And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God. In the Hebrew and the Septuagint the expression is more indefinite-`And it shall come to pass afterward,' or 'in the futurity' х wªhaayaah (H1961) 'achªreey (H310) keen (H3651), kai (G2532) estai (G2071) meta (G3326) tauta (G5023)]; but the meaning is the same, as is evident from Isaiah 2:2, and Micah 4:1, where "the last days" denote the time of the Messiah. And they are so called as closing up the ancient economy, terminating all preparatory arrangements, and constituting the final dispensation of God's kingdom upon earth. (Compare Hebrews 1:1, "God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son;" Acts 9:26, "Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared;" 1 Corinthians 10:11, "They are written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come.")
I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh. As the copiousness of this gift is denoted by the 'pouring out' (cf. Proverbs 1:23; Zechariah 12:10), so its universality is expressed by its being for "all flesh;" the one in contrast with the mere drops of all preceding time, and the other in contrast with the restriction of the Spirit to certain privileged persons or classes under the ancient economy. Accordingly, the prediction goes on to interpret itself in detail. First, there is to be no distinction of sex.
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy - that is, shall speak by divine inspiration and with divine authority. (The foretelling of future events is not necessarily included in the prophetic gift, as meant in Scripture.) This indiscriminate employment of both sexes, with which the prediction begins, would strike the devout part of the audience as remarkably fulfilled in the hundred and twenty inspired disciples, among whom, there can be no doubt, that women would form an observable portion. Next, there is to be no distinction of age.
And your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. This is expressed in accommodation to the mode in which the Spirit operated under the old economy, but need not be held to announce a continuance under the Gospel of precisely the same kind of communication. In the New Testament, at least, we find visions and dreams to be rather the exception than the rule. Finally, there is to be no distinction of rank.