To help us appreciate the context, we must realize that the prophetic activity had ended with Malachi’s work. The Jews living at that time understood that the Holy Spirit would return in the “last days.” Two observations about this period before the “last days” will assist in “handling the word of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). First, the widespread belief among the Jews was that prophecy had ended with Malachi and that the Holy Spirit would return in the last days with the coming of “Elijah” or John, the Immerser. If we can correctly quote the passage stating that “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever”, then why was there a 400 year period that had no miracles and no prophetic oracles? This illustrates that the same God, who does not change, had different purposes and plans in place at different times. The way God dealt with the Patriarchs and the way he dealt with the nation of Israel was very different, yet the same God was interacting with both of them.
Second, to acknowledge that the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit was absent at a particular time in history does not mean that God never intervened. At the outset of any discussion of the Holy Spirit, we must define terms and clarify that God can be at work without miraculous intervention. Even though there were neither prophets in Israel as in the days of Malachi, nor an outpouring of the Holy Spirit as promised in the “last days,” God’s hand was involved during the Maccabean period. There is a terrible misapplication of truth to conclude that if there are no miracles, there is no God at work in the lives of people on earth. The book of Esther is a prime example of the providence of God without one miraculous event. There is no mention of God in the entire book of Esther. Yet, his hand is throughout the events that were unfolded in it. Still, the events were natural events to which the casual observer of that day would never attribute as miraculous. There’s not one mention of a miracle in the entire book.
There were prophets in the restoration literature, like Haggai and Malachi. Still, through their eyes, the days would come when there would come an outpouring of the Holy Spirit like never before in the “the last days.” The Jewish world expected His coming as a sign that the last days had come in which the Messiah had arrived to render judgment, establish His rule, and fulfill the age in which they were living.
At the arrival of the first century, the end of the age was “at hand”. It was about to be fulfilled and a new age ushered in its place. Imagine the impact the Holy Spirit had when He fulfilled the promise on that day in Jerusalem. When Peter explained the event as a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy, we are not surprised to learn that 3,000 souls accepted their guilt and cried out to each other, “What must we do?” It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how loud you shout, you will never be able to duplicate that power today. It was an event of the “last days” of the Jewish regime as foretold by Joel, the prophet. Again, imagine yourself as a Jew living in Jerusalem at that time to appreciate the impact. Your worldview was built around the promise of Joel 2 and all of a sudden you are seeing what cannot be explained naturally and Peter explains, “This is what Joel prophesied regarding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” Since Joel gives the time frame as being “in the last days,” and Peter explains that this is the fulfillment of Joel’s prediction, how could you not see that the “last days” are upon you? You certainly would not place “the last days” in some unknown future, would you? The New Testament writers understood that the end of all things was upon them.
As already pointed out, the expression “last days” implies the end of something. What is that something? It is very significant to repeat that since the kingdom has no end, how can it be the last days of the “Christian age”? How can we refer to the last days of something that has no end? As we have shown, the last generation of Israel was the last days of Israel. That is the age that was present in the writing of the New Testament but was soon coming to an end. And, since the promise of the Holy Spirit was a generational application, the leaders of that generation and the instructions about them can have no application to the leaders of our era.