Joel 2:28–30: “‘After all this, I will pour out My Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your elderly will have prophetic dreams; your young men will see visions. Even on male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. I will produce portents both in the sky and on the earth: blood, fire, and columns of smoke.’”

We saw the fire in Acts 2. Peter quoted these words from Joel while explaining to the crowd gathered there what happened in Acts 2, telling them, “This is that” which Joel prophesied (Acts 2:16–21). A supernatural thing happening —a supernatural display, an expression of God—an operation of the Spirit. “What is happening now is a fulfillment of the words of Joel.”

He is telling them: it was an act of God. It wasn’t something they came up with. There wasn’t a strategy. It was an act of God that caused that to happen—and it wasn’t an act of God just to be an act of God; it was an act of God signaling that a new day has begun. Signaling a new operation of God. Signaling a new interaction and partnership of God with human beings.

We see this almost as the answer to the prayer of Moses, who said, “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29). And this is what we see here: all God’s people now have the Spirit of God, because Paul said, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:9). So all God’s people now have the Spirit of God.

This is heaven kissing the earth. This is heaven coming to the earth. And this is only made available because of Jesus Christ. Remember Peter said that Jesus is the One who “poured out what you both see and hear” (Acts 2:33). He poured it on those people there.

Remember what Jesus said: “I have come to bring fire on the earth” (Luke 12:49). That is the fire we saw—the fire of the Holy Spirit. The fire burning and spreading, somebody catching it, touching another person, and the other person catching it, and the fire spreading throughout.

And He said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses… in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The fire will be spreading. The fire of the Holy Spirit—the operation of the Holy Spirit—will jump from one person's life to another's, and it all began in Acts 2, in that public place.

Peter referred to Joel's words: “I will pour out My Spirit on all kinds of people.” He told them, “This promise is for you and your children and for all who are far away” (Acts 2:39). “You can take it. It’s yours. The door is open. The promise has happened. The Holy Spirit has been poured out. This is what has been prophesied.”

And as we see in Acts 10, the Holy Spirit descended on the household of Cornelius, and they began to speak in tongues and praise God just as in Acts 2 (Acts 10:44–48). That was a signal to Peter that, “Oh—this cannot be contained.” You cannot contain the operation of the Holy Spirit to just the Jews. You need to expand what “all flesh” means. “All kinds of people” does not just mean your own people; it means all peoples. It means all geographically located people. It means all ethnically located people.

And what do we see before the throne? We see, in Revelation, “a vast multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9), all worshiping the Lamb.

Glory to God.