Malachi’s name means “my messenger.” If he was not the very last messenger of God to write an Old Testament book, he was at least one of God’s last Old Testament messengers. (Several of the Historical Books may have been written later than Malachi, for example, Nehemiah. We do not know for sure.) It seems certain that he was the last prophet of the Old Testament era to point forward to the coming Messiah. After Malachi’s time, 400 years of divine silence would begin until the Messiah had established his Kingdom. We are told nothing about the man Malachi himself in his book. We do not know exactly when he lived. But because the temple had already been rebuilt and a Persian governor was ruling in

Jerusalem when Malachi wrote, he must have lived after the time of Haggai and Zechariah. Perhaps he wrote about 450-430 B.C. From Malachi’s book we can learn much about the conditions at his time. They were hard times with prosperity lacking. The people thought that God had let them down. Both priests and people had developed a very careless attitude in their spiritual lives. The priests were offering blind, crippled, and diseased animals to God at the temple. This was something they would not dare to do to the Persian governor, but they dared to do this to the Lord Almighty. The lay people were robbing God by cheating him out of the tithes and offerings they were to offer. Men were divorcing their older wives to marry younger heathen women. The people were generally saying that it was a waste of their time to serve God (3:14). It was to these priests and people that Malachi prophesied. He uncovered their sins before their eyes; then he held before them the promise of the Messiah.

GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF MALACHI:

1. Malachi Admonishes the Priests and People for Their Sins (1-2)

2. Malachi Offers Messages of Hope and Warning (3-4)

Since Malachi’s book is short, you will have time to read the whole book. Notice especially the prophecies in 3:1 where the Messiah is called “the messenger of the covenant.” Notice that the work of John the Baptist of preparing the way for the Messiah is prophesied twice: 3:1a and 4:5. The last three verses of Malachi’s book are a fitting closing for the Old Testament. 4:5 directs our attention back to what has been written so far in God’s inspired Book; 4:5 directs our attention forward to what is soon to take place and be recorded in the New Testament when the long-promised Messiah comes.

Prophets Describe the Savior

Source: Christiananswer.net

After forty years in the desert, the Israelites, known also as Jews, entered the promised land of Canaan. Although the inhabitants of Canaan knew of God’s mighty miracles for the Jews, they rejected Jehovah as God, and fought against the Children of Israel. But God protected the Jews as they resettled in the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and JacobThe Lord ordained priests to oversee the animal sacrifices and to lead in worship. Once a year the appointed High Priest went behind a sacred veil, which separated the people from the holy presence of God. There the priest represented the whole nation before the Lord.After many years, the Israelites crowned a king, David, whom God called, “A man after my own heart.”God spoke to the Jews through David and other godly men, called prophets, reminding them to be holy as a witness to all nations. When the Israelites sinned, the Lord warned

Israel through these prophets, that if they continued to sin, He would allow a foreign nation to overrun their country.In spite of these warnings,

Israel was disobedient and rebelled against God, rejecting His laws and killing the prophets who testified against them.Finally, after eight hundred years of rebellion, Israel was taken out of her own land and was made captive in the nations of Assyria and

Babylon.

But God continued to speak through prophets during the Jews’ captivity. Some of the messages were calls to repentance, while others were prophecies about the Savior who would come to rescue sinful mankind.