Full Question
Will Elijah come?
Answer
The familiar thesis that Elijah must re-appear before the second coming of Christ rests entirely upon the interpretation of Malachi 4:5 and 6:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord : and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”
That is the unique and final admonition and promise of the Old Testament. There is no similar passage that can be brought from elsewhere in the prophets to support or elucidate it.
Its meaning must be sought in itself and its context, together with any subsequent events in the New Testament which may be claimed to be a fulfilment.
The more generally held interpretation assumes that the entire chapter refers to “the latter days “; that “the great and dreadful day of the Lord” is the reappearing of the Lord Jesus, and that before that event the prophet Elijah will be sent on a ministry of reconciliation to the nation of Israel, prior to the regathering and introduction to their Messiah.
With the exception of the identity of the Lord Jesus with the Messiah, this was and is the Jewish interpretation. Elijah was much in the Jewish mind in Christ’s day, as witness the twenty-eight direct references in the gospels.
The disciples asked Jesus, “Why say the scribes that Elias must first come? (Mk 9:11)” an obvious objection to the Messiah-ship of Jesus in the scribes’ minds being the non-appearance of Elijah. It must be remembered that at this time the second advent meant nothing to them or the disciples.
The simple question was, “is this man Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah?” The disciples had already answered “Thou art the Christ.” (Mk 8:29) The scribes had difficulties and reservations, one of which was, that “Elias must first come.” Jesus accepts unreservedly this reading of Malachi—but he goes further and interprets it,
“Elias verily cometh first and restoreth all things But I say unto you that Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.”
Now who was the forerunner of Christ with whom they had dealt as they listed, if not John the Baptist, whom Christ claimed to be the “messenger” of the companion prophecy in Malachi 3:1? Matthew’s comment (Matt 17:13) is “the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.”
Before this incident Jesus was expounding to the disciples the significance of his own and John the Baptist’s appearance. Of John he says, “Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.”
“For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.” (Matt 11:11,13,14)
Clearly the teaching of Jesus is that the functons of the Elijah in Malachi were fulfilled in the mission of the Baptist, and he nowhere alludes to a further re-appearance of the prophet in this role. This view agrees with the prophetic words of the angel prior to the birth of John, “And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God, and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”6
Two objections are raised to this view, but they are not unanswerable.
The first is that the language of Malachi 4:5 and 6 is so definitely indicative of “latter-day” happenings that we must regard the prophecy as still unfulfilled.
The quotation from Luke above would seem to answer this effectively, since the angel found no difficulty in relating the words of the prophet to the immediate mission of John. Moreover, none will deny that the third chapter of Malachi alludes to the work of John the Baptist as Christ’s forerunner, and its atmosphere is like that of the fourth, one of judgment and refining
“Who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap. . .”
The second difficulty is John’s own statement, recorded in the gospel of John (Jn 1:21),
“And they asked him, What then ? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet ? And he answered, No.”
The Baptist’s own conception of his mission was that he was ” the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as saith the prophet Esaias.”
Admitting that the question, “Art thou Elias?” has reference to Malachi 4, his denial is not incompatible with the fuller appreciation of his mission and importance which Christ undoubtedly shewed, when he definitely associated John with that prophecy.
There is an apparent incongruity of any other individual intervening in a work which is always assigned wholly to Christ in the day of his coming, namely, that of drawing to himself the allegiance of his own people. This is avoided if the coming of Elijah referred to by Malachi is taken as a prophecy of the work of John the Baptist.
“The Valley of the Shadow”