לאו – The Book of Joel

by Leonard V Johnson

This early morning, I was perusing Facebook and noticed dozens of people posting quotes from God’s living word. I wondered, do they really know what they are quoting? Do they know what God’s living word truly means? What about the Prophet Joel? How much do you know about what he was inspired by God’s Spirit to record for us? Dedicated to the soon-coming Day of the Lord! 

His name is Jo-El. And his name means YHWH is God.

I’m not speaking of Superman’s father, Jor-El from Krypton.

I’m speaking of a prophet to the Southern tribe of Judah. He was one of the earlier prophets of God. We know that the Southern tribes of Judah were the kingdom that remained after the Northern tribes were carried away captive. It was the nation whose capital was Jerusalem. And, even though his book is not dated by one of the kings, as many of the other prophets’ books were, many believe he was very early in his message, because he never mentions Assyria, Babylon, or Syria, some of the antagonists that were against the kingdom of Judah. He was contemporaneous with the prophets Hosea and Amos – two of the other “minor” prophets. They call them “minor” prophets only because they had short books compared with the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel. But I believe these prophets weren’t minor in their message by any means.

A Prophet of Doom

He lived and wrote approximately during – at least some believe – the reign of King Jehoash of Judah (c. 836-796 B.C.). He was very familiar with the Scriptures, and one of the Scriptures which I’d like to bring to the forefront, before we get into the Book of Joel, is Deuteronomy, the 28th chapter. 

Verse 42 – This was God’s Warning, which He gave through His servant Moses to all Israel (long before they were divided into two separate kingdoms), giving grave consequences for disobedience. All the blessings and curses. “Locusts shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land. 43) The [stranger] who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, …” – and, of course, He goes on from there. But I want to draw your attention to where it says the ‘locusts shall consume your land.’    

Now, later when the temple was built during King Solomon’s day he had a lengthy public prayer in which he said, “’ Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who spoke with His mouth to my father David, and with His hand has fulfilled it, … 23) LORD God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above or on earth below like You, … 37) When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; 38) whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: 39) then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men)’” – 1 Kings 8:15, 23, 37-39.

So, turn with me to the Book of Joel, chapter 1.

Verse 1 – “The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. 2) Hear this, you elders, And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!”

Now, he uses a term ‘you elders’ which were the leaders, the higher-educated, the wise, the kings and princes – today you might say presidents, vice presidents, prime ministers, senators, governors, etc.

“ … Has anything like this happened in your days, Or even in the days of your fathers?”

Now, what happened here in the kingdom of Judah was a monumental event that occurred during the prophet Jo-El’s day. There was a plague of locusts that inundated the land – imagine the sky turning black by biblical proportions. And as a result of witnessing this plague, he was inspired to write this book. Now, he had read those same Scriptures we just read in Deuteronomy 28th chapter. And he knew that this great plague was being brought upon the kingdom of Judah because they had turned away from the LORD God, but he also used this opportunity to write this message. It was perfect for his day, but it still stands TODAY for testimony against the modern-day nations of Israel – including the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and of course JUDAH - the modern-day nation called Israel.

They had never suffered a plague like this since they had come out of the land of Egypt when the LORD God had set all those plagues upon the Egyptians. 

Verse 3 – “Tell your children about it, Let your children tell their children, And their children another generation.” 

Verse 4 – “What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.” – the four stages of the locust which are mentioned here.

The massive swarm of locusts came in and ate all the crops, the fruit trees, all the grass – think about the impact! What if this were to happen in the United States of America – across the plains where we grow wheat, oats, and rye! Or, the Corn Belt - a region of the Midwestern United States! Or, the vineyards of California! What impact would it have today if the nation of the eagle had a nationwide plague? Some of the bible commentaries – like the Jamieson Fausset and Brown Commentary of the Whole Bible – has associated these four stages of the locusts here with what would eventually happen to the kingdom of Judah, saying, “The Hebrews make the first species refer to Assyria and Babylon; the second species, to Medo-Persia; the third, to Greco-Macedonia and Antiochus Epiphanes; the fourth, to the Romans.” 1 Now, perhaps that could be prophetically a type which could be associated with that, but I don’t believe that is the purpose for the prophet Jo-El’s writing. 

Now, while this plague was taking place – while the kingdom was being devoured – what were the people doing? What was their attitude – their focus? 

Verse 5 – “Awake, you drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you drinkers of wine.” – so they were having a party! They weren’t too worried about what was happening. “ … Because of the new wine [spiritually speaking the New Covenant of Jesus Christ – Luke 22:20], for it has been cut off from your mouth [spiritually speaking Psalm 95:7-11; Hebrews 3:7-11].”      

Verse 6 – “For a nation has come up against My land, Strong and without number; His teeth are the teeth of a lion, And he has fangs of a fierce lion.”

So, the prophet Jo-El used this opportunity of the plague of locusts to describe to the kingdom of Judah something which was coming later in their future. 

The prophet Jo-El here is WARNING of the end of this age! 

Thousands upon thousands of people in this world just want to party and ignore what is happening around the world – being distracted by the death of sexual predator and offender Jeffrey Epstein, or worried about the “rights” of unlawful illegal immigrants in a nation that has been invaded and overrun by illegal immigrants! Millions pay no mind to the ever-growing assertiveness of China and Russia, the increase in tensions in the Middle East, North Africa, and Northern Asia.

Here, the Prophet Jo-El sees the need to try and WARN the kingdom of Judah. 

Verse 7 – “He has laid waste My vine, And ruined My fig tree; He has stripped it bare and thrown it away; Its branches are made white.” 

Now, I added this verse because I want you to turn to the Book of Revelation, the 9th chapter – I want to make a comparison with what he is describing here with the fifth trumpet plague. 

Verse 1 – “Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. …” – Satan and his demons being thrown down to the earth from the atmosphere. “ … To him was given the key to the bottomless pit, 2) And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit.” – as I mentioned in “A ‘Secret Rapture’?,” certainly an indication that the atmosphere will be thick with volcanic ash towers or even radioactive dust and ash! And, as I have witnessed, there is grave trouble with America’s disaster response. 2     

Verse 3 – “Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4) They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal [the glorious Spirit of God] on their foreheads.”

Now, I do believe there’s a very good chance – and I can’t prove it – that there may be used a nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapon (EMP). Here is the apostle John in a great vision – under the inspiration of God’s Spirit – writing and describing a series of events which are to take place at the time of the end of this age – the end-time trauma. This great army of Islamic soldiers, 200 million strong ( cf. Revelation 9:16),  will go forth swarming as locusts and as ferocious as lions. But they don’t ‘harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree’ like we see here in the Book of Joel – they destroy men with different types of weapons which destroy not the buildings, trees, or grass. It’s interesting to know that many nations have this technology and what damage these types of weapons can indeed do.

But, I’d like us to go back to the Book of Joel, the 1st chapter –

Verse 8 – “Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the husband of her youth.” – God, on several occasions, like in the Book of Jeremiah, speaks of His espousal to Israel when they were just coming out of the land of Egypt. He speaks about that love that they once had – even describing one time that Israel was like a helpless newborn baby lying beside the road (Ezekiel 16:116). And, lo and behold, this newborn baby happened to be a girl. God says, “And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine.” And God washed off thoroughly her blood, and anointed her with oil, clothed her in embroidered cloth and gave her sandals to wear, clothed her in fine linen, adorned her with ornaments, bracelets on her wrists, and chains around her neck, put jewelry in her nose, earrings on her ears, and a beautiful crown upon her head. And she was exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded in royalty. Almighty God cared for this young lady even unto the time when she was able to be married, and then God says – when it came time for you to be married, I came to propose to you but found out that you had been unfaithful – one of the greatest harlots the world had ever seen! This is the way that God described ISRAEL! ‘I wanted to be a husband to you – and I gave you everything!’ Just like the vow you make when you’re married – “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.” He made this covenant with Israel, and then found out that she was not faithful at all to Him. And this is why He brought His wrath upon them and allowed them to be carried away captive. 

Verse 9 – “The grain offering and the drink offering Have been cut off from the house of the LORD; The priests mourn, who minister to the LORD.” – Imagine the priest within the temple waiting for the offerings and the sacrifices, and the people weren’t bringing anything to the temple. Imagine what the priest must have felt like.

Verse 11 – “Be ashamed, you farmers, Wail, you vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field has perished. 12) The vine has dried up, And the fig tree has withered; The pomegranate tree, The palm tree also, And the apple tree – All the trees of the field are withered; Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men. 13) Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; Wail; you who minister before the altar; Come, lie all night in sackcloth, You who minister to my God; …” – he’s asking the ministers and the priests to set the example of repenting and turning themselves to God. 

Verse 14 – “Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the elders And all the inhabitants of the land Into the house of the LORD your God, And cry out to the LORD.”

Verse 15 – “Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is at hand! It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.”

This is the whole message of Jo-El here in the Book of Joel!! Friends, it’s not about the locusts which are eating up the land in many parts of the world, but the message here is – THE DAY OF THE LORD IS AT HAND!! WAKE UP, SLEEPER, RISE FROM THE DEAD! ‘Awake, you drunkards, and weep; turn to Almighty God and our Lord Jesus Christ!’ He is crying out with this little, short prophecy here to the nations of Israel, like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And, of course, the nation of Judah – modern-day Israel. 

Verse 19 – “O LORD, to You I cry out; …” – possibly looking back at some of King David’s writings in which he said, ‘O LORD, unto You will I cry and make my supplication.’ “ … For fire has devoured the open pastures, And a flame has burned all the trees of the field.” 

Verse 20 – “The beasts of the field also cry out to You, For the water brooks are dried up, And fire has devoured the open pastures.”

Friends, here is drought, famine, pestilences, wild fires – and the people are still going each year to their Pride parades, and their Mardi Gras! Their whole nation is going down the toilet, and they reject Almighty God!

Here is something from Joel chapter 2 ──      

God says, ‘Blow the trumpet!’ Now, anciently, the trumpet was only to be blown by the priest. It was a time when they would blow the trumpet for the gathering of a solemn assembly, a festival meeting, or at the New Moon, but also a WARNING to go out to war. And this is the case here!

Verse 1 – “Blow the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the LORD is coming, For it is at hand.” 

Now, there are times when the Day of the LORD feels like some far-away future event – doesn’t it? Friends, how much closer is it from the time when the prophet Jo-El wrote this, in approximately 835-800 B.C., to our witnessing the coming dreadful Day of the LORD? When you look at the population of the earth today, some 8.2 billion people! When you look today at the massive murder rate alone around the world, with El Salvador having the highest homicide rate in the world at 52.02 murders per 100,000! 3 When you look at the projected population growth rate of 9.6 billion by the year 2050, how are we, as a civilization, going to sustain that? When you look at the U.S. economy, at $37 trillion in debt and rising! How long can we continue going down this road? What happens when our economy has completely crumbled? Does not all this give you an indication as to where we are in the history of the world – that we’re so very close to the end of this age?

Indeed, Jesus Christ gave us some things to look for in Matthew, the 24th chapter, when He said, “’ nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.’” Because then the end-time prophets will arise and shall be persecuted, hated by all nations for His name’s sake, and will ultimately be martyred! 

Verse 2 – “A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, The like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, Even for many successive generations.” – our LORD God said, “’ For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.’” There are nations today like the United States of America, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran with nuclear weapons, with many more nations doing everything they can to obtain them! But they also have in their possession biological and chemical weapons, including many with the ability to annihilate nations using a cyber-attack, or an EMP strike, which would literally place civilization back to the early 1800s. We are living in very DANGEROUS TIMES – wouldn’t you say? The prophet Jo-El never saw the time in which we live, with the ability to utterly destroy ourselves!

Verse 3 – “A fire devours before them, And behind them a flame burns; The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; Surely nothing shall escape them.” – This reminds me of what Russia is doing to Ukraine! Targeting infrastructure, hospitals, and people! Even in our modern history, with ISIS’s scorched earth policy in Iraq. The ISIS terrorists and murderers ignited oil wells and storage tanks, and even refineries. Also, they deliberately spill oil and open pipelines, as well as flood residential areas with heavy crude oil. 4 And in 1991, the Kuwaiti oil fires caused by Iraqi military forces under Saddam Hussein, setting fire to a reported 605 to 732 oil wells! We watched as clouds of black smoke plumes rose from dozens and dozens of blazing oil wells in an almost end-of-time vision there on our television screen, taking them months to finally cap them.

Verse 4 – “Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like swift steeds, so they run. 5) With a noise like chariots Over mountaintops they leap, Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble, Like a strong people set in battle array.” 

Verse 6 – “Before them the people writhe in pain; All faces are drained of color.” – people see this massive army advancing upon the land and their faces turn pale.

Verse 7 – “They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like men of war; Every one marches in formation, And they do not break ranks. 8) They do not push one another; Every one marches in his own column. Though they lunge between the weapons, They are not cut down.” – it’s like they have impregnable armor.

Verse 9 – “They run to and fro in the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter at the windows like a thief. 10) The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; The sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness.” – talking about a massive horde of Gentile armies, most likely Arab and Islamic armies! Now, will there be any doubt in anyone’s mind that we are but living in the very last moments of the end of this age?

Verse 11 – “The LORD gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; Who can endure it?” 

I’m not writing this to scare you half to death or be what I’ve been called before – a warmonger. And neither was the prophet Jo-El. He was there to try and wake people up out of their sleep and out of their drunken stupor and WARN them of what is just over the horizon. 

Verse 12 – “’ Now, therefore,’ says the LORD, ‘Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.’ 13) So rend your heart, and not your garments; …” – the great majority of the people of this world do many things while they pray to show how pious they are – like wrenching their clothes, or reciting prayers while wearing a tallit prayer shawl, or flogging themselves, or thumbing through rosary beads and giving the sign of the beast. Almighty God wants us to rend our hearts – get down to the very inside of your spirit, that’s where God wants you!

“ … ‘Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.’” □         

1) Jamieson, R., Fausset, A.R., Brown, D., Jamieson Fausset and Brown Commentary of the Whole Bible, Zondervan Publishing House, 1982, pp. 782.

2) Atkin, E., “The Troubling Failure of America’s Disaster Response” 17 July 2018. Retrieved 15 July 2025. https://newrepublic.com/article/149899/troubling-failure-americas-disaster-response.

3) Data Panda, Murder Rate by Country, 23 May 2025, Retrieved 15 July 2025.

4) Conflict and Environmental Observatory. “ISIL’s scorched earth policy in Iraq: options for its victims to be recognized under international law” 11 October 2017. Retrieved 15 July 2025. https://ceobs.org/isilsscorched-earth-policy in-iraq/.   

Additional Items of Possible Interest

'Blow the Trumpet!' - Online Article

'Blow the Trumpet!' - Audio Article

'Blow the Trumpet!' - Audio Article in Swahili

'Blow the Trumpet!' - Audio Article in Hebrew