The Holy Spirit as Person and Power: Charismatic Renewal and Its Implications for Theology

By Rob Yule and Murray Talbot

In just over one hundred years, the Pentecostal-charismatic movement has transformed world Christianity. Noted for their rediscovery of spiritual gifts and commitment to world evangelization, 700 million Pentecostals and charismatics now account for more than 27 percent of the global Christian movement.
The Pentecostal-charismatic movement has been more noted for its activism than for theological reflection. But this may be changing. The Holy Spirit as Person and Power challenges traditional theology to take account of what has been disclosed in the dynamism and variety of charismatic experience.
The author is a theologically trained practitioner, impacted in midlife by a transforming experience of the Holy Spirit. He has been a hands-on leader in the renewal movement. Now, in his later years, he reflects on the meaning of the grace imparted to the church by the renewing activity of God's Spirit.
This is not the work of an enthusiast claiming a new revelation. Rather, the author draws attention to many nuances in the Bible's description of the Spirit that have been overlooked in traditional pneumatology. By relating these insights to Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and evangelical theology, he has produced a book with ecumenical implications for all branches of world Christianity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781725251601

Rob Yule

Rob Yule is a retired New Zealand Presbyterian minister and a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. He was chaplain at Victoria University of Wellington in the 1970s, a leader in charismatic renewal, and pastored churches in Christchurch, Palmerston North, and Auckland. He lectured in the Manawatu Branch of the Bible College of New Zealand and on mission trips to the Czech Republic. He and his wife Christene have been married nearly fifty years and have five children and fifteen grandchildren

Book preview

List of Tables and Figures

Table 1 Jesus’ Twofold Work

Table 2 Two Aspects of the Spirit’s Activity

Table 3 Two Aspects of the Church

Figure 1 The Parabola of Redemption

Figure 2 The Paradox of Personhood

Foreword

I recall sitting between Rob Yule and John Brook on a flight from Wellington as we were returning from a Presbyterian Renewal Ministries board meeting. I asked them a question. When Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples in the upper room in John 20:22 and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ was that their ‘born again’ experience?

This sparked an interesting discussion. The traditional teaching of the day was that this was John’s version of Pentecost. But, as John Brook pointed out, that creates historical issues because Pentecost didn’t happen until after Jesus ascended.

This led to another question. Can you separate the empowering work of the Holy Spirit from the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about new birth? The teaching of the day said, You cannot separate the receiving of the person of the Holy Spirit within, from his power. That seemed to make sense, but was quite contrary to my personal experience.

I had received Christ and experienced forgiveness of my sins four years before being baptized with the Holy Spirit. But with baptism in the Holy Spirit came a whole new faith adventure. I had a new desire to worship and pray, the Scriptures came alive and took on new meaning, I desired to seek fellowship with like-minded believers, and I will never forget opening my check book the first Sunday afterwards and hearing a gentle voice from within say, Tithe. This was getting really radical for a trained accountant! It was like I was suddenly thrust into an awareness of a whole new realm. Hence my question on the plane flight, as I tried to understand my experience in theological terms.

Rob Yule has produced a book which not only addresses questions like this, but reaches back in time to the early church fathers and across the wide spectrum of Christian theology from Pentecostalism to Eastern Orthodoxy to increase our understanding of this important aspect of Christian living. Rob brings a depth of understanding and enlightenment seldom found in works on this topic.

When I followed Rob as minister at Hornby (now Hope) Presbyterian Church, Christchurch, one of the first things my wife, Janice, and I did was to read through the minutes of the elders’ meetings. We wept as we saw something of the pain and anguish that Rob and Christene had endured. But from the ashes, God began to birth something beautiful. The plowing had been done. It was time for us to water, nurture, multiply, and reap.

Whenever I felt in need of someone to discuss an aspect of theology, I would phone Rob to pick his brains and was never disappointed. I wanted to ensure that I wasn’t going out on too much of a limb. I really valued his wisdom and insight at those times.

As you read this book you will understand what I mean. Beginning with an overview of Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal movement, Rob quotes from Peter Hocken’s analysis: The argument follows that an unplanned and unexpected movement, without any one human founder or place of origin, and whose essential characteristics are the fruit only the Holy Spirit of God can produce (knowledge of Jesus, heartfelt praise of God, love of the Scriptures, greater sensitivity to powers of evil), must represent a sovereign intervention of the Lord.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Moving from chaos to order, Rob focuses on the creativity of the Holy Spirit before giving an insightful analysis of the empowering work of the Spirit, drawing attention to the rested upon but not in aspect of the terminology. Interesting chapters follow on the Holy Spirit in Jesus, the Holy Spirit in Christians, and the distinction between the Holy Spirit’s personhood and power.

Rob presents being baptized in the Holy Spirit as people’s initiation into the realm of the Spirit. He provides a compelling case for reviewing our traditional understanding of initiation into Christ. Finding support from the outstanding British preacher David Pawson, he highlights how the experience of being baptized in the Spirit is something God intends all Christians to experience and is a valid experience for today. He argues for it to be recognized as a foundational experience for all believers, essential for enabling them to live the life Christ has called them to.

A helpful discussion on the gifts of the Spirit follows, showing their Trinitarian nature and availability for all believers. Rob provides a different perspective from those who lump all the gifts together in a single spiritual gifts inventory. Their grace-given character opens up the possibility for all Christians to be used by God in a range of gifts according their availability and situation. He contrasts the dynamic nature of the charismata of 1 Corinthians 12 with the more permanent nature of the ascension gifts of Christ in Ephesians and the motivational gifts of the Father in Romans.

Rob’s breadth of scholarship is evident as he draws on the church fathers and Eastern Orthodox theologians to discuss the distinctive role of the Holy Spirit. Noting that the Holy Spirit does not become incarnate in our humanity and is not an extension of the incarnation, he supports Vladimir Lossky’s view that the Spirit’s unique role is to communicate the divine nature to human persons. Here Rob deals with subject matter that was entirely new to me and that I found informative and inspirational. He discusses the disagreement between the Western and Eastern Churches over the "Filioque" clause in terms that even I could understand.

Rob draws his argument together in a final chapter which provides both a helpful summary and an appeal. The time has come for the church’s theology and pneumatology to come to terms with the dynamic insights awakened by the surprising and ever-gracious Spirit in the global Pentecostal-charismatic renewal movement.

I can only respond with an Amen, brother! The publication of this book is a ground-breaking contribution to this task. I am grateful to Rob Yule for bringing his spiritual experience and scholarly abilities to bear on such an important theme. Most importantly, he does so in a readable and understandable way.

—Murray Talbot

Former Senior Minister

Hope Presbyterian Church

Christchurch, New Zealand

Abbreviations

AG: W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich, Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957)

BDAG: Walter Bauer, Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. F. W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)

CD: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley et al. Vol. I, Part 1—Vol. IV, Part 4 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956–75)

CMS: Church Missionary Society

DPCM: Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988)

EC: The Encyclopedia of Christianity, ed. Erwin Fahlbusch et al., 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999–2008)

EDT: Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984)

ELLC: English Language Liturgical Consultation

ERT: Evangelical Review of Theology

IBLP: Institute in Basic Life Principles

IBMR: International Bulletin of Mission(ary) Research

ICEJ: International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem

IRC: International Reconciliation Coalition

HIM: Harvest International Ministries

KJV: King James or Authorized Version of the Bible (1610)

NIDNTTE: New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Moisés Silva (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014)


NIDPCM: New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, rev. ed., ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003)

NIV: New International Version of the Bible (2011)

NRSV: New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1989)

NZ: New Zealand

ODCC2: Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd. ed., ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)

ODCC3 : Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd. ed. revised, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

PGL: Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)

RSV: Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1952)

SJT: Scottish Journal of Theology

TDNT: Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel and G. Friedrich (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76)

TDOT: Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2018)

UK: United Kingdom

UPCUSA: United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

YWAM: Youth With a Mission

Introduction

I began my ministry with six years as ecumenical chaplain at Victoria University of Wellington. I experienced the high-point of the Jesus People Movement, mixed with Christians of every conceivable stripe and affiliation, and worked in a chaplaincy team with the Anglican and Catholic chaplains, from which emerged our celebrated Tertiary Christian Studies Programme.

It was quite a challenge to leave this for my first ministry in a local church, in the working-class suburb of Hornby, west Christchurch, in 1979. There I experienced not one but two church schisms. It was a conservative evangelical church made up of religious refugees from liberal churches in Christchurch, seeking solace in the wake of the Geering controversy. They had formed a gathered church, attracted by the preaching ministry of my predecessor. Lloyd Geering, my Old Testament teacher, had created a storm throughout New Zealand when, during Easter 1966, he publicly denied the bodily resurrection and said that the bones of Jesus would someday be found in Palestine.

A group from Hornby Presbyterian Church encountered Pentecostal worship and speaking in tongues at the Queen Street Assembly of God on a visit to Auckland in January 1979—the same summer that we moved to Hornby. Tensions grew during my first year. I returned from my next summer holiday, in January 1980, with a great sense of foreboding.

On the eve of our elders’ retreat in early February, an Irish elder and his wife called round to our home to announce that he was leaving the church. He would be starting an Elim Pentecostal church just around the corner, in the Hornby Power Board theaterette. Later that day, a Lincoln College student visited to tell me that her fiancé had just been killed in an aerial topdressing accident at Mesopotamia sheep station. After our evening meal, the former lay parish assistant rang to say that he and his wife were resigning from the church. At breakfast the next morning—the day of our retreat—another elder with a lovely family came to the manse door to say he wouldn’t be coming to the event either. He and his family were joining the new church around the corner.

It was the saddest day of my life. Three other elders also left, as did the leader of the music group—who was the son of the former minister. The remaining elders met in anguish and distress. But ultimately, from our pain came extraordinary gain. They proved a stalwart, faithful, praying group of elders who stuck with the grieving church through the storms of sorrow that followed. I’m grateful to God for these elders, and others in the church, who bore with me, took me on as a prayer project, loved me, and helped me change and grow.

The group who left wanted revival without tarrying for any. When it became evident that I was not about to give up on the Holy Spirit just because his more ardent backers had departed, pressure mounted from the Reformed and conservative evangelical members of the church. They, in turn, began to leave from the other wing of the fellowship. They included notable leaders in the Christchurch evangelical community, including the rector and deputy rector of Middleton Grange School and their wives, and two pews of students involved with the Navigator movement, which was then firmly anti-charismatic.

I associate these months with the Abbotsford landslip in Dunedin, which began not long before. As one household fell into the fracture, another became exposed and tottered on the brink. When that family left, their friends began to consider doing so as well. It never seemed to stop.

In my distress, I began to pray alone—and sometimes with my wife, Christene—before the communion table in the darkened church at night. The table had inscribed on it in beautiful calligraphy the text summarizing the life of the early church: And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers (Acts 2:42, KJV). I remembered that Graham Pulkingham had done this in the crypt of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in downtown Houston, Texas, leading to its amazing transformation from a rundown mass station to a vibrant and sacrificial urban renewal community.¹

I was led to do this not only by Pulkingham’s example but also by what the prophecy of Joel says about the conditions that precede the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit. How would such an outpouring happen? Joel says,

Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, Spare your people, Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ (Joel

2

:

17

)

So I prayed, in the darkened church, for God to do just that: to take away the reproach of Hornby Presbyterian Church. I pleaded with God to rend the heavens and come down, to send an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to create an exemplary Christian community like the early church in the book of Acts, one which would attract people by its worship and witness, by its common life and uncommon service.

I have never seen a church so profoundly changed as Hornby Presbyterian was over those next few years.² It was truly a work of the Holy Spirit. God humbled us, broke us, transformed us. Like a vintage car restorer, God took us apart, steam-cleaned us, repainted the metalwork, reassembled us, rebuilt, and restored us.

Since then, I have testified at Hornby (now Hope) Presbyterian Church, saying that God looked down and saw this smug, self-satisfied church and said, How can I change them? God looked down and saw this inexperienced little priestling and intellectual and said, How can I change him?

I know, God said. I’ll put them together and see what happens!

It was like two galaxies colliding! The shockwaves are still reverberating! The results of all the energy that was released are still apparent more than thirty-five years later! God changed me, and he changed the church! There was a remarkable move of the Holy Spirit. What suffering and pain we experienced! What an explosion of joy and creativity resulted!

I certainly do not claim credit for all the changes at Hornby Presbyterian Church. I was an inexperienced pastor and made many mistakes. The difficulties we faced called for decisive leadership, which may have hurt some people, though we did see the establishment of an excellent pastoral team and the growth of home groups for pastoral care.

The consolidation of the renewal was the work of my successor, Murray Talbot, and his wife, Janice. They worked through a long ministry to reestablish trust, to consolidate changes in worship, to build community ministries, and ultimately to develop a multi-staff and multi-site church, the flagship church of the Presbyterian movement in New Zealand. I owe them a profound debt of gratitude. My wife and I couldn’t have wished for better successors!

My personal encounter with the Spirit was the catalyst for this turnaround. In the spring of 1981, amid our troubles, I was phoned by Russell James, the pastor of Opawa Methodist Church in eastern Christchurch, a well-known charismatic leader. He had a visiting itinerant American charismatic minister with him, who was available for a midweek meeting. Would I care to have him speak at my church? What topic would I like him to speak about?

I made a quick decision. Yes. The safest and most suitable topic seemed to be The Holy Spirit in the Church: A Historical Perspective. We hastily arranged a Wednesday evening gathering.

Paul Petersen was a big, bear-like man with a shambling gait. He was a United Methodist minister from Seattle. He had been baptized in the Spirit after being prayed for with the laying on of hands by his Episcopalian colleague, Dennis Bennett, of Nine O’Clock in the Morning fame. In the controversy that erupted, he was thrown out of his large and successful church, full of Boeing Company aircraft workers. He now traveled the world by faith, imparting what he had received.

That Wednesday evening Paul Petersen spoke to us about the origins of the Pentecostal movement. I had never heard of this before. It was a surprising move of God: a grace-given revival among the poor and disenfranchised that sparked a worldwide movement in just a few years. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; . . . the weak things of the world to shame the strong; . . . the lowly things of this world . . . to nullify the things that are (1 Cor 1:27–28).³

When the meeting finished, I faced a quick decision. Do I invite Paul back to pray for people to be baptized in the Holy Spirit? Would he available for Friday night, two days hence? He was. I announced that he would be with us in the manse lounge.

On Friday night just a handful came. My wife, Christene, and I were joined by a fellow Presbyterian minister who had supported us during our troubles, by a conservative but godly elder, and by the leader of our women’s ministry. Paul Petersen clarified what seems obvious but had never been explained to this Calvinist before: if we wish to speak in tongues, we need to speak! He led us in a renunciation of any works of the Evil One. He laid hands on each of us and prayed for us one by one.

Just when I thought I was inventing Hebrew words, I had a flow of speech that I had never spoken before, followed by a profound sense of God’s acceptance as his child. My striving and perfectionism ceased. I began to feel a wonderful inner peace and joy, so welcome after the trials of the preceding months.

Meanwhile, Christene came into an experience of the Spirit singing in tongues! Paul Petersen got excited and jumped up and down. One in a thousand, he exclaimed!

Our encounter with the Holy Spirit took place on 30 October 1981. The present book began, modestly, in teaching that I began to give soon after this decisive event. It originated in an attempt to clarify what had happened to me and to share that understanding with others. I learned a lot from Tom Smail’s book Reflected Glory, which I used at that time as a devotional study with my remaining Hornby elders. I first shared some of this material in June 1984, at a Presbyterian renewal gathering in the little township of Dunsandel, on the Canterbury Plains of the South Island of New Zealand.

Over the years, my teachings developed. I honed them in new Christians’ classes, in preaching series on the Holy Spirit in my churches in Hornby, Christchurch, and St. Alban’s, Palmerston North, and on mission trips to other churches. I had no computer in those days. After prayerful and sometimes agonized preparation, I gave my talks extempore from handwritten headings and summaries on scraps of paper. Many times I wanted to take notes from myself! The joke in my family was my writing up my sermons afterward!

Later I was asked to share my teaching on the Holy Spirit at week-long live-in courses at Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Discipleship Training Schools, in Papanui, Christchurch, and at Pukerau, in Eastern Southland.

Many years later, in my retirement in 2013, I was invited to give a lecture series on the Holy Spirit at Emmaus College, Palmerston North. I entitled it The Presence and the Power: The Spirit in Christ and Christians. I focused on what we can learn for our personal life and service in the Spirit by exploring the role of the Spirit in Jesus’ life and ministry.

I have long wanted to publish these lectures. Indeed, I was encouraged to do so by my former Professor of Church History, Ian Breward, who stayed with us on his last visit to New Zealand in April 2014. But the following years have seen invitations to lecture on other subjects and the publishing of three other books. So my cherished teaching and reflection on the Holy Spirit have had to wait. Only now is it seeing the light of day.

In some ways its publication is untimely, for the heyday of charismatic renewal is long past. But the delay has been beneficial, for the material has benefitted from much reflection and refinement. The content is very relevant to the much-needed task of developing a theology of the Spirit that takes into account what has been learned in the spontaneity of charismatic experience. So my book is subtitled Charismatic Renewal and its Implications for Theology.

The Holy Spirit as Person and Power is a biblical and theological exploration of the Holy Spirit in the light of the contemporary renewal movement. The book begins with the eschatological focus and extraordinary grace that the Pentecostal-charismatic movement represents. It reveals overlooked insights from the Bible about the person and activity of the Holy Spirit. It takes what I and others have learned in the variety and dynamism of charismatic experience. It shows how this opens fresh insights into what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. It challenges the major branches of the Christian church to reexamine their theological understanding of the Spirit in the light of these developments. It interacts with the church’s historic teaching about the Spirit, in the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and evangelical traditions.

Ray Taylor, the founding chairman of the Paraclete Trust, the group serving charismatic renewal in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, used to say that theophany must precede theology. By this, he meant we must have a first-hand experience of God’s manifestation or revelation of himself before we can begin to think about him in any meaningful way.⁴

In the same way, I offer this book in the hope that it may contribute to the necessary and ongoing task of integrating personal experience and theological reflection, to the mutual enrichment of both. It offers many insights about the Spirit, experiential and exegetical, that the more formulaic treatments of pneumatology in the history of theology have overlooked. Like the apostles, I cannot help speaking about what I have seen and heard (Acts 4:20).

Throughout the book I have used small print sections to discuss some issues in greater detail, like the use of this device in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. These concern matters of biblical exegesis, historical background, theological debate, or philosophical clarification. Some provide illustration from personal experience or the experience of other charismatic Christians.

I thank the following for reading my manuscript and commending it: Rev. Dr. Eldin Villafañe, Distinguished Senior Professor Emeritus of Christian Social Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston; Murray Talbot, my successor at Hornby (now Hope) Presbyterian Church, Christchurch; Murray Robertson, former pastor of Spreydon (now South-West) Baptist Church, Christchurch; and Nyalle Paris, minister of First Presbyterian Church, Invercargill. My text has also benefitted from the critical observations and helpful suggestions of Fr. Peter Cullinane, the former Catholic bishop of Palmerston North, though I am responsible for its final form. I thank Lynley Trounson of the Hewitson Library, Knox College, Dunedin for help in sourcing books, Liz Ward for help with proofreading and obtaining permissions, my son, Andy, for preparing the two figures, and Paul Gummer for photographing the cover symbol.

I dedicate this book to the memory of my best friend, John Brook, a pioneer of the New Zealand Presbyterian charismatic renewal group the Paraclete Trust (later Presbyterian Renewal Ministries), who died of a brain aneurism in 1992.

This material originated in lived experience and teaching, so preachers and Bible teachers may find stimulation for sermon or lecture preparation. Kindly attribute if you do, just as I have sought to acknowledge those who have influenced me. Freely you have received; freely give.

—Rob Yule

Palmerston North, New Zealand

Advent

2019

1

. Described by Michael Harper in A New Way of Living and Graham Pulkingham in Gathered for Power. My friend John Brook had told the story of Graham Pulkingham and Charismatic Spirituality in the course on Christian Spirituality Today that I organized for the Victoria University of Wellington combined chaplaincies Tertiary Christian Studies Programme in

1976

.

2

. The story has been well told by Michael Reid in his PhD thesis, But By My Spirit,

183

–

96

, by Nyalle Paris, in his research essay, Wind of Change, and again by Michael Reid in his history of Hornby Presbyterian Church, Thus Far,

184

–

236

.

3

. I tell the story of the beginnings of the Pentecostal movement in chapter

1

, below.

4

. Taylor, Chairman’s Letter,

9

.

1

The Holy Spirit and the Latter Days

The twentieth century saw a remarkable global reawakening of interest in the Holy Spirit. The only passage in the Bible that foretells such a worldwide outpouring of the Spirit is the prophecy of Joel. Joel prophesies that this phenomenon will be marked by the crossing of intractable social barriers and be associated with the eschatological events of the last days. Reflection on the remarkable movement of the Holy Spirit that has occurred since the beginning of the twentieth century suggests that we are experiencing the fulfillment of this prophecy, that we are living in the latter days, and that God is preparing his people because the times are urgent.

Since the mid-twentieth century, after centuries of neglect, Western Christianity has experienced a dramatic resurgence of interest in the Holy Spirit. This has come about through the rise of Pentecostalism, through the impact of the charismatic renewal movement on Protestant and Catholic churches, and through renewed attention in testimony literature and theological scholarship. Pneumatology, not so much as a doctrine as an experience of the Spirit, has been rediscovered as the living heart of Christianity.

In the Latter Days

In his brief but influential prophecy, the biblical prophet Joel prophesied a global outpouring of the Holy Spirit before the coming day of the Lord (Joel 2:28–32). The apostle Peter identified the initial fulfillment of this prophecy in the events of the day of Pentecost and saw it as inaugurating the last days (Acts 2:17). The twentieth-century forerunners of the modern Pentecostal movement described their experience of the outpouring of the Spirit as the latter rain of Joel’s prophecy, in contrast to the former rain experienced by the apostles at Pentecost.

The prophecy of Joel is the only biblical passage that foretells a worldwide outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit.¹ The purpose of this chapter is to examine whether the modern Pentecostal outpouring can be regarded as its fulfillment.

Joel’s fascinating prophecy contains the following elements:

1.Its context is eschatological: the outpouring precedes, perhaps even sets in motion, the events of the latter days. I will pour out my Spirit . . . before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord (2:28, 31).

2.It promises restoration after a period of desolation, suggested by the locust plague and its accompanying devastation of the ecology and economy of the land. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten (2:25).

3.It hints that the Spirit will be bestowed in two outpourings, an early rain and a latter rain—corresponding to