limited to; the words say the opposite. Nor was it only the apostles then: there were a hundred and twenty people there, and women among them.

But notice: the apostle did not say that this scripture was fulfilled. He says, "This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel," and so it is. The promise was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He did not say that what happened then was the fulfilment of the prophecy — men have assumed that, and it has led to great misunderstanding of scripture and a lowering of Christianity — but he showed that it was of that nature.

The judgment of God had inflicted these various tongues upon them, and completely broken up the ambitious project of joining together to establish an unity of their own through the tower of Babel. But the grace of God went out exactly where His judgment had placed them.

We must distinguish between the pouring out of God's Spirit — however mighty and gracious an effect of divine power it is — and the Holy Spirit sent down in person to live in believers... there was a privilege far higher than these — the gift of the Spirit to live in us in person, just as our Saviour said.

We consider that Joel 2:28 had a partial fulfillment at Pentecost. Its final accomplishment is still to be looked for in the history of God's ancient people. God can speak to people now by dreams or by a vision in the night. But we consider that the true and proper way for a child of God to be guided is by the Word and Spirit of God. It is very unsafe ground to be guided only by dreams or by the impressions of a man's mind.