«　WEEK 3　DAY 1　»

　　Joel 1:4 What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust has left, the licking locust has eaten; and what the licking locust has left, the consuming locust has eaten.

　　3:11 Hurry and come, all you surrounding nations, and be gathered. There cause Your mighty ones to descend, O Jehovah!

　　Four words for locust are used in Joel 1:4, probably referring to one kind of locust in various stages of growth. The four stages of this one kind of locust refer to the nations that devastated Israel in four consecutive empires: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, including Antichrist, who will be the last Caesar of the Roman Empire (Rev. 17:8-11). The armies of these empires were like locusts (Joel 2:25) coming to devastate and consume Israel totally, devouring her people, land, fields, produce, food, and drink and cutting off her offerings. These empires correspond to the four sections of the great human image in Daniel 2, to the four beasts in Daniel 7, and to the four horns in Zechariah 1. They will be overcome and terminated by Christ, who will set up the kingdom and reign among the saved Israel in the age of restoration. (Joel 1:4, footnote 1)

　　Israel has been suffering the cutting, swarming, licking, and consuming of the locusts for twenty-seven centuries…. God used the suffering of the Jews to bring in the incarnation, an unprecedented event that brought God into man and mingled God and man as one. Furthermore, God has used the locusts to afford all the necessary facilities in the environment for the carrying out of His purpose. The Roman Empire, the aggregate of the four empires, afforded everything necessary for the incarnated God to live and move and work on earth. It also provided the means for Christ to be crucified for the accomplishing of God’s redemption (John 18:31-32), the occasion for the pouring out of the Spirit as the processed and consummated Triune God upon all flesh to produce the church as the organic Body of Christ (Acts 2), and the facilities for the spreading of the gospel to the entire inhabited earth (Matt. 28:19; Acts 1:8).

　　The Bible is a record of two histories: the history of man, the human history, and the history of God, the divine history. The former is like an outward shell, and the latter, like the kernel within the shell. In the Minor Prophets the human history is clearly defined and is signified by the four kinds of locusts mentioned in Joel 1:4. The divine history within the human history is also revealed in considerable detail. The divine history, as the divine mystery of the Triune God in humanity, began in eternity past with the eternal God and His eternal economy (Micah 5:2c; 1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:4-5, 9-11). It continues with Christ’s incarnation (Micah 5:2a); His death, burial, and resurrection for the spreading of God’s redemption and salvation to all the nations on earth (Jonah 1:17; 2:10); His pouring out of the consummated Spirit to produce the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God (Joel 2:28-32); His second coming as the Desire of nations (Hag. 2:7a) and as the Sun of righteousness (Mal. 4:2a); His coming with His overcomers as His army to defeat Antichrist and his army (Joel 3:1-15); and His reigning in Zion in the thousand-year kingdom (3:16-21; Micah 4:7). Eventually, the kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth for eternity. The New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God’s history. (Joel 1:4, footnote 1)

　　We need to have a clear view of these two histories—the physical human history and the mysterious divine history—and I hope that we all will have such a view. The history of man, the history of the world, is outward. The divine history, the history of God in and with humanity, is inward. This history is a matter of the divine mystery of the Triune God in humanity. (Life-study of Joel, pp. 35-36)

　　Further Reading: Life-study Joel, msgs. 4-5