See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Malachi 3: 1-4
Malachi means “messenger.” Perhaps you kept turning the Old Testament pages thinking you must have missed Malachi! After all, it is a small book. Ah, there it is, at the very end of the Old Testament, and its three chapters anyone can read in minutes.
The prophet never experienced the thunder and fire of a 747 taking off from Ben Gurion Airport bound non-stop, thirteen hours to New York. His words, however, speak volumes as God imparts to our human hearts and contemporary times the message he would have us hear on this day in early December. Read the words of Malachi aloud. You be the Prophet this time! And please, really listen. “What more can he say than to you he hath said…?”
