FORERUNNER CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP MIKE BICKLE THE BOOK OF JOEL Transcript: 03/16/03. Session 1 Why Study the Book of Joel?

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1 FORERUNNER CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP MIKE BICKLE THE BOOK OF JOEL Transcript: 03/16/03 INTRODUCTION Well, the question is, Why study the book of Joel? In one sentence, I believe that we study it because it s uniquely designed to prepare the end-time church for the Day of the Lord crisis. Again: why study the book of Joel? Why would you want to spend a lot of time and energy pouring over this three-chapter prophecy? Because it has been designed by the Lord as a unique preparation for the end-time church. A DOWN PAYMENT ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST It s interesting that in the first generation, in the day of Pentecost, Peter by the Holy Spirit said that the book of Joel was occurring in their midst (Acts 2:16-21). It was a down payment of what was to come; and what s going to occur at the end of the age will be the fullness of which the day of Pentecost was only the beginning. They were in ten days of fasting and prayer. It doesn t say fasting, but undoubtedly they were engaged in fasting and prayer. They were doing Joel 2:12-15; they were in the place of ardent intercession. And then the Spirit breaks out in power, which is the end of Joel 2, with signs and wonders and miracles. And by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the apostle Peter said, This is what Joel was talking about: night-and-day prayer leading to a release of signs and wonders and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS WOOING THE ENTIRE EARTH TO CHRIST JESUS Now, know this: what happened in Acts 2 was only the beginning. It was only a down payment of the promise of Joel 2. The fullness of Joel 2 has global dimensions to it, a far greater scope to it than 3,000 believers being touched in the city of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. The scope of Joel 2 is God s Spirit being poured out in response to night-and-day prayer to touch all flesh, the whole Body of Christ worldwide, and beyond the Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is touching and wooing the entire earth to Christ Jesus by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. And it s going to be the most compelling hour in history for people to be saved. And those who turn away will be hardened with an unusual dimension of hardening when they resist this outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a final way in the generation in which the Lord returns. THE GLORIOUS MOSAIC OF THE BOOK OF JOEL But then there s the whole rest of the book of Joel, apart from the prayer of Joel 2 and the outpouring of the end of that chapter, that which was a down payment in Acts 2, the promise of the ultimate fulfillment of which is at the end of the age. But the book of Joel is far bigger than that. Joel 1, 2, and 3 is one mosaic, one tapestry. It s this fantastic message that s connected. All three chapters are connected. They weave together this tapestry of divine wisdom for the greatest hour of human history, when the Lord pours our His Spirit across the whole earth along with shaking everything that can be shaken by His judgments. So it s a global outpouring and a global shaking; and the crescendo at the end of the age. WE CAN CANCEL OUT THE SPIRIT IN OUR COMMENTARIES, BUT NOT IN MANIFESTATION We re going to look at a few introductory points. First, what I ll do in this series on the book of Joel is only give conclusions. In other words, I won t give what the different scholars say about different events in the book of

2 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 2 Joel. I ve done some pretty energetic research on the book of Joel over the years, and there are two or three opinions about four or five of the main events in the book. There may be more than five I haven t actually numbered them but let s say there are five main events in the book. There are two or three opinions on those five events, and a lot of the opinions in the commentaries, I believe, are just the fruit of human wisdom and scholarship. I appreciate scholarship, but not scholarship that cancels out the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Oftentimes, especially with the book of Joel, there s so much scholarly debate going back and forth, it s actually wearisome. So I encourage you to go and look at the commentaries, because it really can be helpful, but particularly in the book of Joel there s this wearisome debate and dialogue as to why it can t be the end times in the fullness of what God is talking about. It seems like so much scholarship today is committed to canceling out signs and wonders and canceling out the activity of the Holy Spirit at the end of the age. Well, they can cancel it out in their commentaries, but they certainly can t cancel it out in manifestation. It s going to happen. AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL TO PREPARE THE BRIDE FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS I take the book of Joel very literally. It s an instruction manual to prepare the Bride for such a time as this. So I won t present all the different arguments, the two or three arguments on the main five or six events. Rather, I m simply going to tell you what I believe, and what many others believe as well. I don t have any insights particular to me. They re insights shared by many scholars throughout all church history. But I want to give you insights that pertain to the literal fulfillment of these prophecies in the generation in which the Lord returns. So that s the direction in which we re going. THE TIME FRAME OF JOEL: THE GENERATION PRECEDING THE BABYLONIAN INVASION The main debate of the book is the dating of the book. When did Joel live? When did he write the book? There are three main opinions. Each of them has a few good arguments. But I believe that only one answer is right. And I believe that many scholars believed that it was the generation prior to the Babylonian invasion of Israel in 586 BC. It s one of the most important dates in Old Testament history; one of those three or four dates that you need to memorize. The most significant devastation to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament happened in 586 BC when the military from Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq, invaded Israel. I think it s interesting that we re in the same conflict, or a conflict with some comparisons even from the days of old. It s my conviction, again after a lot of research on this book and reading the words of many, many scholars through 2,000 years of writing on the book, that it s that generation. I m absolutely convinced that it is. The Lord is preparing the people, as a picture, for the greatest devastation of Old Testament times. He s preparing Israel in this book for judgment in that generation, and it becomes a picture of preparation for the greatest shaking that will happen in the generation in which the Lord returns at the end of the age. That military invasion of Babylon is described in chapter 2:1-11 in very graphic detail. But even that military invasion is only really a dress rehearsal; it s a type, a down payment, of an invasion coming to the nation of Israel by a coalition of nations of an evil worldwide empire described in Zechariah That s the clearest description: Zechariah It s a pretty in-depth description. There are several different prophecies by Zechariah focusing on this global, evil worldwide empire marshaling all their troops together to invade Israel in a manner that is far more devastating even than Babylon in 586 BC. A SHADOW OF THINGS TO COME IN THE LATTER DAYS So what do you find in Joel 2:1-11? When we look at it verse by verse, it s a type of what s going to happen again to Israel. The Lord calls Israel and the Body of Christ worldwide to the same response of night-and-day

3 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 3 prayer and fasting, and to believe Him for the release of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the great shakings that are described earlier in Chapter 2:1-11. Again, 586 BC is one of the most important dates in the Old Testament. You can t understand the sixteen writing prophets without it. I mean, there were prophets like Elijah and Elisha who didn t write Scripture; but there are sixteen prophets who were canonized. So of the sixteen prophets almost every one of them there are a few exceptions either came before the 586 military invasion of Babylon, preparing them and warning them, or looked back and interpreted it as a type of judgments to come in the future. I want to say that again: all sixteen prophets, with very few exceptions, are either preparing the people for the judgment from Babylon that s yet to come, or, they re on the other side of it looking back and interpreting it as a picture of future judgment coming from the hand of God. The big judgment is 586 BC. That s the centerpiece of theology that God has chosen in the Old Testament. That invasion by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian invasion, was the centerpiece of his theology for judgment that we re to use to understand the judgments at the end of the age. So God constantly points to the Babylonian invasion of 586, just as He constantly points to the deliverance through Moses from Pharaoh in Egypt as a picture of deliverance. For a picture of deliverance we go to Moses coming out of Egypt; for a picture of oppression and judgment, we look at Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon. Those are the two centerpieces of Old Testament theology that are useful today, because both of them have an application in the future before the Lord returns. God is going to do what He did with Moses, delivering His people. And He s going to do what He did through Nebuchadnezzar, bringing judgment upon the nation of Israel and even discipline upon the Body of Christ. But it won t be Nebuchadnezzar, it will be an evil worldwide empire that has a significant amount of unity. It doesn t ever come to full unity globally. This world leader is always resisted; he doesn t quite get to where he wants to go. But, he brings an evil coalition far beyond any other time frame in history. It s likened to Babylon, but it s far more severe. It s far more powerful in its global scope and its destruction and devastation. The book of Joel is preparing them for the Babylonian invasion in the near future, literally in Joel s generation, just around the corner. But really, he s preparing the Body of Christ and the nation of Israel for that far greater invasion at the end of the age, the hour in which we re living in right now. Again, it s interesting that Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon dwelt in the same geographic area as Saddam Hussein in Iraq right now. I find that more than coincidental. JOEL, HABAKKUK, AND ZEPHANIAH: STUDY THEM TOGETHER Joel s contemporary prophets. There were two other prophets prophesying at the same time: Habakkuk and Zephaniah. Joel, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah all prophesied together shortly before Jeremiah came on the scene because he came on the scene just before the Babylonian invasion. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were all locked in together; they came just a decade or two after Joel, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Those three you want to study together. All three of them wrote very small books. The language is very similar in all three books; the urgency, the description of the judgment, is very, very similar. Of course the Lord uses those three witnesses to confirm even one another for such a time as this. We have three prophetic witnesses preparing for the judgment before it came. Undoubtedly they were friends. They had a very unpopular job; an incredibly difficult task of warning a nation that had experienced a certain amount of

4 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 4 economic prosperity and religious increase of activity warning them that trouble was around the corner beyond anything they could imagine. Almost no one listened. The forerunner ministry has a similar role today. We re warning the Body of Christ across the earth. Of course, in a lot of places in the earth, they re saying, Hey, things are already being shaken right now. There s already a severe pressure mounting up. But with respect to the church in the Western world, there s a certain amount of prosperity; there s a certain amount of increase of religious activity. I tell you, though, the Lord is saying the very same thing today. He says, Things will change in a moment s time, and even the church in the Western world will find itself in need of supernatural deliverance in order to make it. GOD DIVINELY ORCHESTRATES THESE INVASIONS FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE Ok, there are three main questions that we have to answer. Joel, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk had to answer them, and so do we. Three main questions; not that there can t be several other questions as well. There are three main questions Habakkuk wrestled with, Zephaniah wrestled with, and Joel wrestled with in light of the fact that there s a divinely-orchestrated military invasion to the people of God. Beloved, this is really a shock to their religious system, that the military invasion that was coming was divinely-orchestrated, and that God wasn t only going to orchestrate it, He was going to use an evil empire, an evil leadership, to be His tool of chastisement, even to the redeemed. Of course, that s a bitter pill to swallow. Today, anywhere in the Body of Christ, you can hardly get away with that message. What I mean is that you can t find much reception of that message, though it s a message trumpeted with such clarity from Genesis to Revelation. You can t read the Bible and miss the idea that God divinely orchestrates these military invasions to shake everything that can be shaken. And He uses as His vessel of choice, evil wicked men and wicked nations. And He raises them up and He uses them to discipline His people. He uses them to punish the unrighteous. And then He turns around and punishes the very vessels that He raised up as an instrument of discipline upon His people. IF GOD IS A GOD OF LOVE, WHY WOULD HE ORCHESTRATE JUDGMENTS? Here is the question: if You re a God of love, why will You allow this? If God is a God of love, why will He allow this to happen? Of course that s the question of the hour. In the issue of the judgment of God, there s a pastoral crisis in the wake of it. They re already in the land, but it s an issue of their increase. When God s judgments increase, there s an automatic pastoral crisis in the earth. Believers and unbelievers alike are in crisis. If He s a God of love, why would He even let it happen, let alone orchestrate it? It s a giant crisis. It s the biggest philosophical, spiritual crisis to grapple with in all human history. How can a God of love not only allow, but actually intentionally raise up evil powers to be the discipline in His hand against His own people and punishment against those who resist Him? It s a difficult question, but the fact of the matter remains that the God of love sees no contradiction in His own personality for doing this. Because of course, His goal is to remove everything that hinders love. That s question number one: how can the God of love do this? How is it possible that the God of love could do this?

5 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 5 WHAT CAN DO THE REDEEMED DO TO MINIMIZE OR STOP IT? Number two: what can the redeemed do to stop it or at least minimize it? When the redeemed receive the prophetic word of the Lord and they know that God s judgments are about to increase, and even God s agency for discipline His agency for discipline is an evil power structure what can the righteous do either to stop it or, at the very least, minimize it? That question has to be answered. Of course we know the answer in Joel 2:12-17: it s the call to fasting and prayer and wholeheartedness. It s what the mandate of IHOP-KC is all about. We stand in the gap to ask God to minimize judgments that can be minimized, and to turn the judgments that aren t minimized into a redemptive force that releases the harvest, that works together to release the harvest and transform the spiritual atmosphere for the release of blessing and the signs and wonders described in Joel 2:28. What can the redeemed do beforehand to stop the judgment, or to minimize it? That s the second question. We have to answer these. Again, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, and Joel all grapple with these issues. They don t all ask the question overtly; but the questions are right there. Some of them ask it really clearly. The one who really struggled, of course, was Habakkuk. Those of you who have studied Habakkuk know that he s really troubled in Habakkuk 1. I don t want to go off on a long bunny trail here, but he s saying, Lord, I don t get it. How can the exceedingly wicked discipline the righteous who need discipline? He says, I don t get it. How can You say that You re righteous and use an evil empire, an evil power base to judge Your people who are off base, but who aren t nearly as bad as the one You re raising up to judge them? And of course the Lord answers that question in Habakkuk. And we ll get around to that after we finish Joel. WHAT DO WE DO AND WHAT DO WE SAY AFTER THE JUDGMENTS HAVE COME? Question number three: what do we say? What do we do after it happens, in the aftermath, in the wake of the judgments? Regardless of whether they ve been minimized or not, what do we do and what do we say after the judgments have come? What do we say to the redeemed? And what do we say to the unbelieving community? What do we say to both groups? And we re armed and equipped through a careful, diligent study of the book of Joel. Joel was given by God to answer those three questions, to equip our hearts for such a time as this. Now, in the crisis of God s judgment and God s judgment creates a crisis. Again, I call it a pastoral crisis. But many of the believers who don t have a renewed mind, which is most of the Church today, are saying, Lord God, how could You discipline the righteous people? How could You discipline Your own by an evil instrument and call Yourself a God of love? It s a pastoral crisis. And of course for the unbelievers it s a real crisis. MAN S SIN, SATAN S RAGE, AND THE WRATH OF GOD ALMIGHTY It s amazing that in the aftermath of war the One who gets accused the most is God. The Devil doesn t get accused. Maybe a few people trace it back to satanic origins; there s an overlapping of demonic activity along with divine activity. There s an overlap; the two go together. As a matter of fact, there are three things that go together: man s sin, Satan s rage, and God s discipline, all work together. Man s sin, when he exercises his free will, brings him to the furthest boundaries that God will allow. Satan rages against the righteous; Satan rages

6 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 6 against righteousness. He wants to persecute righteousness. And God disciplines compromise in the midst of His people. So there s this overlapping of man s sin, Satan s rage, and God s discipline. And they re all working together. In Romans 8:28, God says, I cause everything to work together. I cause the whole overlap of those three distinct realities to come forth in one fantastic plan to bring forth the harvest at the end of the age. IN THE MIDST OF HIS JUDGMENTS, THE WORLD WILL LEARN RIGHTEOUSNESS Anyway, it s a pastoral crisis; it s a crisis of pain at the heart level. I mean, even the most sincere are troubled: How can I trust You, God? How can I trust You as a God of love if You let these things happen? And if, even worse than that, You orchestrated a dimension of it? Again, it s not all God s orchestration, because it s Satan s rage, man s sin, and God s discipline all combined together under His sovereign wisdom and power to bring one great effect at the end of the age. But regardless, this hour of crisis is the most effective season Satan has against the Church. Satan waits for the hour of God s judgment. Satan hates God s judgments because of Isaiah 26: When Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness (Is. 26:9). So Satan doesn t like the judgments of God because they produce righteousness in the end not for all, but for many. GOD S JUDGMENTS ARE THE PREMIER TIME FOR SATAN TO ACCUSE GOD But on the other hand, Satan likes God s judgments, because in the midst of His judgments there s an open door to accuse God. It s the premier time for Satan to accuse God. This dynamic is embodied in Job s wife. She looked at Job and said, Well, just curse God and give up. Just die. Give up hope and curse God. And that s what Satan says: Curse God and die (Job 2:9)! In other words, Give up all hope of anything meaningful coming out of this. That s what it means to die in that context to give up all hope that any of this will bear fruit in your life. IN DOUBTING GOD S TRUTH AND GOODNESS, WE BECOME FEARFUL AND AFRAID So Satan comes to accuse God s character; we understand that. He says, God isn t good, and He s a liar. That s all he has to say: God isn t good. Then he goes on to the next dimension: God is a liar. In essence, that s all he has to say. If God isn t good, and He s a liar, than the people are either offended at God in anger or they re driven away by fear. They say, Well, I m not mad at God; I m just so afraid of everything. They re either offended or they re fearful. They re either driven by fear or they possess angry offense. That s what the Devil loves; because if he can make people afraid or offended, then they can never worship. They can never, ever be what Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Father are working together to produce: an end-time, lovesick Bride at the end of the age lovesick, voluntary lovers. NEVER CAN WE WORSHIP IN FULLNESS IF OUR HEARTS ARE OFFENDED Of course, in the forerunner spirit, which is what the book of Joel is all about, God is raising up forerunners who dislodge this accusation against God. They give answers for what s happening. Beloved, that s why it s so critical that we can give answers. Because if people are afraid or offended with anger, if they possess either of those emotions, they can t worship with a full heart. Even God s people, though they might worship a little, never can they worship in fullness if their hearts are dominated by offense or fear. And those are the two predominant emotions that Satan is going to try to establish in the midst of the people of God.

7 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 7 SWEET TO THE TASTE AND BITTER TO THE STOMACH God s answer is people like Joel, prophets like Joel, prophetesses, men and women, young and old, with the forerunner anointing, who understand, who have eaten the scroll, so to speak, who have digested this book, and though it s bitter, it s also sweet. The sweetness of this message is the fact that God in His sovereignty is about doing good. It s bitter because there s real human pain involved. The pain is real. It s bitter and it s sweet when we eat this scroll. Of course I m referencing Ezekiel 3 and Revelation 10, when the angel told the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 3 and John in Revelation 10 to eat the scroll. And it was sweet to the taste and bitter in the stomach. The sweetness is: Oh, the big picture! God, You re moving. It s going to turn out wonderfully. There will be this tremendous crescendo of life and power and love as the fruit of Holy Spirit-anointed worshipers under the power of the Holy Spirit in the great harvest. But there s bitterness; the pain is real. It s real pain; it s not make-believe pain. So it s bitter and it s sweet; but beloved, we have to be like Joel. We have to eat this scroll. In other words, we have to digest this message thoroughly, not on the run. I don t mean just drop in, hear a word or two, check out the notes, and then we re moving on. I mean, we need to digest this. There s a reason I m giving our whole missions base, and everyone who wants it, not just on staff but in the area, the opportunity to go through Song of Solomon line by line so that they can digest it; and then the message of the end-time prophets, or the prophets for the last days. We must take those two together and digest the message thoroughly. I m very serious. Well, the Lord is; I m just a small part of it. But I m very serious about training our staff and our ministry base in the forerunner spirit to go deeply in these things. We don t just want to be driven by offense and fear and mindlessly babbling along like so many of God s people babbled in the wake of There s a babbling spirit on the Church; they re just changing their minds left and right, going with the tide. There s so little clarity about what s happening and what s going on. The Lord is saying, I have an answer; I will raise up forerunners all over the earth. Beloved, these forerunners aren t people who will get this message on the run meaning they don t just occasionally dip into it. We have to digest this; we have to eat the scroll; we have to drink deep of the message. We have to reorder our lives and fill our beings with this reality. And then we become a voice and not just an echo. Then with power and life we can make sense of it to others. DON T BABBLE ALONG WITH THE MULTITUDES IN THE BODY OF CHRIST Some of you may be in a little cave. I don t mean a literal cave, but you may be in a little out-of-the way place in terms of your ministry, and in one moment of time God may give you a voice to nations in the earth. I mean, you can be in your sixties and seventies and you may be the person who s randomly chosen to be on CNN. You have five minutes and the whole globe is listening. And you may have the arrow that pierces millions of people. And you never knew the day before that it was even going to happen. The Lord has so many setups that He s arranging right now. You don t have a clue what position you might be in, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, if the Lord tarries. Beloved, we need to eat the scroll. We need to drink deeply. We need to get ready. I don t care how old or how young you are; this is the hour to go after this thing before the crises mount up and you have nothing to say but just babbling along with the multitudes in the Body of Christ: double-minded, trying to make everyone happy,

8 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 8 trying not to offend this group or that group. We need to be those who stand in the council of the Lord. We ve eaten; we re strong; it s solid in our spirit. We know what God says: He says what He means and means what He says, we re clear about it, and we re not in a popularity contest. We want to be a voice in the wilderness preparing His people. But beloved, we need a million of these kinds of preachers in the earth, a million preacher/singer/writers who do this. A million of them! I mean a million of them could really impact six billion, yea, and eventually ten billion people if the Lord tarries. FORERUNNERS DISLODGE ACCUSATION IN THE HEART OF THE CHURCH Anyway, the forerunner spirit. What do we do? We re going to dislodge accusation in the heart of the Church. We re going to dislodge this accusation. We re going to tell the truth and drive out the accusation, the angry and fearful spirit. We re going to establish the heart of the Bride in confidence in love even before judgment. We re going to establish the heart of the people so that they can make sense of it, or we can help make sense of it to them, so that when they do all the math, God is a God of love with no contradiction. That s where we re going. The book of Joel is all about that. It teaches us what to do, and how to think, and where to go. THE OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOEL OK, let s get to the outline. Pull the pink page out. I m excited about this book. It s wonderful, but it s a heavy book. It s a heavy book, but it s wonderful. It s wonderful because it s true. The outline of the book of Joel. Here are the basic sections in the book. You ll see them: I, II and IV. Well, you can tell I m the one who typed this! No one ever accused me of being a typist. There are three basic sections, I, II, and IV. Each of these three sections gives an expression of the day of the Lord. There are three distinct time frames, three distinct periods of time in which the day of the Lord is expressed. There s a progressive impact. The day of the Lord in chapter 1 is intense. The day of the Lord in chapter 2 is more serious. And the Day of the Lord in chapter 3 is at the very end of the age. And that s where the ultimate crescendo is. So there s a progressive impact of these three Day of the Lords. And they re to be studied together because the day of the Lord in chapter 1 and the day of the Lord in chapter 2 are two different events, two different crises, which are meant to prepare us for the Day of the Lord in chapter 3. We can t separate these three chapters; we must study them together. It s one big message from the heart of God, to which forerunners must say yes. Roman numeral I. The day of the Lord in chapter 1. You can put, Joel 1:15. That s where Joel calls it the day of the Lord. It s an event that s just happened; it s a past day of the Lord. It just happened a year or two or three ago in the time when Joel is giving this prophecy, so it was fresh in every one s memory. And it was a day of the Lord in which insects, locusts, were the instruments of God s choice. In around 600 BC, there was a calamity of locusts. No one knows the exact date, but it was ten or twenty years before the military invasion of Joel 2, and it was a small day of the Lord. It was a beginning, a lesser day of the Lord. Joel 2 would prove to be a bigger day of the Lord. Joel 3 is going to be the great and ultimate Day of the Lord. We ll get to that in a few moments. Roman numeral I. It s a local agricultural crisis that affected the food and the economy severely for several years. Joel 2:25 lets us know that the crisis went on for several years maybe for three or four or five years; we don t know. But it lasted for longer than a couple of months.

9 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 9 What the Lord was saying in this past day of the Lord was, Hey, if you want to minimize the impact right now, I m calling you to fasting and prayer in the present tense. Why? Because the impact of the agricultural and economic disaster was still being felt in the land. God said, You know, we can minimize some of the impact, even though it s already a past tense event. The crisis had already struck; the locusts invaded; the economy was ruined; all the fields were ruined. But you know what? says Joel. Through fasting and prayer, we can minimize it. And that s what he s saying in paragraph A. This was a call to wholeheartedness in full repentance to minimize the crisis after it had already come. Fasting and prayer isn t just something we do on the front end; it s something we can do on the back end of a crisis as well. THIS WAS MORE THAN A NATURAL DISASTER; IT WAS THE HAND OF GOD Interestingly, it s called the day of the Lord. Paragraph B. That s interpreting the plague, because the people of Joel s day just thought it was a natural disaster. And Joel came along and said, Remember that disaster that happened a year or two ago? He said, It was more than a natural disaster; it was the hand of God. The priests and the farmers and all the people of the land said, No, no, it s just one of those things that happens from time to time. And Joel interprets it. He says, It s more than a natural disaster. He says, You re looking through the eyes of man; I m talking through the eyes of the Spirit. I know from God directly, it was the hand of God that did it. And I tell you, that made a lot of people angry. Roman numeral II. It s not a past day of the Lord; it s a near day of the Lord. It s a day of the Lord that s maybe ten or twenty years away. Again, we don t know the exact dates, but it s a decade or two away. Joel may have been prophesying around 600 or 610 BC; we don t really know, but the great invasion came in 586. So it could have been two or three decades out; you never know. The Lord begins to talk about it. It s a near day of the Lord. It s a military invasion. It s far more severe than insects coming and agricultural crisis. A military invasion is a much bigger deal than an agricultural crisis, as severe as that is. This is the soon-coming Babylonian invasion. A. It s described in chapters 2:1-11. It s a national military crisis. Now this is going to affect Israel for seventy years not three to five years, but for seventy years. They re going to be under the oppression, they re going to be in the slave camps. Those camps were really severe at first, and less severe towards the end of the seventy years. But still it was oppression. These were prison camps, refugee camps, if you will, in Iraq. But they were more than refugee camps; the Jews were prisoners of war. That went on for seventy years, not three to five years like the agricultural invasion. Verse 11 calls it the day of the Lord. Joel is prophesying. It s not actually going to happen for another ten or twenty years, and maybe a bit longer. But Joel is saying, I want you to know, as the locust invasion wasn t a natural disaster, the Babylonian military isn t just a political power play. It s orchestrated from heaven.

10 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 10 In his day all the leaders were saying, Well, that s just the fruit of the natural product of political forces and collision And Joel says, No! In verse 11 he says, This is the day of the Lord. This is divine activity intervening (Joel 2:11, paraphrased). Yet many of the people didn t know how to respond to God, because they had no grid that it was God who was acting. And again, God s acting overlaps with Satan s rage and man s sin. That s the part that makes it a little difficult to separate, because there are three realities happening all together: man s sin, Satan s rage against the righteous, and God s discipline of His own people. THE PRIMARY PROBLEM IS AN ADVERSARIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD Of course, paragraph B is the same thing. This is a call to wholeheartedness before the military invasion; whereas in chapter 1 the call to wholeheartedness occurred after the agriculture crisis. In either case, Joel is saying, It s the same thing. He says, Whether it s before the event or after the event, God has one primary solution. There are many secondary solutions. Just as there s one primary source of their problem, there are many secondary sources. The primary source of Israel s problems, both in the agricultural disaster of chapter 1 and the military invasion of chapter 2, was the hand of God. They had become adversarial to God in His righteousness. They were resisting Him; they made themselves adversarial in their relationship to God. God was the primary source, though there were plenty of secondary sources: Nebuchadnezzar s sin and all kinds of things. Joel isn t being comprehensive. He s not saying, Here are the five contributing forces to this invasion. He says, I m taking you to the primary source. Your problem is that you have an adversarial relationship with God. You have to get into agreement; you have to get into a place of wholeheartedness. And don t worry about the secondary causes. The secondary causes aren t your problem. Your problem is the primary cause: God and His zeal for you. Then what happens today: we focus on the secondary causes, because they do exist. There are real secondary causes: sin in Washington, sin over in the Middle East, in the political circles in the Middle Eastern countries, sin in the leadership of Europe. Beloved, let me tell you, the sin of political leaders in America, in the Middle East, or in Europe, isn t the problem. It s not mostly about sinful political people making evil choices; it s about the Church of Jesus not responding. And the primary source of trouble is God. The secondary sources are man s sin and Satan s rage. If we settle the issue with God, we can manage the fallout of man s sin and Satan s rage. It s a totally different issue. GOD S PRIMARY SOLUTION IS THE CALL TO WHOLEHEARTEDNESS But here is the point I want to make here in paragraph B. It s the call to wholeheartedness. God has one primary solution. Yes, there are secondary solutions. The secondary solutions are where most of God s people go. You know: Let s go do a march on Washington. Let s start wars, stop wars, picket, call leaders, appeal All those secondary sources. Some of them are really of God. But no matter how much of God they are, they re always the secondary solution. The primary solution is always the born-again community gathering together in little rooms, rearranging their schedules, taking some of their recreation and entertainment, putting it aside, taking some of their life dreams, laying them aside, taking some of their addictions and passions, laying them aside, and gathering for intensive, unified fasting and prayer on an ongoing basis. That s always the primary solution, because God is always the primary source of the problem.

11 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 11 Yes, there are secondary solutions. There are those who are called to go get all the politicians to do this, that, and the other. I m not minimizing that; I m really not. I m not in any way trying to undermine the secondary solutions; but the primary solutions are so unattended to, so neglected. There s such a vacuum of the primary solution that I want to put all my energy into seeing this bonfire across the earth of millions of believers enacting the primary solution. Then I can think about some of the secondary solutions. But as long as the houses of prayer are mostly empty in the earth and even in those that are beginning to fill up, we need passion and authority in the house of prayer. Not just people sitting in the chairs; we need to see spiritual authority and passion. We need to see wholeheartedness. This is the primary solution. This is what we re called to do. This is why we re rearranging our lives. I mean, we like some of those things just as much as other people like them, whatever they are. We ve said, no to, a, b, c, and d, at least in principle. We re gathering to build a prayer furnace, because the book of Joel tells us to do this in Joel 1 and 2, for the purpose of answering the crisis in Joel 3. It s the answer for today. We re gathering together to build a fiery prayer furnace; that s the primary solution on God s heart. Not the only solution, but the primary solution. There are many secondary solutions, and I honor them, and the Lord is in them. But when the secondary solutions become primary, we get out of the way of what the Lord is doing. I don t have it written down here, but the Lord says in verse 11, This Babylonian invasion, this military invasion, is the hand of God. It s the day of the Lord (Joel 2:11, paraphrased) meaning it s the activity of God. The point is, God is the primary source. One says, No, I think that it s Nebuchadnezzar s ambition, for he made the Assyrians mad and then stirred up the Egyptians. Joel says, That might all be true. But that s really not the problem at hand. Paragraph C. Of course this is our favorite point. The Lord says, I promise you I ll forgive you and bless you. I promise you. I promise you. if you in your weakness and brokenness do what I tell you to do, if you see Me as the primary source and accept My primary solution, I promise you that I will forgive and anoint you. I promise you. No matter how broken, how messed up, how bad your track record is, if you ll simply do what I say in Joel 2:14, you ll find kindness. And perhaps I will relent and minimize even the judgments on the land. Maybe I ll minimize them; maybe I won t. But either way, I ll bring forth goodness in terms of your life. IT MAY BE THAT YOU WILL BE HIDDEN IN THE DAY OF THE LORD S ANGER In Joel 2:14, Joel says, Perhaps the Lord will relent of the judgments (Joel 2:14, paraphrased). In other words, He may minimize them and He may not minimize them; we can t know. Some people pretend to know more than I think God says sometimes, with respect to whether the Lord has minimized the judgment or not. We don t have to know. He leaves in the perhaps, the question mark, just as He does in Zephaniah 2:3. Zephaniah, Joel s buddy, does the same thing. He says, It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord s anger (Zeph. 2:3). In other words, Perhaps you ll find a pocket of mercy. Maybe yes, maybe no. INDIVIDUALLY, YOU WILL ENCOUNTER THE UNFAILING KINDNESS OF GOD But no matter what, this you can be sure of: as far as you as an individual, you ll encounter the goodness of God in a significantly greater way because you gave yourself to Him. Maybe those around you will, and maybe they

12 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 12 won t; you can t know for sure. But you can know that you will. You will run into the kindness of God in the midst of this thing. THE DAY OF THE LORD AT THE END OF THE AGE (JOEL 2:28-3:21) Roman numeral let me say it III. The Day of the Lord at the end of the age. This is the big one; this is the distant Day of the Lord. Remember that number one is the past day of the Lord. Number two is the near day of the Lord. And number three is the distant Day of the Lord. This is where the worldwide evil empire is described. I say Joel 3, but I really mean the last half of Joel 2 and all Joel 3. It s simpler to say Joel 3, but technically it s from Joel 2:28, all the way through 3:21. The day of the Lord at the end of the age. Let s go down to paragraph B. Number 1. There s a negative, an agricultural crisis, in chapter 1. There s a military invasion in chapter 2. And there s this assault of a global coalition of nations against Israel that s described in chapter 3:1-3. Those are the three verses that describe it. Most of chapter 3 is how God says, I will break in and answer you. But I m answering you in a state of despair. So the negative is described in chapter 3:1-3. But if you really want to get the full details, it s Zechariah 9-14; and we ll look at that in the days to come on Saturday and Sunday nights some time down the road. Because that s really the clearest description of the trouble coming to the nation of Israel: Zechariah GOD LIBERATES HIS CHILDREN FROM THE HOUSE OF THE PRISONER But Joel 3:1-3 gives a little snap shot of the trouble. And basically Israel is going to be taken into captivity again. They re going to go back into prison camps. They re going to be set free from prison camps when the Lord returns. And of course, to be set free from prison camps all around in many nations means that they have to go into them to be set free from them. A CHURCH THAT STANDS FEARLESSLY FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE I ve done, not a full study, but a bit of an energetic study on the prison camps at the end of the age in the Scriptures. There are about twenty passages where God is liberating people from the house of the prisoner, from the hidden dark dungeons. He is talking about prison camps. Anti-Semitism is going to explode worldwide; and the concentration camps will be reestablished again. And the Body of Christ is going to be required to do in this day what most of the Church in Europe didn t do in the 1940s. Some of them were heroic, but very few. God is going to have a prepared Church that stands fearlessly for the Jewish people. And we re going to take our stand as voices of mercy and messengers of goodness and peace and comfort in a great calamity that s coming. But what happens is that this Day of the Lord is going to be a global day of the Lord. And there will be demons involved in it at a level beyond anything that we can imagine. Here is the message of Joel. The message of the book of Joel is simply this: we re going to see the lesser days of the Lord, like the agricultural crisis in Joel 1, and we re going to learn from them. In Malachi 1, God says, I am the Lord, I do not change (Mal. 3:6). In other words, I ll never change My personality or tactics. I have the same principles now as I did in the little agricultural crisis that went on for three to five years. We don t know exactly how long, but it went on for some years.

13 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 13 He says in chapter 2, As I was in the military invasion, I m still the same God. I ll be the same God in the global assault against Israel in chapter 3:1-3. I ll be the same God who demonstrates My glory and My power. I will respond when My people cry out in a wholehearted way. That s why we need to do this. THE LORD IS A WARRIOR KING, AND HE GOES FORTH TO BATTLE What is the day of the Lord? I ll end with this. The day of the Lord is a unique time frame in which God manifests His warrior kingship. He is the Warrior King, and He goes forth to battle against His enemy called sin. And when God manifests His power against His enemy called sin, the people aren t His enemy, the sin is. And where sin has lodged in people, then He s at war against sin. When God goes to battle in a unique way against His enemy called sin, and manifests His zeal, His sovereign power, in the natural, there are very few time frames in history in which He does this only a few. Normally He allows sin to go mostly unchecked. Oh, from time to time He puts up a few speed bumps and makes nations stop. But mostly He lets them run, with certain boundaries, on and on and on. We read in the book of Ecclesiastes, Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil (Ecc. 8:11). The wicked say, Hey, God doesn t ever seem to stop us; so maybe He s not even there, and He won t. In the normal course of things, He lets the human heart do as they ve determined to do. But there are a few times in history I don t know the number; I don t mean five or ten, but more than that. There are a few times in history where He breaks into the natural realm. It s called His judgments; and when He breaks in, He manifests His zeal against His enemy and displays His sovereign leadership. And when He does that, He s showing off His power and His wisdom. And it s His day. It s called, The day of the Lord. Now there are what I call small-d days of the Lord: lesser, localized judgments. When God broke in, in Joel 1, with the agricultural crisis, it was a localized lesser day of the Lord. But it was a breaking in; it was the Lord showing His zeal against His enemy, sin. And He breaks in, in an unusual way. It s lesser and localized; it s not global. Joel 2 describes the Babylonian invasion. It s still a lesser day of the Lord, and it s a local one. It s against the nation of Israel. But the Joel 3 Day of the Lord is global and it s called the great Day of the Lord. There s only one day that s the great, global Day of the Lord. And it s the time frame related to the second coming of Christ. All the other ones are local and lesser days of the Lord. There was a day of the Lord in Europe. The Lord was shaking and stirring the nations. Well, it wasn t just Europe; it was the whole earth. Fifty million people died. Yes, there was Satan s rage; yes, there was man s sin. But it s this mysterious combination of God s discipline of His people to shake the nations to awaken them to His own righteousness while Satan s rage breaks forth and man s sin escalates. That was undoubtedly a day of the Lord. It wasn t the big one. That was a time when God broke in and confronted nations and institutions with their sin if they would hearken and listen. Oftentimes when the day of the Lord comes, many people resist it and they never learn its lessons. It was unquestionably a time of the day of the Lord. FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS HAVE WE COME INTO THE KINGDOM But, beloved, yes, there are local and lesser days of the Lord: Joel 1 and Joel 2. But there s only one great, global Day of the Lord. And all the lesser and localized days of the Lord are preparing us for the great one. For such a time as this have we come into the kingdom.

14 Transcript: 03/16/03 Page 14 That s what we re being prepared for; that s why we re studying the book of Joel. We want to understand this stuff. We want this revelation to flow effortlessly in our being. We don t want to be tripped up and confused; we don t want to try to be confident in the day of crisis when we ve only just now figured out what s going on. We want to have clarity for years before the crisis mounts to another level. We want the clarity to be settled in us and so proven that in the hour of crisis we re not experimenting with a new revelation. Rather we re speaking with boldness, fearlessly, because it s something that we re so sure of, we re so accustomed to on the inside, that we won t be moved from our stance of clarity. And beloved, you can t receive that confidence in a moment s time. It s something you receive because you eat the scroll. You feed on this over the months and the years preceding the shakings. Amen. Let s stand.