Acts 2:14-21

Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’



Dig Deeper
According to Nelson Mandela in his auto-biography,” A Long Walk to Freedom,” the official movement of his organization, the African National Congress (ANC) began in 1912 as they sought to gain the political and social freedom that had been denied to non-white Africans for hundreds of years. The movement gained momentum as a force to be reckoned with in the 1940’s and 1950’s as they held out the promise of freedom for the African people. They continually and constantly laid out to their supporters what true freedom would look like. They wanted them to not be fooled by counterfeit offers of freedom from the Nationalist Party that held power in South Africa at the time and settle for something less than real freedom. But they also wanted them to know the signs of what it would begin to look like when they were gaining power and the power base of the exclusively white government was beginning to slip. Surely then their freedom would be near. One of those signs that they always pointed was the time when the government would recognize the ANC and agree to negotiate with them.

Mandela was placed into prison as a political prisoner in 1963 and the ANC continued to be unrecognized by the South African government as a legitimate group. By the 1980’s, the ANC was still banned and its leaders were either in prison or were in exile having fled South Africa. What people did not know was that in the late 1980’s in a quiet little prison cell near Cape Town, negotiations had begun. The South African government realized that they could no longer keep their grip on power without a bloody civil war and had begun to negotiate with Nelson Mandela while he was still in prison. This was certainly not what anyone would have expected and very few people knew that it was going on. But indeed, the beginning signs of the great promises of the ANC had taken place in a very unlikely way. The process was not complete and had not come in full but it had unmistakenly come in a way that fulfilled the signs that had always been taught but just not quite how anyone envisioned.

The people of South Africa had been waiting for the promises of freedom for decades but the Jewish people had been waiting for many hundreds of years for the great promises of God to finally come upon them. Israel believed that although they had returned to their homeland after the Babylonian exile some 500 years earlier that they were still in exile because the presence of the Lord had not yet returned to the Temple and the nation. The promises of God to return to his people and pour his Spirit upon them in a great and new way had not yet happened. But they had expected that the coming of the Messiah, the crushing of Israel’s enemies, the exaltation of Israel to rule over the nations with God’s presence in full display, and even the resurrection of the righteous would all take place at one time in what they knew as the Day of the Lord. God would pour out his Spirit, but probably in the way that he always had, meaning that he would give the Spirit to come upon one or two specific people at a time, usually leaders of the people such as kings, prophets, and priests. Based on many things, including some of the prophecies of Daniel concerning a 490 year exile (the exact time of the end of that exile varied depending on how specific dates of the exile were calculated), the people of the first century were awaiting this Day of the Lord in eager expectation. This is when God would separate his people from his enemies and set things straight, brining the long awaited salvation and freedom to his people.

When Peter stood up early in the morning of Pentecost it was with all those expectations and hopes swirling about that provide a context for what he said. As the commotion of the disciples speaking in tongues and praising God in the native languages of Jews from all around the world began to command the attention of the large Pentecost crowds, Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles, creating the important symbolic statement that they were hearing from the twelve leaders of the renewed Israel. Through the Messiah, these twelve men were now the place where people would find the promises of God being fulfilled.

First things needed to come first, though, and so Peter cleared up any misconceptions that the crowd may have had. No, they were not drunk. No good Jew would be pounding wine down that early in the morning. Peter wanted to make this clear. They were doing what Paul would later call all Chrsitians to do when he urged his readers to not be “drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). The amazing things that the people were seeing and hearing were not of human origin or spirits but were divine in origin and from God’s Holy Spirit.

To explain to the crowds what was going on that day in Jerusalem Peter turned to words of the prophet Joel. Joel was dealing with the question of the people of his concerning the apparent absence of their God. When would he act? God would, said Joel, send rains that would heal the damage to the land and make a way for Israel to be restored, words that pointed to the coming of the Messiah. Afterwards, said Joel, God would pour out his Spirit on all people and then would come the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

That was beginning now, declared Peter. Not in a way that anyone expected but it was beginning nonetheless. What Joel said would be a time “afterwards,” or after the coming of the Messiah, Peter specifically defined as the last days (v. 15). So many people today read the phrase “last days” and assume that this means the end of the world and that the “saved” status that Peter holds out to all those who call on the name of the Lord to be refernces to the time of final salvation from judgment before resurrection. But this is not what Peter meant by “last days.” The last days were the time when God’s promises began to be poured out. No one expected that to begin with a small band of disciples speaking in other languages, but here it was, said Peter.

If they considered Joel’s words carefully they would see that God had promised to pour his Spirit out on all people, not just kings or priests, or even just the Messiah. This is exactly what he was doing now. Here they were, young and old, male and female, people of all types that were the recipients of God’s mighty Spirit being poured out. Their praising of the Lord in other languages (tongues) was the sign that God had fulfilled his promises. In this action, Peter saw the beginning of the prophecy that sons and daughters would prophesy, young men would see visions, and old men would dream dreams. This unlikely beginning was indeed what they had all been waiting for.

It was the beginning of something ground-breaking and earth-shattering. Just as both of those common phrases in the previous sentence have a specific and rather understandable meaning outside of a woodenly literal interpretation, so could the prophets speak of incredible events like the stars falling from the sky or the sun going dark to signify events of epic proportion rather than thinking of these type events as being actually literal. Incredible things that would happen that would shake the foundations of the earthly order. All of this was common Jewish language to describe events of epic proportions.

As was common in prophecy, Peter could place these monumental events that he calls the last days right next to the day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord, which the early church quite comfortably transferred from referring exclusively to Yahweh as Joel would have intended to referring to Jesus Christ, was a time of definitive judgment laid out by God. In one sense, this day of the Lord would be fulfilled in 70 AD when the judgment of God was poured out in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. That was the “great and dreadful day of the Lord” that Joel has spoken of. But Peter speaks of the “great and glorious day of the Lord,” likely because he saw the dreadful day of the Lord for Israel, the judgment upon Jerusalem, as an early fulfillment and foreshadowing of the ultimate day of the Lord at the resurrection. The day of the Lord that was dreadful for Israel will be glorious for God’s people, even though it will still be a day of judgment and humbling of God’s enemies. In essence the “day of the Lord” occurs anytime that God pours out judgment and though there will be one final and definitive day of the Lord, it cannot be said that there has been or will be just one day of the Lord.

This means that the last days were the strange time between the beginning of God’s promised action and the final fulfillment of those things. The last days had begun. The Messiah had ushered in the kingdom of God. God’s Spirit had been poured out on all his people and the life of the age to come would actually be available in the present time through Jesus Christ. The last days began then and we are still in the last days, the days of God’s final act of salvation, awaiting the resurrection of all believers and the onset of the age to come in all its fullness (and that final and definitive day of the Lord).

Entrance into that salvation is as wonderfully universal as it is specific. It is available to anyone without limitation regarding nation, language, tribe, ethnicity, or gender but is limited to those who call on the Lord. Joel had promised that this would be God’s means of final salvation and now that time had begun. In many respects, the first part of Peter’s speech here has great parallels to the end of his speech that comes later in chapter 2. Ben Witherington III, in “The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary,” says, “The two parts of the speech material in vv. 14-40 have a certain unity and coherence: (1) “to call upon the name of the Lord” (v.21) is another way of speaking about the event that involves being baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ” (v. 38); (2) the promise in vv. 17-18 prepares for the promise of receiving the Spirit (v. 38).”

Peter seamlessly transferred Joel’s promise to call upon the name of Yahweh (the Lord in most English translations) to a fulfillment in Jesus Christ as though they were one in the same (the early Christians certainly believed that Jesus could fulfill promises made of Yahweh because they were one in the same in a Trinitarian way). To call upon the name of the Lord was a specific act, however. It didn’t mean to just cry out to God or even to pray. Peter will define it in verse 38 as the act of repenting and being baptized into the life of Jesus Christ. This is precisely Paul’s line of thinking in Romans when, in chapter 6, he refers to being baptized into the life of Christ, and then culminates that great argument in 10:9-13 by affirming that Christians must repent and confess Jesus as their Lord and call upon his name. Acts 22:16 confirms quite clearly that calling on the name of the Lord was the act of being baptized into the life of Christ and taking part in the incredible gift of the Spirit that had been made available here at Pentecost.

Those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved just as God had promised through the prophet Joel so long ago but being part of God’s salvation doesn’t just mean that individuals have a private experience with God and then can look forward to dying and going to heaven one day. Salvation was a much bigger concept of being part of God’s family and actively taking part in his reconciliation project for the whole world (2 Cor. 5:14-21). To be baptized into Christ and take part in this baptism of water and Spirit (see Jn. 3:5; Acts 2:38) into the life of Christ (Rom. 6;1-4) was to be baptized into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). As Luke will make clear at the end of this chapter, to enter into God’s salvation and take part in his Spirit would be to enter into his family and take up the work of the family. That’s what salvation was and it continues to be what salvation is.


Devotional ThoughtSalvation is not just a future hope but a present reality for God’s family as we show the world what it looks like to live a saved life. What can you do today to demonstrate to your neighbors, co-workers, fellow students, etc., the salvation life that is available to all those who call upon the name of the Lord?