Messiah. Isaiah had shown that this Millennial kingdom age would be a time of great

blessing "He who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child" (Isa. 65: 20 N.I.V.).

Thus raising of the dead during the Acts period would have had special significance for

the Jew. Those raised, if the nation repented, would see the return of Christ and live a

much lengthened life in the Millennium but note the last part of Isa. 65: 20:

Sadly Ananias and Sapphira had a foretaste of that in Acts 5: 1-11 so without going

into greater detail we can appreciate that for the Jew the Acts period was a foretaste of

the miracles or powers of the age which was to come, the Millennium. Thus the Acts

period is not a fulfillment of Joel's prophecy but a foretaste of it.

In the N.T., when an O.T. prophecy is fulfilled, it is common to read words such as

"as it is written . . . . ." or "Then it was fulfilled . . . . ." but no such words are found in

Acts 2:  Thus Peter is not claiming that the events on the day of Pentecost are a

fulfillment of Joel 2: 28, 29.  This is not surprising. The main feature of the day of

Pentecost was the gift of tongues but this is not mentioned in Joel 2: 28, 29.

The gift of tongues, according to I Cor. 14: 21-22, was "a sign not to them that

believe, but to them that believe not". Verse 21 is a reference back to Isa. 28: 11, 12;

33: 19 and Deut. 28: 49. Thus to the Jews, the use of the tongues was a sign to

them of their unbelief. In O.T. times it was unbelief in Jehovah, God, but in the Acts

period it was unbelief in Jehovah manifest in the flesh, Emmanuel. Thus as well as

leaning over backwards with a foretaste of the foretold Millennial miracles, God adds the

miracle of tongues to indicate to the Jew their unbelief. Did this produce the desire

Sadly the Jews did not respond and the Gentiles were allowed, in the Acts period, to

share in the miracles and blessings and hope of Israel. According to Rom. 11: they were

like a wild olive grafted into a cultivated one (verse 17), in an attempt to provoke Israel to

emulation (which is better translation than jealousy, verse 11). Would the olive tree of

Israel now bear fruit? They had had a foretaste of the Millennial miracles; they had the

special gift of tongues to point out their unbelief; they had the stimulus of the wild olive;

would Israel now repent of the unbelief and rejection of Christ?

Sadly--no! In Acts 28: 17 Paul debated with the Jewish leaders but they failed

to reach agreement. Verses 26 and 27 indicate that the nation of Israel was then laid on

one side by God and He, in verse 28, then turned to the Gentile who was now to be

blessed independently of the Jew. God then revealed His great plan for the heavenly

places so magnificently described in the first three chapters of Ephesians.

It appears that the evidential miracles, so closely linked with the people of Israel and

the earthly kingdom, ceased at this point.  In the books written after the end of

Acts.28:  there is no mention of them (see Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,

Philemon, Titus, I & II Timothy). Certainly Phil. 2: 26, 27; I Tim. 5: 23; II Tim. 4: 20

show that the days of instant, complete, universal healing were over. The evidential