Joel 0:4

Teaching. The book of Joel addresses the Christian Church under visitations of evil with a call for humility and intercession both through outward form and ceremony and through the inward motions of the heart, with the assurance that God hears and answers prayer, turning the day of calamity into one of prosperity. It heralds Jehovah as the judge of all mankind to right wrongs, giving temporal and spiritual blessings unto His faithful people without distinction, and punishing evildoers. Thus it appeals to our innate sense of justice and becomes a source of hope and strength when the righteous are tried. A final blissful salvation is assured to the people of God. But, at the same time, the book has limitations in fostering a spirit of retaliation (Joel 3:8), in presenting no salvation for the heathen (cp. in contrast Isaiah 2:2; Isaiah 19:18), and, while doubtless the assumption is that the saved Israelites are righteous and the other nations are wicked, yet the distinction between the saved and unsaved is racial rather than spiritual and moral, and the narrow feeling of the Jews, which the book of Jonah was written to counteract, is reflected, and its universal judgment scene (Joel 3:9) needs to be supplemented by that of Matthew 25:31, even as its promise of the outpouring of the Spirit (Joel 2:28.) finds fulfilment in spiritual gifts to the Church which are far wider than those of the single day of Pentecost (Acts 2:14.).