Joel Chapter 2 – part 4 of 9

Joel is not a physical book – Joel is a spiritual book. Joel draws a cloud across the landscape so that we do not see the physical scene, the brutality of actual Crucifixion. Joel paints it in verse two as “a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness,” as the morning upon the mountain of Calvary. As we lift our eyes past the physical to the spiritual we discern a great host, all the powers of darkness gathered into a mighty army, led by Satan himself, “a great people and a strong,” says Joel. Our Champion must fight them all to overcome the world. Joel says, “there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.” Never before! Never again! For if Satan can overcome the Lord of Hosts, evil can triumph over good, darkness over light, the creature over the Creator. Such a battle has never been fought since the world began. Such a battle will never be fought again. And Joel depicts for us, not the Champion of heaven and earth, but the host arrayed against Him. We lose sight of the One in the frightening legions of the many. We see only that they come forward wave after wave in seemingly endless array, bent on total destruction. “A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.” It is a picture of the devourer, the destroyer of all that is good, the annihilator, the arrogantly powerful before whom nothing can stand, after whose passing nothing can remain. Lost in the middle, as it were, hidden from our view, is the One alone. We discern the destroyer, the strength of the host against Him, as we read further into Joel’s description of the battle, but of our Champion there is never a glimpse in Joel chapter two. We see that the appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. We hear a roaring “like the noise of chariots in the tops of the mountains” as they leap into battle there, but of our Champion in the midst of that battle there is never a sight nor a sound.