Malachi 4:1

This brief chapter of six verses is, in the Hebrew Bible, included with Malachi 3. It is an appropriate and exciting close to the Book of Malachi, to the voice of Prophecy, and to the Old Testament Canon of the Bible.

"For behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace; and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith Jehovah of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."

This is a reference to the final judgment, at which time God will make a summary end of wicked and rebellious men. The unique survivors of that holocaust will be those from all ages, the people of God, the redeemed in Christ. Neither Christ, nor any of the apostles, ever softened or reduced the intensity of this promise in any manner.

John the Baptist, revealed later in the chapter as the forerunner of the Judge, used exactly the same figure: "But the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:12). Christ himself spoke of, "The eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 12:42). Peter spelled it out at some length, "The heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men" (2 Peter 3:7). It is of no consequence whatever that wicked men simply do not believe this; God will accomplish it just the same. "But a righteous God would not destroy all men!" That is what the ante-diluvian world thought; and the same God who promised that he would not again destroy the earth with a flood, has also promised a second and terminal destruction by fire. My God give men the grace to believe what he has revealed.