The Book of Joel and the Coming Stellar Invasion by Richie Cooley Jr. - HTML preview

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The Book of Joel

And the Coming Stellar Invasion

By Richie Cooley

Licensed by: Richie Cooley (Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International)

Unless otherwise noted, Old Testament Scripture is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. 

Unless otherwise noted, New Testament Scripture is taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Third Edition. Copyright © 2007 by Gary F. Zeolla of Darkness to Light ministry. Previously copyrighted © 1999, 2001, 2005 by Gary Zeolla.

Some Scripture is taken from the Lexham English Bible. 2012 Version. Copyright 2009–2012 Logos Research Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Some Scripture is taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Table of Contents

I. Introduction: What’s on the Other Side?

 

Chapter I

II. Coming over the Hills (1:1-4)

III. The Lion-Like Nation (1:5-8)

IV. From Drink to Drought (1:9-12)

V. Seizing the Day of Hashem (1:13-20)

 

Chapter II

I. Seized by the Day of Hashem (2:1-5)

II. Scourged of Scorpions (2:6-11)

III. Israel Revisited (2:12-19)

IV. Showers of Blessing (2:20-23)

V. The End of Shame (2:24-27)

 

Chapters III and IV

I. Calling Home (3:1-5/2:28-32)

II. The Great Assemblage (4:1-3/3:1-3)

III. An Ancient Enemy (4:4-8/3:4-8)

IV. The Valley of Jehoshaphat (4:9-16/3:9-16)

V. Conclusion: The Hills of Milk (4:17-21/3:17-21)

 

 

 

I. Introduction: What’s on the Other Side?

John Piper could not easily be taken for a light-minded person. He is a grave preacher and an accomplished theologian, having faithfully and wisely led a massive congregation of evangelical Christians for several decades in Minnesota; thus he is the perfect witness for a remarkable event that took place back in 2009…

I saw the fast-moving, misshapen, unusually-wide funnel over downtown Minneapolis from Seven Corners. I said to Kevin Dau, “That looks serious.”

It was. Serious in more ways than one. A friend who drove down to see the damage wrote,

“On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected...a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts -- most saying they’ve never seen anything like it. It happens right in the city. The city: Minneapolis.

The tornado happens on a Wednesday...during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s national convention in the Minneapolis Convention Center. The convention is using Central Lutheran across the street as its church. The church has set up tents around its building for this purpose.”

According to the ELCA’s printed convention schedule, at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 19, the 5th session of the convention was to begin. The main item of the session: “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.” The issue is whether practicing homosexuality is a behaviour that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry. 

The eyewitness of the damage continues:

“This curious tornado touches down just south of downtown and follows 35W straight towards the city center. It crosses I94. It is now downtown.  

The time: 2PM.  

The first buildings on the downtown side of I94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran. The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what’s left of the steeple in two...and then lifts.” [From the Desiring God blog; August 19, 2009]

Many people witnessed this strange happening, and obviously it was an irrefutable rebuke by God to modern Christian liberalism.

You see, there are two camps of Christians: those who seek to be “up with the times,” who seek to be modern and hip and respectable according to the world’s intelligentsia; then there are the knuckle-scrapers who admire a ridiculously simplistic Biblical fundamentalism. What side was Jesus Christ always found to be on? Without exception he aligned with the latter; he always upheld the simple, straight-forward, literal understanding of even the most fantastic stories such as Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, the destruction of Sodom, Noah’s flood, and Jonah’s adventure in the sea creature.

Why is it so important to hold to Biblical fundamentalism? There are two categoric reasons: an uncompromising belief in the Bible is the only form of Christianity that can honour God, and it alone can bless humankind.

It alone can honour God because the Bible says throughout its pages that it is his perfect revelation to us…

You have commanded Your testimonies in righteousness and exceeding faithfulness. My zeal has consumed me, because my adversaries have forgotten Your words. Your word is very pure, therefore Your servant loves it. I am small and despised, [yet] I do not forget Your precepts. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and Your law is truth. -- Psalm 119:138-142

All Scripture [is] God-breathed... -- 2 Timothy 3:16

Therefore, if we openly circumvent God’s words just to be “cool” according to progressive liberalism, not only does everyone see through such a silly façade, but we’re spitting directly into God’s merciful face, forsaking the gracious instruction he shed his blood to enliven.

The second problem mentioned above is that apostasy from sound doctrine curses humankind. Contrary to what the masses (even religious masses) generally say, theology does matter. If we forsake God’s holy teachings that are laid forth plainly in the Bible it will have a detrimental effect on society; don’t believe me? Let’s look at two obvious errors in Western Christianity these days and think about their ill effects. First let’s look at the Roman Catholic Church’s view on the celibate priesthood.

Nowhere in the Bible is such a thing called for. God created food and sexual intercourse explicitly to enliven our dreary journey in this thorn-filled age...

Now the Spirit explicitly says that in latter times some will fall away [or, apostatize] from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, in hypocrisy [or, insincerity] of liars, having been seared in their own conscience, forbidding to be marrying, [commanding] to be abstaining from foods which God created for receiving with thanksgiving by the [ones who are] faithful and have acknowledged the truth. -- 1 Timothy 4:1-3

Demons not only lead people to live a life of rampant promiscuity, but also a “saintly” ascetic one; so says the wise man Solomon…

Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself? Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other; for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them. -- Ecclesiastes 7:16-18

So the Roman church has openly violated Scripture and demanded priests be celibate. Now often this doesn’t mean priests are without sexual gratification; no, they just can’t get married. Is it not an amazing debauchery that a Christian system exists which frowns on marriage while allowing male leaders to engage in every other form of sexual pleasure? Is this not the height of godless, counter-intuitive stupidity? Talk about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! Moreover, marriage is not a gnat; not only is it a rich privilege, but raising a family is a better means of growing character than any military training course in the world. People often flee to monasteries or to convents or to the priesthood to escape from reality, so how can these people be pastors of those in the trenches of life?

Now even though these sexually active “celibates” are clearly hurting their own souls, one might try to argue that this doesn’t affect society largely. I would disagree; nevertheless, there are bigger fish to fry these days when it comes to priestly sexuality. We all realize why so many children have been abused. If you do not allow normal men with normal urges into leadership positions then you have to let in odd balls with distorted desires, and that’s exactly what’s happened. So you see, a few lines from Moses and Paul were violated and look how many people have suffered violence and/or shipwreck of faith.

Now having bashed the Roman church a bit let’s bash the Protestants (or at least, a movement that was originally Protestant). I’m opposed to cessationalism, as I’ll touch on later; nevertheless it’s clear that one of the most shameful practices in the post-Reformation church has been unbridled charismaticism. Some of these people pretend to get “drunk” in the Spirit and stagger about embarrassingly, say the same few meaningless sentences over and over again and pretend it’s a supernatural tongue, believe they’re being led to bark like dogs or lay on people’s graves to catch some leaking unction from their corpses, etc. 

Again you might say that such people are to be lamented but that they’re not really hurting anyone; false. You see, their theology teaches them that everything in the Kingdom is getting better and better because of the victory of Christ and the power of the outpoured Holy Spirit. Therefore, it’s possible through faith to have every good thing this planet has to offer, especially health and wealth. I’ve sat in a service where a young teenager in a wheelchair was made to feel bad because he couldn’t stand up and walk; in the eyes of that congregation he obviously was faithless and deserved his prolonged affliction. Also, there are many horror stories of teenage girls being told that their lives were beyond repair as they had been wholly given up to demons, simply because they refused a leader’s counsel. Theology matters.

Now I could spin stories all day long of how unbiblical Christianity has harmed the world, yet I want to take a step back from the trees and view the forest…

When God came in the flesh and walked along the shores of Galilee, the overriding theological problem among the people was the lack of understanding concerning the gracious salvation that can be found in the righteousness of the Godhead alone. It’s not that words like grace or mercy or compassion couldn’t be found in Israel’s ancient liturgy, but just because you recite them doesn’t mean you truly understand their theological basis. Even today Judaism flows the same way (don’t get me wrong, I’m not wholly insulting Judaism; I’d happily join a synagogue, for I cant get enough of the Old Testament). If you want to excel you have to add many things to your life; by the time you get finished praying your exhaustive prayer schedule and studying the voluminous Talmud (which you need to read for at least an hour a day if you hope to finish within seven years), all the while keeping up with your lifestyle of ceremonial mitzvot, who has time to actually get to know God?

We all know the result of what happened when petty legalism (and given the beliefs of the Sadducees you might add “crass materialism”) met Wisdom incarnate; yet what does the world look like 2,000 years later? Has the gentile world done a better job with the religion of Hashem? Absolutely not! All we gentiles have done is swiped the ball from the Jews and ran the opposite erroneous direction (all the while hating and despising God’s beloved Hebrews). Instead of stumbling over legalism we’ve stumbled over grace. Look at the nations of the post-Christian West. Look at the UK, letting the Lockerbie bomber out of jail after killing hundreds of people just so he could enjoy his latter days of life (regardless of the political motivations, many still agreed with the decision in the name of mercy). Is this not symptomatic of a nation that struggles with the idea of true justice?

But never mind nations, it’s the collective church I’m concerned with. En masse we gentile Christians have not only done a pretty pathetic job of guarding the Scriptures entrusted to us (i.e. the state of Hebrew textual criticism is ten times better than the state of Greek textual criticism; I trust the Rabbi who would hand a Torah scroll to me; I don’t trust the “hip” pseudo-scholar with their Origen-laced New Testament), but we’ve also done a pretty pathetic job of announcing God to the world. The Jews still worship the awesome, mysterious God of creation; we Christians have translated this One of power and justice into a cosmic teddy-bear. Christianity has morphed into a new religion, Nice-ianity. The word “No” is banished, as are the words “sin,” “hell,” “judgment,” “right/wrong,” “law,” “commandment,” and even male leadership.

And that brings us to our book at hand, the book of Joel. When every purple-clad effeminate minister whispers sweet nothings about how God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, the congregation is led on the wild goose chase of pursuing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness according to the world’s standards. Yet what did Jesus Christ say? “Blessed are the poor!” Not just the poor in Spirit, but the actual poor. What did his physical and spiritual brother Jacob say?

Now let the lowly brother [or, brother of humble circumstances] be rejoicing in his exaltation, but the rich [brother] in his humble state, because like a flower of grass he will pass away. -- James 1:9-10

And again…

Now listen! The rich [people], weep, wailing over your* miseries, the ones coming upon [you*]! Your* riches have rotted, and your* clothes have become moth-eaten. Your* gold and silver have corroded, and their rust will be for a testimony against you* and will consume your* flesh as fire. You* stored up [treasure] in [the] last days! -- James 5:1-3

I think Gandhi was right, and that Christians do not believe in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet life is hard, and that will never change this side of glory; people need to be inoculated against the pains and pressures through faith in the powerful God of providence and through prizing internal treasures. Moreover, they need to realize that his commandments and laws have been broken, “right” has been substituted for “wrong,” and he is about to enter into judgment with this world and send its inhabitants to hell for its sin. Most Christian leaders are very far from the footsteps of Christ, being either pagan, political, or pansies; Joel however is a timeless clarion call that should always be fully embraced. Everyone needs to hear this prophet yell. God is about to bring strange and awesome plagues upon this world, and you need to know, and you need to escape. Let’s now consider the words of Joel, for the platitudes of sugary sermons will melt in future heat, yet concerning the Old Testament Paul writes… Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11; NASB).

Before getting started let’s review a few notes that will help make sense of this book; also, this is a new translation of Joel, and I want to explain some of the features I’ve employed.

*The terms LORD, GOD, and Hashem are all ways to describe the personal name of God, often transliterated as Y-h-w-h or J-h-v-h.

*Unless otherwise stated, apart from Joel, which is my own translation, the Old Testament quotes are from the NASB and the New Testament are from the ALT3.

*The ALT3 distinguishes between singular and plural second person pronouns by means of an asterisk (*).

*This book mostly uses British spelling, except for the other Bible versions quoted, which normally use American spelling.

*Divine pronouns are normally not capitalized, unless they appear that way in Bible versions.

*Within quotes, words that appear in brackets are not in the original text, and were either added by the translators or are my personal comments, etc.

*In my version of Joel, the abbreviations “id” and “lit” are employed. “Id” means idiomatically; sometimes in seeking to be literal the text is a bit jarring; thus I’ve supplied a smoother alternate translation. “Lit” is just the opposite; sometimes the original words have been left a bit by the wayside, so “lit” alerts the reader to how the text literally reads.

*In wanting to relate the book of Joel as fully as possible I’ve often used amplifications. Instead of just choosing one word to translate the Hebrew I’ve used several. These alternate readings are separated from each other by use of a slash (/). However, sometimes when the alternate rendering has more than one word as its final entry it can lead to confusion. In these cases the alternate rendering ends in an asterisk; that way the reader knows when the description ends and the next part of the verse begins. For example, when a single-word alternate is given it looks like this: tree/wood; when the last alternate has several words it looks like this: tree/a wooded area*.

 

II. Coming over the Hills (1:1-4)

1 The word of Hashem that was to Joel [meaning, Hashem is God] the son of Pethuel [meaning perhaps, persuasion of God]. 2 Hear this O elders, and give ear all the inhabitants of the land/earth; has this been in your days, and [consider] if [this has been] in the days of your fathers? 3 On it [id- concerning this] recount to your children, and your children to their children, and their children to another generation...4 The remainder of the devouring [locust/bug] has the [swarming] locust eaten; and the remainder of the [swarming] locust has the licking-up [locust/bug] eaten; and the remainder of the licking-up [locust/bug] has the finishing-off/consuming [locust/bug] eaten.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time discussing the date of the writing because God doesn’t give us any real means of sureness. Liberals will generally give this book a late date as they do with as many prophets as possible; their normal justification is that Joel mentions a captivity in chapter 3. Well, Moses mentioned a captivity as well, so this hardly proves anything (plus there were other smaller captivities before Assyria/Babylon). I’ll quote Macarthur as to why an early date is more probable…

Dating the book relies solely on canonical position, historical allusions, and linguistic elements. Because of: 1) the lack of any mention of later world powers (Assyria, Babylon, or Persia); 2) the fact that Joel’s style is like that of Hosea and Amos rather than of the postexilic prophets; and 3) the verbal parallels with other early prophets (Joel 3:16/Amos 1:2; Joel 3:18/Amos 9:13), a late ninth-century-B.C. date, during the reign of Joash (c. 835–796 B.C.), seems most convincing (from his popular study Bible).