Simply teaching the Bible, simply

The book of Joel. Little is known about this man, whose name means 'Jehovah is God', but conservative scholars place the book around 835 B.C., making it the oldest of the prophetic books and as such the subject matter is even more provocative! The theme is 'The Day of the LORD'; Joel uses this phrase 5 times in these 3 chapters. The immediate context seems to have been a devastating locust plague that had come upon the land, as a judgment from God. However, Joel speak beyond his own day to the final climactic 7 years of this age; the time Jesus Himself called the Great Tribulation. Just as the locust plague of Joel's time had destroyed the land, so will the coming time of judgment be upon this world. Isaiah would later prophesy of this coming judgment saying: Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. (Isaiah 13:6-13) Against the backdrop of the National calamity Joel had just witnessed, he speaks of the end of this age, the Church and the World and the ultimate deliverance for his people, Israel.