The Last Days
When the day of Pentecost came, they were together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting …Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd … “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people Acts 2:1,2,14,17
Christian conspiracy theorists and blazing prophets have partly numbed us to the possibility of God actually doing something extraordinary in our midst and telling his prophets beforehand. We’ve heard it all before, too often, too loudly and they continue to get it wrong!
The Jews had movements that parallel some of ours today. Scriptures in Daniel 9 seemed to speak of a 490 year gap between the announcement of Judah returning to their land after exile and God intervening in a climactic way in Israel and indeed the world’s affairs. Depending on how this time period was reckoned, it seemed to have been completed.
Peter preached from a text in Joel that spoke of supernatural spiritual gifts happening before their very eyes. But that passage began with “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people …” (Joel 2:28). The term ‘the last days’ was used of a time to come when God’s promises would be fulfilled, when the journey would reach its destination, when the story would reach its climax. Peter was saying, “This is it. We’ve made it. These are the signs of the destination.”
We’ve taken the term ‘the last days’ very literally and inadvertently missed Peter’s meaning. We think ‘the last days’ can only cover a very short time period immediately before Christ’s return. “Do you think we’re in the last days?” Of course we are. We’ve been in the last days for 2,000 years. This is not being dismissive of movements wanting to warn the nations of Christ’s return but simply trying to see in the text what Peter saw (and desperately wanted to communicate).
From the time of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was being received by any and all who trusted Jesus as their Messiah and Saviour. ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people’ (Joel 2:28). Before then, few within Israel had experienced anything of the Spirit’s working and moving; but from now on the Holy Spirit would be freely available to all who trusted in Jesus (Acts 2:21).
These are the last days. God has brought us to this amazing point where we can receive the Holy Spirit. This was Peter’s message to the Jews in Jerusalem and rings just as true to us today.
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