JOEL - INTRODUCTION
A Bible Study -
Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2002 James Melough
Nothing is known about the
prophet Joel except that his ministry was to Judah rather than to the ten
tribes (Israel); nor is even the date of his prophecy known, though
suggestions range from between 900 and 800 B.C. to 400 B.C.
These things, however, are of
little importance, except to those who are curious about such details, since
they neither add to nor detract from the value of the prophecy itself, which
it is almost universally agreed, deals with the terrible judgments that will
devastate the earth in the Tribulation, and that will culminate with the
return of Christ in power and glory to inaugurate His millennial kingdom. The
prophecy, however, embraces the whole era known as “the day of the Lord,”
i.e., the long period commencing just after the rapture of the Church, and
concluding with the dissolution of the present heavens and earth after the
Millennium, in preparation for the coming of the new heavens and earth.
Deuteronomy chapter 28 records
the blessings that would attend obedience, and also the curses that would
result from disobedience, and among those curses was the assurance that
locusts would devastate the land. The destruction wrought by these creatures,
as recorded here in Joel, was the fulfillment of God’s warning, the havoc
wrought by them being also a foreshadowing of still more terrible future
judgments, including the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, the oppression
under Antiochus, the Diaspora resulting from Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem
in AD 70, and the final premillennial judgments of the Tribulation era, all of
these being but types of that final awful judgment that will bring the
destruction of the present heavens and earth after the Millennium, and their
replacement by the new heavens and earth.
[Joel 1]