The Great And Awesome Day

We begin today a series on the Minor Prophets, surveying some of the shorter and less familiar of them under the series title, Major News from the Minors.  These “minor” prophets were not minors, nor little men, nor of less importance.  They are called minor because their prophecies are shorter than the 3 majors: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  All of them proclaimed the Word God in their particular settings, and though it seems that they brought primarily a message of judgment, we will see that it was really big, Good News they announced.  Some years back I attended an all-day seminar called Walk through the Old Testament, where a large group of us memorized a survey of every book of the OT.  The key was getting the story line, and with the prophets a symbol and something unique about each prophet.  For Joel that key word was locusts.  The other unique thing in Joel is the prophecy of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Consider these two things from Joel: (1) Locusts pointing to a great and awesome day of judgment and the (2) Holy Spirit high-lighting the Gospel offer of salvation.  Judgment and Salvation are two sides of the Good News that gives hope of eternal life.