Are we living in the days after the last days?

Mark L makes some great points out of Peters use of Joel. I think that these passages are indeed fatal to any real cessationist view. For Joel is clear that “all flesh” will receive the Holy Spirit and prophecy in the last days. Peter is clear that he is living in the good of that and that this promise is available for them and their children and 2as many as the lord shall call”. So, call me a simpleton but I cannot see how we can now be living in days after the last days! Mark says it well:

“The new age, according to Joel and Peter’s quoting of him at Pentecost, is the age of the pouring out of the Spirit. Paul speaks to this in 2 Corinthians 3 and in multiple other places — the earnest of the Spirit, the sealing of the Spirit, the mark of the Spirit on the believer. The end of the former age and the beginning of the new took place at the resurrection. Christ is risen, the first-fruits of those who sleep.

Classical cessation-ism theorizes that there is an apostolic era, a transitional time in the beginning of the age, after which certain gifts fade. But this is to place the transition at the wrong point in time. It is not the apostles presence that marks the age. It is the empty tomb.

I cannot find one NT passage that gives any sense of any other transition — we live in the new age, the new covenant, the age of the Spirit. This is because Christ is risen. The pouring forth of the Spirit is the mark of this age”