'Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your

God ... Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing

behind Him?' (Joel 2:13,14).

'And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the

cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, My great army

which I sent among you' (Joel 2:25).

The passage that demands our attention is that which follows this

promise of restoration:

'And it shall come to pass afterward' (Joel 2:28).

The word 'afterward' cannot stand alone, we must supply mentally the

answer to 'after what?' and here the answer is 'after the promised

restoration, after the day comes when Israel as the people of God shall never

be ashamed'.  It is obvious to any student of Prophecy that this happy day of

Israel's restoration has not yet come, and that consequently some Scriptural

and logical reason must have justified Peter's quotation of Joel 2:28 -32, in

Acts 2:17 -21.  A few variations are observable in Peter's quotation, that

depart both from the Septuagint and from the Hebrew original, but these do

not constitute a problem.  What does constitute a problem of interpretation

is the reason for quoting Joel 2:28 -32 on the day of Pentecost.  Peter most

certainly called the people to repentance, and linked repentance with the

time of restoration which had been the burden of prophecy since the world

began, but if Pentecost was the restoration long hoped for, Peter could not

have said what he did in Acts 3:19 -26.  When we examine his quotation more

closely we discover that he made a most important alteration.  He Did Not

because he Could Not say 'It shall come to pass Afterward' for the promised

restoration was yet future, he could only say:

'It shall come to pass in the last days' (Acts 2:17).

It is an exegetical mistake of the first magnitude to assume that Peter

is providing us with a basic text upon which we may erect a structure of 'the

last days' here, he is simply accommodating the passage to answer a most

simple and somewhat trivial objection.  Upon twelve men had come the 'power

from on high' with the result that the Jews who had come from the twelve

specified nations (Acts 2:9 -11) heard them speak the words of God in the

tongue in which they had been born.  Some were amazed and said 'what meaneth

this?'  Others mocking said 'these men are full of new wine', but Peter said

'these are not drunken ... this is that which was spoken by the prophet

Joel', and proceeds to quote the whole passage.  His answer amounted to this:

'If you are going to attribute this initial outpouring of the Spirit which

has endued these twelve men with power for their ministry, to the effects of

wine and drunkenness, what will you say when the great outpouring of the

Spirit takes place After the restoration actually comes?'  For this reason,

if for no other, Acts 2:16 -21 is the last passage to refer to in the

construction of any scheme of the prophetic period known as the 'last days';

any other reference is preferable to this, for the simple reason that Peter

was accommodating this passage to rebuke those that mocked.

We do not attempt an examination of the prophetic period known as the

'last days' here, but the subject is considered in the article Last Days (p.

416), but a word to the wise we trust will be sufficient.  'In those days',

i.e. the days of which Joel was speaking, God said: