Join us on this episode as we explore how crises drive people back to their faith in God. Dr. J. Vernon McGee delves deep into the messages found in the Book of Joel, shedding light on the significance of Joel’s prophecy during turbulent times. Listen as we read inspiring letters from listeners who share their heartfelt experiences of faith and spiritual growth.
00:00:17 Introduction and Reflections on Tragedy and Faith
You know, there’s no doubt about it. It’s often when tragedy strikes that people are the most willing to think and talk about God. Have you found that to be true in your life? Well, as we travel through the Bible, Dr. J. Vernon McGee makes no secret or excuse about why God allows the nation of Israel to go through hard times. Ultimately, God is drawing his people’s hearts back to himself. But it’s not going to be easy. And I guess it never really is. We’re in chapter 1 of Joel, verse 13. And as you find your way there, it’s a small book. It’s towards the end of the Old Testament. Greg and I have some encouraging and inspiring letters to read from here in the U.S.,
SPEAKER 03 :
And Steve, first of all, I just marvel after more than half a century of broadcasting through the Bible. We’re now coming near the end of the 11th five year cycle. We continue to get the most wonderful responses. And sometimes we see themes. And one of the themes in these letters is how God is drawing people’s hearts back to him right here in our country.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yep. Here’s the first one. This is from Katie in Texas. She emailed this. I’ve been with Through the Bible for over three months now. Well, welcome aboard, Katie. And I continue. And I was saved from always turning back and into the world. Jesus is my Savior, and I am proud to say I am now on the narrow road. I will love to hear more of Dr. McGee’s teaching and read the entire Bible with you. Thank you so much for the newsletter you send out and the Bible bus passes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. So let’s just take a moment. If you’ve never heard about these, these are awesome little business card size because you were really, that was real important to you. That’s great. Well, they were a little bit too big to fit my wallet. I’m complimenting you, my dear brother. Okay. And saying that was a great idea. And it just has a QR code. You just point your phone’s camera at it and it will take you to a website that has our app and many of the other apps as well. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
And we give them out free as a 10-pack. You can call us, 1-800-65-BIBLE, and request those, or go to ttb.org.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, next we’ve got one. Here’s Jim from Arizona who shares, “‘I’m now on the doorstep of retirement from full-time work.'” Well, congratulations, Jim. And let me continue. “‘I will continue my monthly support to the provider of my spiritual fruit, but it will be less in dollars simply due to the reduction of my income.'” I recall when I first came across Dr. McGee. It’s funny how the human spirit automatically knows truth when it hears it. And that’s how I felt listening to his messages. After spending many years wandering in the wilderness and doing everything I could to distance myself from God, he stayed with me and used Dr. McGee as a medium to reel me in. Dr. McGee will always have a special place in my heart. And I am so very grateful that you are so dedicated to carrying on his work. Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Fantastic. Now, here’s one from a listener who hops aboard the Bible bus in Spanish because we’re heard on a lot of stations in Spanish here in the U.S. Yeah. Blessings from California. I’ve been listening to this program since September of 2023. The book of Amos has been a great blessing to me and my husband. I’ve been sharing with him what I’ve learned, so much so that he was saved by the Lord. Oh, praise the Lord. We rejoice with our sister in this. She continues, an answered prayer. Thank you so much for this program. It has helped me stay faithful in my reading. Every day I look forward to listening to you. More than ever, we need God in our lives. God bless you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I always love hearing when somebody’s listening to the program with a spouse who is saved or a neighbor and the other person is not saved and they come to the Lord. It’s just a wonderful story. I heard a testimony. This is off this one. But on Sunday, every first Sunday of the year, we have a Stones of Remembrance testimony time for people pre-planned that come up and give their testimony. And one was wonderful. Carlos Escobar, who came up and talked about fleeing from Cuba when the communists came, flying out on the freedom flights, and then being told by a friend, you’ve got to listen to Through the Bible on KGER in Southern California back in the 70s. And the guy trusts Christ because of that. And he’s now leading a small group Bible study using the Hebrews Bible Companion. Awesome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s coming full circle.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it is. Greg, let me go ahead and pray for us. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your word and the power that it has, not just to change lives, but to save souls. I pray that you would continue to use your word as it goes out on through the Bible and any other means necessary to glorify your name and to make yourself known and to call many people to yourself. Bless the program as it goes out now. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Here’s Dr. J. Vernon McGee with our study of Joel chapter 1 on Through the Bible.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, last time we were looking at this great locust plague that swept through that land in Joel’s day. And he lived at probably the time of Elijah, and Elisha was contemporary with him. probably knew them. And of course, somebody may ask, well, why in the world didn’t they write about it? Well, because neither Elijah or Elisha were writing prophets. At this time, prophets were not writing. Joel is the first one to write. And we find that he begins by describing a locust plague. And a locust plague that probably at that very time was sweeping through the land and destroying every living thing. And it was like an invading army. And it was a warning to the nation because it would be now several years before even the northern kingdom was carried away into captivity. Now, he’s describing that, and he tells the people the things that they are to do. He began to say, you’re to lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. That is, a young bride that’s lost her husband. He died, maybe killed in battle, and she weeps. And that’s the way this nation should. And then he goes on to tell them they’re to mourn, they’re to be ashamed, they’re to wail, and they are to gird themselves. And that means to gird themselves with sackcloth and ashes, and they’re to lament. That was for the priests. And he tells them that they are to lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God. That’s verse 13. And there was no meal offering, no drink offering. The economy of the land was wrecked, and there was not even enough to make an offering to God. And in verse 14, now, where we begin today, he continues this. And he says here, and this is about the seventh thing he suggested for them to do, sanctify a fast. Now, God had never asked them to do that before. You see, God gave to them feast days. He never gave them a fast day. And it was not until they plunged into sin, and now the one sin he mentions that was destroying the nation was drunkenness. It was robbing people of their normal thinking, making alcoholics of them. And they were not able to make right judgments. Sanctify a fast, he says. Then the eighth thing, call a solemn assembly. In other words, come together. And God wanted them to come together and rejoice in his presence. But he says this one is to be a solemn assembly. And here the ninth thing, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord. And that’s the time to go to church. By the way, during World War II, two men that were rather godless men that belonged to all different kinds of clubs, drinking clubs, most of them are. And so these two men, very good friends, they met one day at church. And one said to the other, he said, well, I didn’t know that you went to church. And the other says, well, I didn’t know that you did either. And he said, well, I don’t go to church. This is my first day. But I got a boy over there fighting in this war. I thought it was about time I got to church. May I say to you, friends, that in times of great trouble, It drives people to God. Now he says here that the inhabitants of the land are to come now, not up to one of the feast days, but now fast day to the house of the Lord your God. And now the tenth and last thing, cry unto the Lord. Cry unto the Lord. Why? Because God is merciful. God is gracious. God wants to forgive. Our God is a wonderful God, you see. And they were to come to him, and he would hear and answer their prayer if they came in time of difficulty. Now, having just given them the warning, and these are injunctions, these are the things they are to do if they want the blessing of God upon them. But now he moves from this judgment. of the locusts in a masterly way, as most of the prophets did. But I know of nothing to compare to Joel here. He now moves from the local situation way down to the end of the age to what? He says, verse 15, alas for the day. What day are you talking about, Joel? Listen to him. For the day of the Lord is at hand. and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Now, as there have been many little models, little adumbrations of that which is coming in the future, the local plague was a sort of a day of the Lord. It was a warning. It was a picture of it. And it was that which should have alerted the people. But now he’s going to tell them about Something in the future. Now, that which is coming in the future, the thing that had been promised David was a kingdom. And actually, David would be raised up to rule over that kingdom. And there’d be peace on the earth. And war would cease. Now, all the prophets picked that up. But they also picked up what Joel is saying here. The day of the Lord is coming. And Joel is going to explain what the day of the Lord is. Now, the day of the Lord is in contrast to the other days that are mentioned in the Scripture. You and I are living today in what is called in Scripture, man’s day. It began with Nebuchadnezzar, the times of the Gentiles. The Lord Jesus labeled it that. And that Jerusalem during that period would be trodden down till the times of the Gentiles would be fulfilled. Now, man’s day. We’re living in man’s day. Man is the one makes the judgments today. The appeal is not made to God. We appeal to the Supreme Court. But then no appeal made to God. And this nation has forgotten God altogether. They think it’s just a word to swear by today, a word to blaspheme. Now, what is man’s day? Now, I’m going to turn to a statement of Dr. Schaeffer in his theology on doctrine. And I’d like to read this because it’s very important to understand what man’s day is. Man’s day, he says, this theme, obscured at times by translators, is referred to but once in the New Testament, namely 1 Corinthians 4.3, which reads, But with me it’s a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment. Yea, I judge not mine own self. Now, in this passage here, the phrase man’s judgment is really a reference to human opinion current in this age, which might properly and literally be translated man’s day. That’s the end of the quotation. Now, you and I are living in man’s day. The day of man, believe me, humanism abounds today. Man can solve the problems of the world today. And what has man done? He’s got it in an awful mess right now. And every new politician that comes along, he’s got the answer. Well, they don’t have the answer. Men cannot solve the problems of this world. And I understand that there’s been some talk back in the cloakrooms of our own governments and in the chancellories of the great nations of the world, that actually man cannot solve the problems of the world today. All right? We’re living in man’s day. Now the Scripture speaks of another day that is coming. And that is the day when Christ comes to take His church out of the world. And all believers stand before Him. You find that Paul in 1 Corinthians First chapter, verse 7 says this, “…so that ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What is that day? Well, the day that he comes to take his church out, and the church comes before the judgment seat of Christ. My life verse is Philippians 1, 6, being confident of this very thing, that he that hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Now, the day of Jesus Christ is that day that he takes you and me out of the world. He’s going to keep us until that day. Then we’ll appear before him to see whether we receive a reward or not. That is the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, the day of Christ. Now, the New Testament speaks about the day of the Lord. And we have a very unfortunate translation again in 2 Thessalonians, the second chapter, verse 2. He says that ye be not soon shaken in mind of trouble. That is… are gathering together unto him at the rapture. They were afraid they’d miss the rapture, you know. That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Now, the word Christ is not the word there. It is the word Lord. The day of the Lord is at hand. Now, he’s saying to the believers, you’re not going to go through the day of the Lord. Now, the Scripture makes it very clear, and Joel is the one that’ll define it for us, and I’ll wait till we get to it. But he’s going to say that the day of the Lord is darkness and gloominess, and it’s a difficult day. You see, the viewpoint was that they would enter immediately into the kingdom and be a breeze and be no problem at all. And he says now, the day of the Lord begins at night. And again, I refer you to the fact that that is consistent with the Hebrew method. In Genesis, God started out by saying the evening and the morning were the first day, evening and morning were the second day, evening and morning were the third day. Now you have these different days that you see. And the day of the Lord begins with darkness. And he’ll make it clear what it is. It’s the great tribulation period. This locust plague that has come. The four bands of the locusts. like the four horsemen of the apocalypse that ride in the great tribulation period. Now, he is saying that it’ll open with that. And then it includes the coming of Christ to the earth to establish his kingdom. And then you enter into the sunshine of his presence when the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. Now, that was the Old Testament hope. That was the thing that the Old Testament taught. Therefore, this plague of locusts was in a very real sense a miniature day of the Lord. And the plague was an adumbration of the great tribulation that is coming upon the earth. You see how important it is, friends, to study all of the Bible. Some man wrote me when we were back in Isaiah, and I referred to the day of the Lord. And I made the statement then it began in darkness. Isaiah doesn’t deal with it like that at all. Because Joel had written long before Isaiah. And the people were acquainted with what he was talking about when he mentioned the day of the Lord. Now, this man went on to explain to me what he thought the day of the Lord was. And I was rather amused. He wrote several pages and gave scripture after scripture. He never gave one verse from Joel. And I watch for that. You see, apparently doesn’t even know that Joel is the very keys, the first of the writing prophets. Now, you can’t say the day of the Lord is something other than what Joel says. It’ll have to fit into the program here. The other prophets that came after him, why this was used so many times and very candidly, It occurs, I think, tell the truth, about 75 times in the entire Bible. And it occurs five times, and that day occurs one time in this particular book. Therefore, what we have here is a reference to the day of the Lord, and you’re going to find that all of the prophets… have a great deal to say about the day of the Lord, that day of the Lord that is coming upon the earth. And I think this is very important, friends, for us to note that. And we need to recognize that the day of the Lord is a technical term. There is man’s day, the day of man. We’re living in that day now. The day of Christ is coming when he’ll take the church out. Then the day of the Lord begins with the great tribulation period. And after all, we label the days of the week with different names, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on. And can’t God label these different periods of time if he wants to? And this is not something some man thought of, and I certainly would not have thought of it. This is here in the Word of God that we’re looking at. And it’s important. to understand that. Now, I read again verse 15, and I want to move on from that, because it’s very important. And I ought to say that the day of the Lord is not the Lord’s day that is mentioned in Revelation. The Lord’s day is the first day of the week, as I think is very clear from the New Testament. But a great many have tried to say the day of the Lord and the Lord’s day are the same, just because you have the two words. Well, that to me is ridiculous. Because after all, there is a difference between a chestnut horse and a horse chestnut. Just because you’ve got the same two words, you turn them around, you’ve got something altogether different. And one, you’ve got a nut, and the other, you’ve got a horse. So that it’s just a matter of turning the words around. And because you have that, doesn’t mean they’re the same here. Now, listen, he goes on now, still talking about this plague of locusts. He says, “…is not the food cut off before our eyes? Yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God.” No more joy and gladness in the house of God. And I think that one of the characteristics today is I’ve had the privilege in the past few years of my ministry of speaking all across this country and the great pulpits of this country and practically all of the great Bible conferences. And there’s something I’ve noted and I’ve checked with other speakers that have a much wider ministry than I do. And they all agree with me. In fact, they’ve noted it. That there is a sadness today in congregations when they come together, whether it’s in a conference or whether in a church. Now, I have found in many places that I go at the first service, there is an air of expectancy. You can feel it. The air is charged with it. But there’s no note of gladness. And one man who’s with the FBI down in Florida, he says, I’ve been watching your method. And I don’t think I have a method, but he says I do. He says, I’ve noted that you get up before a congregation and you slide very quietly and slowly into a funny story to get people in a good humor. And I said, you’ve noted that? And he said, yes. And he said, I think I know why you do it. He’s the FBI, and I sure wouldn’t want that fellow following me around. But anyway, he said, I think you’re doing it because of the fact that there is a low level of joy in the congregations today. And I said, you’re exactly right. I said, you’ve noted something that many of us have noted now for a long time. That joy was gone at that time. And today we have everything. And there’s no joy in our services. Now, verse 17, the seed is rotten under their clods. You see, the grain couldn’t even come up. Why? Because these locusts, they just knotted off right even with the ground. The garners are laid desolate. That is, you can’t fill up the granary. The barns are broken down, for the grain is withered. How do the beasts groan? The herds of cattle are perplexed because they have no pasture. Yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. You see, a great famine has come to this land. Now listen to him. “‘O Lord, to thee will I cry, for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.’ I call this a scorch policy, but it was the locusts, you see. They’re the ones, just as if the ground had been burnt off. And verse 20, “…the beasts of the field cry also unto thee, for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.” Now, you see, this is a very terrible, treacherous time. And even the animal world, both the animals that are in the barnyard and the animals that are out yonder in the forest, the wild animals are all being affected by this. It is a judgment that is touched all life in that land in that day. And it becomes a picture of a day that’s coming. Now, he’s going to open next time in chapter 2, and this brings us to chapter 2. He’s making it clear that this is the prelude to the day of the Lord, that this is just a little adumbration, just a little miniature, a little picture of that which is yet to come. And he begins the next chapter with, Blow the trumpet in Zion. We’re going to see the meaning of that. And today, my feeling is that as we teach the Word of God, and that’s one of the words that’s used for evangelize, teruks is one of the words for preaching today. It actually means to blow a trumpet. And I think that we need to sound an alarm today to this nation. I make no apology for doing it. So until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 04 :
Don’t miss this opportunity to pay attention to what God says in His Word. You can find out more in our app or at ttb.org by clicking on How Can I Know God? Or call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE and we’ll send you a few resources by mail. Well, this is Steve Schwetz for all of us at Through the Bible. We’re grateful for your company on the Bible Bus and your partnership in taking the whole Word to the whole world.
SPEAKER 02 :
All to Him I owe. Sin hath left the crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 04 :
Just go to ttb.org or download our app to listen again anytime. As always, we’d love to know what’s God teaching you.
Join us on this episode as we explore how crises drive people back to their faith in God. Dr. J. Vernon McGee delves deep into the messages found in the Book of Joel, shedding light on the significance of Joel’s prophecy during turbulent times. Listen as we read inspiring letters from listeners who share their heartfelt experiences of faith and spiritual growth.
