We also explore the global reach of Dr. McGee’s teachings, currently available in over 250 languages. As the program taps into regions like Guinea, with its complex religious landscape, we receive heartfelt testimonies from listeners who find solace and transformation in the Word of God. These narratives highlight the power of Scripture to cross boundaries and resonant deeply, even within predominantly Muslim contexts. With Dr. McGee’s respectful and focused approach, the discussion underscores the universal appeal and relevance of the Christian message.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to Through the Bible with our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee. We’re making our way through God’s entire Word in five years, and we find that the New Testament writers often reference the Old Testament. And when events in the New Testament fulfill prophecies from the Old, we’re amazed at the continuity of the entire Word of God. Here’s an example. In our study of Acts 2 about the day of Pentecost, believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. Hopefully you remember that. Peter was then called on to explain what was happening and he quoted the prophet Joel saying, “…it shall come to pass in the last days that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” Now, is that an example of Joel’s prophecy being fulfilled at Pentecost? Or is there another explanation? Well, Dr. J. Vernon McGee is going to answer that question in this study of Joel chapter 2. I’m Steve Schwetz, inviting you to hop aboard the Bible bus and find your seat. And while you do that, Greg and I have got a quick report as we move forward in our mission to take the whole word to the whole world.
SPEAKER 04 :
And it’s just stunning to step back and think that by the grace of God, we are now distributing Dr. McGee’s systematic teaching in over 250 languages. And so as we talk today about one of those, just let your mind imagine the global impact in almost every corner of the globe in so many languages. So let’s talk today about Pular, a language that is ministering to the country of Guinea. In Africa, that’s in West Africa, parts of Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and a small number of people in Mali.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and like so much of Africa, Guinea is 88% Muslim. And unlike Africa, less than 1% of the people are Bible-believing Christians. Now, 1% is a very low number. They may be cultural Christians, but they don’t have a saving faith, a relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and so God really works differently in Muslim nations. And anybody who’s done any kind of work in these countries can often tell it’s hard going, it’s hard ground, but there’s also some unforgettable stories.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let’s go into these. Let’s read the first one. Here’s one from Abdaal who tells us of his dilemma after he started listening to Through the Bible in Pular. And this is interesting. My life is divided. On the one hand, there’s the mosque, the daily prayers and the Koran that I recite with devotion. So he’s obviously letting us know that he is a Muslim. On the other hand, there’s your program. The truth. Every day, far from eavesdroppers, notice he’s got to go into isolation, I turn my radio to the program to hear about Jesus, his life, and his miracles. They tell of how he healed the sick and forgave sinners. I ask myself questions that I would never dare to say out loud. Who is Jesus, really? Why do Christians worship him so much? And why, despite being a Muslim, this is so key, am I drawn to these stories of grace and redemption? Well, my friend, it’s the Holy Spirit working on you. Yes, I continue. I don’t know where this will all lead me, but I continue to listen in secret to ask questions and to search for the truth. Maybe one day I’ll come out of the shadows and walk in the light of Jesus. Thank you. And may Allah bless you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. And of course, asking Allah to bless us as it shows that he’s still a Muslim. But we have heard so many of these stories, haven’t we? Over the years, Steve, a Muslim saying, I’m a Muslim, but I love your program. Yeah. And it’s just because it’s God’s word. Now, here’s one. And you left this to me because this name is hard to pronounce. You got it. Issa 2 emailed us her story. She says, So let’s stop and say clearly. He’s a Muslim. It’s polygamous in Africa and certain countries. She goes on. I listened to the program talking about comfort. They told the story of a Savior who heals broken hearts, who reaches out to wounded souls. I cried when I heard about Jesus, His compassion and unconditional love. I prayed, asking Allah to give me the strength to accept my situation, to find peace in the storm. Your program reminded me that I was not alone, that even in the darkness there was a light of hope. I learned to forgive, to pick myself up, to find the strength to carry on. I’m not the same person. My heart has opened up to the grace of Jesus. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know I’m not alone. Thank you for the message of comfort, hope, and the certainty that I am loved.
SPEAKER 03 :
Both these letters point to the fact that I so appreciate and have mentioned before that Dr. McGee does not go and attack other religions. No, he does not. He’s hardest on cults and isms is what he talks about. But when it’s about whether it’s Catholicism in different ways or Islam, he’s always focusing on Jesus Christ. And that’s what these folks are drawn to. Greg, we’re out of time. Why don’t you pray for us?
SPEAKER 04 :
Father, we see the supernatural power of your word in these people’s lives who are following a false god. They are Muslims, and we ask that you would turn them fully to Jesus, faithful believers in him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
SPEAKER 03 :
Here’s our study of Joel chapter 2 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, friends, we come into the second chapter, the book of Joel. at verse 26. Many of you have our notes and outlines, and this is a very important section, as you can well understand. And he now is talking about the day of the Lord. He’s made it very clear Joel, as he began with the locust plague and he blended it in and he gave us a marvelous turnover from that local plague as he looked down through the centuries to the day of the Lord that was coming that began in darkness. The great tribulation period is the way our Lord labeled it. And then he moves on into the future. And he moves into the great tribulation period, the coming of Christ to the earth, and then the millennial kingdom. And we’re moving into that period now here when he said, Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice. The day was coming. Now in verse 26, he says, “…and ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who hath dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never be ashamed, and ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else.” and my people shall never be ashamed. Now, that’s when he’s in the midst of Israel, when he comes to the earth and establishes kingdom. And then there will be fulfilled at that time all of the physical blessings that God promised the nation Israel. And their blessings in the Old Testament were largely physical blessings. The blessings of the land, the bumper crop, the vineyards and the fields and the cattle and the sheep and all of that. And the spiritual blessings actually seem to be secondary. Now to the church, he’s only promised spiritual blessing to us. And now he comes to the spiritual blessings for these people. Now we’ve come to this very controversial passage of Scripture. And I have a letter here from a lady that was involved in the tongues movement. And she’s written me a very lovely letter. And she says that my books and the program have brought her to the place where she is out of that. But she cautions me. She says, I know many of these people in the tongues movement. And their changed life is real, and it’s wonderful. And then she cautions me here. She says, Dr. McGee, I hope that you will not use any cutting remarks. And I want to say that you cut me saying that because you’re accurate. I have done that, and I have been rebuked for it by others. One Pentecostal preacher said, you do not go after other groups. in a way that you go after us. And we are for you because we agree with you on so many things. You just happen to be wrong on certain things. Well, may I say that I’ve been wrong in that connection of being ugly about it. And so, as I come now to this passage of Scripture, All that I want to do is to give to you at least my interpretation of it. I could be wrong. I was wrong one time, you’ll recall. So I could be wrong here. But I don’t think so. But I’d ask you to listen to it very carefully. Now, again, I’d remind you that we are in the little prophecy of Joel. And everything that Joel is saying, he began with a locust plague. It was a local locust plague, nothing like it. And he compares that to what is coming way down in the future, the day of the Lord. And the day of the Lord just doesn’t bring in the kingdom and all the brightness and rose water that you can sprinkle around. It opens with the great tribulation period. Then Christ comes to the earth. Now he’s moved in here to that period when the kingdom is established. And as we saw in verse 27, here the Lord’s in the midst of them. Now what’s he going to do? Now we’re talking about the spiritual side. “…and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out of my Spirit, and I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.” Now, there’s so many wonderful things we can say about this passage of Scripture. First of all, Dr. Charles Feinberg, who is an outstanding Hebrew scholar, and he is a Hebrew. And he has a very fine series of books on the minor prophets that have been very helpful to me. And he calls attention to something that I actually had not known before, that in the Hebrew Bible, that this actually is a separate chapter, beginning with verse 28 of chapter 2, where it says, “…it shall come to pass afterward that I’ll pour out my Spirit.” And down through verse 32, that you have the third chapter. And what we have is the third chapter is really the fourth chapter in Joel. Now, this is important enough, I believe, to make it a separate chapter. But we need to be very careful now that Joel’s prophecies are confined to a period of time known as the day of the Lord. He introduces it. He’s the first of the writing prophets. And he tells what’s going to take place in that period. He has emphasized the fact the way it begins, and it begins in darkness, the great tribulation period, and our Lord gave it that name. And the verse here, or the word, I should say, that seems rather important, and it shall come to pass afterward. Well, what does he mean that it will come to pass afterward? Well, you remember when we were back in Hosea, in the third chapter of Hosea, that very important little chapter back there, in verse 5, he says there, “‘Afterward,’ there’s that important word, “‘shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness.'” in the latter days. Now, we identified the latter days as that period of the great tribulation period which ushers in the kingdom by the coming of Christ to the earth. And that is the beginning of the millennium. Now, I take it that we now are speaking of a very definite period of time that this prophecy is to be fulfilled During the time of the day of the Lord and its afterward, after that night of the great tribulation period, God will pour out his Spirit. Now, that is the passage of Scripture that we have here. And since he’s the first of the writing prophets, he’s not the only one that mentions the pouring out of the Spirit. For instance, Isaiah. Over in the 32nd chapter, verse 15, he says, “…until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.” Now, he is speaking of the kingdom that’s coming on the earth. And the pouring out of the Spirit there has reference to Israel, has reference to the millennium. And none of the prophets, of course, spoke of the church. Now, he’s not the only one. Ezekiel, in the 36th chapter, beginning with verse 27, he says here, “…and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. Ye shall keep my judgments and do them, and ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your father.” Now, you can’t apply the pouring out of the Spirit to you today. What land did God ever give to your fathers? Well, this, to begin with, refers to a particular people and for a particular period, you see, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And this is very, I think, very important to see. Now, Zechariah, one of the last of the writing prophets, He says this in Zechariah 12, verse 10, And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications. And Joel here makes it clear, if you read it all the way through, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord will be saved, for in Mount Zion and Jerusalem shall be deliverance. Now, if you want to repeat Even the day of Pentecost, you’re going to have to go to Jerusalem to do it. It has to do with geography. It has to do with a time period. And it has to do with the people. Now, the question arises, what did Peter mean on the day of Pentecost? When he referred to this passage of Scripture, did he mean it was fulfilled? No, he didn’t. And he didn’t say that, by the way. Now, I’m going to turn over there just to pick this up. We’re not teaching Acts. We’re teaching Joel. But I want us to see now how this is applied. On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, And here these men were speaking to these Jews who had come in from all over the Roman Empire, and I think even beyond it, and they’re hearing these men speak in their tongue. There was not an unknown tongue there that day. Every person heard many of them. speak in his native mother tongue that he was raised in. At that time, the Jews were scattered throughout the Roman Empire pretty well. And later on, they were entirely scattered and Jerusalem was destroyed. But now they’ve come up there for the day of Pentecost. And here, each man hears them speak in his own tongue. Well, many believed, but a great many there began to mock. And they said, well, these men are filled with new wine. They’re drunk. That was the impression that they gave. And so Simon Peter is the one that gets up to answer them. And he begins on that note. He says, for these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. In other words, that sure isn’t Los Angeles. In that day, they didn’t get drunk in the morning. Today, they start out pretty early in Los Angeles. Now, he does not say here, and if you’ll note it very carefully, he does not say that this is in fulfillment of what the prophet Joel said. Now, very frankly, that’s the formula that you’ll find all the way through. All of the gospel writers used it. Paul used it. He would say, this is done in fulfillment. And very frankly, I’m not going to turn to all of them, but let me just turn to one. Let me turn to two. Over in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, in verse 17, “…then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, In Ramah was there a voice.” Now, that was a fulfillment of prophecy that had to do with the birth of Christ. And then again, if you drop down to verse 23, it says he came to Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets. Not just one. He shall be called a Nazarene. Now, that was in fulfillment of prophecy. And Paul, in that great sermon in Pisidia, in Antioch, He said concerning the second psalm, this is my son, this day have I begotten him, that it referred to the resurrection. And he quotes the second psalm in reference and says this is in fulfillment. Now, what does Peter do? Peter says, but this is that. This is like that. This is similar to that. Now, again, put yourself back there. He’s not talking to Gentiles. There’s not a Gentile there. If he was, he was out of place. Those were Jews. fooled on the Old Testament. They knew the Old Testament because those that would come up to Jerusalem knew that they were required to come up according to the Mosaic law. Now he says, you’re ridiculing, mocking this thing that’s happened. This is similar. This is like that which is going to take place in the last days. And then he does something quite interesting. He quotes all of Joel’s prophecy here. And he says, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh. Now, was that fulfilled on the day of Pentecost? No, 3,000 were saved. But someone has said there could have been 300,000 there. So I wouldn’t call that a fulfillment of prophecy at all. It’s similar to that. You’ve mocked it, but you ought to recognize that your own word says the day is coming. God will pour out his spirit on all flesh. If it’s poured out on a few today, you ought not to be surprised at that. He’s answering them. And then he went on to quote what was to take place. I will show wonders in the heavens. and in the earth, blood and so on. Well, by the way, was that fulfilled? Of course it was not. That did not take place at that time. So that I think that we need, if we understand the book of Joel, you would never come to the conclusion that Peter meant that it was being fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. This passage of Scripture will be fulfilled. And all that Peter’s answering these that were mocking and says, you men know there’s a day coming when God’s going to pour out his spirit on all flesh. Well, he’s pouring it out now on some. It’s not the fulfillment of the prophecy because we haven’t seen earthquakes and the stars and the heavens are not responding at this time. And he identifies it before that great and terrible day of the Lord. And friends, the day of Pentecost was not a great and terrible day. We believe it was a very wonderful day, by the way. Now he said, “…whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord.” And it reveals that at that time, and this is one of the many passages that caused me to make the statement from time to time that I think the greatest time of salvation is yet in the future. God has yet to save more of the human race than are going to be lost. I agree with Spurgeon. Spurgeon says, I don’t think God’s going to come out on what he meant, the short end of the stick. God intends. to win more than will be lost. And I think the greatest days are turning to God when He pours out His Spirit on all flesh. That’s not true today, my beloved. We’re not living in that day. And I don’t mean to be ugly about it. But I do mean to be very insistent and dogmatic about that because I do think it’s important to fit this in to where it belongs. Now, if you’ll notice, chapter 3, it opens like this, “‘For behold, in those days and in that time when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem.'” Now, actually, chapter 3, verse 1 goes along with that, you see. He’s still speaking about the same thing. And what is he talking about? In those days. What days? Well, when the kingdom is set up upon this earth, when he brings again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem. Now, he hasn’t done that yet. And it’s yet in the future. And he hadn’t done it at the time of the day of Pentecost. Now, I’m sure that you can see that this must fit into the context of what Joel is saying. And I do believe this is one of the many instances of just reaching into Scripture. without any understanding of a book of the Bible and the purpose of it and the message of it and just lift out a few verses and make them apply to some local situation because you want it to apply to a local situation. Now, that’s done by a great many today. And very candidly, friends, that’s the reason we’re going through the Bible as we are. I have to take it up as I come to it. Therefore, I trust that today we can see that this passage of Scripture is all important. I think everybody agrees to it, but it’s yet to be fulfilled yonder in the future. All right, we will get into chapter 3 next time. Until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 03 :
As you walk with the Lord today.
SPEAKER 02 :
Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 03 :
Our story on the Bible Bus today is just one step in a five-year journey through the entire Word of God. Come along for the ride, and you’ll study both the Old Testament and New Testament, discovering God’s great redemption story. Is this your story too?
We also explore the global reach of Dr. McGee’s teachings, currently available in over 250 languages. As the program taps into regions like Guinea, with its complex religious landscape, we receive heartfelt testimonies from listeners who find solace and transformation in the Word of God. These narratives highlight the power of Scripture to cross boundaries and resonant deeply, even within predominantly Muslim contexts. With Dr. McGee’s respectful and focused approach, the discussion underscores the universal appeal and relevance of the Christian message.
