Joel 3:2

"I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will execute judgment upon them there for my people Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have parted my land.

"The valley of Jehoshaphat ..." "This is not to be thought of as a literal place in Palestine, but as an ideal place where judgment is to be executed."[10] This is the same as the place called Armageddon (Revelation 16); and in both cases, it is the place where God will execute his wrath upon evil men; and absolutely no "battle" of any kind is prophesied as occurring at either site. This judgment of God upon "all nations" who have persecuted God's people has already taken place repeatedly in history, as witnessed by Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, Gomorrah, Assyria, Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem; and it is still going on! (See my Commentary on Revelation, pp. 374-378.)

"My people Israel whom they have scattered among the nations ..." Many expositors think only of the dispersion of the Jews; but more than that is meant.

The people and inheritance of God are not merely the O.T. Israel as such, but the church of the Lord, (the true Israel) of both covenants, upon which the Spirit of God is poured out.[11]

The "scattering" here must then be applied to all of the many "scatterings" that were inflicted upon the old Israel, as well as to the "scatterings" of Christians all over the world, a very considerable number of which have resulted directly from vicious persecution by evil nations, as that which arose around the martyrdom of Stephen, the dispersion of the faithful that came about from the persecutions of the apostolic missionaries, as Paul, who fled from place to place, with a result of congregations being planted all over the Roman empire; and this pattern continues indefinitely and even into modern times; it was persecutions which drove the early colonies to the New World in the 17th century. Thus the scattering of God's people among the nations is not a one-shot episode that happened to ancient Israel. No wonder the commentators cannot decide what "scattering" is meant here! "And have parted my land ..." Here again, "my land" is wrongly read as "Palestine"; but the notion that any such place is any more "God's land" than North America or any other place on earth should have been laid to rest twenty centuries ago. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof" (Psalms 24:1). The parting, or dividing of God's land therefore refers to the horrible divisions that have come upon the earth through the devices of wicked men. The whole world today is divided, because the only basis of unity through "one new man in Christ Jesus" has been denied and rejected by evil men. This passage teaches that the ultimate judgment of God will fall upon humanity for their sins. Deane was near the common consensus of opinions in this comment:

"This must be referred to the long subsequent time (from Joel) when Palestine became a Roman province, its capital leveled with the ground; then the great dispersion of the covenant people among the nations commenced, and continues to the present day."[12]

Apparently, however, Deane failed to include here the similar "scattering" of the true Israel and the "divisions" of mankind resulting from wickedness. They also, of course, are included.