Hi -
For your prayerful consideration. As you may know, I've long suspected that Pentecost was only half-fulfilled. Most in the eschatosphere feel otherwise, since the church was (allegedly) "born" on Pentecost and the Spirit was poured out, etc. Almost all of the work I've seen that use the Lord's Feasts as a prophetic timeline include Pentecost as a spring feast and say it was fulfilled at Jesus' first coming.
But as we know, Peter connected the out-pouring to Joel chapter 2, but he didn't just quote or reference the part about the Spirit, dreams and visions. Rather, he spoke of blood, fire, pillars of smoke, the sun turning to darkness, the moon turning to blood, and the great and awesome Day of the Lord. That stuff, I believe, is near-term and is much more suggestive of "the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2) which many students see as His second coming. I'm also inclined to believe that an outpouring of the Spirit, prophecy, dreams and visions are part of the final Pentecost for the Jews.
To get the whole picture, I'd like to connect Joel, Amos and Ezekiel, since there are conceptual connections and they all deal with this same time period.
The prophecy of Joel begins with a locust swarm that laid the land waste. Locusts go through four life stages: egg, nymph, fledgling and adult. The terms "chewing," "swarming," "crawling" and "consuming" may be references to these stages; the point is that just like the locust swarm that devastated the land, an army will move against Israel, coming from the north, with the same ability to destroy completely.
That was the prophetic possibility, but God offers an option:
"Now, therefore," says the Lord,
"Turn to Me with all your heart,
With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning."So rend your heart, and not your garments;
Return to the Lord your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
Slow to anger, and of great kindness;
And He relents from doing harm.
- Joel 2:12-13
In verses 18-20 Joel says the Lord will be zealous for His land and will pity His people, and will remove the northern army. This has not happened yet.
Amos also speaks of locusts, starting in Amos chapter 7. The NKJV renders verse 1 as "Thus the Lord God showed me: Behold, He formed locust swarms at the beginning of the late crop; indeed it was the late crop after the king's mowings." I haven't researched "king's mowings" yet but suspect it's wheat (the "early crop" would be barley) at about the time of Pentecost. If I get good information, I'll supplement this. But of interest is the translation of the same verse in the Septuagint, where it is rendered: "...swarm of locusts coming from the east; and behold, one caterpillar, king Gog."
This, to me, was intriguing. Locusts have no "king" or leader (see Proverbs 30:27) - but these particular "locusts" (apparently used symbolically) do, and the appearance of the name "Gog" brings Ezekiel 38 to mind. We see in verse 2 that "Gog" is the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.
Note: some versions translate "Rosh" as a proper noun but I've concluded that "chief prince" is more likely correct. Review Ezekiel 32:26, Gen. 10:2, 1 Chron. 1:5 and Ezekiel 27:13 and you will notice that there is no people group identified as "Rosh." Hal Lindsey suggested this pointed to the Russians, but this is extremely unlikely because the etymological root of "Rus" is Scandinavian, and "Russia" is medieval Latin. The national identification did not exist when Ezekiel wrote.
Gog is, I believe, a spiritual entity. We read about "princes" of nations, and Michael, a "chief prince" in Daniel 10. We know there are some miscreants in the Divine Council (read Psalm 82 which is a plea for the members of the Divine Council to stop judging unjustly).
If my premise is correct - that at the time of Peter, Pentecost was really only half-fulfilled - then the final fulfillment is yet future and may be just ahead. We'll know in a few short weeks, if the sun is darkened, the moon is "turned to blood" and the residents of Jerusalem see blood, fire and pillars of smoke.
Best,
Steve
"You can always forget an unkind thought,
but you can never unsay an unkind word."