And it shall come to pass afterward, that I
will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out
my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and
fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon
into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. And it
shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be
delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord
hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. (Joel 2:28-32)
When Moroni
initially appeared to Joseph Smith in September 1823, he told Joseph that the
prophecy of Joel 2 had not yet been fulfilled. While it is true that what
happened on the Day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:17) was a partial fulfilment of Joel 2:28-32, many
commentators, including some from the time of Joseph Smith, viewed the text to
still have a then-future fulfilment, too. Consider the following:
The prophecy of Joel (ii. 28.—32.) concerning
the effusion of the Spirit, is applied to the apostolical age, (Acts ii.
16.-21.); but from the connection of the passage with what goes before, it
seems to point likewise to a period still future, the conversion of the Jewish
nation, which precedes the Millennium. (Alexander Fraser, A Key to the Prophecies of the Old and New Testaments, Which are Not
Yet Accomplished: Containing, I. Rules For their Arrangement. II. Observations
On their Dates. III. A General View of the Events Foretold in Them [Philadelphia:
D. Hogan, 1802], 42)
Fraser ties
the complete fulfilment to the future conversion of the Jews, a theme that is
part-and-parcel of the eschatology of the Book of Mormon (e.g,. 2 Nephi 10:7).
