• Stirred by “the Magnificent Things of God”
    The Watchtower—2002 | August 1

    • Moved to Action!

       4. What prophecy of Joel was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost 33 C.E.?

      4 Having received the holy spirit, the disciples in Jerusalem lost no time in sharing the good news of salvation with others, beginning with the crowd who had gathered that morning. Their preaching fulfilled a remarkable prophecy, recorded eight centuries earlier by Joel, the son of Pethuel: “I shall pour out my spirit on every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will certainly prophesy. As for your old men, dreams they will dream. As for your young men, visions they will see. And even on the menservants and on the maidservants in those days I shall pour out my spirit . . . before the coming of the great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah.”​—Joel 1:1; 2:28, 29, 31; Acts 2:17, 18, 20.

       5. In what sense did first-century Christians prophesy? (See footnote.)

      5 Did this mean that God was going to raise up a whole generation of prophets, both male and female, in the manner of David, Joel, and Deborah, and use them to foretell future events? No. Christian ‘sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants’ would prophesy in the sense that they would be impelled by Jehovah’s spirit to declare “the magnificent things” that Jehovah had done and would still do. So they would serve as spokesmen for the Most High.a