An Attack Coming From the North!

 "A nation has come up into my land." - JOEL 1:6.

More than a century ago, Brother C.T. Russell and his associates, a small group of other students of God's Word. begam to meet together. They wanted to see if they could learn what the Bible really teaches about Jehovah God, Jesus Christ, and the condition of the dead, and the ransom.  Their method of study was simple.  Somone would raise a quetion, and then the group would examine every scripture text related to the subject.  Finally, they would  make a record of their findings.  With Jehovah's blessing, thsoe sincere Christian men discovered many fundamental Bible truths that we cherish to this day.

As those Bible students soon found out, however, it can be one thing to learn what the Biblee teaches about a certain doctrinal subject but quite another to discern correctly the meaning of a Bible prophecy. Why is that so?  For one thing, Bible prophecies are often best understood  when they are undergoing fulfillment or after they have been fulfilled.  But there is another factor. To understand a prophecy correctly, we generally have to consider  its conten. If we focus only on one aspect of the prophecy and ignore the rest, we may draw the wrong conclusion. In hingsight, it seems that this has been the case with a prophecy in the book of Joel.  Let us review some of that prophecy and discuss  why an adjustment in our present understanding is needed.

Read Joel 2:7-9.  Joel foretells that  a plague of locusts will devastate the land of Israel.  With teeth and jaws like  a lion, the greedy insects will devour everything in sight! (Joel  1:4, 6) For many  years, we have applied that prophecy sybollically to the way which Jehovah's people, like an unstoppable swarm of locusts, engage in their preaching activity. We understood that this activity has devastasting effects on the "land," or the people under the control of the religious leaders.

If we are restricted  ourselves of reading of Joel 2:7-9, a case could be made  for that explanation. However, when we consider the prophecy in it's context, we see  that a different understanding is appropriate. Let us examine four reasons why this is son.

Next time: An Attack Coming From the North! - FOUR REASONS FOR AN ADJUSTMENT

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