Is sin still a sin?

Two articles in last week’s newspaper started me to thinking back some years. One article asks, “Is sex outside of marriage still a sin?” It outlines the gradual changes in society and cultural thinking over the years. Polls and surveys and opinion pieces seem to be the basis of many people’s beliefs these days, not the scriptures. Bedrock? Foundation? Sand. Well, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, the saying goes - and sin by any other name still smells of death.

The other article is headlined “Church adds drive-in to draw visitors.” The pastor stands in the doorway of the church and preaches by microphone to the parking lot, where folks just tune in their car radio to listen. Communion will be offered car to car some Sundays.

Okay, what’s wrong with that? Well, why bother to put gas in the car and drive from the comforts of home down to the church? Why not just save that expense?

I think someone’s forgotten the meaning of the root word for church, which is fellowship. It’s pretty hard to fellowship from the inside of an automobile, unless you’re planning to cram 6 or 8 bodies into one.

Laziness has gone to seed these days, where people don’t want to communicate face to face, offer a hand or a hug, a listening ear, prayer and singing and clapping and smiling, or crying. Don’t want to get dressed in something relatively clean or neat, don’t want to shave or shampoo, don’t want to “give of your best to the Master,” as the old hymn goes. Or it is complacency?

Well, at least they did leave the house and head to the church instead of the beach, or staying inside stretched out on the sofa in front of the football game. Maybe that counts for something.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, but… there’s a party going on!

I received a lovely card the other day from friends, and I truly appreciated the card and the handwritten note on it. Printed on the inside front cover was a familiar Bible verse, I Corinthians 2:9, “But as it is written (see Is. 64:4), Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” That’s where the quote ended on the card.

But that’s only part of the Apostle Paul’s statement in I Corinthians. Without the “rest of the story,” that part is really misleading.

Paul’s statement continues in verse 10, “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit…” How neat!

If we pay attention to the voice of the Holy Spirit, we can have a glimpse of the things God has prepared for us who love him, wonderful things. Reunions. Parties. Worship. Assignments. Fellowship. Learning. Sharing. Laughing.

David Marcy, Pastor of Kingstree United Methodist Church, said a comforting benediction at the cemetery after Ora Lee’s funeral, and he mentioned Ora Lee having peace now. Instantly the Holy Spirit spoke to me and added - and a PARTY!

I suddenly got a mental image of a wonderful celebration going on in heaven with Ora Lee at the center, a for-real party with Jesus, Holy Spirit, Father God, and all of Ora Lee’s family and friends (especially Tim, T.C., Theron and her mom Annie) hugging and laughing and enjoying themselves immensely.

I couldn’t be sad after that moment. I was sorry for us, for all of us who will sorely miss her and T.C. and Tim, but I can’t be sad knowing where she is and what she’s probably doing.

From now on, whenever I see that incomplete fragment of Paul’s comment about heaven, I’m going to think, “PARTY!”

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away

Job said that after his children were killed (Job 1:21)… and people have been repeating it ever since to explain away their personal disasters and losses.

Since we live in a fallen world, created by God, granted to humans to own and operate, handed over by them to the enemy in exchange for counterfeit power, I guess it’s understandable for some people to use this phrase as a sort of grief pill.

But when they say it these days — after Jesus came, took our sins upon himself and died to pay their penalty –  they are accusing God of being an Indian giver.  A thief.  A murderer.  And He’s not.

This won’t be a theological discussion.  I would just like to suggest a “post-cross” way of looking at this comment of Job’s.

The Lord gave: grace, love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, mercy,
reconciliation, restoration, sonship, inheritance, friendship, fellowship, comfort, counsel, guidance, and a blessed future with him in heaven.

And the Lord has taken away: guilt, condemnation, loneliness, confusion, judgment, anxiety, fear, punishment, and a cursed future separated from him in hell.

Why?

(From the Archives)

That question was asked by wounded students at Virginia Tech. Relatives and friends of dead students. University faculty and staff. Law enforcement officers. Every news person with a microphone and camera is seeking someone on campus to ask how they feel and what they think, but most of all, why. Why did he do it?

Of course, other “why” questions follow that one. Why weren’t people warned sooner, why weren’t classes cancelled, why wasn’t the campus shut down. Why wasn’t the shooter stopped before he killed so many.

Jesus answered this question in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have to the full.” (NIV)

There is a thief, an enemy who hates people. He hates ALL human beings because God made them and loves them. Stealing, killing and destroying is his nature. He’s had lots of practice and he does those things very well.

The main thing he wants to steal is faith. If he can’t steal faith directly he will nullify it by stealing belongings, health, jobs or relationships, introducing fear and doubt into the situation. He will do whatever it takes to prevent faith from working.

If he can, he will kill people, and obviously many times he can. He will do it with sickness, disease, natural disasters or accidents. And he will do it by stirring up anger, jealousy, hatred and murder in the heart of a human being.

If he can’t steal faith or kill people, he’ll destroy anything else he can so they can’t be used to nurture faith or preserve life. He’ll destroy the truth with lies, stir up strife in marriages, families, neighborhoods and nations. He will turn misunderstandings into full-blown wars.

Many people think this enemy is imaginary and that’s the way he likes it. You sure won’t defend against an enemy you don’t think is real. It’s never a mystery to me when I see news stories about murder, not even mass murder. It’s just another day on the job for the enemy of our souls.

“Why?” is the wrong question. What can be done about it, is the right question. Changing people from the inside out is the first step, which is what Jesus came to do. That’s the kind of news I’d like to see more of in the headlines.

“Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be” — God’s will?

(From the Archives.)

Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe unto them who call evil, good, and good, evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

A couple of years ago, the Sunday School class I attended was studying the Bible account of Jesus and the disciples, the boat and the storm.

Jesus and the disciples were in a boat headed to the other side of the Sea of Galilee when a bad storm came up. Jesus was taking a nap and the panic-stricken disciples woke him up, saying “Lord, save us, we perish.” (Matthew 8:25) Mark puts it like this: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38)

Jesus got up, rebuked the storm stopping it in its tracks, and then rebuked the disciples for their lack of faith. (They could have stopped the storm themselves, without waking him up.)

One of the class members said, “God was trying to kill Jesus with the storm. That’s why the storm arose in the first place, and then Jesus cancelled out God’s will by rebuking the storm.”

I asked her, “You don’t believe Jesus was God?” “Well, yes,” she said, “but everything that happens is God’s will, isn’t it?” She looked a little puzzled at my reaction when I strongly disagreed. The notion that everything bad and evil happening in the world is God’s will, his design, his doing — is calling evil, good, and good, evil.

God created man to have a will of his own, gave him authority to use it, and has never taken that authority back. God did not force Adam and Eve to disobey a direct command. He doesn’t force me, or you, or Hitler, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or a child rapist, or a terrorist, to commit evil.

It is not God’s will that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (II Peter 3:9) Yet some people do perish.

We are instructed to pray for leaders and government authorities, because it’s God’s will for “all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 2:4) But not all people will be saved.

People have a free will of their own — some use it to make the wrong choice. The devil didn’t make them do it, and God didn’t make them do it.

If everything that happened was God’s will, why bother to pray? Just let whatever will be, be. But then certain other scriptures would have to be torn out of the Bible…

Like Ephesians 6:2, “Honor thy father and mother which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” That’s number Five of the Ten Commandments, quoted from Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16.

Well, maybe the Ten Commandments don’t apply any more. Or maybe they don’t apply to everybody, or they don’t apply in any real sense. Just in a wishy-washy sense that only applies to some group dynamic — not to individuals at all, just the whole of mankind which will survive while individuals are slaughtered at God’s whim. Hogwash.

Many “if” statements are found throughout the Bible. If you do this, that will happen. It’s the eternal law of sowing and reaping. Long life is one of those “ifs.” Deuteronomy 6:2, “… that thy days may be prolonged.” Deuteronomy 11:9, “And that ye may prolong your days in the land…” If they obeyed God’s Word, that is. But they didn’t, and their days weren’t prolonged.

What about bad things happening to good people? If God isn’t behind everything, then is he powerless? NOT omnipotent after all? Couldn’t he do something to stop it, if it wasn’t his will? Yes, if God wanted to change himself, become an Indian-giver and a liar, he could. But he gave control of some things over to people.

We have an enemy, Satan, who hates God and us. He’s real; a real liar and a real murderer. He will kill us if he can, steal from us whatever he can take and destroy anything he can’t take. (John 10:10.) He is the accuser and the leader-astray, but he can’t make us do anything against our will. He can certainly suggest sin, demonstrate how to do it and promise to reward it, but in the end he will be destroyed. Those who side with him will be destroyed, too.

God told us to do certain specific things. He made promises and provisions to those who are in Christ. The global, spiritual warfare is real, the devastation is real, the pain is real, but God’s power is even more real. He loves to demonstrate that power through the lives of his people. If they will let him…

If prayer was useless and “que sera, sera” was true, why would we be told to pray so many times? If faith was powerless, why did Jesus urge the disciples to have God’s faith? If death and disaster was God’s will, why did God send the Holy Spirit and gifts of healing and miracles?

The choice to believe is ours, and I choose to believe God is good, his mercy endures forever, and his Word is true. Mark 11:23-24 is true. Mark 9:23 is true. Matthew 17:20 is true.

The problem isn’t in God or in his Word. The problem is in those who fall for “que sera, sera” and won’t pay the price to believe. Faith is ours for the taking, but it comes with a responsibility and a job description.

When somebody gets sick and dies, it’s easier to say it must have been God’s will and excuse unbelief, than to take responsibility for failure. The disciples failed, after all — they tried to cast out a demon from a sick child and failed. (Mark 9:14-29) Jesus came along, took care of the problem, then explained to the disciples what they needed to do differently. Prayer with fasting. Do you suppose they ignored Jesus after that and simply quit praying for the sick? I don’t think so.

Jerry Savelle came to Florence years ago for a series of meetings about healing. He recalled an incident when a man complained to him, “Brother Jerry, you prayed for brother so and so, and he died!” Jerry answered, “Everybody I pray for dies sooner or later.” That didn’t excuse him from praying for the next fellow, and it doesn’t excuse us either.

Wilderness training

The New Testament has lots of military words and phrases, although they aren’t obvious in most English translations. Thinking about that fact, I started meditating on the way most of us think about “wilderness experiences.” Negative, bad, depressing, to-be-avoided, painful, stressful, faith-stealing, etc., etc.

Soldiers go through weeks and months of necessary training, some of it in wilderness areas. Like it or not, we’re soldiers ourselves.

What is a wilderness? Webster’s dictionary defines it primarily as a place that is uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings. Not that it is suitable for cultivation or habitation and no-one chose to do it — wilderness is a region that is not really suitable for cultivating crops or building cities and towns. The New Testament Greek word for wilderness means “solitude,” and is used in a variety of applications. I like that.

What is missing in a wilderness? Distractions. Normal food and shelter, companionship, duties and responsibilities. Ordinary occupations and opportunities.

What is present? Raw materials. Rocks and boulders, dust and grit, scrub brush, scorpions and snakes, blazing sun, deep shadows. Solitude. Challenges. Ingenuity. Inventiveness. Extraordinary occupations and opportunities.

For their lack of faith, the children of Israel had to wander around in a wilderness for forty years. Why not make them wander around in civilized territory? They could have pitched their tents on the shores of the Jordan, shopped at the local village markets and traded with other travelers. Forty years would have still gone by, the old folks would still die off, and by then they would have learned their lesson, right? Apparently not.

Jesus grew up in a civilized world, albeit under Roman occupation. He along with many others went down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. He received the Holy Spirit, was identified and commended by God, and thus was prepared to preach… or was he?

Matthew 4:1 says, “Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted (tested) by the devil.” He was there 40 days and 40 nights, fasting that entire time. He was removed from the daily distractions of carpentry, customers, brothers and sisters and neighbors, even the normal synagogue attendance as an adult Jewish man.

There were no disciples yet. No shops or stores in the wilderness, no bread bakeries. No tents or blankets or extra garments. He had to fashion whatever shelter he needed from whatever materials were available. Mark tells us that wild beasts were there too. Scavengers and hunters, they may have thought Jesus would make a nice snack.

And of course the enemy was there, in whatever form he was using at the time. Only after the devil did his best or worst to detour Jesus from his called path, did the angels come to minister to Jesus. Perhaps they brought him some breakfast, who knows.

What exactly happened in the wilderness? We’re only told about the end of that time, after Jesus had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and was hungry. A great deal must have happened before that, however. Training. Preparation.

Luke tells us in 4:14, “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee; and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.” Jesus was already well known in Galilee, but this time something was different. He was different.

Our trouble with wilderness may arise from the fact that we don’t see it as a training ground, a time and place of solitude where our spiritual ears can be tuned up, our thinking and meditating processes exercised, and our faith can grow strong and muscular.

Wilderness and solitude without the distractions of other voices means you have to discern between the voice of your own needs and wants, the voice of the tempter, and the voice of the Holy Spirit. You have to hone your decision-making ability, your ability to choose the right voice to believe and obey. If you’re in the wilderness and a voice tells you a hungry mountain lion is just over that hill, don’t go that way, you’d better know for sure whose voice is speaking.

Jesus said many times that he only did what he saw the Father do or tell him to do. This 40 days in the wilderness surely wasn’t an exception.

High house payments, sky-rocketing cost of gasoline, economic turn-downs and job layoffs, family squabbles, health problems — all of those things be devastating distractions to hearing and obeying the voice of the Lord. But they themselves are not the wilderness.

I think our attitude toward wilderness needs an adjustment. Sometimes we need a day apart down at a local park or camped out in our bedroom, alone with our Bible and the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we need a bit of voluntary wilderness to restore our spiritual perspective, learn how to discern between confusing voices, exercise and strengthen our faith.

Cyclones and floods and earthquakes

Jesus and the disciples had been walking through Jerusalem, looking at the temple buildings. The disciples were impressed by the buildings, but Jesus told them that one day not one of those stones would be left on another. He was trying to prepare them for the times to come.

Back outside of town on the Mount of Olives, he answered their questions about the future. “There will be famines and earthquakes in various places… then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now - and never to be equaled again… As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man… they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.” (Matthew 24)

The apostle John wrote, “Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts and the cities of the nations collapsed.” (Rev. 16)

I think what we have been seeing in the weather in the United States and Asia these past few weeks - tornadoes, fires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, are just a taste of what is ahead for the world.

Is global warming to blame? Is there global warming, in fact, that is caused by anything human beings have done and are doing? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone knows for sure. But if we believe the scriptures, We can’t stop these prophesied disasters no matter how many curly lightbulbs we buy.

What we can do is comfort and care for the injured, the sick and hungry, share with them, provide water and clothing and housing as much as possible. The most important things we can do are pray and share the gospel right along with physical help.

There is coming a time when the daylight will be gone, when none of us will be able to work. We need to be working while it is still day!  (See John 9:4.)

Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho…

This article isn’t about Joshua, though, it’s about Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus is an interesting character. Reading Luke 19:1-10, this short passage about Jesus meeting Zacchaeus struck me as worthy of more study. It looked to me like Jesus may have gone to Jericho just to meet this little man, sort of like he went to Samaria to meet the woman at the well. After all, he told Zacchaeus, “I must stay at your house today.” And when the crowd complained about that, Jesus commented “The son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

As I investigated Zacchaeus and Jericho a bit further, I wrote down several questions and the answers I found.

(1) What does his name mean? It’s derived from a word meaning “pure,” which he certainly wasn’t before Jesus got ahold of him. I wonder if people made jokes about his name…

(2) What was his job? Chief tax collector; he probably supervised several other tax collectors and all of them worked for Rome. Their own income came from overcharging the people - they pocketed the difference. He may have been acquainted with Jesus’ disciple Matthew (Levi), who had the same job.

(3) What was his position then in the community? Wealth, influence with Rome, reputation as an astute businessman, since he’d been elevated to “chief” tax collector, employees and servants, influence and/or friendship with other Jews who had a vested interest in seeing that Rome stayed happy. We aren’t told if he had a wife and children. He was despised by the ordinary citizens since he cooperated with their enemy and took advantage of his own people.

(4) Ethics / morals? On a par with his job, no doubt. He knew the Jewish law but going by his own words he didn’t really keep it. He really couldn’t keep the law and his job, and we know which one he kept.

(5) Spiritual condition? Hungry for something more. He was aware that Jesus was in town. He’d heard gossip from underlings or house servants maybe, but somehow he’d heard about Jesus. His curiosity wasn’t the only thing that took him into the street. No businessman would climb a tree in public! What would people think? Of course, he didn’t really care what the ordinary people thought. Still, he wanted to see this Jesus person. Being short, he couldn’t see over the people in front of him but the crowd didn’t respect him enough to give him space. They wouldn’t let him get close enough to the street. I think Zacchaeus was desperate to see Jesus. What were people saying about Jesus? He raised the dead! He healed the sick! He turned water into wine! Who wouldn’t want to see a man like that? But I don’t think many would climb a tree to do it, unless they were desperate.

(6) What did it cost Zacchaeus? Everything he had. After his meeting with Jesus, he couldn’t be a tax collector any longer. And he himself promised to do more than the current religious leaders required, he promised restitution more in line with the actual law, even better than the actual law. He had to have counted the cost. If he meant it, he would have been giving back a great deal of money and cutting off his livelihood and his relationship with the Romans. But what he gained was worth it; eternal life, starting now.

(7) Where and what kind of place was Jericho? For this, I went to the internet and did a little research. I knew some of the Old Testament stories about things that happened there, and Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan takes place near Jericho. It was a prominent city in the days of Joshua before the “walls came a-tumbling down,” put under a curse by God and deserted for all practical purposes. By the time of Jesus the city had been rebuilt and was prominent again. Herod even had a palace there, overlooking the city. Thieves and robbers had a wonderful time of plying their criminal trade along the steep and dangerous route down from Jerusalem. Fascinating story about Zacchaeus, and a fascinating town he lived in.

If you’re interested in learning a little more about the place, keep reading. The following notes came from an internet Bible study site:

“Jericho is located near the southern end of the Jordan Valley about eight hundred twenty-five feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea and about two hundred feet above the surface of the Dead Sea. The area around it is watered by springs and small streams, and since 7000 B.C. Jericho has been an oasis and a population center in the otherwise mostly barren valley. Some scholars think Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and it was called the city of palm trees in Judges 1.16. Intersecting there since historic times have been a major road that comes down the Jordan Valley, one that crosses the Jordan River (five miles east of Jericho), and one that leads up through the steep, barren hills to Jerusalem, which is fifteen miles to the southwest and more than two thousand feet higher than Jericho.

Jericho had high walls and protective towers in ancient times, as it did when Joshua led the people of Israel across the Jordan River on their way to occupy what became their land. But the city was built of sun-dried mud bricks, so it was often invaded and captured by enemies. These ancient bricks have mostly washed away, and so archaeologists are not sure which part of the city was standing when Joshua captured it (Josh 6).

Elijah went through Jericho and met fifty prophets, who followed him to the Jordan River just before he was taken up to heaven (2 Kgs 4.4–12). Elisha began his work as a prophet in Jericho (2 Kgs 4.13–22). When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586/587 B.C., King Zedekiah tried to run away, but the Babylonians caught him and put out his eyes on the plains near Jericho (Jer 52.1–11). After the Jews were allowed by the Persians to come back from Babylonia to their land, a number of those whose families were originally from Jericho returned (Ezra 2.34), and some of the workers who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem came from Jericho (Neh 3.2).

The Romans made Herod king of the Jews in 37 B.C., and he then built a winter palace for himself and a Roman-style city just northwest of ancient Jericho. Water was brought in from the Jordan River by an irrigation system. Herod’s new Jericho included a city center, a theater, and a stadium, and the city was surrounded by groves of evergreen and palm trees with flower gardens, fountains, and pools. It was the winter residence for Herod, his staff, and a large group of servants and supporters.

East of Jericho along the Jordan River was the place where John the Baptist stayed to baptize those who heard his message and were preparing themselves for the coming of God’s new kingdom. Jesus was also baptized there (Luke 3.1–22), and later he visited Jericho—apparently the old city, not the palace of Herod. In Jericho Jesus healed a blind man (Luke 18.35–43), and he met and stayed with Zacchaeus, the rich chief tax collector for the Romans (Luke 19.1–10). Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan tells a story that takes place on the steep and rocky road that led down from Jerusalem to Jericho (Luke 10.25–37).”

Rome and Romans, more thoughts

I started my study of Romans with a search for information about the people Paul was writing to. Christians, he says, but other than that, who? Several reference books and online sources indicate they were a mixture of economic, racial, educational, and religious backgrounds. Probably they had become believers after Roman Jews attended the feast of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out, became Christians, and then brought the Gospel back with them to Roman. (See previous post.)

Paul wrote other epistles to correct things, either mistaken beliefs or practices. So, I wondered if perhaps he had written this epistle with that idea in mind also. Of course, as he planned to visit them, he used the occasion to introduce himself and gave an impressive list of personal references toward the end. But with all of the teaching about the gospel that he included, why did he stress certain things?

I sort of started at the back of the book, to stir up a different train of thought in my mind. I’ve read this book numbers of times, and it always just seemed to me a theological discussion - Paul’s Gospel, so to speak. But obviously it is more than that.

As I flipped through this book, I came to chapter 12, about presenting your bodies as living sacrifices. Why did Paul even mention sacrifices? Why not just say live godly lives, think godly thoughts? Was there something about sacrifices themselves that he was addressing? Correcting? Back to the reference stuff, online searches, etc.

Yes, there was quite a lot about sacrifices in the daily Roman life, Jews and Gentiles and other ethnic groups alike. Rome was a hodge-podge of religions activity. It had no particular one religion that was clearly Roman itself, it had every imaginable kind and variation of religions. And many, many sacrifices! For every lifestyle choice, every problem, every decision, whether by the government or the individual - even when it came to construction of an addition to a public wall - there were sacrifices to some god or other. Asking for favor, asking to avoid displeasure, asking for good weather, good crops, good success, etc.

Okay, lots of sacrifices. What kind? Many kinds. Animals and vegetables, similar to Jewish sacrifices. Very, very rarely, human sacrifices had been made but only in extreme circumstances, according to one historian I read - that is, before the days of Nero.

One interesting kind of sacrifice was where a kind of doll was sacrificed or offered, representing the person making the sacrifice. That of course was supposed to satisfy the particular god. So now these verses in Romans 12 have a deeper meaning for me - offer you yourself to God, your own body, your own person, and not some kind of effigy substitute for yourself like Roman religions do.

Dreams, visions, the Holy Spirit is at work

This is exciting! The following news reports are from several mission updates I received by email April 17, 2008:

(1) Many reports have been received of Muslims who are finding Jesus through experiences of dreams and visions.

(2) Over the past few years Burma’s Buddhist monks and nuns have invited Christian missionaries to come share the gospel in the privacy of their monasteries. “It appears that the Holy Spirit had urged these monks and nuns to call our evangelists to come and share the gospel of hope and love.” Several thousand Buddhist monks have now been led to Christ as close to 80 percent of the monks in each of the monasteries prayed to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. [Adapted from MISSIONS INSIDER, 18 March '08.]

In Acts 2:17 Peter quotes verses from Joel chapter 2, about visions, dreams, and the Holy Spirit being poured out - in the last days. Those days, and these days!