Acts and Old Testament

While this episode covers Acts 2:1-21, the emphasis is on vv. 14-21. The first thirteen verses are only summarized with respect to what they describe and its biblical-theological significance.

Acts 2:14-21 takes us back to the New Covenant idea of the Old Testament. We will talk about the connections between these verses and items in Acts 1, Jer 31:31-34, Ezek 36:22-27, and Joel

2:28-32, which Peter quotes in this section of Acts 2. The episode gets into how these inter-connections should inform how we think about eschatology (end times) and biblical theology in general.

Acts 2:1–21 LEB

And when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in the same place. And suddenly a sound like a violent rushing wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And divided tongues like fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability to speak out. Now there were Jews residing in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the crowd gathered and was in confusion, because each one was hearing them speaking in his own language. And they were astounded and astonished, saying, “Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how do we hear, each one of us, in our own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and those residing in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya toward Cyrene, and the Romans who were in town, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own languages the great deeds of God!” And all were amazed and greatly perplexed, saying to one another, “What can this mean?” But others jeered and said, “They are full of sweet new wine!” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them, “Judean men, and all those who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and pay attention to my words! For these men are not drunk, as you assume, because it is the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘And it will be in the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. And even on my male slaves and on my female slaves I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. And I will cause wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun will be changed to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes. And it will be that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.’

Summary of View of Apostles

I’m more or less going to summarize it in a couple of minutes, and then move on. So, in Acts 2, we might as well just jump in here., see how the events of Acts 2 factor in or build from, link into, link back into the events the Old Testament, specifically the event to Deuteronomy 32 verses 8-9, where the nations were divided at Babel, which, of course, is recorded as an incident in Genesis 11.

But to make the summary as short as I can possibly make it, what happens in Acts 2 looks back on the division of the nations in Genesis 10-11. Genesis Chapter 10, of course, the Table of Nations, and of those nations are the ones referred to in Chapter 11 of Genesis with the Tower of Babel incident, where God has to punish nations and divide and disperse the people all over the Earth. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 is less familiar to people. Everybody knows the Tower of Babel incident, again, if you've read much of the Bible or if you’ve been sort of in church any amount of time, you probably are going to have come across a reference to that. But Deuteronomy 32:8-9 was the passage that says when the most high divided the nations, he divided them up according number the sons of God. And Yahweh, Israel was Yahweh's portion in verse 9. Jacob was his allotted inheritance. And so the worldview that’s conveyed there is this. This is actually the Old Testament biblical theological rationale for why the nations have other gods and why there are other nations. So we read in Babel about the dispersal but Deuteronomy 32:8-9, and in some other places but will to stick there, we see that the result really is that God allotted the nations to lesser gods, lesser divine beings, Beney Elohim, and, more or less, sort of disinherited the nations from being his own children, from having a direct relationship with him.

He disinherits them and puts them under the administration, under the authority, under the governance of lesser divine beings. And this isn’t a good thing. I mean it’s a punishment. God is, again, disinheriting them, out-distancing himself from them. And that's why the very next verse says Jacob, Israel is the portion of the earth, of the one people of the earth that are going to belong to Yahweh. Well Israel, Jacob, did not exist prior to this point. That's why Israel is not listed in the Table of Nations. Right after God disinherited the nations, again, allotting them to other gods, he calls Abraham in Genesis 12 and, again, it's the beginning of the story of the people of God, of the Old Testament, Israel, as we know it. So, again, this is the Old Testament framework for why Israel is opposed by other nations, why Yahweh is opposed by the gods, because we learn in Psalm 82 that, eventually, the gods that are put over these nations do not do their job well. They become corrupt. We learn from other passages in Deuteronomy that they seduce the Israelites instead of sort of taking care of their own people. The people allotted to them and directing them back to the true God or sort of stand in a holding pattern so that Israel can sort of perform its function as being a conduit of truth to the other nations. Remember the Abraham covenant that through Abraham and his seed, all nations of the earth would be blessed. Instead of it working that way, the gods of the other nations become corrupt and have to be judged. And that's what happens in Psalm 82. So, it doesn't go well.

We have free will divine beings sort of doing their own thing or presuming worship for themselves, or trying to seduce those under their charge to worship them instead of Yahweh. It even extends to Israel. Like I said, there are passages in Deuteronomy 17:3, Deuteronomy 29:25, thereabouts, and so on so forth, where Israel is seduced by these other gods to worship them instead of Yahweh. Again this is, again, the backdrop to the mess of the Old Testament, in terms of Israel and the nations, well, the reversal of that whole situation, reclaiming the nations, and God taking it upon himself to bring those nations back to himself, is what we see in inaugurated, initiated in Acts chapter 2 in the events of Pentecost. And if you watch the video, I go into a little bit about how there are Greek terms in Acts chapter 2, the first 13 verses, the Pentecost story, that link back into Genesis 11 and Deuteronomy 32. Again, that's no accident.

The alert reader, their mind would be drawn back to those passages and, therefore, back to that worldview, back to the whole situation. And if you look at the nations that are listed in Acts chapter 2, they proceed from the east, the easternmost presence of where the people of God are scattered in the foreign nations, moving westward and, again, remember Paul's sense of being, the apostle to the Gentiles. It was his mission to get to, to sort of migrate through all the way to the farthest nation mentioned in the Table of Nations, so that the quote unquote fullness of the Gentiles could be brought in. Again, he was very conscious of this whole idea that the nations had to be reclaimed and that God had sort of through the exile seeded Jews in those places. Of course, they come to Pentecost. They take the gospel back to nations with them. And then it’s Paul's job to go into those nations that have been infiltrated, at least with the seed thoughts of the gospel, and to start churches, to preach the gospel himself, and, again, to reclaim that which had been disinherited in the distant past.

And so that is really what's going on in Acts chapter 2. And there's a lot of messaging in that passage, What I want to focus on here are, let’s just jump into verse 12. So when people see this happening, that the apostles and, again, those within the 120 from Acts chapter 1, have been enabled by the Spirit. The Spirit has come upon them, enabling them to speak other languages, there known languages because of the very purpose, again, is to have Jews there present at Pentecost to embrace the gospel, to embrace Jesus as Messiah, then go back to their homelands to penetrate, infiltrate the nations. And so they're standing around, then in verse 12,

Acts 2:12 ESV

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

They are just jabbering in different languages

Acts 2:13 ESV

But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

They’re drunk. And of course that isn’t the point. And Peter, in verse 14, is going to address that and correct it, really answer the question what does this mean, again, from a little bit of a different trajectory. But the one thing I want to focus on a little bit here is that the short answer to the question, what does this mean, is that this, what you're seeing here, is a fulfillment of the new covenant promise of the Spirit, that the Spirit will come. So the new covenant has begun. And, of course, what happens at Pentecost is directly tied back to what Jesus did on the cross, the resurrection, again, that has new covenant elements. But this is the fulfillment of these passages back in the Old Testament. This is the time of the new covenant.

So that the Nation’s are Reclaimed

The Spirit has come and the reason the Spirit has come is to empower, not just a prophet here and there to preach, but to empower everyone who believes to go into the nations and reclaim them. We’re going to talk today a little bit about, again, this whole, what makes this different, what makes this new. Well, I what to see the thought here, and this might be something here you never would've heard. I understand that.

But, really, what's going on is in the Old Testament, prior to the new covenant, the notion of being elect and being a believer in Yahweh, a follower of Yahweh, are actually two separable classes. Now Israel was elect but that was no guarantee that an Israelite would be saved, as we would say it, or would be a believer, would be a follower in Yahweh. Well, you say Keith, that’s kind of crazy. Aren’t election and salvation synonyms? Well, actually they’re not. They are related concepts but they are not synonyms. We often assume this. And the easiest illustration in the world for this is your Old Testament. Israel was elect. We see that very plainly in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 7, God chose you because he loved you among all these peoples and so on so forth, and the election language found in the Old Testament. Well guess what, you have a lot of elect people who are called Israelites, and a significant number of them, maybe even the majority of them, apostatize. They worship other gods. That's the reason we have an exile. So either you’re going to say that you have Baal worshipers in heaven, you can worship Ball and still be a believer, which, again, the story of the exile suggests quite dramatically otherwise, or you have to see election as something that is not synonymous with salvation.

And, what’s going to happen here in the new covenant is that no longer are you going to have elect and believer in Yahweh be two separable classes. In the Old Testament, people of God were sort of an ethnic, it had an ethnic flavor just by definition. The children of Abraham, Jews, they were the people of God. They were elect. To be a follower you had to join yourself to the nation of Israel. You had to, in effect, become a Jew. You had to be circumcised as a male. You had to go through, again, various rituals, various acts to join the nation of Israel because that’s just how things were defined. Well, in the New Testament era, the New Testament people of God are a circumcision neutral body.

Not so the body of Christ

In the body of Christ, it doesn't matter if your Jew or Gentile. In the New Testament era, the era of the new covenant, all believers are the people of God, and by definition, all believers are elect. So here, you have in the New Testament the new covenant period. You have an overlapping, sort of a fusion of the concept of election, someone who's elect and someone who is actually a believer in Yahweh. And in the Old Testament, you didn’t have that. Election in the Old Testament, really what it boils down to is, you were chosen by God from among all the nations, again, that’s back to Deuteronomy 32 worldview.

God disinherited the other nations and said I’m going to start my own. I’m going to take this guy Abraham. I’m going to call him. He’s going to have a child through his wife Sarah, and from that child, that special child Isaac, I'm going to raise up a seed, raise up a family, raise up a people for myself. They are the ones I choose to be my people, but those chosen people still had to believe. You had to believe in the God of Israel. You had to believe that he was the God of gods. You had to believe that he was in covenant relationship with you. You had to not worship other gods. You had to deny them as faith, so to speak. Again, there's this exclusivity element. People had to make that choice. You didn’t just wind up in that category, believer, follower of Yahweh, someone who had believed in loyalty to Yahweh. You just didn’t wind up there by the fact that you were born and circumcised or born into an Israelite family, say as a girl, that isn't the way it happened. Election meant that you were put into a body, the children of Abraham, where the truth of the true God would be taught, and you would learn who the true God was and you would learn that the true God had made a covenant with you, and then you could decide to be loyal to him, to believe that, and be loyal to him exclusively, or not.

So election was really a status that put you into the position where you would hear the truth and experience the truth, again, the true God from all other gods. But you still had to embrace that on your own. And so there was a division between election and being a believer. In the New Testament, again, with the new covenant, when all believers get the spirit of God, and they are all empowered with a mission, and the ability to perform that mission, and the people of God is circumcision neutral, it is not tied to be a physical descendent of Abraham anymore, Paul could not have been clearer than he was in Galatians 3. And I think a lot of believers are sort of oblivious to Galatians 3, but it’s one of the more important passages in the New Testament.

Galatians 3:1–6 ESV

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

Galatians 3:14 ESV

so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

the new covenant, the promised spirit

Galatians 3:26–29 LEB

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are descendants of Abraham, heirs according to the promise.

So Gentiles, if they believe in the Messiah if they believe in Jesus, they inherit the Abrahamic covenant. So by definition, they are a believer and they are also elect. Again, we don’t often think of things in these terms but it's really important to do so, to parse not only what Peter is going to say and what we've already read in Acts, but also the rest of the Old Testament.

So let’s jump back into Acts and, Peter’s going to address this charge, well, these guys are drunk. You know, that’s the answer to the question of what's going on, well, they’re drunk. Peter says no. So verse 14 in Acts chapter 2,

Acts 2:14–16 LEB

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them, “Judean men, and all those who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and pay attention to my words! For these men are not drunk, as you assume, because it is the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

Now Peter is going to quote a passage from Joel in the Old Testament. Joel, by the way, was writing and speaking to Israelites, specifically to Israel, perhaps all twelve tribes but at least to Judah. And I say it that way because the date of this book is unknown. It’s one of the hardest to determine. Scholars have dated the book of Joel anywhere from the ninth century BC to the fifth century BC. So it may have been written before the northern 10 tribes have been literally made history, scattered everywhere by the Assyrians, but it may not. They could have been around. You know, Joel could have been around speaking to all 12 tribes, maybe just those two that were left after the events of 722 BC with the 10 tribes. Who knows? But at the very least, it's the two tribes, at the very least. It could be all of them but at least 2. So here’s what Joel says

Joel 2:28–32 LEB

And it will happen afterward thus: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your elders will dream dreams; your young men shall see visions. And also on the male slaves and on the female slaves, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. And I will set wonders in the heavens, and on earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun will be changed to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. And it will happen—everyone who calls on the name of Yahweh will be rescued, because on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as Yahweh said, and among the survivors whom Yahweh is calling.

So Peter’s saying, look, this is what’s going on. The Spirit has come, just like Joel said, and, of course, just like Jeremiah 31 said, the new covenant promise just like Ezekiel 36 said. Again, we’ve been through those passages in previous episodes. The Holy Spirit, think about it, is given to enable and mark all believers as chosen for service by God. Not just a few individuals

You think back in the Old Testament, the language of the coming of the Spirit, the Spirit came upon, the Spirit rested upon, those sorts of phrases. They were very specific. They referred to judges, to prophets, to kings, that sort of thing. But what's happening here is that the Spirit is coming and coming upon all of the people gathered there who are Jews. They’re Jews there in Acts chapter 2 in Pentecost, and they're going to be empowered, the 120, they're going to be empowered to speak to people, to other Jews at Pentecost, telling them about the Messiah, and those people are going to be converted. They’re going to believe and they’re going to go back to the nations where they been scattered, providentially, because of the exile, and they're going to start spreading the Gospel and the nations will begin to be reclaimed for the God of Israel. People will be drawn back through the Messiah, through the Israelite Messiah, to the God of Israel.

Now I suggested earlier, again, in earlier episodes of Acts 1, that the promise of the Spirit was a reference to the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 versus 31-34, and other passages like Ezekiel

36 and 37 so you can see clearly here that I’m suggesting the same thing here, that Peter’s use of Joel also connects back to the same new covenant events. Now I want to actually just a little time, you might think it’s a little messy, but I want to do it for the sake of being a little thorough here. This is easy enough to demonstrate but I wanted to do just a few points of connection, just to refresh your memory, because it will solidify the point, but it will also leave us with a question, given the original context and the wording of Joel's words back in the Old Testament. So one of the links between what we’re seeing here in Acts 2 and this quotation in Acts 1 and then back to these Old Testament passages, well Acts 1 of course is sort of a precursor preparation for the events of Acts 2. Remember in our earlier episode we read Acts 1 versus 4-5.

We read, ‘wait for the promise of the father’. Jesus telling them wait for the promise of the father which he said, ‘you heard from me, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’ So there's a connection there because this thing they're waiting for in Acts 1 happens in Acts 2. Now if you go back to Jeremiah 31:31-34, that passage, which is sort of the go to passage for the new covenant, doesn't specifically mention the Spirit in connection with the new covenant. But Ezekiel 36, which we’ve been to twice, we revisited this passage twice already, that passage does. So Ezekiel 36:22, again to refresh your memory, says,

Ezekiel 36:22–37 LEB

“Therefore thus say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh: “Not for your sake am I about to act, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you defiled among the nations to which you went. And I will consecrate my great name, which was profaned among the nations and which you have profaned in the midst of them, and the nations will know that I am Yahweh!” ’ a declaration of the Lord Yahweh, when I show myself holy before their eyes. “ ‘And I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from all of the lands, and I will bring you to your land. And I will sprinkle on you pure water, and you will be clean from all of your uncleanness, and I will cleanse you from all of your idols. And I will give a new heart to you, and a new spirit I will give into your inner parts, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give to you a heart of flesh. And I will give my spirit into your inner parts, and I will make it so that you will go in my rules, and my regulations you will remember, and you will do them. And you will dwell in the land that I gave to your ancestors, and you will be to me as a people, and I will be to you as God. And I will save you from all of your uncleanness, and I will call to the grain, and I will cause it to increase, and I will not bring famine upon you. And I will cause the fruit of the tree and the crop of the field to increase, so that you will not suffer again the disgrace of famine among the nations. And you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourself over your iniquities and over your detestable things. But not for your sake am I acting,” declares the Lord Yahweh. “Let it be known to you, be ashamed, and be put to shame because of your ways, house of Israel. “Thus says the Lord Yahweh: ‘On the day when I cleanse you from all of your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the ruins will be rebuilt. And the land that was desolate will be cultivated in the very place that it was desolate before the eyes of all of the persons crossing over. And they will say, “This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden, and the wasted and desolate and destroyed cities, now being refortified, are inhabited.” And the nations who are left all around, you will know that I, Yahweh, I built that which was destroyed; I planted the desolate land; I, Yahweh, I have spoken, and I will act.’ “Thus says the Lord Yahweh: ‘Again this time I will let myself be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do something for them; I will cause them to increase their population like a flock.

Now that, again, there’s some clear links with Acts chapter 2 there. This passage itself, though, Ezekiel 36, actually harkens us back, takes us back, mentally to Jeremiah 31, even though Jeremiah 31 doesn't specifically mention the Spirit, it does mention a few things that are in this Ezekiel 36 passage, the new heart, the internal desire, the impetus to obey the Lord, again, all of these things are connected. Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31, Acts 1, Acts 2; one more passage. As New Testament proof that the coming of the Spirit in Acts 2 and the bestowal of the Spirit to each believer with the fulfillment of the new covenant idea, look at what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3. I’m going to start in verse 1 and read a lot of the chapter. Just think about what he says and think about what the new covenant was. It’s not like the old covenant of Sinai. It’s something new, so on and so forth. So in 2 Corinthians 3 we read this. Paul writes,

2 Corinthians 3:1–11 ESV

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

Eschatology

And again, he goes on and compares Christ and Moses and so on and so forth. Again, he has a saying, we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Now, those of you who are familiar with my two power stuff or the myth that is true, the Jewish Godhead idea, this isn’t saying, well, there is no Spirit. There’s only Jesus and God. That isn’t what it’s saying at all. Just as in the Old Testament, you had embodied Divine beings, the angel of the Lord is the best example, who were but also were not Yahweh, again, you have this twoness going on. In the New Testament, you have the Spirit identified with Jesus but also not being Jesus. It's the same sort of is but isn't kind of thing going on, whereas the Old Testament, it was the angel and Yahweh. Here in the New Testament, it’s the Spirit and Jesus. This is why Jesus says, I’m going to go back to my Father but we're two or three are gathered in my name there will I be in your midst. It's because he goes, the Spirit comes, and the Spirit and Jesus are sort of interchangeable ideas, but yet they're also distinct. This is actually where Trinitarianism comes from.

By the way, comparing what the Old Testament does here with two Yahweh's and what the New Testament does with Jesus, Jesus is the second Yahweh but he also has this is but isn’t relationship to the Spirit, so you have three. Again, the implication here of all this in Acts 2, the coming of the Spirit, again, is the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31, the new covenant. That means that the language in Jeremiah 31 pertains to the believer, the changed heart, and therefore, the church, at least in part. The language of the new covenant does not therefore speak of a state of perfection. Now I bring this up because a lot of Christians, they sort of mentally associate the new covenant with the millennium and they somehow think of this as some sort of perfect state, or ‘all will believe or all will know me’. Again, that isn’t the point. The all language there is actually restricted, as we’ve seen, to believers. And even if you're sort of an old-school pre-Miller or old-school dispensationalist, you should realize that even in the millennium, in those systems, and again, I'm not married to those systems, but even in those systems, the millennium is not some sort of state of perfection where everybody believes.

Because you have, again, the nations gathered, even after the millennium with the other millennium in that system to align themselves with Satan at the end of Revelation 20, so this is far from a state of perfection. So this whole idea that everyone's going to believe me, and I’m pouring out my Spirit upon all flesh, in context, that is restricted to people who believe. Again, we don’t have this totality going on. I would say one more thing here and this is something I want to get into, and this is something to help us segue way toward the end here, and that not all the new covenant language though, in these Old Testament passage is apparent in what happens in Acts chapter 2. There are missing items between the Old Testament descriptions from Joel, from Jeremiah, from Ezekiel 36-37, there are missing items in what happens in Acts 2. Again, that's something that’s not coincidental. If you go back and look at Peter's quotation in Acts 2, we sort of stopped at verse 17 so let’s pick up there. Peter, again quoting Joel, says,

17 “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, Joel 2:28, that’s the passage he’s quoting, and it says pretty much that. Here’s what it says,

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;

So we’re ok. We can see what Joel described there happening in Acts 2. That’s just fine. You continue in Peter’s quotation in verse 19. Still quoting Joel]

19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above

and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; 20 the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. If you go to what Joel said, originally, you read this,

30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.

Now that sounds just like what Peter Just said. But Joel adds something. He adds,

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

That only gets picked up by Peter in verse 21, so we’re still sort of ok. We’re still sort of back and forth. Peter is kind of in line with what’s going on. Again, this whole idea that the Spirit is come, everyone that calls on the name will be saved; that sort of becomes the Gospel message. We see that Romans 10, ‘Whomsoever shall call him in the Lord shall be saved’, but there's one final thought that Joel adds. He says,

For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.

Now this is where it gets tricky because we don't see anything in Acts 2 like the actual day of the Lord, which was the time of judgment. The day of the Lord in a nutshell is the time when all that’s wrong becomes right. All of the wrongdoers, the unrighteous are punished, the righteous are vindicated, their faith is vindicated. People find out that this is what we need to do.

We need to believe and we’re glad we did. The Lord is come. Everything is made right now.

That’s the day of the Lord, a two edged sword, good and bad. But you don’t see that happen in Acts chapter 2. What's this reference to survivors and those who are in Jerusalem who escape? There’s nothing like that that happens in Acts chapter 2 during these events. And in fact, if you kept reading the book of Joel in Chapter 3, you get passages like verse 14, Joel chapter 3,

Joel 3:14–20 LEB

Commotion, commotion in the valley of decision! For the day of Yahweh is near in the valley of decision! The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars have withheld their splendor. And Yahweh roars from Zion; from Jerusalem he utters his voice, and the heavens and the earth shake. But Yahweh is a refuge for his people, and a protection for the children of Israel. And you will know that I, Yahweh your God, am dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain. And Jerusalem will be a place of holiness, and strangers will pass through it no longer. And it will happen on that day; the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills will flow with milk, and all the channels of Judah will flow with water. A spring from the house of Yahweh will come forth, and it will water the valley of Acacia Trees. Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom will become a desolate desert, because of the violence they did against the children of Judah, in whose land they have shed innocent blood. But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem for all generations.

You get sort of this apocalyptic feel to what Joel says after the part that Peter quotes. So on one hand, you have some clear overlap with what Joel says and what happens in Acts chapter 2. And so we can talk about Joel and the new covenant passage in Jeremiah and the new covenant passage in Ezekiel 36. We can talk about that being fulfilled in the events of Acts chapter 2, and by means of the church. Again, the circumcision neutral people of God where everyone has the Spirit, where there's no difference between election and salvation, election and believing loyalty to Yahweh. But what we can't say is that everything that's associated with that original quotation has something to do with the events of Pentecost. There's still something that hasn't happened yet. There's still something out there. This also happens, not just with Joel chapter 3, but Ezekiel 37, we read this I think in the first episode. Look at what this says, here's what happens after the new covenant passage in Ezekiel. I just read the new covenant language in Ezekiel 36 a few minutes ago. Listen to what Ezekiel 37 says that follows. Verse 24 in Ezekiel 37,

Ezekiel 37:24–27 LEB

“ ‘ “And my servant David will be king over them, and one shepherd will be for all of them, and in my regulations they will go, and my statutes they will observe, and they will do them. And they will dwell on the land that I gave to my servant, to Jacob, in which your ancestors dwelled, and they will dwell on it, they and their children and the children of their children forever, and my servant David will be a leader for them forever. And I will make with them a covenant of peace; an everlasting covenant it will be with them. And I will establish them, and I will cause them to increase, and I will put my sanctuary in the midst of them forever. And my tabernacle will be with them, and I will be for them as God, and they will be to me as a nation.

Again, this isn’t what you see happen in the book of Acts. This is the sort of thing you see happen in Revelation later on, again, associated with the second coming. What I’m getting to is that you really need to take a look at what's happening in Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2 now, and go back to the Old Testament and compare what's being quoted and also, what's not being quoted. How is the Old Testament being used by the New Testament writers? If you do that often enough it's going to lead you to an important theme in biblical theology, just broadly, just generally, and also for understanding things like the kingdom of God and eschatology, end times specifically, and that is, here’s the important theme, already but not yet. This is often how scripture is fulfilled, quote unquote, in the New Testament.

There is present fulfillment in the days of the apostles and therefore, by extension, in our time, the time of the church, but there's also things that are not yet. It's already but not yet. Think about it. The kingdom of God, according to various statements and the stuff we've covered this point, the kingdom of God is already here. It's not just the millennium. It's already here, but it's not yet. There are things that fit now and in the days of the book of acts, but also things that don't, that only fit later. The kingdom of God is already here but not yet. The nations are being reclaimed and judged, but not yet. The Lord is here. He's the Spirit but not yet. He will come again. Our hearts are made new, but not yet. We are sanctified as the children of God, but we’re not completely sanctified, not yet. If you don't understand this basic idea of how the Testaments and the promises work together, the Bible will be inherently confusing to you, and you also sort of grab one end and forget the other and go off on a tangent theologically, and you’ll only have half the picture, but you’ll think it's the whole picture. And this is why, again, I've made the comment many times on my blog and in other contexts, I don't like any of the eschatological systems, because they all cheat when they have to.

They typically latch onto already fulfillment, that would be your amillennialist. Okay, everything is already done. All these promises was filled in the church in the New Testament, the book of Acts, and it's already here. We don’t have to look for a literal millennium out there. And I don’t even like the word millennium, but I’m not going to go off on that tangent. The other side, the premillennialist, well, this stuff wasn't fulfilled in the days of the book of Acts. It's yet out there in the future so that's the side they latch onto, all the futuristic stuff. Folks, it's both, it's both. And there are ways to reconcile these things together if you can live with the tension that that the Bible actually gives you, that God's plan is sort of in effect already. It's already here. It's already happening, but not yet. There's this tension, there’s this already but not yet idea. This is why when it comes to sanctification, again, we’re sanctified as children of God now, positionally. We’re not glorified glorified. Being a Christian is being in the process of becoming what you already are. It sounds kind of odd but it reflects the already but not yet theme, the already but not yet sort of framework or trajectory that is so prevalent in Scripture in so many areas.

Now last thought here, the reason it works this way, ultimately, and frankly you’re going to have to be a little familiar with what I've written and sort of my theology that I've put on not the podcast but on the blog, in the myth that is true and in some other things, but the reason it works this way, this already but not yet, goes back to God's decision to use free will agents, whether they’re divine or whether they’re human, his decision to use less than omnipotent and perfect agents, to remove free will agency now, or right after the fall, would be the eradication of humanity and every other image that’s unperfected, God would be alone. But God didn’t want to be alone. To him, that's less desirable than the way things are. This is the path he chose. God decided, look I want to dwell with my human imagers on earth. I want them to be my family, and I want them to also be united with my nonhuman family, my nonhuman imagers Again, this is just divine counsel theology 101,what was going on in the Eden. And when it gets ruined, God doesn’t say, boy that was a bad idea or I'm so angry now I'm just going to wipe out evil. God says, I am sticking with the plan. I will have my way and now I'm going have my way using these imperfect beings to participate in that plan.

And so the kingdom of God, God sort of moving all things back to Eden, which, again, is where Revelation ends, that is invariably and inevitably involving human participation. And that's why it's always a work in progress. It's already but not yet. There will come a point where God decides now, I’m going to send Jesus back. I’m going to intervene in human history in this final way, and I'm going to bring things to a close, but until that point, it's already here, and it won't be overturned. It’s already but it's not yet because God has decided to stick with the original plan. These are the decisions of God. To do something else would imply he was mistaken or had chosen poorly in the beginning and, frankly, he didn't. This is what God wants done and we have to see it reflected in a whole range of passages in Scripture. But again, we need to wrap our minds around this already but not yet thing to understand a lot of other things.

Already but not yet

I would say in the simplest terms, the propensity is to seize on one swing of the pendulum or the other, either the already or the not yet. And what you have to do is you have to embrace both. And so, most of our systems latch onto one or the other, and they essentially try to explain away or ignore or marginalize the other side. So that’s why we have these competing systems. Some, is their future for national Israel?

Yes/no Is there going to be a literal kingdom?

Yes/no Is the kingdom of God going to happen literally on earth or not?

Yes and no The reason you to get these competing systems that pick one side or the other, or that sort of overemphasize one side and minimize the other side is this choice that’s made. And what I'm saying is, look, here’s what you can say fundamentally. The kingdom of God began on Earth, Eden. This is God's original plan.

He’s going to stick to it. The nations were disinherited and these are nations that were, again, on the earth. So to have the reversal, to have the nations reclaimed, and have the kingdom of God be what God originally intended it to be, that has to happen on the planet. It's not an abstract thing we call the church, even though the church is the kingdom but the church is not yet the kingdom. It is but it isn't the kingdom. It’s the current fruition; it’s the current progression of the kingdom. But we're moving towards something that will be on Earth.

Another reason I don't like millennium is millennium limits it to 1000 years, and I don't see it that way. I see it when this thing happens, when we have the second coming, and we have all things, again, brought to a head, brought to an end, it will be on this earth, and the Lord will be here. And the nations will be reclaimed, the nations that we are familiar with. It will be this planet, this globe. There will be believers given resurrection bodies. They will literally rule over the nations, as Revelation 3 says. You’re going to rule over angels, all this stuff.

You will have human beings redeemed, glorified human beings, on a new earth which is, quote unquote, heaven. This will be the place where God dwells. This will be the place where we dwell with God. This will be the place for God's divine agency of the divine beings who are loyal to him. They’re here, too. It is Eden globalized, and that is I think the picture, the eschatological picture, the end times picture that we need to have in our head. Not some system that adopts one side of it to the neglect of the other. That's the fundamental difference I see. We’re going to hit other passages in Acts. We'll get into some eschatology as well. But I think this failure to recognize the already but not yet is one of the just fundamental flaws in a number of contemporary, well, not contemporary, well, they are contemporary but they’re also historic systems of end times.