Joel. Romans 10. The Divine Call That Covered All.
The Whosoever Was Not Human. The Calling Was Divine. The Salvation Was Universal.
Part 13 of 14
The Verse That Built an Altar Call
Romans 10:13 is one of the most preached verses in the history of Christianity. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It became the foundation of the altar call, the sinner’s prayer, the personal decision for Christ. The entire apparatus of modern evangelical salvation, come forward, repeat after me, ask Jesus into your heart, rests on this single verse and the human-initiative framework it was assumed to support.
Whosoever calls, the individual human being making the decision, taking the step, performing the act of calling. Shall be saved, the conditional result, the salvation that follows the calling. The formula was clear. You call. You are saved. You do not call. You are not saved.
But Paul did not write this verse. He quoted it. Romans 10:13 is a direct quotation of Yoel (Joel) 2:32. Paul is not stating his own doctrine. He is citing the Hebrew prophet, the same prophet whose text he has been using throughout Romans 10 to dismantle the very human-initiative framework the quotation was later used to build.
When you read the verse in its source, in Yoel, in its own context, with the rest of the passage it belongs to, everything changes. The whosoever is not who the tradition assumed. The calling is not what the tradition assumed. And the salvation that results is not conditional in the way the tradition assumed.
Paul did not write Romans 10:13. He quoted Joel 2:32.
And Joel 2:32 in its own context says something the altar call tradition never read.
Joel 2
Read in Its Own Context
The second chapter of Yoel (Joel) is one sustained vision. It describes a great and terrible day of YHWH, an overwhelming darkness, signs in the heavens, a day of cosmic upheaval. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of YHWH comes.
Then, within that same passage and inseparable from those signs, comes the declaration: And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of YHWH shall be saved.
Read the Joel signs and identify when they occurred. The sun turned to darkness, Mattityahu (Matthew) 27:45 records that darkness came over all the land from the sixth hour to the ninth hour as Yeshua hung on the cross. The moon to blood, the blood that ran from the cross, the death that the moon’s reddening in the tradition of the Passover signified.
The great and awesome day of YHWH, the day of the cross, the day on which the last enemy began its defeat, the day that Yeshua himself identified in John 12:31 as the day of judgment: now is the judgment of this world.
The signs of Joel 2 were not future signs pointing to an event still to come when Kefa (Peter) quoted the passage in Acts 2. They were signs that had already occurred at the cross. The sun had already gone dark. The blood had already been poured out. The great and awesome day had already happened. The Joel passage was not describing what was about to happen at Pentecost. It was describing what had already happened at the cross, and the salvation that resulted from it.
The sun turned to darkness at the cross. The moon to blood at the cross. The great and awesome day of YHWH was the cross. Joel’s context places the salvation declaration at the cross, not fifty days later.
The Whosoever
Who Was Actually Calling
Now read the declaration itself with the cross as the context. Everyone who calls on the name of YHWH shall be saved. Who was calling on the name of YHWH on the day of the cross?
The earthly expression of YHWH, the full appearing, Yeshua, YHWH saves, was on the cross.
And from the cross he cried: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, my God. He was calling upon the name of YHWH. The earthly YHWH calling upon the throne YHWH. The divine to divine conversation of Document 11 enacted in the most direct possible terms, the earthly expression calling upon the eternal name of the throne expression at the precise moment the cross was accomplishing what the cross was accomplishing.
The whosoever who called upon the name of YHWH at the great and awesome day of YHWH was YHWH himself, the earthly expression of the divine presence calling upon the throne expression from the cross. Not a human whosoever deciding to pray. Not an individual making a personal decision. The divine presence calling upon itself at the moment of the universal accomplishment.
And the salvation that followed was universal, everyone, all, not because every individual human being subsequently made a personal call, but because the one who called was the one whose name covered all of humanity. YHWH saves calling upon YHWH, and the salvation that resulted was as universal as the one who called it forth.
The whosoever who called upon the name of YHWH at the great and awesome day was YHWH himself, the earthly expression calling upon the throne expression from the cross. Divine to divine. And the salvation was universal because the one who called covered all.
Romans 10
Paul Was Dismantling the Framework
When Paul quotes Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:13, he is not establishing the human-initiative salvation framework. He is completing the dismantling of it that has been underway since Romans 10:1.
The chapter began with Paul expressing his heart’s desire for Israel, that they might be saved.
He then identifies the problem: they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. They are seeking to establish their own righteousness rather than submitting to the righteousness of God. They are still operating in the human-initiative framework, the framework that says salvation is obtained by the right human action.
Paul then presents that framework in its strongest form. The word of faith, confess with your mouth, believe in your heart, is near you. It is preached. It is accessible. It is the framework the community was already teaching.
And then he does what he always does when he quotes the Hebrew scriptures in Romans. He quotes them to expose the impossibility of the human-initiative framework. How shall they call without believing. How shall they believe without hearing. How shall they hear without a preacher. How shall they preach without being sent. The chain breaks at every link if human initiative is the mechanism.
And then he quotes Yeshayahu (Isaiah): Lord, who has believed our report? The answer the text gives is not almost no one. It is no one.
Yochanan (John) 12:37-38 records that though Yeshua had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word of Yeshayahu might be fulfilled: Lord, who has believed our report? No one believed. And verse 39 goes further, therefore they could not believe, because Yeshayahu also said he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart. The inability was divinely appointed. The no one who believed was the fulfillment of the prophetic word, not a human failure to be corrected. If personal belief is the mechanism and no one believed, not almost no one, but no one, by divine appointment, then the mechanism not only fails its own test. It was never the mechanism. The salvation that followed the total unbelief was not in spite of the unbelief. It was accomplished through it.
Then he quotes Joel: Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And immediately continues, have they not heard? Yes, their voice has gone out to all the earth. But Israel has not obeyed. They are a disobedient and contrary people.
Paul is not quoting Joel as the solution to the human-initiative problem. He is quoting Joel as the divine-to-divine declaration, the calling that YHWH made upon his own name at the cross, to show that the salvation it produced was already universal, already accomplished, already extended to all regardless of human response. The disobedient and contrary people are not excluded from what Joel declared. They are included in the all of God all in all.
The Resolution
Divine to Divine
Here is the resolution that appears when Joel and Romans 10 are read through the hermeneutic this series has established from the beginning.
Yoel declared that at the great and awesome day of YHWH, the day the sun went dark and the blood was poured out, the one who called upon the name of YHWH would accomplish universal salvation. The calling was divine. The day was the cross. The one who called was the earthly YHWH addressing the throne YHWH in the cry from the cross. And the salvation was universal, everyone, all, not conditioned on human response but accomplished by the divine call itself.
Paul quoted this declaration in Romans 10 not to establish a human pathway to salvation but to close the argument against the human-initiative framework with the most decisive possible statement. The salvation of all was accomplished by the divine call at the cross. Not by human whosoever praying the right prayer. By YHWH calling upon YHWH at the precise moment the work of universal salvation was being accomplished.
This is what Paul meant when he ended Romans 10 with the declaration from Yeshayahu: I was found by them that sought me not. I was made manifest to them that asked not after me. The ones who received the salvation were not the ones who sought it, asked for it, prayed for it, or called for it. The ones who received it were the ones YHWH found, which is all of humanity, because YHWH saves called upon YHWH at the cross and the result was universal.
And then chapter 11 seals it: God has concluded all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all. Not that he might have mercy upon those among the unbelieving who subsequently believe. Upon all. The mercy is as universal as the unbelief that preceded it. The divine call at the cross covered the full scope of human unbelief, covered it completely, irreversibly, universally, and the salvation is the result of the calling, not of any human response to it.
I was found by them that sought me not. I was made manifest to them that asked not after me. The salvation of all was accomplished by the divine call, not obtained by human seeking, asking, or calling.
The Spirit Poured Out
When Joel Said It Happened
Joel 2:28, and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. The pouring out of the Spirit is placed within the same passage as the cross signs. The same day. The same event. The sun going dark, the blood being poured out, the great and awesome day, and the Spirit poured out on all flesh within that same declaration.
The gospel of Yochanan (John) records what happened on the evening of the resurrection. Yeshua came to where the disciples were gathered, showed them his hands and his side, and then breathed on them. Receive the Holy Spirit.
The ruach, the same breath YHWH breathed into Adam, the same breath that came into the dry bones of Yechezkel’s (Ezekiel’s) valley, breathed from the risen one into his disciples on the night of the resurrection. Not fifty days later. Not in a dateable public event requiring a specific location. On the evening of the first day. At the resurrection itself.
Yochanan’s account places the pouring out of the Spirit at the resurrection because Joel’s context places it at the cross and resurrection. The same day. The same event. The sun went dark at the cross, the Spirit was poured out at the resurrection, and both belong to the single great and awesome day that Joel described and that Yeshua identified in John 12 as the day of judgment, the day everything was accomplished.
The Spirit poured out on all flesh. Not on those who subsequently received it in a specific experience. On all flesh, the universal human race that the cross had constituted as the righteousness of God, the all of humanity that God all in all declares as the permanent dwelling of the divine presence. The pouring was as universal as the salvation. Both accomplished at the cross and resurrection. Both declared by Yoel. Both fulfilled on the great and awesome day that was not future to Joel’s quotation in Acts, but past.
Joel declared it. The sun went dark at the cross. The Spirit was poured out at the resurrection. The whosoever who called upon the name of YHWH was YHWH himself, the earthly expression calling upon the throne expression in the cry from the cross, and the salvation that resulted was universal.
Paul quoted Joel in Romans 10 not to build an altar call but to close the case against every human-initiative framework. The salvation was accomplished by the divine call. The finding was done by the one who found those who were not seeking. The mercy was poured out on all, concluded in unbelief so that it could be shown to all.
Whosoever called upon the name of the Lord. That was YHWH. And the salvation was everyone. Because the one who called was the one whose name covered everyone. YHWH saves. Divine to divine. Universal in scope. Accomplished at the cross. Confirmed at the empty tomb.
Sealed in the declaration that will not be unsaid: God all in all.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams