“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

Malachi 4:5-6

I have a daughter that’s a lot like me and when things don’t click right away she has a bad habit of giving up. She succeeds at nearly anything she decides to do, but sticking with it when resistance comes is a problem. On Christmas morning 2022 she unwrapped a purple Huffy Disney princess bicycle with training wheels that it took me two hours to assemble the night before. You can raise the seat to accommodate the ever-growing kudzu legs that 6 and 7 year old girls possess. For a year she would ride it up our street, around the cul-de-sac, and back down to the house maybe twice before deciding to move on to the next activity her mother and I are apparently responsible for planning. Two years ago she finally decided she wanted to try it without training wheels. The training wheels on this bike are adjustable, so our first step toward velocipede mastery was to simply raise the wheels slightly off the ground. I asked her to ride, doing her best to keep the training wheels off the ground. Naturally, it only took a couple of seconds before the training wheels scraped the ground and she was immediately done. Clearly riding a bicycle is some type of wizardry that she’s convinced are beyond her abilities. It was days before I got her to try again.

Sadly, she never allowed herself to gain any confidence and it took months before we moved on to the next step. From there we tried removing one training wheel for a while. A few months later we removed both and had her try to glide without pedaling to learn balance.

Progress was agonizingly slow. And not because she couldn’t do it, but because she wouldn’t even give herself the chance. Every time she failed, she’d give up altogether until enough days or weeks had passed that I could finally talk her into giving it another shot.

Fast forward nearly two years to November 2, 2025 and SHE FINALLY DOES IT! Out of the blue, no wobble, no panic. One minute I’m holding her up and the next I’m letting go while she cruises up the street like she’s been doing it her whole life. 

Malachi was an Old Testament prophet to Israel after they returned from captivity and rebuilt a significant amount of the city. Trouble is, it wasn’t long before they started doing the very things that landed them in exile in the first place. Their worship is lackadaisical. Their offerings were substandard. Instead of bringing the first and the best, they brought the lame and tattered if they brought anything at all. To Malachi’s contemporaries, God was of little importance and their worship reflected that. The second verse of the book accurately sums up the national perspective.

Malachi 1:2

“‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’”

As Janet Jackson once said, “What have you done for me lately?”

Malachi then spends the rest of his short book calling Israel back to repentance, even prompting them to test God’s generosity if they would repent and merely tithe (the bare minimum required by the Mosaic Law), promising God would pour out abundant blessing. 

Fast forward to the end and we find something truly unique. He tells Israel a Messiah will come, describing a day when their enemies are finally and fully defeated, bringing long-awaited healing and freedom. Then he says,

Malachi 4:5-6

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

It’s unique because Malachi is the only prophet to say that Elijah returns before the Messiah comes. Long story short, in 2 Kings 2, Elijah says God will “take him away,” a whirlwind sucks him up, there’s something about chariots of fire, and then a group of 50 other prophets try to find his body, but can’t. They assume he was “taken” by God rather than dying a natural death. There’s no indication whatsoever in all of Scripture that he may come back. Until Malachi that is. And apparently, this minute detail gained unprecedented significance over the next 400 years because it comes up on at least four significant occasions in the New Testament!

1. In Luke 1:17, the angel appearing to Zechariah says his child, John, will go before the Messiah “in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.”

2. Matthew wrote about an occasion when John the Baptist was in prison and his followers came to Jesus to ask whether or not He really was the Messiah. When they leave, Jesus turns to the surrounding crowd and says, “For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:13-14). 

3. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all write about a time that Jesus’ disciples find him on a mountain top talking with Moses and Elijah, which would’ve been startling since both had been dead or “taken” for nearly 1300 years. A cloud comes down, there’s a bright light, and then suddenly Jesus is alone. As Jesus and company come down the mountain, the disciples are trying to figure out what just happened and ask, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” And Jesus says, “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased…” and then Matthew says, “Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist” (Matthew 17:10-13).

4. Finally, in my opinion, is the most interesting occasion. In John 1, John is baptizing people in the Jordan River when he’s approached by some priests and Levites (think Old Testament church staff) who ask John, “Who are you?” John 1 says, “He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’” AND GUESS WHAT HE SAYS!

John 1:21b

“He said, ‘I am not.’”

He’s not? He’s NOT?! 

An angel appeared to Zechariah saying he was. Jesus Himself said on at least two different occasions to two different audiences that he was and even says, “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist,” but John? He wasn’t so sure.

Life is hard and living like Jesus is harder. It’s easy to become discouraged when progress doesn’t come as quickly as we’d like. But for every, “I am not” that reverberates in our minds, the Savior is patiently reminding us, “You’re doing better than you think! Keep going! You’re almost there! You can’t see it, but I can. I’m using you. I know it’s hard, but don’t give up!” 

Next time you’re tempted to believe the voice saying, “No, you’re not,” I hope you can hear the voice of Jesus saying, “Yes you are.”

Zach Orr