Intro to Joel
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. 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. Joel 2:32 The book of Joel is a fascinating prophetic book, not just because it is three chapters in our English translations and four in Hebrew Bibles, but because this book is all about the Day of the Lord. The majority of this book focuses on a devastating event in the history of the Israelites when a swarm of locusts swept over the land and consumed everything. Verse 4 expresses vividly the event as Joel writes, “What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.” If there was any hope that anything was left for the people, this verse makes it very clear that all of the harvest has been e...