What is the meaning of Acts 2:16?

No,

• Peter’s immediate “No,” answers the scoffers in Acts 2:13 who mocked the apostles as “full of new wine.”

• Scripture draws clear lines between unbelief and Spirit-prompted understanding (1 Corinthians 2:14; Jude 1:18-19).

• “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33), so Peter rejects any idea that what just occurred was chaotic drunkenness.

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This is

• Peter identifies the Pentecost phenomenon as the very event God promised, not an anomaly.

• Like Jesus declaring, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21), Peter says, in effect, “You’re witnessing prophecy unfolding.”

• Acts 3:18 reinforces that “God fulfilled what He foretold through all the prophets.”

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What was spoken

• The phrase underscores the permanence of God’s spoken word; what He utters, He performs (Isaiah 55:11).

• Matthew consistently ties events to “what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (e.g., Matthew 1:22; 2:15).

• Hebrews 1:1–2 affirms that God, who “spoke to our fathers through the prophets,” has now confirmed His word in Christ and, here, through the Spirit.

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By the prophet Joel

• Peter anchors the moment in Joel 2:28-32, a literal promise of the outpouring of the Spirit.

• God’s prophets were “moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21), guaranteeing reliability.

• Other prophets anticipated these days as well (Acts 3:24; Jeremiah 31:33-34), but Joel uniquely foretold the universal scope of the Spirit’s coming.

• The citation affirms continuity: the same God who spoke through Joel now acts through the risen Christ’s Spirit.

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summary

Peter’s one-sentence introduction, “No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16), refutes mockery, identifies the event as prophetic fulfillment, upholds the authority of God’s spoken word, and locates the source in Joel’s inspired prophecy. Pentecost is not confusion; it is the precise, promised moment when God’s Spirit begins to be poured out on all flesh, validating both Old Testament prophecy and the gospel preached by the apostles.