Joel 2:32

Joel 2:32. And whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord Whosoever, having heard the gospel, shall repent and believe in Christ, and call on him, or shall make application to God in prayer through him, shall be delivered Namely, from temporal and eternal destruction: thus St. Paul interprets this passage, Romans 10:13. For to believe in Christ, give ourselves up to him, and profess ourselves his disciples, is the most effectual, and indeed the only effectual means of escaping the judgments coming upon the unbelieving and disobedient, and likewise of being preserved from the wrath to come. The prediction, as it stands here in the prophecy, chiefly refers to those in Jerusalem who believed in Jesus as the true Messiah; for these, having a firm faith in what he had said, upon seeing some of the signs come to pass which he had foretold should precede the destruction of Jerusalem, they quitted the city in time, and so saved their lives, and escaped all those dreadful calamities which the unbelieving Jews suffered during the siege. For in mount Zion, &c., shall be deliverance The gospel is described as taking its rise from Jerusalem, and as being from thence carried to all nations. The deliverance, therefore, here said to be in mount Zion, is deliverance by embracing the gospel, which had its rise there. Or mount Zion and Jerusalem may be here put for the gospel church, the mystical Jerusalem, the city of the Messiah, the only place of salvation present and eternal. As the Lord hath said That is, according to his promises and declarations by his prophets. And in the remnant Or, among the remnant, whom the Lord shall call Namely, to believe in Christ, and by him to wait for eternal life. Or, whom the Lord shall appoint to be preserved. This may primarily be understood of those who were converted by the preaching of Christ and his apostles, and who therefore escaped the vengeance which involved the rest of the nation, Act 2:40 ; 1 Thessalonians 2:16. These are called the σωζομενοι , such as should be saved, or delivered, Acts 2:47. But there is another remnant of the Jews included in this promise, who shall be converted at the end of the world, when the obstinate and incorrigible shall be destroyed. In this sense the word remnant is often understood: see the margin. This sense of the word agrees well with what follows in the next chapter.